In recent years the idea that our universe, including ourselves and all of our innermost thoughts, is a computer simulation, running on a thinking machine of cosmic capacity, has permeated culture high and low. - The New York Times
We are used to hearing such petulant ressentiment, especially in connection with the 20th-century avant-garde in the figurative arts: “I could have entered a urinal in an exhibition, too”; “I could have painted an all-white monochrome, too”; etc. The simplest response is, “Yes, but you didn’t”. - Unherd
Escape behavior offers useful insight into the brain’s inner workings because it engages nervous system networks that originated in the early days of evolution. - Smithsonian
Mathematics belongs firmly within, not outside, the Modernist revolution in art and thought that reconfigured minds and lives. So why would any writer who cares about the origins of the ideas not wish to understand the intellectual core of arithmetic to the technological transformation of our world? - Prospect
Only connect: "The strongest predictors for people to maintain their happiness and health throughout the course of their lives were people who described their relationships as having satisfying levels of quality and warmth." - NPR
"Without professional historians, history education will be left more and more in the hands of social media influencers, partisan hacks and others unconcerned with achieving a complex, empirically informed understanding of the past." After all, this is the plan from the ahistorical side, no? - The New York Times
The experience had clued him in to something: In elite circles, not all opportunities were advertised. There were rooms that the rest of us didn’t know existed, and those rooms came with possibilities never advertised by the career-services office. - The Atlantic
Across broad landscapes of science and technology, the past is eating the present, progress is plunging, and truly disruptive work is hard to come by. Despite an enormous increase in scientists and papers since the middle of the 20th century, the number of highly disruptive studies each year hasn’t increased. - The Atlantic
Are thought, argument, and debate really dying? The picture painted in the media is of a horrified, unqualified yes. But it’s a big country out there. Is wokery crushing free inquiry everywhere? - The New Republic
Ask someone how she thinks and you might learn that she talks to herself silently, or cogitates visually, or moves through mental space by traversing physical space. - The New Yorker
This culturally and linguistically diverse environment gave rise to innovations that would have lasting legacies in fields including algebra, geography, astronomy, medicine and engineering. - The Conversation
If I’m going to choose a non-living interlocutor, why would I choose a Large Language Model – essentially a sophisticated search algorithm performed on an astronomically large database – when I could choose one of the great thinkers of the past? - 3 Quarks Daily
The six-page long memorandum specifically requires John Deere to provide farmers and independent repair facilities with access to the company’s tools, software, and documentation to make repairs to John Deere equipment. - Gizmodo
Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker's emotional tone. - Ars Technica
Drawing on a rich tradition of comics that depict counterfactual and dystopian futures, this graphic novel breathes horrifying visual life into a world in which there was no peaceful transition of power in 2021. - The Conversation
