Sublime

no self-respecting liberal could condone big tech’s mass manipulation techniques

If liberalism, nationalism, Islam, or some novel creed wishes to shape the world of the year 2050, it will need not only to make sense of artificial intelligence, Big Data algorithms, and bioengineering but also to incorporate them into a new and meaningful narrative.

An entire political, moral, economic and intellectual culture – roughly what is now called ‘the West’ – grew around the values entailed by the quest for good explanations, such as tolerance of dissent, openness to change, distrust of dogmatism and authority, and the aspiration to progress both by individuals and for the culture as a whole.

À l’époque, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, hackers et lanceurs d’alerte, ridiculisaient les citadelles, gouvernements comme multinationales. Aaron se fichait de révéler leurs secrets pour les affaiblir. Esthète de l’intérêt général, il misait sur « la sagesse des foules », le désir inné des individus – humains, si humains, pensait-il –,

The Enlightenment principle that we can apply reason and sympathy to enhance human flourishing may seem obvious, trite, old-fashioned. I wrote this book because I have come to realize that it is not. More than ever, the ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress need a wholehearted defense.

of them wrote as though fragility and vulnerability could be overcome in some progressive future. And it is now possible to identify the link between this belief and their philosophy of science.