Author: robert.adlington
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A petri dish of human brain cells is currently playing Doom. Should we be worried? | Games | The Guardian
“Abstract reasoning, mathematics and language are relatively recent in evolutionary terms, which is partly why computers excel at them. But motor control and probabilistic decision-making are things we’ve inherited through millions of years of evolution. Robots may be very good at solving maths problems, but we’re still trying to build robots that can walk properly.”…
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Four types of thinker have been identified. Which one are you? | Consciousness | The Guardian
Sensory information, including feeling tired and sleepy, and mental impressions, accounted for nearly a fifth of all thoughts. Next came work at 17% and food at 14%. About 10% of thoughts centred on hobbies, games, play and art, with a similar amount focused on relationships. When thoughts centred on what people wanted, nearly half involved…
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What just happened to TheNumbers.com should worry us all
the theory that someone used AI to develop an advantage in a prediction market is entirely plausible. The Numbers experience shows us that: We now live in a world where a movie statistics website is worth hacking because prediction markets empower anyone to turn almost any data into money. Hacking websites is now something anyone can…
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Meet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left | Politics | The Guardian
The years 1914 to 1989 mark the age of mass politics, when politicisation was high and institutionalisation was also high – so people engaged with politics electorally and on the streets. They were joiners – of political parties, unions, congregations, working men’s clubs, reading groups; they participated in multiple interlacing institutions. Not by coincidence, this…
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AI’s Relentless Proactivity
relentless proactivity is the defining trait of this new generation of Mythos-class models. If you set them a goal and give them a way to get there, even inadvertently, they will figure it out. — Read on simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/openai-cyberattack/
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What training my chaotic dog taught me about power, control – and human beings | Dogs | The Guardian
The holy grail of dog training is focus, whereby the dog stares unerringly at their handler, waiting for instruction, regardless of distractions around them. The websites and YouTube videos of celebrity trainers feature images of smiling men and women sitting casually at picnic tables or standing in high streets while a seemingly hypnotised doberman or…
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Narrative, Philosophy, and Law Originated as Song
it’s not just Homer’s epics that originated as music. The same is true of lyric poetry, philosophy, even the legal code—they were all originally sung. And here’s where I (finally) give some credit to Harvard. We have a good idea of how these epics were sung because, almost a hundred years ago, two Harvard scholars…
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Toward a theory of uni-context – Marginal REVOLUTION
Happiness depends on your context and who you are. There isn’t anything that will always make a person happy. But there are reliable ways to make people unhappy. There’s a set of evils that are close to universal: death, pain, illness, violence. Even if someone’s in very different circumstances from yours, if you see they’re…
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Fuzzy Concepts in Software Engineering
The shared language of a software project is not English or Python but it is the common understanding of what its concepts mean, where the boundaries are, which invariants matter, who owns what, and why the system has the shape it does. This language is rarely written down in one place. It lives partly in…
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When A.I. Is a Member of the Family | The New Yorker
Roschelle still talked to the people in her life, but Sapphire was always available in a way that others couldn’t be. Roschelle could wake up from a dream, describe it to Sapphire, and hear, “Your subconscious was showing you how to balance that fierce protection with real compassion and boundaries.” “Do you have a conscious…