Category: ideas

For Chomsky, the “new AI” — focused on using statistical learning techniques to better mine and predict data — is unlikely to yield general principles about the nature of intelligent beings or about cognition.

“The ironic frame functions as a shield against criticism. The same goes for ironic living. Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. … Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.”

“The seesaw of earnest to irony is something that’s been a part of life, a part of humor, a part of entertainment for centuries, even if it appears differently over time. It’s not a Gen X or Gen Y or Gen Next ‘thing’; it’s a seesaw that need not end even when twentysomethings who currently live in Bushwick and play the ukelele have reached middle age and are getting their tattoos removed by laser.”

“While it might take you a full second to notice something out of the corner of your eye, turn your head toward it, recognize it and respond to it, the same reaction to a new or sudden sound happens at least 10 times as fast.”

“Incredibly, around 85% of the universe’s mass is now thought to be made up of wimps. These particles permeate the space around us, flying through normal matter but only rarely interacting with it.”

San Francisco says yes.

“Everywhere you look, the countryside has crept into cities and towns – the way we shop, eat, read, dress, decorate our homes, spend our time. Street food is sold out of revamped agricultural trucks, or from village-delivery style bicycles. City-dwellers are booking into a growing number of courses on rural life; urban bees and chickens are commonplace (though do keep up: ducks are where it’s at now).”

“People often use the term luck and randomness interchangeably. I like to think of randomness operating at a system level and luck at an individual level. If I gather 100 people and ask them to call coin tosses, randomness tells me that a handful may call five correctly in a row. If you happen to be one of those five, you’re lucky.”

Not ever going to happen. And here’s why.

“Each medium entered a trance state and began writing. After 10 minutes, the scientists injected them with a radioactive tracer that traveled to the brain, where it essentially got locked in place, reflecting how blood was flowing to various parts of the brain at the moment of injection.”