Addressing or dismissing the anxieties of conscience: is this the purview of medical science? Or of other therapy? In our time (this is truth, and it is significant for the Christianity of our time), in our time it is the physician who exercises the cure of souls. People have perhaps an unfounded dread of calling in [...]
Daydreaming and neuroscience: how brain imaging may track the creative process fostered by the wandering mind. From the article: Dr. Christoff and colleagues suggest that creative thought involves a special interaction between these control systems and mind-wandering. In this activity, the control system holds a particular problem in mind but permits the brain to wander [...]
Tiny bubbles, of the mind (make us feel happy / make us feel fine): the way technological mathematics limits our thinking, enclosing us in ever-smaller circles of awareness. From the article: The ubiquity of incredibly powerful algorithms designed to reinforce our interests also ensures that we see little of what’s new, different and unfamiliar. The [...]
Embedding ethics in the code driving technology.
Memory's saving grace: how history, carried in deep recollection, can rescue us in adversity. Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly Smurov exclaimed: “There's Ilusha's stone, under which they wanted to bury him.” They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had described [...]
The human difference? Perhaps the humanities: fluid language and historical sensibility. From the article: The first astonishing fact is that we can speak at all, of course. No matter what you’ve been thinking and feeling throughout the day, you will be able to find words to express the experience and describe it to those around [...]
No time for thinking: does this observation, nearly two hundred years ago, still hold? On the restless impatience of American society, among both commentators and their public. Men who live in ages of equality have a great deal of curiosity and little leisure; their life is so practical, so confused, so excited, so active, that but [...]
Merging Human with Artificial Intelligence: The Reality of Sam Altman. The co-founder of Y Combinator considers the consequences of technology. From the article: On a trip to New York, Altman dropped by my apartment one Saturday to discuss how tech was transforming our view of who we are. Curled up on the sofa, knees [...]
On science and the humanities, of and in the world: how closely related are the investigations of the sciences and the humanities? They may begin at a common origin, but they diverge and specialize with different aims in mind where world making is concerned. Science attempts to make a world that remains invariant across human [...]
Civilization's tricky situation: as we enter the autumnal season, the shadow self would be heard, as the gateway to introspection. Here history and imagination are in play. The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him [...]
