Category: ideas

Much of the debate among researchers falls into two opposing camps. One group claims that our ability to reason is hijacked by our partisan convictions: that is, we’re prone to rationalization. The other group — to which the two of us belong — claims that the problem is that we often fail to exercise our critical faculties: that is, we’re mentally lazy. – The New York Times

Imagine that you wanted to train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics and, more specifically, on age progression (e.g., how people are likely to look as they get older). Ideally, you’d want a broad and rigorous dataset with lots of people’s pictures. It would help if you knew they were taken a fixed number of years apart—say, 10 years. – Wired

In the jungle of unresolved emotions, Digital promises something it can’t keep: The right partner. Endless choices. The best friends. Even better friends somewhere out there. The Internet amplifies the Nervousness of our social lives on all levels — privately, socially, politically, economically. The result: Our current reality of constant shitstorms, outrage, conspiracy theories, populism and overall pessimism. The Web can do a lot of things, but it can’t hug you, it can’t heal you, it can’t connect on a human level — unless we are already connected in the analog world. – Medium

Which beliefs exactly should be judged as “out of bounds”—and who gets to be the referee? How wide is the circle of ideas that are not even worthy of discussion? Such questions are themselves open to debate, and the judgments we make about them in particular cases will tend to be provisional. Still, this is preferable to the alternative. For there is a growing cost to pretending we’ve arrived at a settled consensus about their answers, or to denying that they are even real questions. – The Point

Sometimes philosophers argue for conclusions far outside the domain of ‘respectable’ positions; conclusions that could be hijacked by those with intolerant, racist, sexist or fundamentalist beliefs to support their stance. – Aeon

But – these stories have been rewritten before in earlier scientific study. And before we declare a definitive new theory, there are questions… – The New York Times

Francis Fukuyama had a great idea. His “end of history” suggested a way of thinking about what was now happening to the world and synthesized the work of a number of philosophers. “The only flaw in the brilliance of The End of History was that its thesis turned out to be wrong, and wrong in a huge way.” – The New Republic

Philip Kennicott: “When we remember our lives authentically, we ask a fundamental question: Why did I remember this thing, at this moment? The “Why now?” question gives memory its meaning. Facebook randomizes and decontextualizes memory and detaches it from our current self.”  – Washington Post

And yet, that’s what some thought when push buttons first appeared on machines: “Do you not think that this prodigious diffusion of mechanism is likely to render the world terribly monotonous and fastidious? To deal no longer with men, but to be dependent on things!” Pushing buttons made life too easy, too simplistic, or too rote, when a single finger-action could conjure one’s desires. – Aeon

“Today, experimental philosophers and philosophically inclined psychologists are designing experiments that can help to answer some of the big philosophical questions about the nature of art and how we experience it – questions that have puzzled people for centuries, such as: why do we prefer original works of art to forgeries? How do we decide what is good art? And does engaging with the arts make us better human beings?” – Aeon