There is no controversy in saying that a single organism wants to remain alive. Even bacteria purposefully move toward where there is more sugar. But things get more complicated when we ask whether all of life shares a collective sense of purpose. - Big Think
Postmodern ideas have gained the status of absolute truths. Relativism, selectively appropriated into the language of both left and right politics, has metamorphosed into dogma. As oversimplification distorts communication, public trust in scientific fact has eroded. Could renewed ideas of objectivity be a way out? - Eurozine
Rubbing shoulders with strangers is considered both a pleasure and a pain of urban life. Density can be an endless source of social possibility, of chance encounters in city streets. - Aeon
Here’s the thing about the wisdom of crowds – it only applies when those individual decisions are reached independently. Once we start influencing each other’s decision, that wisdom disappears. - MediaPost
“Moral grandstanding” and “virtue signaling” are slurs. They are variations on the charge of being “woke”, “politically correct,” etc., going at least as far back as Tom Wolfe’s 1970 essay on “radical chic.” These are all ad hominems, attacking the person, not the argument or cause. - 3 Quarks Daily
This idea is surprisingly popular among philosophers and even some scientists. Assume that in the far future, civilisations hugely more technically advanced than ours will be interested in running “ancestor simulations” of the sentient beings in their distant galactic past. - The Guardian
If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone about an event you both participated in that left you feeling like one of you was delusional because your stories were so different, you might have a hint about how much your experiences have shaped the way you understand the world around you. - Nautilus
Longtermism is about taking seriously just how big the future could be and how high the stakes are in shaping it. If humanity survives to even a fraction of its potential life span, then, strange as it may seem, we are the ancients: we live at the very beginning of history, in its most distant past. - The New...
"Nearly 60 percent of recent grievances center on what I’d consider lifestyle choices: music and parties and people talking loudly. But one person’s loud is another person’s expression of joy." - The Atlantic
If life in the 1930s was marked by a Great Depression, and the 2010s by a Great Recession, one might say our current decade is marked by a Great Regression. This return to childhood manifests in the things we consume, in how we spend our time, even in the ways our societies are governed. - Aeon
The internet by design has sanded complex ideas down to trending hashtags, stripping subtlety from language and producing younger generations who confuse attention for personal growth. - The Atlantic
And by "people who should know better," we mean certain AI researchers themselves. "The problem is that people closest to the technology live with one foot in the future. They sometimes see what they believe will happen as much as they see what is happening now." - The New York Times
In this future, people are citizens, rather than subjects or consumers. With this identity, it becomes easier to see that all of us are smarter than any of us. And that the strategy for navigating difficult times is to tap into the diverse ideas, energy and resources of everyone. - BBC
Cosmic voids are cosmology at its purest. They are simple. The complications of star formation and black holes don’t impact them because they don’t have any stars or black holes. They are basically big fossils from the earliest days of the universe and their shapes encode the evolution of the universe. - Nautilus
