Why our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading & Daydreaming
It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members’ interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I’m going to tell you that libraries are important.
This Is Water: David Foster Wallace on Life
On September 12, 2008, David Foster Wallace took his own life, becoming a kind of patron-saint of the “tortured genius” myth of creativity. Just three years prior to his suicide, he stepped onto the podium at Kenyon College and delivered one of the most timeless graduation speeches of all time — the only public talk he ever gave on his views of life. The speech, which includes a remark about suicide by firearms that came to be extensively discussed after DFW’s own eventual suicide, was published as a slim book titled This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (public library). You can hear the original delivery in two parts below, along with the the most poignant passages.
Why Management Needs Philosophers
Underlying the practice and study of business is the belief that management is a science and that business decisions must be driven by rigorous analysis of data. The explosion of big data has reinforced this idea. In a recent EY survey, 81% of executives said they believed that “data should be at the heart of all decision-making,” leading EY to enthusiastically proclaim that “big data can eliminate reliance on ‘gut feel’ decision-making.” Managers find this notion appealing. Many have a background in applied sciences. Even if they don’t, chances are, they have an MBA—a degree that originated in the early 20th century, when Frederick Winslow Taylor was introducing “scientific management.”
It’s Time to Rethink How We Are Educating Our Children
In Brief On the whole, the way we educate students hasn't gotten a major upgrade in more than a century. Technology has both revolutionized what we need to teach to children, but also the capabilities that we have at our disposal to teach.
The influential Confucian philosopher you’ve never heard of
A man is hiking in the countryside when he suddenly sees a toddler about to fall into an abandoned well. What will he do? Many people will instinctively run toward the toddler to save him.
Macron, Ricouer, and the philosophical strategy underlying the French president's trademark phrase — Quartz
Steve Perlman doesn’t take Prozac, like some of the other rare-plant botanists he knows. Instead, he writes poetry. Either way, you have to do something when a plant you’ve long known goes extinct. Let’s say for 20 years you’ve been observing a tree on a fern-covered crag thousands of feet above sea level on an island in the Pacific.
Robots Learn the Basic Algorithm that Underpins Human Intelligence?
Theory of Connectivity The human brain is the most sophisticated organ in the human body. The things that the brain can do, and how it does them, have even inspired a model of artificial intelligence (AI). Now, a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience shows how human intelligence may be a product of a basic algorithm. This algorithm is found in the Theory of Connectivity, a “relatively simple mathematical logic underlies our complex brain computations,” according to researcher and author Joe Tsien, neuroscientist at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, co-director of the Augusta University Brain and Behavior Discovery Institute and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cognitive and Systems Neurobiology. He first proposed the theory in October 2015.
Introduction to Philosophy/The Branches of Philosophy
The Branches of Philosophy[edit] Western philosophy can be divided into six branches that have assumed various importance over time. Traditionally metaphysics sets the questions for philosophy. Epistemology asks how do we know? Ethics and politics have to do with action and quality of life.
Is consciousness just an illusion?
Image copyright Science Photo Library The cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett believes our brains are machines, made of billions of tiny "robots" - our neurons, or brain cells. Is the human mind really that special? In an infamous memo written in 1965, the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus stated that humans would always beat computers at chess because machines lacked intuition. Daniel Dennett disagreed. A few years later, Dreyfus rather embarrassingly found himself in checkmate against a computer.
How Elon Musk Learns Faster & Better than Everyone Else
This past weekend Donald Trump praised his Chinese counterpart for his efforts to address the increasingly tense situation on the Korean peninsula. The US president said Xi Jinping “is working to try and resolve a very big problem, for China also.” That problem, of course, is the ongoing development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, despite UN sanctions. Kim seems hellbent on being able to hit North America with nuclear-tipped missiles, and some analysts think he’s only a few years away from it. Trump suggested he might be willing to meet Kim under the right conditions, echoing sentiments from secretary of state Rex Tillerson that the US is open to direct talks with North Korea as long as the agenda is a “denuclearized Korean peninsula.”
Why Study Philosophy? 'To Challenge Your Own Point of View'
When did your formal education in philosophy start? I didn’t think I was going to study philosophy. I also loved science, and took out lots of books about science as a kid, and, oh gosh, I ruined my mother’s kitchen by trying to do do-it-yourself chemistry experiments.
Why Silicon Valley Titans Train Their Brains with Philosophy
Silicon Valley is an ultra-competitive environment that comes up with the most exciting technological advancements of our modern life. Understandably, its executives are under constant pressure to deliver something new that will capture and better yet, disrupt, markets. To alleviate the stresses and open their minds, the execs have been known to experiment with microdosing on psychedelics, taking brain-stimulating nootropics, and sleeping in phases. What’s their latest greatest brain hack? Philosophy. Some philosophers are finding Silicon Valley employment teaching “practical philosophy” that you can use in business and everyday life.
