We’ve had opposite extremes — capitalists & communists, Adam Smithians & Karl Marxists — completely miss the obvious. Humans are not rational, deterministic “utility functions” optimizing for individual or collective “good”. Free markets’ invisible hand will correct? +
“I’m a consumer, what’s wrong with that?” The way you consume? The quantity? The fact that luck gave you an opportunity to NOT be an animal, to use that neocortex to create a better world, maybe? +
As of 13 September 2023, UNESCO has verified damage to 289 cultural sites in Ukraine: 120 religious buildings, 27 museums, 109 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 19 monuments, 13 libraries… In Odessa alone, a city near and dear to me from childhood +
ChatGPT. It’s a chat. Not AI. It’s not Intelligent. It’s not even a knowledge base of Humanity, like Wikipedia or PubMed. It’s a collection of statistical models of knowledge. Some licensed, some stolen*. Oh, and no one understands how the inside works. The chat predicts +
You know what? Russians still living in Russia, the remaining 140 million of them, don’t care about the war. Nor do they care about their rulers or the Western sanctions. Or the Western companies having left or banned. Russia is stuck in yet another historical +
Everybody thought: first AI would do physical labor, then some cognitive labor, then the really hard cognitive labor, like programming… And then, last of all, but maybe never, because it’s magical and human… was creativity +
Искусство Кино — published since 1931 and thus, together with “Sight & Sound” and “Cahiers du Cinéma” one of the earliest magazines to cover the film industry, art and theory — has printed its last issue. Yes, my work has been featured in it. But +
Elon Musk just said on CNBC something I’d been thinking about a lot: “If we do get to this sort of magic genie situation, where you can ask the AI for anything. And let’s say, even if it’s a benign scenario… How do we actually +
My conversation about human happiness with ChatGPT took 5 minutes. Question: According to what is currently known to science, what 50 factors, listed from most influential to least, influence a human (male, with an IQ above 100) self-reported feeling of happiness +
Social media, especially Instagram, has succeeded to complete the Global Harmonized Standard of Women™, an industrialized process started by the female magazines (Vogue, ELLE…) It’s all pretty… scary. We now have a draft proposal for ISO review. +
Only thoughtless people do crazy things, publish emotional photos, record damming TikToks, break up “forever”… relying on the “Delete Chat” and “Block” buttons of messengers and social apps. Those unable to think ahead imagine they will never face the consequences. Our digital footprint describes our +
Wow. The Match Group did indeed introduce chat-assist to Tinder. Just look at their suggestions to start a dialogue after a match: 😱 • Hiiii Jane! Getting into anything fun this week? • Hello Jane. How’s it going? • Hi there! Getting into anything fun +
52% of American women were unmarried or separated in 2021. The rising share of single women households has been driven entirely by women who have never married. Over 80% of women under 30 have never tied the knot in 2021… Despite all the readily-available research +
As a civilization, we’d known about our impact on climate since the 1950-60s. We’ve also continued to fail to agree on anything that would have prevented its negative impact… since the 1970s. 50 years later, the IPCC reports, again, that nothing’s changed. We will not +
Yoga tools are almost limitless. But if I’m short on time, I do the following Best Of of Hatha Yoga™. Every day, before pranayama, running, meditation, filming and everything else. Warm up head rotation pull the head with our hands due to the force of +
The “argument by fuzzy concept” fallacy is second only to ad hominem… An argument of intellectual indoctrination, laziness and dullness which, if pressed, degenerates into circular reasoning, requiring, at best, a definition by negation (“not hate, not lust, not friendship, not nⁿ…”) Got a World +
Are we really free? Are we free to be who we really are? The answer is no, we are not free. True freedom has to do with the human spirit — it is the freedom to be who we really are. Who stops us from +
“America is a kind, generous place… if you have money. It’s a rapacious, violent place if you don’t have money. To be wealthy in America is to be loved. People find you interesting, they want to know you. You have a broader selection of mates. +
“I run every single morning. That’s because that’s the one thing I hate to do more than anything in the world” — David Goggins, an ultramarathon runner and triathlete. I wonder whether people who worship him realize the all-too-common pattern of self-abuse and hate in +
A truly “Pro” notebook computer would feature: • an ortholinear, split & probably concave keyboard optimized for touch-typing • an Apple Pencil compactible screen • a 21:9 screen ratio / form factor But hey, who’s thinking about pros these days, eh? Economies of scale rule… +
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