“When I say that mathematics is seen as not having a history, I mean that mathematical truths are supposedly eternal, they’re unchanging, it doesn’t matter the context, it doesn’t matter the time, they’re always true, one and one equals two. It’s been true since the beginning of time, whether there have been humans or historical figures or mathematicians who knew it or not.” – LongReads
Category: ideas
Can Plants Think? There’s Evidence They’re Smarter Than We Think
The idea of a “plant intelligence”—an intelligence that goes beyond adaptation and reaction and into the realm of active memory and decision-making—has been in the air since at least the early seventies. – The Paris Review
You Have A Chronic Illness. Here’s How To Have A Rich Creative Life
With chronic illness, rigidity in your thinking and behaviour is the greatest barrier to living well with your illness. The only thing you can count on is the fact that you never really know what your day is going to look like, and that things are always changing. – Aeon
Film Criticism Is Perhaps Better Done On Video
That’s right, streaming film criticism, in which critics break down scenes through clips and show how lighting, sound, or other effects add to the emotional and intellectual resonance of a movie, is now moving into a more mainstream form, and a lot of it – as good as a cinema studies class or two – is online for free. – The Guardian (UK)
The Eternal Optimism Of The Silicon Valley Mind
Silicon Valley (and all of the tech people who inhabit it and its environs, on- and offline) doesn’t have a political point of view, really. It’s not conservative nor liberal. It’s only always optimistic about technology making life easier and better. “This creed burns brightly, undimmed by the anti-tech backlash,” and it is deeply rooted in sunny, optimistic American culture. – The New York Times
As K-Pop, Bollywood, And Turkish TV Arise, Are The Days Of U.S. Cultural Dominance Over?
Author Fatima Bhutto thinks so. “Hollywood is no longer the center. America is no longer the center. Now we have a multipolar world. So Turkey is a center. India is a center. Pakistan is a center. China is certainly a center. Nigeria is a center. South America – so many centers. And I think that’s – I mean, as a viewer, as a listener, I find that really, really exciting.” – NPR
We’re Living In A Post-Happiness World
So we’re pursuing “joy” instead – something that comes and goes and that we don’t feel we need to sustain. Could this actually be a boon for the arts as we start to realize that collective experiences are important? “Contentment is the next growth industry.” – The New York Times
Is It Time To Get Rid Of Remedial Math?
College students actually do just fine without it, or so Cal State says. This probably won’t shock a lot of humanities majors, but an administrator says, “The traditional pathway, where we had one route through developmental math for all students, as if they were all going on to take an algebra-based major, was not functional.” You don’t say. – LAist
The Illusion Of Consciousness And Our Perceptions
“As yet, we have only a sketchy understanding of access consciousness, and there are many controversies over the details of the neural systems involved, but in time we should be able to fill in the picture and settle the disputes. Yet, many philosophers would say, even then we wouldn’t have a full understanding of consciousness.” – Aeon
Why Our Symbols And Monuments Aren’t Permanent
We create symbols, then alter their meanings. Some argue vehemently that monuments, such as Confederate statues, should be left in place—that their part in history should not be “erased.” But change is not an erasure of history; it is a part of it. – Nautilus