Category: ideas

Oh yes, people showed up, and they asked real questions. Lee McIntyre, author of Post-Truth and one of the three, offers a report. (The hardest part: the six-year-old girl who looked him in the eye and asked, in all seriousness, “How do I know I’m real?”) – The Conversation

“Since the financial crash of 2008, across Europe and in the United States, there has been (to borrow a phrase from Frank Kermode) a “sense of an ending”. Liberal orthodoxies have fallen into radical doubt. Populist movements are arrayed against the political and economic order that has stood in place for the past fifty years. Electorates have leaped into unknown futures. The grounds of civilization won’t break up under our feet so much as recede under melting ice caps and rising seas, while the indices of progress – life expectancy, equality, happiness and trust in political institutions – have gone into reverse in many parts of the world.”  – Times Literary Supplement

Writing in 1994, Sven Birkerts worried that distractedness and surficiality would win out. The “duration state” we enter through a turned page would be lost in a world of increasing speed and relentless connectivity, and with it our ability to make meaning out of narratives, both fictional and lived. The diminishment of literature—of sustained reading, of writing as the product of a single focused mind—would diminish the self in turn, rendering us less and less able to grasp both the breadth of our world and the depth of our own consciousness. – Paris Review

This may not feel like a particularly revolutionary time. But, if we look closely, we can see current economic, social, and political forces pulling us in two directions. One direction will accelerate us forward, the other backwards. We will decide our fate by the revolution we embrace. – The Walrus

This idea that animals are conscious was long unpopular in the West, but it has lately found favor among scientists who study animal cognition. And not just the obvious cases—primates, dogs, elephants, whales, and others. Scientists are now finding evidence of an inner life in alien-seeming creatures that evolved on ever-more-distant limbs of life’s tree. – The Atlantic

At some tech companies, faith in the mission is encouraged to the point that it resembles religious belief. Employees are invited to see themselves as proselytizers for the transformation of society, spreading the ideas of a company and its leaders around the world. What happens, though, when the mission doesn’t accord with the behavior of a company or the values of its employees? – The New Republic

But don’t worry, capitalism was saved by the show’s “Galentine’s Day,” which has now become a very real thing. – The Wall Street Journal

Yes, some newspapers are. But the myth of objectivity is – and journalism, at least in the U.S., is returning to its roots. – Wired

Laypersons and academics alike have largely viewed creativity as a positive force, a notion challenged by the philosopher and educator Robert McLaren of California State University, Fullerton in 1993. McLaren proposed that creativity had a dark side, and that viewing it without a social or moral lens would lead to limited understanding. As time went on,  newer concepts – negative and malevolent creativity – included conceiving original ways to cheat on tests or doing purposeful harm to others, for instance, innovating new ways to execute terrorist attacks.  – Aeon

A recent study following the careers of over 100,000 scientists for over 50 years found that half of university-hired scientists leave the academic life after just five years. That’s a huge increase over prior years: According to the study, which was published in the Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences, academic scientists in the 1960s stayed in the ivory tower for an average of 35 years. – Pacific Standard