Pragmatism emerged in the US in the late 1800s as a response to the Enlightenment push for absolute truth. Pragmatists — like William James and John Dewey — were less interested in certainty and more concerned with immediate experience. They wanted to know what worked for ordinary human beings. - Vox
Where we’ve arrived instead is somewhere more foreign than artificial consciousness. In a strange way, a program like PaLM would be easier to comprehend if it simply were sentient. We at least know what the experience of consciousness entails. - The Atlantic
On the one hand, if we are solely responsible for the things we do wrong, some genuinely malevolent parties get off scot-free. On the other, if we locate responsibility entirely outside the individual, we relegate ourselves to sentient flotsam buffeted by currents beyond our control. - The Guardian
So, this is my answer: if I am being canceled I want my friends — and this includes not only my closest associates, but anyone who considers themselves friendly to me — to stand by, remain silent, and do nothing. If you care about me, let them eat me alive. - The New York Times
The frustration has become a persistent meme: that Google Search, what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or dying. For the past few years, across various forums and social-media platforms, people have been claiming in viral posts that Google’s flagship product is broken. - The Atlantic
For thousands of years, global wealth – at least our best approximations of it – barely budged. But beginning around 150-200 years ago, everything changed. The world economy suddenly began to grow exponentially. Global life expectancy climbed from less than 30 years to more than 70 years. - BBC
92NY's CEO: "The 92nd Street Y is a lot like New York City. ... Amazing things happen here. But, like New York City, for a number of years we underinvested in maintenance and capital." - The New York Times
Part of the issue is language. "On the one hand, PaLM and other large language models are capable of understanding in the sense that if you tell them something, its meaning registers. On the other hand, this is nothing at all like human understanding." - The Atlantic
Chefs love the food focus, but also aren't real happy with some issues. Alton Brown: 15-second clips on TikTok "trivialize cooking in a way that I find potentially harmful because we’re going to have a whole generation who think that cooking is just putting nuts in ice cream." - Variety
That is, the personal brand. Thanks, internet culture. "We’ve arrived at a new era of anonymity, in which it feels natural to be inscrutable and confusing—forget the burden of crafting a coherent, persistent personal brand. There just isn’t any good reason to use your real name." - The Atlantic
The censor is convinced that “some forms of expression are so vile or dangerous that they should be restricted, or so valuable that they should be compelled.” Consequently, censors “claim the moral sanction to speak for the collective.” - LA Review of Books
When I hear people in the corporate world talking about creativity and storytelling — how what they’re really doing is ‘telling a story,’ how everything is about creativity and storytelling, how everything is narrative — I hear it and think: Do you actually know what it means to be creative? - Chicago Tribune
The quest for purity informs cancel culture. It pushes partisans to ever-greater extremes, even when those positions are politically self-defeating. It turns historical heroes /into villains and closes nuclear power plants in the face of climate change. - Virginia Postrel
It's leaps and bounds ahead. It raises immediate questions about how these technologies will change how art is made and consumed. It also raises questions about what it means to be creative when DALL-E 2 seems to automate so much of the creative process itself. - The Daily Beast
