The Aztec empire did not fall because it lacked capability. It collapsed because it accumulated too many adversaries who resented its dominance. This is a historical episode the US president, Donald Trump, should take notice of as his rift with traditional US allies deepens. - The Conversation
A great human artist, we’d like to believe, amplifies and defends the exceptionalist spirit of our species but, in an echo of the anxieties that haunted early photography, a demonised version of AI threatens to steal away our souls. - Aeon
Perceptual psychologists have long studied what happens when people stare at uniform fields of colour without visual edges or contrasts. Sometimes, experiencing this kind of sensory deprivation can result in something known as the Ganzfeld effect: a response to a uniform field that causes the brain’s pattern recognition to work harder. - Psyche
A machine will never possess the level of interpersonal skills needed to manage a team, to engage in civil discourse with individuals from different cultures and backgrounds, or to resolve messy human conflicts that resist logic. Judgment will never be AI’s strength. - US News
Neuroplasticity therefore reframes the brain as neither rigid nor infinitely malleable, but as a living system shaped by experience, effort and time. - The Conversation
The old metaphor of creativity being sparked makes it sound like there’s a creativity center in the brain that’s just waiting to kick things off. But brain scans of jazz improvisers point to a much more diffuse picture of creativity’s location. - Psychology Today
Intelligence and consciousness are different things. Intelligence is mainly about doing: solving a crossword puzzle, assembling some furniture, navigating a tricky family situation, walking to the shop — all involve intelligent behavior of some kind. - Noema
A massive new study comparing more than 100,000 people with today’s most advanced AI systems delivers a surprising result: generative AI can now beat the average human on certain creativity tests. - Science Daily
The First Amendment ignores the harms that speech inflicts. It is dangerous, in other words, not for the threat it poses to power, but for the harms it inflicts on the vulnerable. - The Nation
Cultural outsiders experience being an outsider as synonymous with being deficient. Eager to ‘fit in’, and to avoid feeling inferior, they seek validation from outside to feel good about themselves, focus on achievement, and rigidly conform to societal expectations. - Psyche
Entertainment is about diversion and pleasure. Fun. It occupies our attention, distracts us from boredom, and amuses. But many things in life can do that: food, games, conversation, idle distractions. If we define art solely as entertainment, we risk conflating it with any activity that gives pleasure, and end up with nothing distinctive about art. - 3Quarks Daily
The question is no longer just "How do we play Beethoven better?" but "How do we survive as a cultural institution in a digitized, competitive economy?" in a way to convince 21st-century society that it is still worthy? - LinkedIn
Who doesn’t want to know how a lost civilization got lost, or where it might be hiding? The trouble is that what gets touted as a lost civilization often turns out to have been there all along. - The New Yorker
