threebeornothreebe

Le rôle des monuments à la mémoire des morts est d'honorer ceux-ci, mais aussi d'éviter que les horreurs de reproduisent.  Au fait, peut être que le rôle de l'Honneur et la Mémoire (dans le sens honorifique du terme) est justement le résultat de l'évolution naturelle pour éviter que ces erreurs ne se reproduisent pas.   L'inverse positif est vraie aussi: mémoire et honneurs pour ceux qui réussissent, aidant ainsi toute la société (consciemment ou inconsciemment, malgré eux ou pas).  

La plupart des bouquins sont aujourd'hui des gros Twitters qu'il faut lire car c'est ce que tout le monde lit, et  que n'importe qui peut ecrire d'ailleurs.  Le contenu est secondaire: on a peut être tout dit deja, tout ce qui est important au moins. L'important c'est d'etre au courant, et d'alimenter ce courant.  (Bien sur, toutes les combinaisons de mots et de faits n’ont pas été épuisés, mais d'un point de vue des sentiments évoqués par ceux-ci, les différences ne sont plus vraiment significatives: le cerveau humain n'a pas suffisament de “résolution” emotionnelle à ce niveau)

La pub est une insulte que l’on peut lire par example dans cette rue près de Jussieu. Je me met un instant à la place des publicitaires, juste pour voir. Ils vivent dans un monde de concurrence, certainement difficile a supporter, mais bien construit et parfaitement encadre: il y a des calculs, des choix a faire aussi, mais un chiffre, un objectif, un prix qu’on ne peux pas cacher (enfoui quelque part en petits ou grands caractères). Je me dis: c’est un art, mais aussi de l’Art . Un art dégénère, un art prostituée, mais de l'Art. La recherche du choc, de l'esthétique, du message.  Il y en a pire dans les musées.

Real intelligence or artificial cognitive enhancement will soon be indistinguishable. Reasoning takes some effort of course, but the elements and pieces that compose it are like “qualia of the thought”: they are ineffable and you cannot break it into more elemental pieces (unless you are using a formal language, and try to solve the puzzle without “thinking” but following some algorithm (like the Chinese room)).  I mean, working memory, speed of thought, all contribute to the feeling that one is thinking and one can direct one’s attention to a problem , but the thinking itself is happening under the hoods.  One can direct focus and attention to pieces of the problem, based on previous knowledge - something you can explain verbally - but intuition and even the elemental pieces of inference are mostly unconscious processes.  Higher IQs are like better natural athletes: they can maybe work to improve some aspects of their body, but then, when performing t...

The Orion constellation is perhaps the easiest to recognise star configuration in the sky; it is visible from both the south and north hemispheres as it lies near the celestial equator (it can be seen at latitudes between +85° and -75°), meaning that migrating human populations would have been able to continuously observe it for hundreds thousands, perhaps millions of years. Also, the magnitude of the stars make it very visible (Rigel is the sixth brightest star in the sky). It is visible even for the modern city dweller. Since the shape of a constellation change extremely slowly (in particular stellar drift is minimal for far away stars, which is the case for the main stars of Orion constellation), it is conceivable this shape / pattern is imprinted in the genetic memory of our species (as well as others species of course). Since today's human populations living in cities generally ignore the sky (least use it for navigation!), it would be possible to run an interesting exp...

“Undo" exist only in the virtual world (well not only).  But what a big difference... We write, think, knowing we can correct . This is new.  I just wrote a long email, and by mistake I pressed cancel instead of sending or saving, and it was deleted. I felt betrayed, fundamentally betrayed by the world, when in fact I should known better: throwing things at a fire always burn them in the real world and this is no betray: it is the way it works.  The digital world has created new expectations in an old reality - not a new reality. We feel cheated and find abnormal things that are just natural facts. 

I was talking more about the a esthetics and culture, how it is "calcified" as Kevin Slavin says, into algorithms. In fact this is not new: since we invented means of "externalizing minds" (print, etc), we suffered unintentionally form that process of "calcification".  At first the intention is good: to crystallize, computerize and automate what you like - so as to discover or enhance automatically the things you like most about the world you live in. But then.. there is no space for change, control or exploration (here I totally agree with Kevin). Kevin talks a lot about the financial world, and I think this is a good (important) example with profound consequences. I was thinking more about very subtle "differences" that at the end make huge cultural shifts (perhaps even more important consequences after all). For instance, take language and speech. Think what the word-processor has done to writing. From the XVI century onwards, b...