“I just kind of saw the writing on the walls, like where America was going … . People give us way more credit than we actually deserve,” she says. “We're just dressing up in our little costumes and shooting guns for fun.”https://t.co/Vl7Bay0Y4g
Congrats to @ninabegus on publishing "Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI." It’s open access on @UofMPress; OA publication made possible in part from @UCBerkeleyLib Berkeley Research Impact Initiative. https://t.co/clSy9sZC6b
Sperm Whales and Their Almost-Human Speech
1️⃣Sperm whale communication is far more complex than we thought.
And here’s the wild part — it actually sounds surprisingly close to human speech.
Researchers from the CETI project just found vowel-like features in whale clicks. 🐋🔊
What's more important in an ultimate sense?
A) the continued survival of hominids-as-they-are, or
B) the continued unfolding of the great process-of-life of which hominids are part
latest video is out LMK what you think:
"Against Anthropocentrism - The Flame, Not the Torch"
For this week's @NewYorker, I wrote about the centuries-old project (surprisingly successful, at times) of recovering long-lost myths from fragments in language, historical texts, and modern stories.
In half a century the worldwide Anglican Communion will be 50% trans women and 50% subsaharan Africans and we're going to cook the craziest mystical theology since the Frauenmystik
If a mosque was shot up every month - it would be a crisis for Muslims
If a synagogue was shot up every month - it would be a crisis for Jews
If a temple was shot up every month - it would be a crisis for Hindus
Christians: This is happening to us. Christian churches are being violently targeted at an exponential rate. Christianity is the most persecuted religion on earth, nothing else even comes close. Christianity is under attack.
Time to get serious about it.
"Inferring Consciousness in Phylogenetically Distant Organisms" - This paper took a while to get its open-access status, but now it has it.
The most recent discussion of non-human consciousness I've published. Octopuses, flies, others..
Link below. 1/
Very good & very disturbing column from @NickKristof, as is often the case.
"current political challenges shouldn’t let us lose sight of every other issue, including the systematic brutality that we tolerate in our food industry". No paywall w. this link.
https://t.co/8wrQ4RkmDn