LINKS - July 13th, 2022
Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human. LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.
The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari
By Darshana Narayanan, Current Affairs
“We have been seduced by Harari because of the power not of his truth or scholarship but of his storytelling. As a scientist, I know how difficult it is to spin complex issues into appealing and accurate storytelling. I also know when science is being sacrificed to sensationalism. Yuval Harari is what I call a “science populist.” (Canadian clinical psychologist and YouTube guru Jordan Peterson is another example.) Science populists are gifted storytellers who weave sensationalist yarns around scientific “facts” in simple, emotionally persuasive language. Their narratives are largely scrubbed clean of nuance or doubt, giving them a false air of authority—and making their message even more convincing. Like their political counterparts, science populists are sources of misinformation. They promote false crises, while presenting themselves as having the answers. They understand the seduction of a story well told—relentlessly seeking to expand their audience—never mind that the underlying science is warped in the pursuit of fame and influence.”
Out of The Forest
By Patrick Roberts, Aeon
“During the past few decades, however, a few leafy spanners have been thrown in the works of the ‘savannah’ narrative. The earliest hominins, dating from around 7 to 5 million years ago, show that our ancestors’ first experiments with bipedalism occurred in mixed forest and woodland settings. (Among the Great Apes alive today, the orangutan uses bipedalism the most frequently, doing so as it reaches for sugar-rich fruits high up in the canopy.) Not only that, but analyses of fossil hominin skeletons dating between 5 to 2 million years ago, including that of ‘Lucy’ and those of our own genus, show that many of them still had arms, shoulders and hands adapted to climbing (a skill necessary for life in the forest) even as their interactions with terra firma increased.”
NASA Triumphantly Unveils Full Set of Webb’s First Images
By Lee Billings, Scientific American
“The next great era of astronomy truly began this morning. After nearly three decades of troubled development and $10 billion in spending, a pulse-pounding launch on Christmas Day in 2021 and a nail-biting half-year of delicate preparations in deep space, the James Webb Space Telescope has at last delivered a complete set of first full-color images. President Joe Biden himself offered a sneak preview yesterday evening from the White House, revealing what is destined to be the most iconic picture from the set.”
Your Next Therapist Could Be a Chatbot App
By Molly Glick, Discover
“As with any field that’s ripe for digital revolution, applying AI to therapy could come with major caveats. Some technology ethicists worry computers could affect the quality of what were once largely human-directed processes. And, based on her research, Zeavin predicts real-life therapy sessions may grow even more exclusive than in the past and primarily serve wealthy patients. ‘As we see that kind of cash influx, I get worried about an increasing scale-up of things like Woebot,’ she says.”
Penguins Adapt Their Accents to Sound More Like Their Friends
By Alex Wilkins, New Scientist
“The distance of penguins from humans on the evolutionary tree suggests that vocal accommodation could be common to many species, but a lot more data needs to be gathered first. “There could be a huge variety of different species that are able to modify their vocalisations slightly and have this ability of vocal accommodation, but we don’t know that yet,” says Ortiz.”