IDEAS

In Medieval Times, Curiosity Was A Negative

Curiosity was seen as a largely vacuous interest in novel or forbidden information. The curious person was thought to reach for what was hidden and secret, beyond their proper purview, and thereby isolate themselves from spiritual and social community. - MIT Reader

Why Do Things Exist?

This very obvious fact about the world – that things exist – can shift from seeming mundane and trivial to very surprising, even downright weird.  - Aeon

How America Developed A Culture Of The Telephone

Advertising could turn people into customers, but helping phone owners form what Bell called a “telephone habit” required a different tool.  - JStor

Why We Are Not Our Brains

Remember that the brain itself is merely another object in the world. To talk about it at all is to have already accepted a level of objective existence which cannot be reduced to sensory experience. - 3 Quarks Daily

The Death Of Online Search?

Even Google may not be too big to fail, as pessimism mounts about the possibility of Search ever again working the way it used to. - The New Yorker

We Need To Change Our Approach To Digital Life

It’s increasingly clear to me that we will not survive as a society without some seismic intervention that separates us from our screens, our algorithms, and our little simulacra of social life. - The New Yorker

How Did Equality Come To Mean Different Things?

Today, it’s evident that the word ‘equality’ means very different things to different people. What once seemed capable of providing common ground is now just another source of controversy. What explains this shift? - Aeon

The Ethics Of Entertainment Values

"Is the value of my experience at Disney World undermined by the fact that it is, at the end of the day, a production of the Walt Disney Company? Can I trust a profit-hungry corporation to teach my children universal values? - Psyche

The Trap Of Optimization

We usually assume that more of it must be better. But we can become so focused on improving one thing that we lose sight of the others. You can try to arrange your calendar so that every minute is accounted for, but you’ll soon start running over and end up behind.  - The Guardian

When AI Transfers Into The Physical World

“With a world model, you give it a visual state of the world, an image, and it will then predict the next visual state of the world.” These 3D generations can be used as digital training grounds. “They’re simulations, but they look and feel real.” - Wired

When Writers Lose Confidence In Free Speech

If democracy is the political system that allows the fullest human flourishing, the novel is the literary form that most fully cultivates our understanding of human possibility and tragedy and endurance. - The Atlantic

A Long-Lost, Supposed Destroyed, Handwritten Draft Of MLK’s ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech Has Emerged

"Like the typed version, it does not include the words 'I have a dream,' part of the ringing second half of the speech that King famously improvised." - The New York Times

True Crime Podcasts Are Known For Exploiting Victims. Can A Famous Survivor Host Make A Difference?

Elizabeth Smart: "I want this to be an empowering experience for them. I want them to feel pride in sharing their story." - Slate

In A State That Does Not Fund Public Education Well, Artists Band Together To Bring The Arts To Rural Schools

"The work could especially help the approximately 100 districts in the state where some, if not all, schools are only offering classes Monday through Thursday, primarily because of funding restrictions." - Oregon ArtsWatch

AI May Be Changing The Ways People Think

Some psychiatrists and philosophers interested in AI-human relationships suspect that AI psychosis may just be the most visible example of a much broader phenomenon: the subtle reshaping of ordinary human belief by conversational AI. - Big Think

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