“We have seemingly been hardwired with a number of cognitive biases that impede our ability to take appropriate action to address seemingly distant, gradual and complex challenges such as climate change.” - The Guardian
You imagine the American city in the 1940s and ’50s and you think so many challenges being confronted—substandard housing, deindustrialization, racial strife, pollution—all this stuff is going on, and yet city leaders are obsessed with parking? But in fact they are. - Wired
We fail all the time, in things large and small, yet our biggest failure may be that, as a rule, we don’t understand failure. And since we are not equipped to think about it, we can’t grasp its broader significance in our lives. - Psyche
As the world became almost unfathomably strange, many people reacted by demanding seriousness; social and political critics understandably turned very sober. And this too marginalized satire, which addresses serious issues by mocking them. - 3 Quarks Daily
In a culture that demands overcoming against all odds, even failure has been commodified by the American self-help industrial complex: rebranded not as a devastating and possibly life-altering event but as a blip en route to a chest-thumping achievement, accomplishment, or acquisition. - Yale Review
A big collection of archival data, going back all the way to 1949, suggests people believe morality is declining. People are asked questions like, “Do you think morality is declining?” and “Do you think people are less honest today than they were 50 years ago?” in 100 different ways, in dozens of different countries. - Nautilus
‘Can art make me become a good person?’ is a more interesting question, because neither ‘Yes’ nor ‘No’ is an adequate answer; the only viable answer, really, is ‘It depends.’ Nevertheless, people will persist in saying simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. - Dublin Review of Books
"Today, for the first time in history, thanks to artificial intelligence, it is possible for anybody to make counterfeit people who can pass for real" Is that right? Anybody? - 3 Quarks Daily
"The findings suggest that the brain likely uses different mechanisms for encoding and representing these two different volumes of voices when there is a background conversation ongoing." - New Scientist
The revolt against humanity, Adam Kirsch argues, is no longer an “avant-garde phenomenon†of interest only to the chattering classes, and the spiritual development it represents is bound to impact our understanding of humanity's place in the world. - LA Review of Books
Artificial intelligence is roiling tech, business and politics like nothing in recent memory. Listen to the extravagant claims and wild assertions issuing from Silicon Valley, and it seems the long-promised virtual paradise is finally at hand. - The New York Times
At least not to the U.S., where sincerity is important. "To make sense of this, allow me to explain the Australian cultural phenomenon that is the elegantly simple 'yeah, nah.'" - Slate
"To most people, A.I. is an abstraction, something akin to magic. That's dangerous. We would do better to think about it as we do with physical infrastructure, like roads or processing plants, with their vulnerabilities and real-world consequences." - Slate
