Category: ideas

The logic of private interest – the notion that we should just ‘let the market handle it’ – has serious limitations. Particularly in the United States, the lack of an effective health and social policy in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has brought the contradictions into high relief. – Aeon

A 2016 survey of top AI researchers found that, on average, they thought there was a 50 percent chance that AI systems would be able to “accomplish every task better and more cheaply than human workers” by 2061. The expert community doesn’t think of artificial general intelligence (AGI) as an impossible dream, so much as something that is more likely than not within a century. So let’s take this as our starting point in assessing the risks, and consider what would transpire were AGI created. – Nautilus

In the 20th century, tuberculosis, typhoid, polio and Spanish flu breakouts prompted urban planning, slum clearance, tenement reform, waste management and, on a larger level, Modernism itself, with its airy spaces, single-use zoning (separating residential and industrial areas, for instance), cleaner surfaces (think glass and steel) and emphasis on sterility. – Los Angeles Times

“How do we define community in a time of crisis, which is in many ways what community is for? We don’t need our neighbors as much when we are healthy and wealthy and can pay for all the assistance we require. When we need our neighbors most, and when community matters the most, is when we are hungry or sick, or when good Samaritans are our only hope.” – Plough

Coffee is sold less to provide an individual with pleasure than to support an industry with a skillfully primed audience. – The New Yorker

It’s important to realise that the concern about beliefs being socially influenced is worrisome only if we’re deliberating about whether to maintain belief from the perspective of doubt. – Aeon

The demonization of density harkens to the heyday of urbanization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. American civic leaders and reformers of the time embraced the notion that urban social problems — disease, poverty, immorality — stemmed from the physical environments of cities. – CityLab

The situation into which almost every parent in America has now suddenly and unwillingly been thrust could not be more different. One-size-fits-all education barely works in a classroom, but it is completely unmanageable with kids spread out across their various households working independently. – The Atlantic

It’s not entirely irrational behavior. And it can be explained. It’s the product of several longterm trends that encourage hyper-skepticism. – Good Company

As Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi recently noted, both capitalism and celebrity rely on the “lie of meritocracy:” that working hard will lead to ultimate success. The grips of COVID-19, with its fallout of the millions who have lost their jobs and the thousands who have lost their lives, has shined light on the tenuous nature of the meritocracy myth. Now that we know what essential work is, it seems the perfect time to reflect upon the not-so-essential work of celebrities. – The Conversation