What repeatedly surprises about the history of free speech is its incurably accidental nature – reforms undertaken for one set of reasons generate unforeseen and quite different consequences – and, also, the cobbled-together quality of the debate. - London Review of Books
Opinions differ in part because scientists cannot even agree on a way of defining human intelligence, arguing endlessly over the merits and flaws of I.Q. tests and other benchmarks. Comparing our own brains to machines is even more subjective. - The New York Times
“The visionaries behind the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library hope a visit to the Medora, North Dakota-based library will prove as restorative to people in the modern era as this area once was for Roosevelt.” - Fast Company
In other words, positive music increased the likelihood of recalling stories with added positive elements, and negative music increased the likelihood of negative elaborations. - PsyPost
When he started at Columbia as a sophomore this past September, he didn’t worry much about academics or his GPA. “Most assignments in college are not relevant,” he told me. “They’re hackable by AI, and I just had no interest in doing them.” - New York Times (MSN)
For what it’s worth, most Americans share this sense of declinism when it comes to movies, music, and TV, telling pollsters that these things peaked somewhere between the 1970s and the 2000s. - Noahpinion
Even our educational institutions often teach critical thinking as a weapon to dismantle others’ arguments rather than a tool for examining our own. The skill we most desperately need is the very one we’ve neglected to cultivate: the ability to hold our own certainties in suspension. - Psyche
There are many in the humanities, and even more outside the humanities, who would argue that what is important to assess are thoughts, ideas, creative capacity itself, and that being nitpicky about ChatGPT wrongly shifts the focus to what is essentially just a matter of words. - The Point
And a bunch of Disney adults are not exactly thrilled about it. “It’s another fracture within one of the largest and most intense fandoms, one that I think signals trouble for Disney’s generational appeal.” - Spitfire News
The space of possible languages is vast, and full of exotic languages that are much weirder and stranger than any we have yet imagined. We should explore what those might be – and for more than intellectual curiosity alone. - Aeon
Sycophancy is a common feature of chatbots: A 2023 paper by researchers from Anthropic found that it was a “general behavior of state-of-the-art AI assistants,” and that large language models sometimes sacrifice “truthfulness” to align with a user’s views. - The Atlantic (MSN)
Rather than passively perceiving music, the brain physically embodies it, synchronizing with musical patterns to produce sensations of timing, musical pleasure, and even the impulse to move. - Earth.com
