When we look at history’s major censorious regimes, all of them—I want to stress that; all of them—invested enormous resources in programs designed to encourage self-censorship, more resources than they invested in using state action to actively destroy or censor information. - Reactor
Since our actions result from nothing more than one event following another, no one really deserves praise or blame for anything they do. Our actions are determined by physical events in the physical brain, tightly linked in a causal chain that none of us is able to control any more than anyone else. - 3 Quarks Daily
I still believe in philosophy’s capacity to seek truth, but I’m conscious that I’ve tethered myself to an academic heritage plagued by formidable demons. - Aeon
By the end of the long weekend, the eclectic crowd had created a radical system for describing and discovering online content that still directly powers web search today, and which paved the way for how all content is labelled and discovered on the open web. - Aeon
Sports fandom raises a number of interesting and important philosophical issues such as the connection between sports fandom and identity, and whether it is better to be a committed fan of a particular team or to appreciate the sport from a more neutral perspective. - Aeon
If an animated movie or series is good enough, or in the case of Avatar: The Last Airbender far beyond simply “good,” why mess with live-action remakes? - CBC
Thinking about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for instance, “to come close to the feeling and texture of war as it is lived behind the lines – and behind front doors – it is necessary to turn to the work of Ukrainian artists, writers, playwrights and filmmakers." - The Guardian (UK)
“Many scenes and images in The Boy and the Heron echo those from his earlier films, only this time they’re rendered in service of a story almost wholly about the profound ravages of war.” - The Atlantic
What we’re seeing here is the collapse of a long and interesting discussion about AI bias into a tense, obfuscating exchange between anti-woke culture warriors and a hypercautious tech giant with a large comms team. - Intelligencer (MSN)
In terms of defining the canon in 2050, preservation of the “now” is a big question, but so is whether a preserved work can actually be presented again in the future. - ArtHub
The researchers came up with a term to describe the motivation behind these all-purpose conspiracy mongers. They called it the “need for chaos,” which they defined as “a mindset to gain status” by destroying the established order. - The Atlantic (MSN)
If you think of a sound, such as a dog barking, a loved one’s voice, or a favorite tune, to what extent can you hear that sound in your mind? Not at all? As vividly as actually hearing it in real time and space? Somewhere in between? - Nautilus
Results are overturning assumptions about brain anatomy, for example, revealing that regions often have much fuzzier boundaries and job descriptions than was thought. - Nature
Antilogic was a form of contradiction that caused a person to simultaneously believe opposite things about a single event or phenomenon, without any way out or means of resolving the contradictory views in which they had become ensnared. - Psyche
