An avant-garde likes to present itself as insurgent and radical, yet the logic of the metaphor suggests that a new group will soon be coming along to replace it. Today’s avant-garde is always liable to congeal into tomorrow’s orthodoxy. - The Nation
It is not just in war and sport that luck plays such a great part. In our interconnected global economy, every business operates in a high-variable environment. This is not new. - Psyche
Quantum physics may just be the realisation that this ubiquitous relational structure of reality continues all the way down to the elementary physical level. Reality is not a collection of things, it’s a network of processes. - The Guardian
The question of what we can know of that which lies beyond the limits of our imagination is partially about the biological function of intelligence, and partially about our greatest cognitive prostheses, particularly human language and mathematics. - Aeon
Without public education delivered as a public good, the asylum seeker in detention, the teenager in jail, not to mention millions of children growing up in poverty, will have no realistic way to get the instruction they need to participate in democracy or support themselves. And students of privilege will stay confined in their bubbles. - The New York Times
From copying my music teacher to copying the great composers to mashing-up great recorded content to learning to ask AI to create – it’s all the same process. We are copying what already exists and trying our best to do it so others will consider it art – not craft. - Shelly Palmer
This question—why parents and taxpayers should support public schools that teach content that conflicts with their most cherished beliefs—has reverberated across the decades, sometimes registering only as a faint echo and sometimes, such as today, resounding at top volume. - The Point
That there is more than one way to interpret numbers might seem obvious, but is worth repeating at a time when, once again, historians claiming that they will emulate the supposedly ‘hard’ sciences are in a position to get huge grants and hire armies of assistants. - Aeon
Research shows that humans are born with an inherent sense of numbers, known as numerosity.5 The concept of numerosity is one of the only high-level cognitive functions that is mapped to a specific region of the brain. In other words, we are primed to do basic math, but culture gets in the way. - Nautilus
The universe is stranger than we can imagine, Albert Einstein is said to have said. Indeed, we should not even be sure there is a universe: we can see stars and nebulae and planets and whatever, but no one has ever seen a universe. - 3 Quarks Daily
We already have abundant material rebutting creationism on scientific grounds, but the Trollingers explicitly refrain from discussing the science. What they do instead is much more interesting. In an extended and detailed analysis, they apply the Museum’s own criteria to the Museum’s own display. It does not fare well. - 3 Quarks Daily
The ultimate goal, in Dr. Ferrucci’s view, is that A.I. becomes a trusted “thought partner,” a skilled collaborator at work and at home, making suggestions and explaining them. - The New York Times
The three-body problem is the best metaphor I’ve found for a social complexity that affects us all today—a problem resulting from the interaction of three major centers of gravity. This dynamic is scrambling our intuitions and making us long for order in what feels like an increasingly chaotic world. - Wired
We see others as crippled by ignorance and cowed by superstition; we don't see the extent to which we are, in our own ways, oppressed by our rationalism and lack of "superstition" (in a spiritual sense). - Salon
Given that the world we live in forces us to deal with pandemics, economic problems, wars and climate change it can seem overwhelming that we are supposed to be happy. It’s unrealistic to think we should always look at the bright side of events. - The Conversation
