Working at the intersection of moral and political philosophy, social science, and economics, Elizabeth Anderson has become a leading theorist of democracy and social justice. She has built a case, elaborated across decades, that equality is the basis for a free society. Her work, drawing on real-world problems and information, has helped to redefine the way contemporary philosophy is done, leading what might be called the Michigan school of thought. – The New Yorker
Category: ideas
Why We’re So Terrible At Predicting The Future
The thing about tech is that even if you can see it coming, you can’t be sure quite how it will arrive or what it will do when it gets here. – The Guardian
When You’re A ‘Cable Guy,’ You See The Worst Of America
This story has everything: Cat urine, bathroom emergencies, women in lingerie, and, yes, the Cheneys. – HuffPost
The Civil Discourse In One Small Reddit Corner Of The Internet
Yes – this is on a Reddit forum, a site not known for its calm discussion of issues. But the Change My View forum, “founded in 2013 by Kal Turnbull, then a teenage musician in Scotland, is an online space that promotes respectful conversation between people who disagree with each other.” – The Atlantic
Eight Months With A Flip Phone
Why would someone not 90 years old use a flip phone? “Motivating me in those early days, during the brain-shock of the new-old, was a thought experiment of my simple invention: Suppose the Dalai Lama had a smartphone.” – Wired
Why Many Americans Don’t Know Their Grandparents’ First Names
This revelation comes courtesy of the Big Data of Ancestry.com, one of the most popular genealogy (and DNA testing) sites. Ancestry and demographers provide a variety of explanations, from immigration and language changes to smaller family sizes meaning there’s no one left to ask. – The Atlantic
The Books (And Movies, And Music) That 44th President Barack Obama Enjoyed In 2019
No surprise, his favorite book was Becoming, by Michelle Obama. But of course, many of us who enjoy streaming platforms live for his playlists, and this year’s no different. – The New York Times
How Our Brains Know Where We Are (Our GPS)
The recent marriage of neuroscience with the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence that have really strengthened this perspective. Work at this interface has shown that a brain that uses an absolute, invariant model of the world to model and negotiate changing environments requires more computational resources than one that uses relative information. – Nautilus
The Complicated Story Of Frankincense And Myrrh
The plant-based aromatics are known to most people through the story of the Three Magi and the Christ Child, and frankincense is known to some through the incense used in some churches, but both substances have histories that go back to pre-Christian antiquity. In fact, over the centuries, even Christianity’s relationship with the pair has been ambivalent. — Aeon
The Intriguing Science That Explains Wit, Humor
Wit, whether visual or verbal, can make the commonplace uncommon again by breaking the habits that render perception routine. We tend to define the quality of wit as merely being deft with a clever comeback. But true wit is richer, cannier, more riddling. And the best of it is often based on a biological phenomenon called supernormal stimuli. – The Atlantic