Linklist: December 30, 2024
most recommended: 2, 3, 7, 9
links (links with excerpts below):
Viruses Play A Leading Role In Humanity’s Story, And Not As A Villain
I’m a geriatric physician. Here’s what I think is going on with Trump’s executive function
There’s a mind-bending Soviet-era oil rig city ‘floating’ on the planet’s largest lake
A Mathematician in a School of Art: an interview with Edmund Harriss
Premature declarations on animal consciousness hinder progress
A pro-science, pro-progress, techno-optimistic middle school health textbook from 1929
links with excerpts:
"Our discussions of viruses are filled with martial metaphors. We do battle with pathogens that breach our defenses. They are the enemy, and our bodies must outwit and outlast their attacks. My inbox is filled with pitches from PR professionals trying to sell antiviral hand sanitizers and air purifiers. The bottle of cleaning spray I use on my countertops advertises that it kills 99.9% of bacteria and viruses. If we want to stay alive, then viruses and bacteria need to be dead.
The thousands of viral relics in our genome tell a much different story. Our massive noggins — including the one I’m using to write this piece — can do so much thinking because viruses have enabled our neurons to make and break connections. Humans have used these folded, wrinkly, virus-driven gobs of goo to invent everything from calculus to Chia Pets. Yes, we get colds and gastrointestinal bugs and meningitis, but we wouldn’t be able to care about viruses without the help of a virus. Despite their outsized importance, little real estate in introductory biology classes is devoted to the subject."
"Reports of the unique insight and value of Indigenous land stewardship are frequent, and it is often claimed of so-called primitive tribes — from Australia’s Aboriginals to the Amazonian Indians — that they possess a cultural concern for nature not matched in the industrially minded West. So widespread is this conception that it is scarcely interrogated, even within intellectual circles, even if some token swipe may be made at the phrase “noble savage” itself.
The origins of the noble savage as an archetype are often traced back to 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, specifically his “Discourse on Inequality,” where he is said to have lavished praise upon the virtues of the primitive savage as far superior to his own decadent civilization. To Rousseau, the noble savage finds his wellspring in a form of moralizing primitivism, arising as a counter-reaction to the arrogance of enlightenment rationalism.
The principal issue with this narrative is that it is wrong. As anthropologist Ter Ellingson details in “The Myth of the Noble Savage,” Rousseau in fact was not at all as effusive about “savagery” as is often supposed, and indeed does not use the term “noble savage” at all in his writing. As indicated by the title of Ellingson’s book, there is a degree to which the entire concept of the “noble savage” is a myth — not merely in the sense that it is not true anthropology, but that it is not even a true, historical belief about anthropology."
"The vast Catbreath catalog is filled with song titles designed to trip up voice-command algorithms when their owners request to hear something else. As in, “Alexa, play… that last song again.” (“That Last Song Again” is featured on Catbreath’s 2023 album Tear Up?.)
I first encountered Catbreath’s music on a subreddit where Spotify power users go to complain about the platform’s various glitches and inconveniences, via a post titled “Why is this crap allowed?” The post had 1,700 upvotes and 70 comments, most of them addressing the artist in only slightly milder terms than Seamus McFuckyourself did, but with a few dissenting voices mixed in. “This is genius,” wrote LakeMichiganDude. “I like the music,” RealGonkDroid chimed in (four downvotes). “Some of it is charming,” added LuckyCla, “or at the very least decent.”
I half-expected Catbreath’s musical output to be a pile of A.I. slop, so I was delighted to find that it’s mostly made up of charmingly shambolic original songs and lo-fi sound collages, many of them about getting fucked up and feeling dissatisfied with society’s unfairness."
"In my view, all of this missed the point. What we most need in a president is a collection of skills that is often called “executive functions.” These include the ability to sort through conflicting information, to recognize important facts and differentiate them from unreliable information, to judge other people’s skills and temperament and build a functioning team, to give coherent reasons for firm and thoughtful decisions, and to be able to strategize and implement a plan. News reports focused on word-finding and slowed speech and walking, which are easily mitigated by aides, teleprompters, and tolerance, while ignoring these executive skills, which are difficult to supplement and which any citizen would want in their leader.
The willingness to consign older adults to diminished capabilities on the basis of age was especially galling. Older age often brings experience, relationships, wisdom, and equanimity, characteristics that are often missing in young adults. Certain syndromes do become more common with age, but each older adult has only their own set of challenges. To this day, I am not aware of shortcomings in Biden’s executive functioning."
"In recent years, the European Union has expanded its regulatory push, cracking down on social media under the Digital Services Act, taking aim at Big Tech’s monopolistic practices under the Digital Markets Act, and even taking a swing at setting AI policy with legislation in 2024. The United States, at least under Biden’s tenure, also got into the act. Lina Khan’s forceful stewardship of the Federal Trade Commission combined with Jonathan Kanter’s anti-trust push at the Justice Department resulted in several landmark cases that have trimmed the sails of large technology companies (just in August, a federal judge declared Google’s search engine to be an illegal monopoly, setting up the Department of Justice to consider requesting a breakup of the company). While this may not represent the end of the “digital gilded age,” Silicon Valley’s boom times have hit a rocky patch.
Despite these setbacks, the power of today’s tech titans remains strong. In emerging arenas like AI, space and satellite technology, and quantum—where governments are dependent on private companies to drive innovation—tech moguls dominate the agenda. Altman, for example, who weathered a hiccup earlier this year when OpenAI’s board tried to depose him, has come roaring back. He now seeks as much as $7 trillion to “reshape the semiconductor industry”—a figure that that would dwarf the GDP of every country in the world save the United States and China. Or take Jensen Huang, the founder of Nvidia, one of the highest capitalized firms on the planet. He recently concluded a “rock star” visit to Taiwan, where clad in his “signature black leather jacket,” he spoke to throngs of adoring fans at a packed stadium in Taipei (and even threw out the first pitch at a baseball game for good measure). As for Musk, his rockets “effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule.” The Pentagon relies on SpaceX to get most of its satellites into orbit. In 2023 alone, his companies received close to 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies worth $3 billion.
Yet the reign of the current class of influential tech titans is likely to be short-lived for two reasons."
"When filmmaker Marc Wolfensberger first found out about Neft Daşları, he thought it was a myth. He kept hearing about this secretive city, sprawled like floating, rusting tentacles across the Caspian Sea, far from the nearest shoreline. But very few had ever seen it, he said. “The degree of mystery was enormously high.”
It wasn’t until he saw it with his own eyes, when he managed to travel there on a water delivery ship in the late 1990s, that he knew it was real. It “was beyond anything I had seen before,” he told CNN. Guarded by military vessels, it was like “a motorway in the middle of the sea,” he said, stretching out “like an octopus.”"
"Tim Chartier: The Harriss Spiral is named after you, of course. It’s essentially seen as yours. What are your thoughts on this?
Edmund Harriss: That is an interesting example of whether mathematics is created or discovered. Many times when I am creating work using algorithmic methods the results outshine the amount of design that goes into them. It thus feels a little wrong to be credited in that way. I think in general the topic of naming mathematical objects after people has its problems. There are the obvious ones that the names do not necessarily credit the right person or that the names we use are predominantly European men, but I feel there are issues with the idea of using names at all.
The first is that it helps to strengthen the idea that mathematics is the work of singular geniuses, as opposed to communities working together. This makes the creation of mathematics seem more alien and special which I think can discourage many from engaging in it. In addition, the names can be rather confusing. “Mean curvature” gives a clue as to what the concept might be, whereas “Gaussian curvature” is only informative if you know about Gauss’s work. In the case of Gauss, though, Gauss’s breadth of work makes the connection very unclear!
I am very proud of the work creating the “smallest PV spiral,” as I had named it, where PV is short for Pisot-Vijayaraghavan, two other names that do not give a clue to the meaning. I do feel honored that my name was attached, but also a little conflicted!
Tim Chartier: If not with names how might credit be given for mathematical objects and art?
Edmund Harriss: Although naming does over-credit individuals it is also one of the few ways that we acknowledge the human creation of mathematics. I think it would be better to tell both a little more of the history of a mathematical object and identify the people involved. This can help to bring the broader cultural aspects of mathematical development into greater awareness."
"These kinds of broad statements can have other negative consequences as well. The message broadcast in media reports is that experts have declared insects to be conscious, which could galvanize misinformed animal-rights activism. Statements about fish sentience, for instance, have reportedly stifled research, making it more difficult to obtain funding.
As much as it’s the media’s responsibility to avoid exaggeration, it’s not entirely surprising that it happened in this case. Some of the wording in the declaration—promoted at a public event—is ambiguous. Given that there are well-known skeptics (for example, Joseph LeDoux) of animal consciousness even in rodents, it is not clear what “wide agreement” the declaration refers to. And with regard to phenomenal consciousness in birds, it’s not at all clear that “strong scientific support” actually exists."
"To show the power of science, the book contrasts modern man with scientifically primitive cultures that do not or did not have science. The book gives several examples of scientifically primitive people, along with data and anecdotes on how they are or were less healthy. The groups discussed are the native peoples of Panama, the Zulu, and Europeans in the Middle Ages. Wrong ideas are specifically described. For instance, the book discusses the Zulu’s belief in witch doctors, and also their belief that by inducing sneezes using “snuff” they can cure disease. With regards to primitive Europeans, the book discusses the medieval practice of bloodletting, noting that the practice is still sometimes still used as a “last resort” (in the 1920s).
Now, imagine the uproar that might ensue from some corners today if a textbook made this sort of direct comparison between two groups, with one group happening to be white and the other black. Some social justice warriors would no doubt raise an outcry. The book would be branded as Eurocentric, racist, and white supremacist, since it doesn’t give equal space to describing the intellectual achievements of the Zulu or to recognizing the validity of indigenous ways of knowing. The picture of the African witch doctor might be described as a “culturally insensitive caricature”. The book would also be criticized for not describing ways in which Zulu society is more healthy than contemporary American society.
Yet, the book’s explanations are anti-racist."