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Escape the algorithm
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Category: Post
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people will go against the evidence of their own eyes if contradicted by a unanimous group. Second, group pressure is much weaker if even a single person dares to disagree with the group. Third, and most remarkable: it does not matter if the dissenter is mistaken; dissent punctures group pressure either way. People are liberated…
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a team from Google DeepMind has introduced a new cognitively inspired framework that deconstructs general intelligence into 10 key faculties. More importantly, they propose a way to evaluate AI systems across these key capabilities and compare their performance to humans. — Read on singularityhub.com/2026/03/20/google-deepmind-plans-to-track-agi-progress-with-these-10-traits-of-general-intelligence/
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I think Disney and Las Vegas are the closest the USA gets to the monumental architecture style seen throughout Rome. Monumentalism is architecture designed with massive scale, made to awe the viewer with symbolic power (usually as a symbol of the state). Monumentalism is everywhere in Rome. It’s in Catholic cathedrals. When confronted with monumental…
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Roblox has something like 380 million monthly active users. Minecraft has something like 60 million. Fortnite has 650 million registered players. These…are all virtual three-dimensional spaces where you can run around in an avatar and interact with faraway persons over the Internet. The only thing that differentiates them from the Metaverse, as narrowly construed by…
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In Disneyworld, the 50 minute lines are an experience. You get interesting visuals about Star Wars, Avatar and other franchises. The lines are designed to always give the sensation of movement. They twist back and forth, in short twists – so you feel like you’re always turning a corner. You enter isolated tunnels and small…
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Patterns, everywhere patterns. An elegant concept, executed with grace. At times, disorienting. Hopefully I wasn’t programmed! Enjoy.
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The core problem with democratic / decentralized modes of governance (including DAOs on ethereum) is limits to human attention: there are many thousands of decisions to make, involving many domains of expertise, and most people don’t have the time or skill to be experts in even one, let alone all of them. The usual solution,…
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The American middle class as we know it didn’t emerge from the free market. It was constructed — deliberately, through policy, in response to specific political and economic conditions. And: Today, you can earn what used to be a solidly middle-class income and find that it purchases a fundamentally different life than it did a…
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— Someone in the government just registered aliens.gov — A video game soundtrack that’s so good it’s absurd — Free SVG backgrounds (super helpful) — What makes a truly great basketball player?
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The community should be rooting for you to outshine the high-status people. Regardless of what the community values—artistic achievement, real-world success, morality, fame, positive impact on the lives of others—it should be clear that it is good, cool, and desirable for you to do better than the people who are currently high-status. A healthy high-demand…
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The Fungus that Came to Blackeswell is an adventure for 2nd-3rd level characters that is incredibly descriptive – with language that reminds me of the movie Annihilation. It’s set in an eerie, isolated village and is a total sandbox for players to explore. It is an absolute blast to play and to run. The problem…
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Social media, by allowing people to post ideas that are unmediated by any editorial planning process, brings forth whole modes of engagement with political ideas that I think simply could not exist in a world of rigorous journalistic feedback. Ways to fix this problem are: Political parties kicking out toxic members, using AI to reword…
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One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel beyond local weekend getaways. Almost no destination has a pain/novelty ratio that makes it worth it. On the one hand, I’ve traveled enough that few places hold the promise of real novelty and stimulation. On the…
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Average grades continue to rise in the United States, raising the question of how grade inflation impacts students. And: The cumulative impact is economically significant: a teacher with one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value of lifetime earnings of their students by $213,872 per year. Concerning. And absolutely happening, based…
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The GameStop era started when some people discovered a crack in Wall Street’s armor that could be exploited through Internet coordination. Ultimately, the system won, and most people lost. Yet the era revealed a lot of truths, educated people about stocks, and produced a lot of memes. Of all the GameStop memes, this one still…
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What I remember – people with drug problems reading Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire. High schoolers reading Shogun, the Stand. Books went to road trips, books went to sporting events. Lots of people reading Nietzsche or pretending to. Everyone reading Dragonlance, the Lord of the Rings, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Visiting book sales…
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“The painting invites the viewer to wonder what has just happened, why it happened, and why the participants are dressed in such costumes. It encourages the viewer to reconstruct the preceding events through imagination.” — Read on apaintingstory.com/en/posts/the-duel-after-the-masquerade/
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No one told me the Vatican is a storage closet. Beautiful beyond imagination, yet overflowing with statues and paintings, like they ran out of room for the collections. People told me I would be “angry” at the Vatican for “stealing treasures.” I did not feel that way. I was overwhelmed with gratitude. The Vatican saved…
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