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IDEAS

The Man Who Thinks The Enlightenment Was A Mistake

Rod Dreher emerged from the conservative blogosphere in the 2000s and won fans with his daily stream of testy opinions and unguarded anecdotal writing. He seems almost allergic to ideological consistency, has long had readers on the left as well as the right, and sometimes changes his mind over the course of a single paragraph. - The Atlantic

How Pokémon Became A Source Of Massive Soft Cultural Power

It’s a card game! It’s an app! It’s a movie! It’s a meme! It’s a stuffie (or a lot of stuffies)! But truly, what is Pokémon? - CBC

Generative AI Is Pretty Bad At Video Game Worlds

It might never improve enough. “Even in the most ambitious view where AI technology is feasibly able to generate worlds that are as responsive and interesting to explore as a video game that runs locally … there’s a lot more that goes into making a video game.”- The Verge (Archive Today)

The Ur-Conspiracy Theory, And How To Fight Them In General

“The fundamental problem we face involves the degree to which the truth must now compete with such a vast multiplicity of falsehoods that discovering truth itself becomes unviable.” - Paris Review

Does Making Art Require A “Writer’s Room”? Or Is It Something Else?

There’s no question that they’ve helped me write. And yet, if I look back over my career as a writer, the value I’ve derived from carefully controlling my environment has paled in comparison to my main source of motivation: scary e-mails from editors. - The New Yorker

What Does It Mean To “Rewire” Your Brain?

Is it a helpful shorthand for describing the remarkable plasticity of our nervous system or has it become a misleading oversimplification that distorts our grasp of science? - Aeon

Where The Power Lies: Institutions Versus Networks

Institutions foster cooperation by rewarding good behaviour and punishing rule-breakers. Yet they themselves depend on cooperative members to function. We haven’t solved the cooperation problem – we’ve simply moved it back one step. So why do institutions work at all? - Aeon

Scientists Look Inside The Brain Of A Musician While He’s Playing

What happens in a performer’s brain while playing? Traditional brain-imaging tools like functional m.r.i. (f m.r.i.) require subjects to lie motionless in a scanner. Newer wearable technologies, including EEG (electroencephalography) caps fitted with electrodes, make it possible to study musicians in more natural settings. - The New York Times

What Happens When We Fill Every Waking Moment With Information

From the jarring morning alarm to the podcast we listen to on the way to work; from the constant murmur of the office to the background music in the café; from the endless information on our smartphones to the television that’s on just to have “something” playing. - 3 Quarks Daily

Turns Out, AI Prefers Human Content To Its Own

This is the AI search paradox: The more AI-generated content exists, the more valuable human thinking becomes. - Fast Company

In Praise Of Obsolete Technologies (Like CDs And DVDs)

There is satisfaction in pressing a button or cranking a dial that no touchscreen will ever replicate. There is also certainty; if I reach for my car’s temperature control, I know it will be there, without taking my eyes off the road to click through six sub-menus. - The Guardian

Have China’s Universities Really Become Best In The World?

It’s true that Chinese universities have made remarkable strides, and some of them host superb centers of research and education. However, they aren’t nearly as dominant as those rankings suggest. - The New York Times

Study: Using AI Doesn’t Reduce Work, It Intensifies It

In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so. - Harvard Business Review

If I Can Write A Novel In A Day With AI And It Takes You Six Months, Who Wins?

Through Hart’s teaching business, Plot Prose, she’s working on a proprietary piece of software that can “generate a book based on an outline in less than an hour, and costs between $80 and $250 a month.” - Gizmodo

We’re Not Ready For The Ways AI Will Disrupt Jobs

The immediate risk to employment may not be AI itself, but the way companies, seduced by its promise, overinvest before they understand what it can actually do. - The Atlantic

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