The appalling mistreatment of ME/CFS patients continues, based on the myth that it’s all in the mind. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 12th March 2024 It’s the greatest medical scandal of the 21st century. For decades, patients with ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) have been told they can make themselves better by changing […]
Science
An open invitation to the Fremantle launch ...
A talk to the Economic Society of Australia: Monsters in the Machine, Technology, Growth & Human Flourishing An Author Talk with Goldfields Libraries An appearance on the Breaking the Spell podcast
A month or so out from Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated biopic Oppenheimer, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community is having its own Oppenheimer moment. Like the director of the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos Laboratory, who famously came to regret his part in the development of the atomic bomb, the Big Tech Titans are falling over each […]
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism (2018), the British writer Aaron Bastani puts a leftist spin on the Promethean view of technological development. While noting the revolutionary potential of recent genetic innovations, he insists that the latter are no different in kind from the selective breeding practices of the past: they are simply another great leap […]
Paywalled, I’m afraid, but consider subscribing! The defence: Chess vs artificial intelligence Nostalgia on demand: Streaming memories in the experience machine
The best scene in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer comes towards the end of the movie. The titular physicist is talking to Einstein, recalling a previous conversation in which they’d discussed the possibility that an atomic bomb would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. ‘When I came to you with those calculations’, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) reflects, ‘we thought we […]
So about five hundred million years ago, give or take, there was this little creature called Plectronoceras. It was about 2 cm long — just under an inch — and it had a conical shell with a bunch of tentacles sticking out. It was a cephalopod, an early member of the group that includes octopuses […]
John Mitchinson explores why perception is as much about what we know as what we see