What is needed is a path forward that allows us to cope with tragedy and injustice without abandoning the value of people we care about or the issues we find important. We long for solutions that ease our anxiety but also provide us with reasons to live. - 3 Quarks Daily
Although education is linked to better cognitive skills and health, it does not appear to alter the brain’s physical structure in the long run. Researchers suggest that any initial structural impact may be temporary or too small to detect with MRI technology. - Neuroscience News
Perhaps you don’t want to reward The New York Times for not settling with its digital workers (they have a handy Games site here), but if you’re feeling stressed right now, there’s a reason you’re doing crosswords somewhere (or Wordle or Connections equivalents). - The New York Times
“The Cultural Olympiad (can’t we go back to the friendlier Arts Festival?) is special. It is the only aspect of the Olympics that needn’t be politicized or commercialized.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
“The rabbit holes and the unexpected obsessions are what’s beautiful about searching the internet; but AI, like the tech companies developing it, is obsessed with efficiency and optimization.” - The Atlantic
Today, we are rapidly becoming ‘tech-vexed’ – my word for the gradual yet relentless seduction of computerised life. The COVID-19 pandemic simply accelerated a trend: many of us are now more intimately connected to smartphones than to nonmediated relationships with people. - Aeon
The background condition of this discussion is our current state of permacrisis: the collision of multiple critical problems whose conjunction renders effective response to any one of them impossible. Crisis demands a response, but too much of it strains our abilities. - The Walrus
Spreading the fear of AI stealing all our jobs seems to garner much more enthusiasm for basic income than continually pointing at the evidence. But hitching the case for basic income to fears of rapid AI progress makes it far more vulnerable than it needs to be. - Vox
People find it easier to empathize with a single individual than with groups, plausibly because individuals are easier to conjure in one’s imagination. Therefore, the difference in empathy toward a present person and future others in general is likely even greater than what we’ve found. - Psyche
Since the nineteen-sixties, much of American public life has become automated, driven by computers and predictive algorithms that can do the political work of rallying support, running campaigns, communicating with constituents, and even crafting policy. - The New Yorker
Figuring out how to relate to minds of unconventional origin — not just AI and robotics but also cells, organs, hybrots, cyborgs and many others — is an existential-level task for humanity as it matures. - Noema
Continually choosing the convenient path lessens your ability to deal with unavoidable difficulties. And, from an evolutionary perspective, some measure of discomfort is just as crucial to our survival as rest and relaxation. - The Guardian
If you speak more than one language, ask yourself: in which language do you find it easier to say ‘I love you’? And in which one do you swear more liberally? For me, cursing in a foreign language feels strangely playful, as if it gives me permission to access a different version of myself. - Psyche
“It is surprising that few scholars have stopped to wonder whether Rousseau’s fledging as a philosophe ... had anything to do with the six years he marinated in Madame Dupin’s project, quill to linen, taking dictation, making clean drafts, and trawling through stacks upon stacks of books.” - Aeon
