Category: ideas

MIT professor Frank Levy: “The first two are AI’s depth and breadth. The third is the media picture of AI that shapes public perception. … By depth I mean the extent to which AI equals or surpasses human intelligence – the development that worries Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Hawking. … By breadth of AI, I mean the way that software with current levels of sophistication will increasingly penetrate the workplace and displace workers. … The third dimension of AI – the media portrayal – is wildly excessive and it comes at a bad political moment.”

“Psychologists and linguists have long been interested in the extent to which language affects thought, including whether and how different ways of communicating similar information can influence subsequent thinking. If Bush tells us that ‘stuff happens’ (rather than, say, that ‘people use guns to commit atrocities’), are we less inclined to seek stricter gun control? … The research to date suggests the answer is ‘yes’.”

“Almost a century ago, a fad for sleep-learning swept the industrialised world, ending only after neuroscientists determined it was physiologically impossible. Yet today, a growing body of research suggests they were wrong. Sleep-learning appears to be heading for a revival, on a far more solid scientific basis than its earlier incarnation.”

“I see the potential in my clients. They are becoming very well-respected brands. I think the other attorneys who are working in entertainment might have vast experience in the world, but they’re not from the same generation, whereas I am my clientele. The demographic I’m involved in is who I am as a person.”

Comprising anywhere from one third to about half of the population, introverts sometimes appear shy, depressed, or antisocial, when that’s not always the case. As Susan Cain put it in her famous TED Talk, introverts simply “feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they’re in quieter, more low-key environments.”

“For more than three years, Jarosinski’s followers (currently numbering over 117,000) have enjoyed his steady stream of extremely witty tweets. Sometimes light and playful, sometimes tortured or paradoxical, each is accompanied by his avatar, a cartoon drawing of what appears to be Theodor W. Adorno sporting a monocle.”

“Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought.”

“Pascal’s famous wager requires a choice between believing and not believing in God. But there’s more than one way not to believe.”