SpaceXponential
@spacexponential
Conscientious Questioner
SpaceXponential
“Meaningless” is how some people put it. It’s just too easy to peek under the hood and realize there’s no master plan or final destination.
Molly Mielke • callings
The structure of games is not that the points are valuable, but that the attempt to get those points, the attempts to win the game and the game’s terms sculpt some kind of interesting or beautiful activity.
New York Times • A Philosophy of Games That Is Really a Philosophy of Life
I love this! Nguyen follows this up with
“The philosopher Talbot Brewer, in his book, “The Retrieval of Ethics,” says something like we’ve lost sight of how important activities are and we’re just obsessed with how important the output is and the product is. And that’s partially because we’ve been swept up in this hyper-industrialized product-oriented world where we think, look, the thing that I’m trying to achieve is the thing that’s valuable. And I think what we lose sight of is how interesting it can be to be caught in the process of doing something.”
"I believe," he writes, "that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, new friends." The point is that a cappella harnesses the creative intelligence of a whole group. By contrast, says Eno, high art is about separating geniuses from foot soldiers. "A cappella subverts that: it's highly composed music but th... See more
Stuart Jeffries • Surrender. It's Brian Eno
The metaphor of risk management uses financial incentives to empower our nobler epistemic instincts.
While the metaphor of Facts excuses us from the responsibility of exercising personal judgment, the metaphor of risk management uses financial incentives to empower our nobler epistemic instincts to overcome our lazier ones.
... The employment of gree
... See moreMike Elias • Pascal’s Market
To establish a Fact, someone must decide what context is relevant to include, and what to exclude.
The trouble is, there is no objective way to decide what context to omit. Context omission is inevitably subjective — it’s whatever the omitter decides is irrelevant.
Mike Elias • Wittgenstein’s Revenge
...The dart guns of social media give more power and voice to the political extremes while reducing the power and voice of the moderate majority. The “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the right... See more
The Atlantic • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in ... See more
The Atlantic • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
Political risks aside, whatever the blockchain of facts could discover about consensus has already been thoroughly demonstrated by Trump Tweets. Trump Tweets have shown us that access to, obviousness of, and even universal agreement on the facts often achieves nothing for public discourse. Everyone agrees on the exact words he said, but their inter
... See more