“If we encountered a group of humans who returned to the same trees over and over and performed the same inexplicable action near them and didn’t seem to have any practical reason to do so, there would be lots of people who would interpret it through the prism of religion.”
Category: ideas
If We’re Honest, We’re All Agnostics In A Way
“Belief without doubt would not be required by an all-loving God, and it should not be worn as a badge of honor. … Anyone who does not occasionally worry that he may be a fraud almost certainly is. Nor does the worry absolve one from the charge; one may still be a fraud, just one who rightly worries about it on occasion. Likewise, anyone who does not occasionally worry that she is wrong about the existence or nonexistence of God most likely has a fraudulent belief.”
Parrots Got Rhythm – And So Do Elephants, Sea Lions, Bonobos And Other Critters
Studies of Snowball the dancing cockatoo (who had a round of television fame in the late ’00s) “turned out to be just the prelude to a new concerto of research on musicality in the animal kingdom. In recent years, scientists have tested various species and found evidence that nonvocal learners such as sea lions and bonobos have rhythm too. In parallel, pioneering studies have begun to elucidate how the brain tracks a beat.”
The Programmer Who Broke The Internet By Deleting A Tiny Piece Of Code
“‘I think I have the right of deleting all my stuff,’ Koçulu wrote on March 20 in an email that was later made public. And then he did it.”
Making Art About A Community In Crisis
“They wanted me to tell the public how they showed love. How they sacrificed for each other. How they took care of a disabled homie, gave his family money after he was crippled by a gunshot blast. Or how they would pay for his funeral if he was killed. How they would discourage younger siblings from joining the gang. How they stuck by each other. They had their own code of love. I promised to write about it.”
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Has Become A Video Game Impresario
“Justice O’Connor’s own passions and priorities were central to the development of a number of the games — among them Supreme Decision, in which students take on the role of an imaginary Supreme Court justice who must cast the deciding vote in a case.”
Why Our Minds Wander (Does It Matter?)
“Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and ‘to be here now.’ These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Are they right?”
What Policymakers Could Learn About Artificial Intelligence From The Guy Who Played Go With Google’s Computer
“In the first three games, AlphaGo bludgeoned Lee with a calculating efficiency that mystified the 33-year–old Korean. Then in Game 4, Lee responded to the challenge of artificial intelligence with new tactics. He attacked AlphaGo, aggressively sought to hem it in, and in a transcendent moment of genius laid down a lone white pebble that one Go champion dramatically called the ‘hand of god.’ He won.”
Here’s What’s Difficult When We Try To Talk About Intelligence In An Intelligent Way
“We might be getting stupider, we cannot predict our future path, and we have no idea what kinds of intelligent beings (if any) exist in the cosmos beyond. But I maintain that there is a silver lining, because this very act of self-examination forces us to confront some harsh, but fascinating, realities about our culture and our technology.”
You’ve Seen Pseudoscience, Now Have A Look At Pseudolaw
“These days, we are distressingly familiar with alternative, conspiracy-theory versions of science and medicine. Less well-known is the legal version of this phenomenon, not as visible as creationism or anti-vaccine activism but in many ways as destructive.”