The empty-self metaphor has inspired a large following. These followers embrace an optimistic view in which human foibles can be readily vanquished through systematic manipulation of social environment. However alluring it may be, we suggest it is time to replace this Panglossian view with one that acknowledges the importance of enduring psychological structures. - Psyche
What we are trying to do is not just help ground students—the large majority of them scientists and engineers in training—in a humanistic research program, but to identify irreplaceable ideas during a time of accelerated change. - The Atlantic
“What we see in front of us used to be culturally diverse. Now it is culturally generic. Most of what we see is the big chains we see everywhere,” she said. “It creates a sense of placelessness. We could be anywhere.” - The New York Times
Our curiosity may be or could be one of the best things about us (though when we describe someone as a curious person we can sometimes mean that they are a bit odd, as though we admire curiosity but it makes us uneasy). - London Review of Books
"At 'temperature zero,' the model always chooses the most likely next token and gives the same answer every time" - down to the music and menus in every restaurant or pub. - The New York Times
Deal by deal, ownership is being extracted from the thousands of communities where businesses were built to the handful of cities where capital is already concentrated. - The New York Times
Systems fail; unanticipated difficulties occur; things break or rot. To cope with this reality, philosophical and religious traditions such as Buddhism and Stoicism have long focused on transience, unpredictability, and the inevitability of change and loss. - Scientific American
We live in a golden age of digital creativity. Forget A.I.: you, yourself, can record an album from your sofa, or curate a photo-essay on the train. In that spirit, here are some of my favorite creative digital tools. - The New Yorker
Why are humans so driven to make things? In our age of A.I. slop, the V. & A.’s devotion to physical objects is a tonic. And if two new buildings seem like overkill, think of all those data centers. - The New Yorker
Rather than cycling through distinct eras sequentially as Laver predicted, social media feeds flatten time entirely. Decades of vintage subcultures and instant micro-aesthetics are collapsed into the same endless scroll, allowing a 1990s minimalist silhouette to coexist alongside a week-old “whimsymaxxing” viral trend. - The Conversation
To be online, many now admit, is to be endlessly manipulated and exploited. In December, Oxford University Press declared rage bait to be the word of the year, noting that use of the term had tripled over the previous 12 months. - Wired
What should the government do? We asked a panel of experts to assess the risks A.I. presents and the tools of governance that could be adopted to address them. - The New York Times
A groundbreaking study challenges 70 years of assumptions about how human language works. By analyzing billions of word uses, scientists discovered that meaning is organized around power, danger, and order rather than emotion alone. - ScienceDaily
