Admirers agree with you “even if you say something totally crazy.” And that’s bad: “You need people who can tell you what you don’t want to hear." Being admired for our accomplishments is pleasant, but it can also inflame our vanity and distort reality in ways that leave us worse off in the end. - The Atlantic
"Current AI systems hold up a mirror to our online minds. Like Narcissus, we can get lost gazing at the reflection, even though it is not always flattering. We ought to ask ourselves: Is there more to these algorithms than mindless copy? The answer is not straightforward." - Nautilus
In a world flooded with such new devices, it is not at all surprising to find that many people now are not even aware of any aspiration to self-knowledge beyond what may be revealed by the AppleWatch or the Fitbit. - Unherd
So far, scientists have learned that, generally speaking, anesthetic drugs render people unconscious by altering how parts of the brain communicate. But they still don’t fully understand why. - Nautilus
“Platform co-ops offer a more democratic and equitable alternative to traditional companies, and they have the potential to create good jobs, boost local economies, and increase resilience in the face of future shocks.” - Wired
If COVID-19 has been an X-ray of society’s fracture points, scammers have not only looked at the film but pressed on the wounds. Since the start of the pandemic, both prophylactic and postexposure measures have been rife with fraud. - Harper's
It turns out that Francis Fukuyama doesn’t like what history’s end has wrought. Liberalism has been corrupted by bad actors on all sides who have lost faith in its tenets: free speech, universal tolerance, and human equality. - The Baffler
"For me, at least, fandom has started to feel like a phenomenon akin to cryptocurrency or economic populism—a history-shaping force that we’d be foolish to ignore." - The New Yorker
Most metropolises are overrun with ghosts; from New York to London, Mumbai to Shanghai, a simple Google search throws up an encyclopaedia’s worth of results about urban legends based on things that go bump in the dark. - Aeon
"It’s really quite strange that people from so long ago seem to have understood so much. And, if you’re looking at things like sexual relations, it’s amazing: there’s hardly a permutation that has not been covered by a myth. They knew everything." - The New Yorker
There are – allegedly – occasions when we come to understand something about the world via a peculiar kind of experiment that takes place only in the mind. Thought experiments, as they’re known, are an exercise of pure imagination. - Aeon
When we talk about labor-saving devices, whose labor is saved, exactly? It’s women’s labor. But during the industrial era, the household work traditionally performed by men became more completely replaced by technology than the household work traditionally performed by women. - 3 Quarks Daily
The 404 is the Los Angeles Times' new Finsta - slang for "fake instagram," usually an account for a closer group of friends or family - and is staffed not to spread the paper's journalism but "continually inventing new types of experimental content." OK, #cool. - Los Angeles Times
We hear fluent speech, we think "fluent thought." But wait: "The human brain is hardwired to infer intentions behind words" - even where there is none. - Fast Company
"Suppose we are now willing to regard it as a live possibility that we really are living in a simulation. How much would it matter? Should it profoundly shake our understanding of the cosmos and our place in it?" - Slate
