“Contrary to the popular view, I think that we sometimes have good reasons to argue against the person. In other words, ad hominem arguments can be good arguments, especially when they are construed as rebuttals to appeals to authority.” – Aeon
Category: ideas
Some Science Has Become So Theoretical It Lacks Evidence. Are We Fooling Ourselves?
In the past, experiments played a vital role in developing theory and vice versa. For some time now that back-and-forth has not existed in certain fields where experiments are barely managing to test theories developed over decades. Wherever experimental data can be coaxed out of nature, it suffices to corroborate or refute a theory and serves as the sole arbiter of validity. But where evidence is spare or absent – as it is for a growing number of questions in physics – other criteria, including aesthetic ones, have been allowed to come into play both in formulating a theory and evaluating it. – The Guardian
What Happens When We Lose The Capacity To Be Bored?
In the past, work was recognized for its colonizing power, expanding to fill and dominate time itself such that there might exist no clear line between work hours and nonwork hours. Our current condition is worse. The Interface, leveraging boredom, makes us all into unpaid workers for the advertisers who support those apparently cost-free platforms. We ought to recall that there is no such thing as a free transaction. In this species of transaction, you pay with your individuality, freedom, and happiness. – The Walrus
How Did Nature Get To Be Seen As A Moral Good?
Today, nature is valued as a signifier of sustainability, resilience, and good quality of life not only in European and American cities, but also in new “smart” cities across Asia and the Middle East, and in “megacities” of the Global South. – Public Books
What Our Behavior In Masses Means For Predicting The Future
Rapid progress in information technology has led to the ‘big data’ revolution, in which gigantic quantities of information can be obtained and processed. Patterns of human behaviour can be extracted from records of credit-card purchases, telephone calls and emails. Words suddenly becoming more common on social media, such as ‘demagogue’ during the 2016 US presidential election, can be clues to hot political issues. – Aeon
Listening To The World: How Our Taste Is Being Reprogrammed
Beyond obscuring labor, the switch to digital has reprogrammed our discovery and consumption of music. Despite the seemingly unprecedented supply of music, Damon Krukowski suggests that internet companies, like Spotify and Amazon, “are replacing the freedom and chaos of the internet at large, with the control and predictability of their programs.” In other words, they generally provide access to art that we are or would be comfortable with, and they otherwise restrict or obscure alternatives. “When you go into a bookstore, or record store, or library—any physical space devoted to information,” Krukowski writes, “you enter another world . . . But when you open a browser—it’s an irony that’s the word, isn’t it?—that relationship to information is reversed. It conforms to you.” – The Baffler
Scientists Have Figured Out How To Revive Dead Brains (Now What?)
“These findings,” the scientists write, “show that, with the appropriate interventions, the large mammalian brain retains an underappreciated capacity for normothermic restoration of microcirculation and certain molecular and cellular functions multiple hours after circulatory arrest.” – New York Times Magazine
Why Concrete Truths Have Lost Their Foundations
Why has assent on even basic factual claims (beyond logically demonstrable ones, like 2 + 2 = 4) become so hard to achieve? Or, to put it slightly differently, why are we—meaning people of varied political persuasions—having so much trouble lately arriving at any broadly shared sense of the world beyond ourselves, and, even more, any consensus on which institutions, methods, or people to trust to get us there? And why, ultimately, do so many of us seem simply to have given up on the possibility of finding some truths in common? – Hedgehog Review
We Evolved To Be Successful. So Which Traits Will Dominate Going Forward?
Will our pre-wiring—together with toxic cultural forces, such as racism—lead to fiercer, meaner, better-armed tribal conflict? Or will the part of us that expands love from mates to friends to shipmates come to dominate? – Reason
How Reality Got Jumbled Up With “Reality”
It is impossible to prove a counterfactual, but without reality TV, it seems unlikely that so many people would equate “being real” and “telling it like it is” with spilling ugly secrets, flaunting rank egotism, attacking personal morality and social norms, and exuding contempt for the opinions and sensibilities of others. This cultural turn is dismaying enough, but as this kind of behavior comes to define what is honest, authentic, and true, it becomes more difficult for free and democratic societies to push back against the looming threat of a full-fledged surveillance state, a digital Panopticon. – Hedgehog Review [paywall]