LINKS - February 28th, 2024

Feb 28, 2024

Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting ~~stories that tell us something about what it means to be human~~ newsletters I subscribe to. LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.

I am not sure how many times I’ve sent out a LINKS email but this week was, by far, the lamest news week I can remember (at least in terms of Rhapsody type stuff). So this week I’m doing something different: sharing five newsletters I really like, all of which teach me something about what it means to be human, albeit in quite different ways. In each instance, I’m just sharing a recent thing they published.

We’ll get back to the news stories next week.

Blood in the Machine

Let's not do this again, please

About this time in 2023, OpenAI was enjoying a crescendo of hype over its image and text generation products — hype that would be sustained nearly all year. ChatGPT passed standardized tests. AI-generated images of famous people dressed up in the style of other famous people streamed down our feeds. A New York Times columnist worried that an AI had trie…

9 months ago · 55 likes · 18 comments · Brian Merchant

Philosophy for the People w/Ben Burgis

John Stuart Mill on Justice and Utility

My view on John Stuart Mill is that (a) he was a brilliant writer and thinker who got many things right and (b) his position on the nature of morality was deeply misguided. Maybe, to raise this to the level of hot take, that core commitment to utilitarianism was a bit of…

9 months ago · 8 likes · Ben Burgis

Figs in Winter: New Stoicism and Beyond

The varieties of bad Stoicism

In The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde has the character of Lord Henry say to Dorian that “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” Then again, Henry was a cynical hedonist, so we should probably take his advice with a fairl…

2 years ago · 102 likes · 70 comments · Massimo Pigliucci

The Honest Broker

13 Observations on Ritual

My article on ‘dopamine culture’ has stirred up interest and (even more) raised concerns among readers who recognize the symptoms I described. One of the illustration went viral in a big way. And I’ve gotten requests from all over the world for permission to translate and share the material. (Yes, you can all quote generously from the article, and repr…

9 months ago · 708 likes · 149 comments · Ted Gioia

Wondering Freely

Must we aim at profit?

During the Warring States (476-221 BCE) China was a mess, a constant warfare of small state against state. Bigger states invading smaller ones, massacring the local population in the process. Epidemics. Famine. Underpopulation. Yet philosophy thrived in this context, and we have some of the brightest minds in philosophy, includin…

9 months ago · 15 likes · 3 comments · Helen De Cruz

And one bonus plug. I can’t not share TPM’s Morning Memo. I do work there after all.

Thank you for reading Rhapsody! If you enjoyed this post, please share it with someone who’d enjoy it as well! Little by little, we can all develop a better understanding of what it means to be a human being! :)

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LINKS - February 28th, 2024

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