Category: ideas

“Agnosticism is often thought of, incorrectly, as a state of theological indecision. Rather, it is the conviction that it is epistemologically impossible to determine whether or not there is a deity. Agnosticism is an ideology of unknowability … ‘a recognition that we need room for mystery, for the imagination, for things sensed but not proven, intuited but not defined.'”

“Copyright is designed to encourage human creativity for human audiences. If a book falls in a forest and no one reads it, does it make an infringement? It seems like the only sensible answer is “No harm, no foul.” On the other hand, there’s something strange about a rule that tells technologists just to turn the robots loose. It encourages uses that don’t have much to do with human aesthetics while discouraging uses that do.”

It’s all about whether you grew up in a “carpentered environment.”

“It could convert the giddy Olympian optimism of 2012 into wonders that will unfold over decades. It could be, to use the favourite adjective of eternally amazed sports broadcasters, incredible. But according to three venerable architects – Royal Academicians, still with fire in their bellies from their 1960s youths – it will not.”

Talent agencies, of course: “Agents help connect Olympians with Madison Avenue and corporate America, lining up deals for endorsements, speaking tours and television commentary jobs, among other opportunities. And some stars of the Rio Olympics, which end Sunday, could reap millions of dollars.”

“People talk about the decline of handwriting as if it’s proof of the decline of civilization. But if the goal of public education is to prepare students to become successful, employable adults, typing is inarguably more useful than handwriting. There are few instances in which handwriting is a necessity, and there will be even fewer by the time today’s second graders graduate.”

For “writing” read “Google” and you have much of the burden of current worries about how use of the internet may be degrading our minds. Writing itself is just as much an external prosthetic technology (“characters which are no part of themselves,” as the Egyptian king complains) as the internet is. Writing is also a tool of extended cognition. The difference is that we have had thousands of years to get used to it. The truth about the question of whether our reliance on modern electronic prostheses is better or worse for us is that it’s simply too early to tell.

C.B. George: “It is a mindset that can mock a rapper who fabricates a criminal background and idolize the authenticity of a convicted felon. Seriously? Me, if I must choose between someone who pretends to have shot people and someone who’s shot people, I go for the fantasist every time. It is a mindset that holds dear an essentialist view of “indigenous culture” even as it disdains the same essentialism in the nationalist intolerance currently blighting the US and much of Europe.”

“Given that the final frontier in artificial intelligence calls for some form of consciousness, when it comes, it will almost certainly issue not from the source code of a programmer, but from the lab of a neuroscientist. Then, if romance novels play a role, it will be to ensure, as a true test of intelligence, that they are read not with indifference, but with delight or disdain.”

“Longing for the past is generally referred to as nostalgia – a gentle, tender feeling that might make these stories seem like nothing more than harmless sentimentality. But it is crucial to distinguish between wistful memories of grandma’s kitchen and belief in a prior state of cultural perfection.”