Author: robert.adlington

“The evidence is consistent and robust: physical punishment does not predict improvements in child behaviour and instead predicts deterioration in child behaviour and increased risk for maltreatment. There is thus no empirical reason for parents to continue to use physical punishment.” — Read on www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/19/how-many-more-children-like-sara-sharif-will-be-killed-before-smacking-is-banned

We have to learn the bitter lesson that building in how we think we think does not work in the long run. The bitter lesson is based on the historical observations that 1) AI researchers have often tried to build knowledge into their agents, 2) this always helps in the short term, and is personally…

Being a successful FDE required an unusual sensitivity to social context – what you really had to do was partner with your corporate (or government) counterparts at the highest level and gain their trust, which often required playing political games. Impro is popular with nerds partly because it breaks down social behavior mechanistically. The vocabulary…

Pluralistic ignorance is when you think everyone around you is engaging in some behaviour, or has a set of beliefs, when it isn’t actually true. (My favourite example of this in social science is from a paper called Pluralistic Ignorance and Hooking Up. It’s about how, on college campuses, there’s a belief that everyone is…

A Syllabus for Generalists by Cristina Jerney In recent years, there’s a tendency towards specialism and specialists, from the job market to identities to relationships to education and more. Conversations around university education, for example, tend to be focused on high-earning job prospects, rather than on developing multidisciplinary ways of thinking. The job market tends to……

I don’t know about you, but my YouTube algorithms can act like a nagging friend, suggesting a video for days until I finally give in. Such was the case with this video essay with the tantalizing title: “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really)”. Open Culture, openculture.com — Read on www.openculture.com/2024/10/twin-peaks-actually-explained.html

Bacon was the only artist who could fully face up to the reality of his time because he had no beliefs, religious or political. The show is subtitled Human Presence, but Bacon is not even sure we can call ourselves “human”. — Read on www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/oct/09/francis-bacon-human-presence-review-national-portrait-gallery-london

List of extinction events – Wikipedia — Read on en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

Timeline of the far future – Wikipedia — Read on en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

Some actors have a very strong inner life and a strong visceral power. He did and more: it was as if a live electric wire ran through him. You’d touch him and get a shock. He used that power with great intensity. — Read on www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/oct/04/leonard-rossiter-rising-damp-fall-and-rise-of-reginald-perrin