WSJ: “In the provocative, ambitious and exasperating pages of “The Story of Stories,” Mr. Ashton, a former researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes the case that stories have been part of human history so long that they predate language itself. A story, he writes, is a “primary vehicle for emotion” with three components: character, chronology and consequence. Into this form, we put our relationships, our inner lives and what we believe to be our external reality. We live and breathe stories: We concoct them; we relate them; we react to them. From time to time in history, there has come a technological leap that allows greater dispersal of stories: the invention of the printing press; the development of wood-fiber paper; the innovations of radio, television and, of course, the smartphone. The author refers to the manner of these jumps as “saltation,” a geological term pertaining to the movement of particles by wind or water that he likes so much he uses it 11 times.”
FT: “Complex animals appeared on Earth even longer ago than thought, according to a more than 500mn-year-old fossil trove uncovered in south-west China that shows the power of symmetry in evolution. The discovery dates the surge in oceanic evolutionary diversity known as the Cambrian explosion to before the start of the eponymous geological period 539mn years ago, says research published [recently]. The find captures a critical moment when simpler creatures began to evolve into more advanced ones with capabilities that would eventually enable them to thrive on land.”
From “The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence,” by Sebastian Mallaby: “At the end of January 2014, Google bought DeepMind for $650 million, a bargain by today’s standards. But the real payoff for Hassabis came over the next decade, as Google poured billions into DeepMind’s research. The quest for superintelligence, which Hassabis had harbored since his teenage years, would soon go into overdrive.” [WSJ excerpt]
Jacob Mchangama: “Democracies have always worried about dangerous ideas corrupting the young. Intellectuals and lawmakers should absolutely be concerned about how and when our children navigate social media. But they should also be concerned about whether, in our rush to protect our children, we are building an infrastructure of surveillance and censorship that will ultimately threaten the hard-won freedoms we want future generations to enjoy.”
Mike Munger: “Liberalism has two mutually reinforcing aspects. The first is humility: I can’t assume I’m right. The second is toleration: I can’t assume you’re wrong.” [via Arnold Kling]
