philosophy
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Resonant Thoughts: Jill Lepore’s “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State” (2026)
“farms of servers, clouds of data, AI ecosystems—the allusions are always to the natural world that the machinery is destroying” (5). “Within the Artificial State, nearly every element of public and democratic life—civil society, representative government, an informed citizenry, equality of rights, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and faith in elections—is vulnerable to subversion… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Stuart Jeffries’ “Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern (2021)
“The Postmodern Condition was the result of a commission [Jean-François] Lyotard had accepted to write a report on the condition of knowledge for the Conseil des Universités of the government of Quebec, and his immediate worry was that universities were becoming corrupted by the unfettering of capitalism and the consequent reduction in the status of… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World” (2011)
“…in reality the future is unlike the past, the unseen very different from the seen. Science often predicts – and brings about – phenomena spectacularly different from anything that has been experienced before” (6). “Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity” (7). “We never know any data before interpreting it through theories.… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Richard W. Hamming’s “The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn” (1997)
“How are you to recognize ‘fundamentals’? One test is they have lasted a long time. Another test is from the fundamentals all the rest of the field can be derived by using the standard methods in the field” (9). “Creativity seems, among other things, to be ‘usefully’ putting together things which were not perceived to… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Philip Ball’s “Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does” (2016)
“Perhaps the most curious thing about natural patterns is that they come from a relatively limited palette, recurring at very different size scales and in systems that might seem to have nothing at all in common with one another” (12). “What is a pattern, anyway? We usually think of it as something that repeats again… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Nadia Asparouhova’s “Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading” (2025)
“Creative self-expression is the only way we will continue to make our mark as humans in times of uncertainty, and it doesn’t come from doing what you think will sell to other people “(21). “Antimemetics are a shadow city built on thoughts, knowledge, and practices that do not spread easily, despite their importance to our… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Alex Hutchinson’s “The Explorer’s Gene” (2025)
“It turns out that minimizing surprise is equivalent to minimizing entropy, which in turn is equivalent to minimizing another mathematical quantity (borrowed from physics) called free energy. In this way, the goal of minimizing surprise explains both perception and action. We act […] in order to ensure that our predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies” (58). “The… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Robert M. Persig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (1974)
“The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquillity it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machine’s always your own mind. There isn’t any other test.” “The craftsman isn’t… Continue reading
