NYTimes: Republicans Have Chosen Nihilism

“I’ve long appreciated the pseudonymous writer Scott Alexander’s description of liberalism: “People talk about ‘liberalism’ as if it’s just another word for capitalism or libertarianism or vague center-left-Democratic Clintonism,” he wrote on his Slate Star Codex blog. “Liberalism is none of these things. Liberalism is a technology for preventing civil war.”

He’s exactly correct. And as the Supreme Court has repeatedly observed, our nation’s educational system — and especially its college campuses — is the place where we learn liberalism. It’s the place where we are supposed to practice pluralism. Our system of government was built to accommodate conflict but only as long as that conflict is channeled through a Constitution that protects our liberty from the government and empowers that government to protect its citizens from one another.

Students are entitled to be free. They are entitled to be safe. But enduring hard words and hearing dreadful ideas isn’t just an inescapable element of pluralism; it’s also the price of peace itself. Break that system, and the conflagrations abroad will have violent echoes here at home. Trust that system, and we can manage the conflicts that tear other nations apart.”

Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone

***** How the Enlightenment Ends

How the Enlightenment Ends

Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.

By Henry A. Kissinger

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124

THE COMING HUMANIST RENAISSANCE

We need a cultural and philosophical movement to meet the rise of artificial superintelligence.

By Adrienne LaFrance

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/07/generative-ai-human-culture-philosophy/674165/

Just as the Industrial Revolution sparked transcendentalism in the U.S. and romanticism in Europe—both movements that challenged conformity and prioritized truth, nature, and individualism—today we need a cultural and philosophical revolution of our own. This new movement should prioritize humans above machines and reimagine human relationships with nature and with technology, while still advancing what this technology can do at its best. Artificial intelligence will, unquestionably, help us make miraculous, lifesaving discoveries. The danger lies in outsourcing our humanity to this technology without discipline, especially as it eclipses us in apperception. We need a human renaissance in the age of intelligent machines.

In the face of world-altering invention, with the power of today’s tech barons so concentrated, it can seem as though ordinary people have no hope of influencing the machines that will soon be cognitively superior to us all. But there is tremendous power in defining ideals, even if they ultimately remain out of reach. Considering all that is at stake, we have to at least try.

**** Google’s New Search Tool Could Eat the Internet Alive

Will searchbots put me out of a job? https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/07/google-search-generative-experience-content-creation/674674/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

If widely implemented, the peril of AI search is that it could eventually shrivel up much of the content that is now reliant on Google traffic for survival. Nothing is going to happen to the internet overnight, but websites hire people like me to notice and solve problems for readers because helpful information gets clicks. If publications aren’t rewarded with traffic, they are going to publish less information. Google claims it understands the stakes, though the company is notoriously secretive about how its algorithms work: The spokesperson told me the company will “continue to prioritize approaches that send valuable traffic to a wide range of creators and support a healthy, open web.” But the basic premise of a searchbot necessarily involves more text in Google, and less traffic to websites. Google’s AI doom loop may lead us into a much smaller version of the internet, with fewer sites, fewer posts—and thus a worse experience for all of us.

Read: AI search is a disaster