Search Results

What’s the point in fighting a made up monster? Excerpt: " A straw man is when you simplify or exaggerate somebody’s argument to make it easier to target, an opponent you can blow down with adversarial flair. For example, if an atheist says that Christianity is just worshipping “some bearded man in the sky,” well, that’s a straw man, because barely any Christian would accept that representation of their religion. Of course, if a Christian says that an atheist does not believe in anything or that life has no meaning, that is also very likely a straw man. The problem with the straw man argument is that not only does it not actually address someone’s points, but it poisons the entire debate. It’s a bad-faith argument that sees conversation as a brawl and “truth” as only one weapon in the war to win at all costs. But there is a better way. The opposite of a straw man is a steel man. This is where you not only represent someone’s arguments faithfully and with respect, but you do so in the best possible light. You spend a great deal of attention clarifying and double-checking what your debating partner actually means. In my experience, if you take the time to genuinely inquire about what someone believes, you will find far greater nuance — and often far greater agreement — than you thought at the start. For example, only the most dastardly and venal of politicians are doing it entirely for themselves. Most politicians want to make society and the world a better place. It’s just that left- and right-wing arguments differ about how to achieve that."

Nature, in all its manifestations, is alive. Related prior post Excerpt (to first link above): When Angela Auambari, a Muisca woman I was recently interviewing, said the phrase again, I asked her what she meant by it. “You can put water in tubes to send it into our homes, and yet that water will always have a life of its own,” she told me. I explained that in grade school I was taught that a tree is alive, a bird is alive, but a lake is not. “You and I are women; we give life,” Angela countered. She gestured to the open window above us, through which the laughter of my 1-year-old daughter traveled. “The lakes up in the hills, the rivers that connect them to us, they, too, give life, and for this reason, they are alive. Agua es vida.” I understood what she meant. I even agreed with her. Still, what separates living, breathing beings from inanimate matter remains frustratingly set in my mind. Stones, no; seagulls, yes. The entire scientific tradition, from Descartes down to Linnaeus and Darwin, is built upon this division. Nevertheless, as climate change superheats the planet, things we have long been taught to think of as inert are springing into action: ice sheets splintering, flood-prone rivers devouring mountain towns, wildfires consuming Paradise. Those who live on the front lines of these eruptions don’t have the luxury of encountering the Earth as anything other than animate. In his new book, Is a River Alive? , Robert Macfarlane, one of the most significant nature writers of his generation, attempts to unlearn this persistent and damaging distinction. By exploring four extraordinary bodies of water and the people and laws aiming to protect them, Macfarlane examines a question whose time has come, whether we like it or not. The current environmental catastrophe is a problem not only of missed emissions targets but also of the human imagination, as the writer Amitav Ghosh has argued. “Our plight is a consequence of the ways in which certain classes of humans––a small minority, in fact––have actively muted others by representing them as brutes, as creatures whose presence on earth is solely material,” Ghosh argues in his 2022 book, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis . Human stories have historically refused to recognize that these others—both human others, and also things like gold, glaciers, bacteria, the jet stream; the list goes on and on—shape us just as much as we shape them. Ours is the language that makes extraction possible. People need new narratives, Ghosh insists, that foreground nonhuman actors in order to slow this planetary cataclysm. (The time for averting it has long since passed.) Related book

Empowering robots with human-like perceptio n Excerpt: " A new Duke-developed AI system fuses vision, vibrations, touch and its own body states to help robots understand and move through difficult in-the-wild environments. The wealth of information provided by our senses that allows our brain to navigate the world around us is remarkable. Touch, smell, hearing, and a strong sense of balance are crucial to making it through what to us seem like easy environments such as a relaxing hike on a weekend morning. An innate understanding of the canopy overhead helps us figure out where the path leads. The sharp snap of branches or the soft cushion of moss informs us about the stability of our footing. The thunder of a tree falling or branches dancing in strong winds lets us know of potential dangers nearby. Robots, in contrast, have long relied solely on visual information such as cameras or lidar to move through the world. Outside of Hollywood, multisensory navigation has long remained challenging for machines. The forest, with its beautiful chaos of dense undergrowth, fallen logs and ever-changing terrain, is a maze of uncertainty for traditional robots."

What do we actually know? (Audio & Podcast) Description: You probably know someone who thinks they know more about something than they really do. But you could never be described that way . . . could you? This week, cognitive scientist  Phil Fernbach  explains the “illusion of knowledge” — the fact that we think we understand the world in much greater detail than we actually do. He’ll explore why this happens, and how to close the gap between what we know and what we think we know.  Another (of many) related UIIs w/Claude

A brewing civil war in the Democratic party Excerpt: "A civil war has broken out among the Democratic wonks. The casus belli is a new set of ideas known as the abundance agenda. Its supporters herald it as the key to prosperity for the American people and to enduring power for the liberal coalition. Its critics decry it as a scheme to infiltrate the Democratic Party by “corporate-aligned interests”; “a gambit by center-right think tank & its libertarian donors”; “an anti-government manifesto for the MAGA Right”; and the historical and moral equivalent of the “Rockefellers and Carnegies grinding workers into dust.” The factional disputes that tear apart the left tend to involve wrenching, dramatic issues where the human stakes are clear: Gaza, policing, immigration. And so it is more than a little odd that progressive activists, columnists, and academics are now ripping one another to shreds over such seemingly arcane and technical matters as zoning rules, permitting, and the Paperwork Reduction Act. The intensity of the argument suggests that the participants are debating not merely the mechanical details of policy, but the very nature and purpose of the Democratic Party. And in fact, if you look closely beneath the squabbling, that is exactly what they are fighting over. The abundance agenda is a collection of policy reforms designed to make it easier to build housing and infrastructure and for government bureaucracy to work. Despite its cheerful name and earnest intention to find win-win solutions, the abundance agenda contains a radical critique of the past half century of American government. On top of that—and this is what has set off clanging alarms on the left—it is a direct attack on the constellation of activist organizations, often called “the groups,” that control progressive politics and have significant influence over the Democratic Party. In recent years, the party’s internal divides have been defined almost entirely in relation to the issue positions taken by the groups. The most progressive Democrats have been the ones who advocated the groups’ positions most forcefully; moderate Democrats have been defined more by their relative lack of enthusiasm for the groups’ agenda than by any causes of their own. The Democratic Party’s flavors have been “progressive” and “progressive lite.” The abundance agenda promises to supply moderate Democrats with a positive identity, rather than merely a negative one."

List of PwC episodes

Small acts of resistance known as "micro-feminism" can help women feel empowered at work. Excerpt: " Micro-feminism began trending on TikTok last year when a video from Ashley Chaney went viral. She shared that whenever emailing a team, she will always address the women first. Since then, creators have continued to share examples ranging from practical to tongue-in-cheek, including asking men to take the notes in meetings, and holding doors open for male colleagues and insisting they enter first. Alice Rose is a gender and psychology researcher from the University of South Australia's Centre for Workplace Excellence and says although "maybe not highbrow", micro-feminism is a nod to systemic inequalities and a "small push back" against them."

Will you and your life benefit by asking these questions? Excerpt: "A company can offer all the free snacks and on-site massages in the world—but if the people don’t make you feel supported, you’re probably still not happy at your job. To an increasing extent, “the corporate world is understanding that relationships and the culture of relationships at work is the new competitive edge,” says Esther Perel, a psychotherapist who hosts the popular couples’ therapy podcast Where Should We Begin? In May, Perel shifted her focus from improving relationships at home to bettering those at work. She released a 100-question card game with prompts designed to get people to open up and share stories, in hopes of improving team dynamics and fixing a workplace’s culture. Each prompt targets one of her four pillars of healthy workplace relationships—trust, belonging, recognition, and collective resilience—and it’s designed to be played at an off-site meeting, while onboarding a new employee, during a one-on-one check-in, or at an after-work happy hour. “This goes way beyond your typical icebreaker,” Perel says: Telling personal stories at work can make people feel less siloed and improve collaboration. At the average all-hands meeting, for example, “You see where the eyes go, you see who's listening, you see the blank stares, you see people on their phone,” she says. “Once a person starts to tell a story, everybody's eyes lift. Now you come to life, you're interested, and you elicit curiosity.”

An influential muscian and producer ponders human creativity Excerpt: " Art—as a field of work and study and as a matter of qualitative rather than quantitative value—is threatened, misunderstood and undervalued. No doubt this is because art is not an obvious form of self-advancement—it doesn’t make you thinner or, except in very rare circumstances, richer. It does, however, improve you, and “What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory” by Brian Eno and Bette A. explains how. All the pretense one might anticipate in a book with both “theory” and “art” in the title is undone by its gestural, playful illustrations by Ms. A., a Dutch artist who illuminates Mr. Eno’s discussion of how art is “like a language that changes meaning depending on the listener.” Take, for example, her cheerful drawing of hairstyles—they reflect “Bette’s Grandma’s feelings about haircuts”—which depicts the severe, shaven noggin of someone who “is against something” and a fluffier coiffure for one who “wants to get married.” Together Mr. Eno and Ms. A. contemplate the art inherent in “natural” haircuts and the “highly sculpted beehive” that suggests “time, formality, maintenance.” Ms. A. is the perfect foil for the king of the art-school rockers. British popular music of the second half of the 20th century was profoundly influenced by the U.K.’s post-World War II art schools. While it will surprise no one that Paul Simonon, the Clash’s bassist, went to art school, the list also includes John Lennon and Pete Townshend. The art schools were easy to get into and their teachers were well regarded. The schools’ core view was that the postwar world would be creative, incorporating a number of disciplines. Their graduates would be in tune with culture, ready to work in design (both industrial and graphic), fashion, advertising and entertainment, well-prepared for a world in which there was a lot to buy and sell to newly flush teenagers. Mr. Eno, born just after the war, attended Ipswich School of Art, earning a diploma in fine arts from the Winchester School of Art in 1969." Art, he says, is a way to explore feeling without creating “inescapable consequences.” Related book

One thing that unites us. Don't let them vanish. Excerpt: " Once upon a time there was an old-fashioned diner-style restaurant in my town, and I frequented it for decades. A sizable group of us even had a breakfast club there, convening every morning to discuss ways the world could be improved. After my kids grew up and moved away, the first thing they wanted to do each time they came home was have pancakes in the mythical establishment they had cherished since they were toddlers. Locals loved everything about the restaurant: the ambience, the decor, the clientele, the staff. Most of us even liked the food, though generally speaking the food was an afterthought. The restaurant (the original owner hated it when anyone referred to it as a diner) was a central meeting place in the village, the suburban equivalent of the ancient Roman forum. It was like “Cheers” without the liquor. But it was sold after Covid hit, and new owners remodeled the place, sprucing it up and giving it a glitzy new feel. They started by tearing out all the booths. I immediately stopped going. So did my friends and a lot of the old patrons. The breakfast club was kaput. Without our beloved booths we were nothing."

People pick up on cues that A.I. entities miss Excerpt: " One thing AI can’t do?  Read your body language.  Researchers at Johns Hopkins University pitted human beings against AI models and asked each to assess short videos and images showing two people who might—or might not—be interacting with each other. Both human volunteers and the AI models were asked to rate features important for understanding social interaction, such as how close the individuals were to each other, on a scale of one to five.  In one video, a man who appears to be a chef in a professional kitchen speaks confidently to a smiling woman who returns his gaze. In another, a father chats with his toddler at a craft table, at one point wrapping his arm around the child. In a still image, a tennis player stretches to hit a ball as a linesman crouching several feet behind her looks on. Humans mostly agreed with each other on their evaluations of the scenes. However, the AI video models were unable to accurately assess what people were doing, and image models that were given still frames of the scenes couldn’t reliably predict whether people were communicating."

‘Vibe coding’ with new AI tools makes it possible for just about anyone to create personalized apps—no programming required. Key Points Two friends built “BabyTime,” a phone app that lets young kids call family by tapping photos, using AI code from Anthropic’s Claude. AI coding tools are enabling more people to develop software for personal use, without needing extensive coding knowledge or a CS degree. Vibe coding allows users to create custom apps for specific needs, offering an alternative to generic apps and addressing limitations of Big Tech.