Monday, 4 February 2019
Sunday, 3 February 2019
Tom Vanderbilt - "Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot"
http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/why-futurism-has-a-cultural-blindspot
Like the hungry person who orders more food at dinner than they will ultimately want - to use an example from Lowenstein and colleagues - forecasters have a tendency to take something taht is (in the language of behavioral economics) salient today, and assume that it will play an outsized role in the future. And what is most salient today? It is that which is novel, "disruptive," and easily fathomed: new technology.
As the theorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in Antifragile, "we notice what varies and changes more than what plays a larger role but doesn't change. We rely more on water than on cell phones, but because water does not change and cell phones do, we are prone to thinking that cell phones play a larger role than they do."
Like the hungry person who orders more food at dinner than they will ultimately want - to use an example from Lowenstein and colleagues - forecasters have a tendency to take something taht is (in the language of behavioral economics) salient today, and assume that it will play an outsized role in the future. And what is most salient today? It is that which is novel, "disruptive," and easily fathomed: new technology.
As the theorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in Antifragile, "we notice what varies and changes more than what plays a larger role but doesn't change. We rely more on water than on cell phones, but because water does not change and cell phones do, we are prone to thinking that cell phones play a larger role than they do."
Vyvyan Evans - "The evidence is in: there is no language instinct"
https://aeon.co/essays/the-evidence-is-in-there-is-no-language-instinct
linguist-anthropologist Daniel Everett has claimed that Pirahã - a language indigenous to the Amazonian rainforest - does not use recursion at all. This would be very strange indeed if grammar really was hard-wired into the human brain.
linguist-anthropologist Daniel Everett has claimed that Pirahã - a language indigenous to the Amazonian rainforest - does not use recursion at all. This would be very strange indeed if grammar really was hard-wired into the human brain.
Alex Mar - "The Cost of Diane Arbus' Life on the Edge"
https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/diane-arbus-c-v-r.html
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.
Diane writes of a day spent observing people on the street and finding them "all odd and splendid as freaks and nobody able to see himself, all of us victims of the especial shape we come in."
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.
Diane writes of a day spent observing people on the street and finding them "all odd and splendid as freaks and nobody able to see himself, all of us victims of the especial shape we come in."
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