meghan twombly

But the healthy body is one, but also, the gift of communication. Writing and speaking is a gift. Do you work at it? Yes, of course. But nevertheless, it was a gift that I discovered when I was so terrified to give my first ever lecture, which was to 5,000 people in what’s now dark, Constitution Hall, for Geographic, in Washington, D.C. I was... See more

Problems are typically richer than our preconceived notions about how to solve them. We can learn this the hard way, by failing and then failing again but failing better. But there are often shortcuts to be found if you are willing to spend more time mapping the landscape.

Even for those in the harder sciences, the necessity of becoming competent in social thinking and philosophical reasoning has never been more urgent. We live in an era of unprecedented tools—the first generation with the ability to fundamentally change what it means to be us—and those with the technological know-how also need to know why .

We can.... See more

Turning language over to machines is the equivalent of a bird clipping its own wings.

we need not retreat into the well-trodden trenches of luddites vs. tech bros. There’s a smarter way of understanding the rise of LLMs while preserving our critical thinking, all while shining a crucial, easily overshadowed light on how our ability to reason with language is the essence of humanity.

When artificial intelligence is used to diagnose cancer or automate soul-crushing tasks that require vapid toiling, it makes us more human and should be celebrated. But when it sucks out the core process of advanced cognition, cutting-edge tools can become an existential peril. In the formative stages of education, we are now at risk of stripping... See more