These corporations have erected a private state over us. They who have disrupted almost every economic and political balance in the Republic. They who have amassed the power to shape and determine how we speak to one another and share news and information. Even how we think, dream, and perceive our place in the world. - Harper's
We all suffer from delusions, and we all, like Oedipus, use tricks of self-deception to keep ourselves from acknowledging truths about our lives. Yet understanding, or even describing, this everyday experience can seem like a fool’s errand. - Harper's
What we hardly talk about is how we’ve reorganized not just industrial activity but any activity to be capturable by computer, a radical expansion of what can be mined. Friendship is ground zero for the metrics of the inner world, the first unquantifiable shorn into data points. - The Walrus
The researchers found that, in jackpot scenarios, the activity of neurons associated with motor preparation decreased. Motor preparation is the brain’s way of making calculations about how to complete a movement — similar to lining up an arrow on a target before unleashing it. - Nature
Today, it can be digitally simulated, biologically synthesised or made from entirely different materials to those that allowed our evolutionary ancestors to flourish. These and other possibilities are inviting researchers to ask more fundamental questions: if the materials for life can radically change – like the materials for computation – what stays the same?
In 2010, a political-science paper came out that made people worry. It suggested fact-checks might actually make people dig in their heels. What if telling people they’re wrong makes them double down rather than change their minds? - The Atlantic
Olivier Roy believes that a range of abstract and apparently unstoppable forces—globalization, neoliberalism, postmodernism, individualism, secularism, the Internet, and so on—are undermining culture by rendering it “transparent,” turning our cultural practices into “a collection of tokens” to be traded and displayed. - The New Yorker
Conspiracy theorists appear earnestly committed to finding the truth, yet they are drawn to theories that often involve false and implausible claims. The psychology of insight – especially the rewarding feelings associated with discovery and revelation – can resolve this paradox, helping to illuminate the surprising role that deep thinking plays in proliferating conspiracies. - Psyche
Studies with creative writers and physicists reveal that about a fifth of their most important ideas occur when they’re mind-wandering, not focused on a specific task. This is why spending time in nature or simply gazing out of a window can enhance creativity. - Harvard Business Review
I would argue that climate change and advanced AI are the only two risks where parts of their probability curve include singularities where change is so fundamental that we cannot forecast beyond it. All other risks are a continuation of the status quo, to a greater or lesser extent. - 3 Quarks Daily
After all, who wouldn’t have enjoyed seeing The Bear face off against Shōgun, or The Crown’s Elizabeth Debicki go up against True Detective’s Jodie Foster? - The New York Times
But “the creator of the Pulitzer prize-winning musical Hamilton said it may still be too soon after 2012's movie Brave, which is set in Scotland, for a Disney animation set in Wales.” (They are rather different countries, but … well.) - BBC
“When we learn something with other people—be it a college study group, a cooking class, or workplace learning—we encode the information more robustly in the brain and feel more motivated to act.” A virtual environment can substitute, but basically, humans learn better with each other. - Fast Company
I have come to believe it will take many, many thousands, maybe even millions of robots doing stuff in the real world to collect enough data to train e2e models that make the robots do anything other than fairly narrow, well-defined tasks. - Wired
"It's strange that we don't still really know the answers to questions like when do children have a proper distinction between the past and the future, given that this seems to structure the entire way that we think about our lives as adults." - BBC
