Intelligence has to be defined relative to goals and the knowledge needed to attain them. In any case the argument against the doomsday fear-mongering of existing AI extends to more powerful systems: any system that monomaniacally pursued one goal (such as making paperclips) while being oblivious to every other goal (such as not turning human beings into paperclips) is not artificially intelligent: it’s artificially stupid, and unlike anything a technologically sophisticated society would ever invent and empower. And scenarios in which the systems take over themselves commit the fallacy that intelligence implies a will to power, which comes from confusing two traits that just happened to come bundled in Homo sapiens because we are products of Darwinian natural selection.
Archives for April 2018
Are Fake Books On Amazon Being Used For Money Laundering?
“Worthless” books priced at up to thousands, of dollars on Amazon.com and which contain only nonsensical text have been identified as possible vehicles for money laundering by an author whose name was, he says, used to send almost $24,000 (£17,200) to an unknown and fraudulent seller.
A New Institute To Study Failure
Research on failure as a motivator is limited, though the evidence that does exist suggests that students can grow both from learning about the failures of other successful people and from experiencing failure themselves. Crucially, for failure to “work,” research indicates that educators and parents need to encourage students to figure out what went wrong and try to improve. “Failure needs to give people a chance to regroup and rewind the clock,” Xiaodong Lin-Siegler explained. Her main goal, she said, is to help students realize that failure is a normal part of the process of learning.
How The Supreme Court Broke Hollywood’s Movie Theatre Studio System 70 Years Ago
The Supreme Court’s 1948 ruling agreed that the studios were giving preference to their own theaters, which was a violation of antitrust laws. Targeted were Metro, Warners, Paramount, RKO and 20th Century Fox, which were ordered to get rid of their theater holdings. Also affected were “the little three defendants, United Artists, Universal and Columbia,” according to Variety at the time.
What It Takes To Be A Festival Director These Days
Preserving a special sense of meaning is pivotal for Jane Moss. “There are lots of festivals around. You need to stay focused on a festival that has meaning of some sort.” She has found that the most successful performing arts events “always have enormous passion attached. For a festival, you need somebody who is an advocate and who is passionate about what they are presenting. Audiences do not want programming based on a focus group. They tend to respond to vision. If you start with the premise: ‘We want an audience of XX and therefore will do YY, because we think we know what they will like’, it almost never works. The audience will respond to a director who has passion.”
Philosophers Don’t Talk – Or Think – Enough About The Meaning Of Life
“Philosophers ponder the meaning of life. At least, that is the stereotype. … In fact, professional philosophers rarely ask the question and, when they do, they often dismiss it as nonsense. … If they go on to talk about meaning in life, they have in mind the meaning of individual lives, the question of whether this life or that life is meaningful for the person who is living it. But the meaning of life is not an individual possession. If life has meaning, it has a meaning that applies to us all.”
The Art Of Rejection Letters
Knowing that you may never get a response is disheartening. Yet many embrace the uncertainty and even lean into it. For those playwrights, rejections become the most common form of communication with theatres.
Why Do So Many Kids Decide They Hate Poetry? Could It Be From Writing Haiku In Grade School?
Chris Harris: “I imagine it’s popular in grade schools because it’s a simple format. Then again, My Dinner with André has a simple format, but I’m guessing it doesn’t play gangbusters at a nine-year-old’s birthday party. … Experiencing poetry solely through prefab formal structures like haikus, acrostics, cinquains and diamante poems could make students feel like poetry is just some sadistic fiend’s attempt to make English even more complex and irritating. ‘POETRY: It’s like regular writing, but with even more rules!'”
The Meanest Things Vladimir Nabokov Said About Other Writers
“In interviews, he seemed to delight in airing his grievances about other writers’ work, especially when he considered them unfairly beloved by the public. Reading his complaints half a century later, I have to say, I delight in them too. At a time when the literary world seems determined to swear that every book is Good because it is a Book, Nabokov’s outspoken anti-book opinions feel almost ecstatically transgressive.”
How The Culture Wars Are Changing Theatre
Across the entertainment industry, hard battles are being fought for visibility and representation.
Now We Can All See The Staging Of ‘Unstageable’ Novel ‘2666’
The Goodman Theater’s five-and-a-half-hour stage adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s mammoth, seemingly unstageable novel 2666 drew a stream of ardent fans of the Chilean novelist to Chicago in 2016. The scope and technical complexity of the production – which involved five distinct sets, 15 actors playing 80 characters, and an elaborate movie-within-the-play – made subsequent productions difficult. But now those who were unable to make the trip can binge-watch the entire thing online [for free], from a couch anywhere in the world.”
Non-Profit Theatres Were A Big Part Of Broadway This Season
In the season that concluded last night, 33 new shows opened in Broadway houses. But while Broadway is usually spoken of in commercial terms, it’s worth noting that 10 of those shows were produced by the subsidised companies resident at Broadway venues. That’s 30% of this year’s total output.
A Play Staged On A Series Of Shoebox-Sized Sets
“Flight, from Glasgow-based theater company Vox Motus, is not exactly theater in the traditional sense. In fact, there are no live performers. The entire story is told via 230 miniature dioramas on a rotating carousel. Audience members sit in private booths along the perimeter of the carousel, listening to a soundtrack through headphones as the tiny scenes pass by and light up, one after the other.” (audio)
Gina Gibney’s Growing Dance Empire
“Gina Gibney runs two enormous dance spaces in New York City: Together they contain 23 studios, five performance spaces, a gallery, a conference room, a media lab and more. Gibney is now probably the largest dance center in the country. … The new branding calls for it to simply be called Gibney (as opposed to Gibney Dance), to reflect its range of public programs, affordable work space and commitment to social justice issues. … Gibney also houses the Gibney Dance Company, which was founded in 1991.”
Dancing With Death: The Murky Ethics Of Filming People In Life-Threatening Danger
“The Deminer” – a documentary about a Kurdish Peshmerga officer who disarms mines – “makes for nervous viewing. Each of the four detonations we see ratchets up the sense of inevitability. It’s not quite a snuff movie, though haunted by a similar balefulness. What moral responsibilities do documentary-makers have when their subject is a danger to himself?”
Music As Political Activism – Can It Ever Really Work?
“Part of classical music’s conceit (as well as other genres’), even among many contemporary audiences, is the notion of a universal beauty in music, and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that … Classical music isn’t alone in this regard (although it does carry the most Enlightenment baggage). … What a conceit can’t do is provide the foundation for concrete political change.”
One Of World’s Biggest Gallerists Proposes ‘Tax’ On Large Galleries At Art Fairs
“David Zwirner, whose namesake art gallery is one of the world’s largest, said he was prepared to pay more for space rental at art fairs if the extra money could help smaller galleries take part as well.”
Documenta Names Its Third Director In Less Than A Year
“On 1 November [Sabine] Schormann will replace Wolfgang Orthmayr, a producer of musicals who was appointed interim managing director in April. His beleaguered predecessor, Annette Kulenkampff, left her post before her contract ended as the result of a budget deficit of €5.4m following the 2017 edition.”
‘Toxic Culture’ Of Harassment Rampant In Professional Music World: Study
“Musicians from across the industry took part in a survey by membership organisation the Incorporated Society of Musicians. … Of the 600 musicians who took part in the survey, 47% said they had experienced discrimination, including sexual harassment and other inappropriate behaviour, in the course of their work.”
Metro LA’s Two Biggest Public TV Stations To Merge
“Independent broadcaster KCETLink Media Group (KCET), based in Burbank, and PBS SoCal (KOCE) in Costa Mesa, unveiled Wednesday a plan for ‘a merger of equals.’ They aim to become a powerful new hub for original public media content and innovation that serves 18-plus million people in Southern California.”
Mezzo-Soprano Huguette Tourangeau Dead At 79
A winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions in 1964, the Canadian mezzo had a career at the Met and many North American companies, but she was best known as Joan Sutherland’s co-star on a series of opera recordings conducted by Richard Bonynge, including (among others) Norma, Maria Stuarda, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
Controversial Statue Of Stephen Foster In Pittsburgh Comes Down
“The move followed an October decision by the Pittsburgh Art Commission, which found that the statue should be removed within six months and hosted in a private, ‘properly contextualized’ location. Many residents have held that the sculpture – showing a shoeless African-American banjo player seated at the famed composer’s feet – is condescending or outright racist. Speakers at commission meetings last year largely agreed.”
States Are Using Preservation Laws To Block The Removal Of Confederate Monuments
“Once a community decision has been made about a controversial monument, officials often have to deal with public preservation laws designed to impede the removal of historic monuments. Efforts to remove statues in places like Baltimore and Memphis have proven no more straightforward than what happened in Demopolis, Alabama.”
Why It’s Never Too Soon To Make Art About Tragedy
As we try to navigate through an age defined by particularly egregious bullshit, writers have a moral obligation to avoid infecting the universe with more careless storytelling. It’s a privileged viewpoint to declare that the only thing in the world that matters is my personal interpretation of events.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.26.18
Homer And His Unique Way of Seeing
Winslow Homer has always been a complicated artist, and now he will be viewed as an even more complicated one. What’s going to do that is an exhibition opening in June at … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2018-04-26
A Dorough Tribute
In the aftermath of Bob Dorough’s death on Monday, increased attention is going to his extensive body of songs. Among Dorough’s greatest admirers is the Swedish trumpet player and singer Mårten Lundgren. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-26