ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

I Am In A Relationship With The Internet

Barely more than a decade later, the internet is not the tool. I am the tool. Somehow, I have been instrumentalized by the internet, which operates me through my phone. It often feels like the internet is reading my mind. - Slate

An Existential Question About Journalism

Who picks up the tab of paying for journalism when the audience won’t, and how does that change the truths that we journalists want to tell? - The Point

How Do We Separate The Artist From The Transgressions?

How do we weigh an artist’s accomplishment against his personal wickedness? “Do we believe genius gets special dispensation, a behavioral hall pass?” Should we draw clear distinctions between a transgressive work of art and behavioral transgressions? - The Atlantic

Why Board Gamers Need To Chill When People Say No

"I desperately want everyone to witness the euphoric tactical flourishes and wonderful social interactions that a great board game can foster in the right environment, but I have also come to understand that for some people, a pile of cardboard will always be a pile of cardboard." - Slate

Machines, Humans, And The Definition Of Art

Let's rethink the whole thing. "Seeing a work of art as indissolubly linked with an individual creator’s technical skills is a worn-out myth. The further we develop, the more this link displays its conventionality." - Los Angeles Review of Books

What Happened To The Marketplace Of Ideas?

“A lot of us wanted to believe that we had free and open discussions in this country, and that we can talk about anything, and that we can make changes. It sounds great as cocktail-party chitchat, when we are all in the room with the same beliefs.” - Christian Science Monitor

Why Complex Systems Are Weaker Than Simple Networks

Recall the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. A straw is a very small thing, it weighs almost nothing, but it can bring down a thousand-pound camel. Or consider how small cracks can grow until they eventually destroy the largest structures. That’s how failures occur. - Tablet

Diversity Of The Ancient Classics

To suggest the Classical inheritance is monocultural, or “pale, male and stale”, is to do a disservice to the patchwork of cultures, backgrounds, outlooks and beliefs that fed into what we now receive as the Classics. - The Critic

The Value Of “Splendid Uselessness”

The real project of humanity – of understanding ourselves as human beings, making a good world to live in, and striving together toward mutual flourishing – depends paradoxically upon the continued pursuit of what Hitz calls ‘splendid uselessness’. - Psyche

Something To Consider: A Post-Human Economy

One estimate is that 99.9% of internet content will be AI-generated by 2030. The future, in other words, will be by bots and for bots. But isn’t that a lot of what the internet is already? - Tablet

Scientists: Human Memory Can Be Unreliable Almost Immediately

Scientists exploring our ability to recall shapes say people can make mistakes after just a few seconds – a phenomenon the team have called short-term memory illusions. - The Guardian

ChatGPT Doesn’t Have A Body, And That Means It Doesn’t Know What It’s Saying

"If you need to cover your hair for work in a fast-food restaurant, which would work better, a paper sandwich wrapper or a hamburger bun? GPT-3 went for the bun." - Fast Company

More Research On Building Better Brains Through Participating In The Arts

"Children that are playing music, their brain structure actually changes and their cerebral cortex actually gets larger." - NPR

Fandom, Fake Friendships And The Real World

In 2021, psychologists found that forming parasocial bonds was strongly related to avoidant attachment. That is, people who tended to push others away in their day-to-day lives were more likely than others to relate to fictional characters, and especially to characters who are also emotionally avoidant. - The Atlantic

Urgently Needed: A Defense Of Humanism

It’s suddenly plausible to imagine that freethinking, that tradition of poking and prodding at all fixed ideas and institutions, will drift into obsolescence, because an oracular machine will instantly spit back answers to life’s questions with an aura of scientific authority. - The Atlantic

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