A question we've been asking ourselves lately: What is reality, anyway?
Reality is not a simulation, and you do have to care about other people
The alt-right's intellectual firepower comes in part from a Thiel-funded Silicon Valley think-tank that has promoted the idea that reality is a simulation run by ultra-powerful computers from the future. After all, if reality's a simulation, why bother worrying about homelessness?
The best article about the Machine Intelligence Research Institute is "Come With Us If You Want to Live," which nails through live reporting exactly how nihilistic the rationality fetish can get.
But the whole notion is sophomoric stonerism. Computers don't have access to a higher reality: "Empirically, increasing computational power will not necessarily transform the water of computer games into the wine of a full-fledged simulated world."
Nov 22, 2016We don’t recognize advanced life because it forms an integral and unsuspicious part of what we’ve considered to be the natural world.
↩︎ Nautilus
Google Maps changes how you look at the world
Current mapping technologies distort our wayfinding instincts out of their natural balance between "egocentric" (process-oriented) and "allocentric" (context-oriented) navigational modes.
Nov 22, 2016Our production of the world, our interpretation of it, what we've been told to experience and what we've been told we have to do, both bore and distress me. I don't want to live in someone else's dream.
↩︎ University of Arizona
The Editors' Longreads Picks
- An excellent essay on poverty and writing by Starr Davis. Updated May 31, 2022
- Novelist Héctor Tobar tries to understand the 1992 Los Angeles riots through the experiences of a single high school.
- Steven Johnson with a long assessment of the current state of A.I. and language. (The illusion has gotten very good.)
Welcome to The Morning News Tournament of Books, 2017 edition.
- Our championship match is decided in the Tournament of Books, with news of a Rooster surprise debuting this summer. Updated Mar 31, 2017
- In Thursday's action, Reyhan Harmanci sets up a colossal final.
- The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad.
Все ваши Белый дом принадлежит нам.
- "Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?" Updated Mar 3, 2017
- Wilbur Ross just wanted to make some money in ethically gray areas (that should've prevented him from taking office).
- Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman can't help but continue to lie.
The oceans are under assault, and not just from the White House and friends.
- Trump's assault on the environment begins with American headwaters. Updated Mar 1, 2017
- Don't just blame the oil companies for destroying the oceans—blame sushi restaurants.
- Nothing escapes the deepest trenches of the ocean floor. Not light, not nutrients, not pollutants.