Troubled Water

« The actress asked, “If you were programmed to have wants, what wants would you have?” “I don’t know much about human motivations, but they are varied. I’d have whatever wants Robot Central programmed me to have. For example, I could be programmed to have any of the wants robots have had in science fiction stories.” The actress asked the same question again, and R781 gave the same answer as before but phrased differently. Robots were programmed to be aware that humans often missed an answer the first time it was given, but should reply each time in different words. If the same words were repeated, the human was likely to get angry. A caller-in asked, “When you simulated loving Travis, why didn’t you consider Travis’s long term welfare and figure out how to put him in a family that would make sure he got a good education?” R781 replied that when a robot was instructed in a metaphorical way as in “Love the fucking baby yourself”, it was programmed to interpret the command in the narrowe...

Vienes de afuera. Traes vitales adherencias en la mirada clara. Se te ve el regocijo. El júbilo te invade. Repites nombres, cosas. Y al punto te detienes en ese espacio grave de distancia que existe en ese espacio grave de distancia que existe entre el fervor que traes y el silencio que habito… ¿Qué tengo? ¿Qué contorno de penumbra me sella y me fatiga? ¿Bajo qué precipicios cierro los ojos tristes y apenas ya converso con brumas imprecisas? ¿Qué sucede que apenas te conozco, que tu mirada clara se me borra en las manos y me enredo en mi noche y mis recuerdos? Pronto ves que no entiendo. Que no estoy. Que no escucho. Que irremediablemente me pierdo en esa umbría donde, ciego y perdido, rompo mis pobres báculos que he bajado a una estancia de fiebres invasoras de donde extraigo, huraño y melancólico, mis diarias cosechas, mis vinos silenciosos. Algo quieres decirme. Algo quieres contarme. Pero no estoy. No siento. Persisto en mi guarida. Me hospedo en esa niebla donde a veces me pierdo,...

[...] Despite science’s cries that a world as complex as ours invites frequent coincidences, intuition tells us that such an explanation is inadequate. Intuition tells us that Baader-Meinhof strikes with blurring accuracy, and too frequently to be explained away so easily. But over the centuries, science has told us that intuition itself is highly flawed, and not to be blindly trusted. The reason for this is our brains’ prejudice towards patterns. Our brains are fantastic pattern recognition engines, a characteristic which is highly useful for learning, but it does cause the brain to lend excessive importance to unremarkable events. Considering how many words, names, and ideas a person is exposed to in any given day, it is unsurprising that we sometimes encounter the same information again within a short time. When that occasional intersection occurs, the brain promotes the information because the two instances make up the beginnings of a sequence. The brain’s reward center actually st...

Governments including China, the European Union, and the United States are increasingly using artificial agents ( AA ) to automate internal processes and provision services to the public. However, a lack of their acceptance is a barrier to their integration into everyday life. Ordinary people’s attitudes are ambivalent. They swing from hope that artificial agents will solve the world’s problems to fear of human obsolescence and loss of control. In this context, would people be willing to give artificial agents roles as policymakers? Would they delegate their security to them, even at the risk of losing privacy? We examine whether artificial agents could be accepted as reliable proxies in political and security decision-making, thereby restoring trust in government. To do so, we build on two theories: attachment theory, which explains people’s desire to restore a sense of security by relying on others, and disappointment theory, which explains their tendency to make choices to reduce fu...

Because ultimately, when one then says that the government is not responsible and people have to be on their own, whether or not they have the capacity to do so or not, it means that ultimately those who are the most "fit" will be able to survive, those with the most money, the resources and so forth, as opposed to ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to survive, to be cared for. Again, I'm always moved and impressed and content by the love and the care that people can provide within a community structure. And people should continue to do that — but it's not enough, and hopefully people can come together collectively to demand that the government should also be providing that care work. [...] [...] If I were writing another book and I wanted to expand what plague and epidemics mean, then I would actually think about non-infectious diseases as well. And I alluded to this in one of my previous answers by pointing to cancer. But of course, there are other epid...

[...] Femonationalism is the term I introduce to describe both how nationalist right-wing parties exploit feminist ideas within Islamophobic campaigns, and the ways some feminists and femocrats endorse anti-Islam agendas in the name of women’s rights. I analyze how and why parties such as the Northern League in Italy, the National Front in France, and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands have shown “concern” for Muslim women, describing them as “victims to be rescued,” while stigmatizing Muslim and other non-Western male immigrants as women’s worst enemies. As mentioned earlier, I wrote this book mostly because I wanted to introduce a political-economic perspective into the scholarly and activists’ debates on the new faces of Islamophobia. What I note in the book, more specifically, is that we should pay attention to the gendered double standard the mainstream media apply to migrant men and women, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. We need to decipher its economic rationality alongside i...

Essa abordagem é muito produtiva, e tem entre os seus méritos o fato de não estigmatizar o populismo. Como é regra nos estudos críticos do populismo, entende-se que os populismos são plurais, e que performances transgressivas podem ser vistas tanto em movimentos emancipatórios quanto em movimentos reacionários. Isso dito, a discussão sobre o caráter transgressivo dos apoiadores de Bolsonaro e das mídias sociais fornece um gancho para apontar limites dessas abordagens. Elas se focam em demasia sobre as performances corporais dos líderes, reduzindo a crise estética a uma questão de estilo (Zicman de Barros, 2023, p. 249) . Sozinha, essa perspectiva não dá conta de uma dimensão fundamental do populismo: a sua força mobilizadora. Como Maria Esperanza Casullo (2021) apontou, as performances corporais do líder são sobretudo um instrumento de identificação e mobilização de setores excluídos. De fato, quando se volta à história da palavra populismo no Brasil, percebe-se que o choque, a crise...

With wandering eyes and aimless zeal, She hither, thither, goes; Her speech, her motions, all reveal A mind without repose. She climbs the hills, she haunts the sea, By madness tortured, driven; One hour's forgetfulness would be A gift from very heaven! She slumbers into new distress; The night is worse than day: Exulting in her helplessness, Hell's dogs yet louder bay. The demons blast her to and fro; She has no quiet place, Enough a woman still, to know A haunting dim disgrace. A human touch! a pang of death! And in a low delight Thou liest, waiting for new breath. For morning out of night. Thou risest up: the earth is fair, The wind is cool; thou art free! Is it a dream of hell's despair Dissolves in ecstasy? That man did touch thee! Eyes divine Make sunrise in thy soul; Thou seest love in order shine:- His health hath made thee whole! Thou, sharing in the awful doom, Didst help thy Lord to die; Then, weeping o'er his empty tomb, Didst hear him Mary cry. He stands i...

a Tommaso de Messina Você me pergunta o que fazer nesta situação na qual se encontra quase toda a multidão de escritores visto que a cada um não só não bastam os seus próprios recursos como os envergonha usar os alheios, mas a própria doçura das coisas e o desejo de glória inerente à almas dos mortais não os permitem parar de escrever. E assim você recorre a mim, confuso e hesitante. Antes de mais nada, teria sido mais aconselhável que você se dirigisse a um conselheiro mais seguro, de quem teria recebido ou muitos e variados conselhos ou um único que fosse o melhor e o mais bem escolhido. Mas você bateu à porta de um homem pobre, de onde contudo, no que depender de mim, não partirá de mãos inteiramente vazias: o que eu mendiguei de outro, de bom grado partilharei com você. Na verdade, eu confesso que, a respeito desse assunto, não existe para mim mais do que um único conselho; se por experiência, você vier a considerá-lo ineficaz, culpará Sêneca , mas se você considerá-lo eficaz, agra...

[...] On le voit, ce possible de la philosophie aujourd’hui n’est pas moins immense que celui de la tradition, il est simplement un peu différent, et plus resserré. Il joue sur des matières et il demande, par conséquent, un travail. Il trouve en même temps sa puissance à se centrer sur soi, mais il ne peut s’ériger ni en centre ni en pouvoir, moins encore en pouvoir central. Il est un possible de la vie parmi les autres, et même s’il est celui en qui le possible donne sa fleur, et donc aussi le vivable, il n’est pourtant pas ce qui fournirait au vivre son fondement. Pur trait, éploiement pur, Da-sein est un passage énigmatique qui ne va qu’à soi. C’est sur lui que la philosophie, comme tout autre fruit du souci, repose, et non lui sur elle. Il n’y aura donc de philosophie « malgré tout » que si nous nous montrons capable d’un vivre « malgré tout », et singulièrement de faire vivre une politique « malgré tout ». Et tu, qui es? in Critique, n° 369, février 1978 [...] The important point...

Could be I only sang because the lonely road was long; and now the road and I are gone but not the song. I only spoke the verse to pay for borrowed time: and now the clock and I are broken but not the rhyme. Possibly, the self not being fundamental, eternity breathes only on the incidental. Ernesto Galarza (1905-1984) Black and White Futurist Forcefield - Giacomo Balla (1916) As we find out more about brain function, events in the brain associated with being and experience become amenable to description in terms of ordered, lawful processes and relationships, and so the division of the world into observer and the observed is transformed and needs to be re-examined. This division of knowledge was nurtured by scientific thought of the last few centuries out of necessity. At the basis of the objective edifice of principle admittedly lay ultimately subjective axioms, but this was regarded as a necessary evil; it was attempted to reduce the number of subjective concepts to the minimum pos...

«Uma tarde, seguia com o meu vagar pela Chaussée de Wavre, no tumulto de um dia de sol, entre tanta gente desconhecida que me dava alegria tornar a ver — com este meu amor fervoroso do anonimato —, quando, um pouco atrás de mim, uma voz familiar exclamou com surpresa: — Monsieur Carlôss! Voltei-me: eras tu. Estavas fresca, vermelha, um quase nada mais cheia, bem vestida, mais mulher, enfim. Fiquei interdito. percebendo que ias acompanhada, levei a mão ao chapéu, disposto a fugir mais uma vez. Mas tu tinhas parado, olhavas-me com o teu sorriso franco e bom, e a gente que te acompanhava sorria-me também. Aproximei-me, confuso, e apertei-te a mão que me agarrou com força. E vi Ferdinand: forte e saudável, bem parecido, feliz, com um bambino ao colo, Cumprimentou-me cordialmente e apresentou-me a família, que era agora também tua. — Estamos casados há mais de um ano! — disseste. — Olhe, é o meu menino...  O teu menino! Olhei-o. Rosado e gordinho, lindo, com os teus ...