SpaceXponential
@spacexponential
Conscientious Questioner
SpaceXponential
The many analysts, including me, who had argued that Trump could not win the general election were relying on pre-Babel intuitions, which said that scandals such as the Access Hollywood tape (in which Trump boasted about committing sexual assault) are fatal to a presidential campaign. But after Babel, nothing really means anything anymore––at least... See more
Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
Every good cult leader needs a stage - Perhaps the most distinctive thing about the Clubhouse chat-room model is that it provides a stage where leaders can talk while followers listen as part of an audience—and sometimes wait to be called on.
The Information • Clubhouse and the Future of Cult-Driven Social Platforms
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
We think of ‘facts’ as being somewhat equivalent to data — they’re observations, which in theory anyone could verify.
But observation is just one of three essential ingredients required to make a Fact.
The other two are:
- 1) Context omission, and
- 2) Trust, in the one omitting the context.
Mike Elias • Wittgenstein’s Revenge
The era we live in requires us to take trust leaps at a surprisingly high rate – we have jumped from using credit cards to dabbling with cryptocurrencies; from making reservations at trusted hotel brands to booking rooms from complete strangers; from public transportation to using Uber or Blablacar; from libraries and encyclopedias, to open... See more
JENA MARIE ESPELITA • TRUSTING A TRUSTLESS NETWORK. The Paradoxes of Trust in Blockchain Technology
Objective systems seem desirable, relying entirely on machines and not fallible and opportunistic humans. There is, however, a catch – machines may be running the code, but humans are acting on it. A subjective system might be able to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate transactions in a way that an objective one could not. Concepts... See more
JENA MARIE ESPELITA • TRUSTING A TRUSTLESS NETWORK. The Paradoxes of Trust in Blockchain Technology
Bohm considered unexamined thought to be the crux of most issues that humans face. He says, “When we see a ‘problem,’ whether pollution, carbon dioxide, or whatever, we then say, ‘We have got to solve that problem.’ But we are constantly producing that sort of problem — by the way we go on with our thought.” His concept of dialogue is meant to
... See moreCharles Broskoski • Bohm Dialogue
Whereas the modern university segregated scholarship from curation, demoting the latter to a secondary, supportive role, and sending curators into exile within museums, archives, and libraries, the Digital Humanities revolution promotes a fundamental reshaping of the research and teaching landscape. It recasts the scholar as curator and the curator... See more
Todd Presner • The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0
In a world of perpetual data overload, [curation] implies information design and selectivity: the channeling, filtering, and organization into intelligible and usable information; the digging up of new or long ignored cultural corpora. Most of these corpora are simply sitting in storage: less than 1% of the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent... See more