[Martin Elster]

Related to Transhumanism is Posthumanism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumanism

An AI takeover is a hypothetical scenario in which an artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, as computer programs or robots effectively take the control of the planet away from the human species. Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce, takeover by a superintelligent AI, and the popular notion of a robot uprising. Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_takeover

[Julie Steiner]

To me, complaints that The New York Times has put this ignoramus's essay behind a paywall sound an awful lot like "The food is bad, and the portions are small."

I just can't work up the proper horror that a private enterprise is charging money for its product, especially since (in this particular case, at least) that very same business model is limiting access to a mediocre essay that doesn't deserve much attention.

[Matt Q]

The glimmer of gold

Nobody reads poetry anymore,
so who the hell are you
I see bent over this book?

--Aleksandar Ristović

The opening poem of Ristović's Devil's Lunch: Selected Poems, which I got in the post today.

[Jennifer Reeser]

“How clever you are, to know something of which you are ignorant.”

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

[Max Goodman]

This thread has attracted some thoughtful and thought-provoking responses.

Suddenly, everything I read seems to touch on the idea that changes in the world are changing human nature. Suggested culprits include television

Originally Posted by David Foster Wallace, examining in 1988 the work of young writers

It may be that, through hyper- and atrophy, our mental capacities themselves are different [from those of previous generations]: the breadth of our attentions greater as attention spans themselves shorten. Raised on an activity at least partly passive, we experience a degree of manipulation as neutral, a fact of life.

and quantum mechanics

Originally Posted by a character in Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World

it was mathematics--not nuclear weapons, computers, biological warfare, or our climate Armageddon--which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we would simply not be able to grasp what being human really meant.

[Jennifer Reeser]

Those are fascinating, Max, thanks. Personally, I have always loved Occam's Razor -- "a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities."

Newspapers are big business. Poetry is competition, yes? While you are reading poetry, you are not reading newspapers. Money you spend on poetry is money you are not spending on journalism.

Hmm...

[Jennifer Reeser]

Exhibit A:

Five years ago, from NPR. Quite to the contrary, "In half a decade, the number of U.S. adults who are reading poetry has nearly doubled."

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/08/61838...results-reveal

In a sane, stable economy in which people are content where they are, this is not a problem. But in a tanking economy such as ours, rampant inflation, etc., (also where New York residents are fleeing the state by six-digit numbers), the shark surfaces in these businessmen. You know that old adage, "Kill the competition." The NYT article does just that -- calling it dead.

J

Originally Posted by Jennifer Reeser

Those are fascinating, Max, thanks. Personally, I have always loved Occam's Razor -- "a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities."

Newspapers are big business. Poetry is competition, yes? While you are reading poetry, you are not reading newspapers. Money you spend on poetry is money you are not spending on journalism.

Hmm...