Category: ideas

Lionel Shriver, who is sixty-three, thinks people are ridiculous for congratulating themselves on enduring quarantine, when the worst is yet to come. “This is not the bad part,” she said. – The New Yorker

To live is to encounter the tragic — a reality shot through with utter strife, and covered in complete darkness. Despite our best attempts, we are not going to get out of it. For philosophers to overlook, sugarcoat, or rationalize this fact is to deny something essential about who we are and what we might become, both intentionally but also in spite of ourselves. – Los Angeles Review of Books

There have been times that coffee as a commodity was more valuable than most currencies. Cultures have been built around the bean, and destroyed others who have been exploited for it. – Times Literary Supplement

In 2018, the first British Minister for Loneliness was appointed and the government published A Connected Society. In the preface, the country’s then prime minister Theresa May referred to research that “shows that loneliness is as damaging to our physical health as smoking”. – Times Literary Supplement

While thought experiments are as old as philosophy itself, the weight placed on them in recent philosophy is distinctive. Even when scenarios are highly unrealistic, judgments about them are thought to have wide-ranging implications for what should be done in the real world. – Aeon

“The public square is thick today with augurs and prophets claiming to foresee the post-Covid world to come. I, myself, who find sundown something of a surprise every evening, have been pursued by foreign journalists asking what the pandemic will mean for the American presidential election, populism, the prospects of socialism, race relations, economic growth, higher education, New York City politics and more. And they seem awfully put out when I say I have no idea. – The New York Times

What computer scientists and neuroscientists are after is a universal theory of intelligence—a set of principles that holds true both in tissue and in silicon. What they have instead is a muddle of details. Eleven years and $1.3 billion after Henry Markram proposed his simulated brain, it has contributed no fundamental insights to the study of intelligence. – Wired

“This tiny coronavirus has showed us in a painful way that humanity is a single organism and human existence is possible only in relation to other living beings. The notion of “relationship” should be understood as a maxim, as the ability to love. Although this is truly a high standard, maybe even too high for a human being. Our current situation is paradoxical: on the one hand, it means isolation, on the other, it brings us closer. While isolating ourselves, we should be able to – we are even forced to – appreciate our relationships in a small circle and to tend to them.” – Estonian World

Whether we’re talking about vaccines or groundbreaking clean energy, lifesaving technologies shouldn’t be treated as precious commodities to be hoarded for private gain. In the midst of global emergencies, they’re public goods to be deployed as rapidly as possible. – The New Republic