While liberal arts institutions do have intrinsic value, that doesn’t mean they are entitled to be socially favoured or economically exceptional for ever. A particularly stubborn myth is that liberal arts education has a monopoly on cultivating critical thinking. - The Guardian
This fetishization of perfection might not be surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. You cannot learn or grow while trying to appear as if you have everything figured out. You cannot talk to God by trying to avoid doing something wrong. Perfection is stagnation. - The New York Times
“In the fiction of Assassin’s Creed, humanity is descended from ancient aliens; ... world events influenced by a shadow war between two secret societies; the media exists to manipulate the public. This makes for an exciting series of video games” — but it echoes real-life conspiracy theories. - Slate
"Playing an instrument well is phenomenally difficult. It takes a lifetime of arduous work and can become all-consuming, making it easy to forget that technical mastery is a means to an expressive end, not the goal. … In and of itself, it is uninteresting.” - The New York Times
Then the indie web might be for you. It’s “pushing back against algorithms and AI and calling for a more creative, personal internet.” - The Verge (Archive Today)
Ever since Descartes, who split mind from matter and linked thinking and being, we’ve drifted from the very thing that makes us human. We’ve separated ourselves from the natural world, physically and mentally. The mental separation enabled the physical one. We came to see ourselves inhabiting a world of things, ourselves the only conscious element within it. - Harper's
A study by the Singapore Management University found that frequent interruptions to check our devices lead to more attention and memory lapses. Unlike total screen time, the frequency of smartphone checks is a much stronger predictor of daily cognitive failures. - Washington Post
The study provides evidence that large language models, such as ChatGPT, are mathematically constrained to a level of creativity comparable to an amateur human. - Psypost
The study mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organisation moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years. - The Guardian
You never feel as if you’re getting warmer; rather, you go from cold to hot, seemingly in an instant. Or, as the neuropsychologist Donald Hebb, known for his work building neurobiological models of learning, wrote in the 1940s, sometimes “learning occurs as a single jump, an all-or-none affair.” - Quanta
If you’re more likely to read something written by AI than by a human on the internet, is it only a matter of time before human writing becomes obsolete? Or is this simply another technological development that humans will adapt to? - The Conversation
Machine intelligence meets or surpasses humanlike abilities in many areas—but being an embodied human is complex, and our grasp of intelligence has grown significantly. - Scientific American
In place of the bohemian idealism of previous countercultural movements, this counter-counterculture embraced cynicism, scoffing at inclusivity and progress. - The New York Times
“It is not uncommon for a visitor to refuse to leave the Annex, convinced she is Anne Frank reincarnate. This degree of identification perplexes the director. Calling her by her first name, as some of his colleagues do, troubles him as well.” - LitHub
