On the general theme of humanity’s cognitive ability. I’ve mentioned before that, as with morality, there’s a wide range of positions. On the one hand, we know of prodigies like Srinivasa Ramanujan, who had preternatural mathematical skills; we know of Savants who can tell you what day of the week a particular date falls (and oddly these are associated with autistic people); and so on.
The AI revolution is revealing that there are things that can be known that even smart humans figure can’t out.
Scientific American, Lyndie Chiou, today: Mathematicians use AI to find mysterious symmetries, solving decades-old problem
Subtitled: In parallel, a race by amateurs and mathematicians has found all 25,000 cases of one “inverse Galois problem”
The details aren’t the point. But a sample:
For any polynomial, known algorithms tease out its Galois group. But the reverse direction is opaque: Given a particular Galois group of symmetries, can you always find an associated polynomial? The quandary became known as the inverse Galois problem.
When I was at UCLA I indulged in math courses on interesting topics like group theory. Then changed majors, to computer science (at CSUN) to get a job. Math still fascinates me, but it’s sort of like poetry, or music: beautiful in its own way, if not practical in the real world. (I could immediately retract this in other contexts: weird math has turned out to support physical observations again and again.)
And so on. The point remains. There are realms of reality that most humans, maybe all humans, cannot perceive.
\\
More on humanity’s cognitive limitations.
Washington Post, opinion by Robert Gebelhoff, today: I attended an anti-vaccine conference. The joke ended quickly., subtitled “I am firmly pro-vaccine. Ridiculing those who are not helps no one.”
I have a confession: When I arrived at the Grand Hyatt hotel in D.C. on Thursday to cover an anti-vaccine conference, my intention was to make fun of it. That was wrong.
To be clear, I have an unshakable faith in vaccines. I have written about immunizations for years, so little of the anti-vaccine rhetoric at the convention surprised me much. Most of it — including the keynote address from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — was the same deceptive talking points I have heard countless times.
Over the course of the day, however, I realized that treating those views with disrespect, wrong though they might be, would help no one. It would only feed into the resentment that created the anti-vaccine movement as it is today.
Many examples. Anecdotal evidence. The writer concludes,
Moreover, purveyors of false information often layer multiple claims on top of each other. Diving into any one of them can turn out to be a complicated rabbit hole. Kennedy, for instance, referenced a 2017 study that found babies in Guinea-Bissau who received the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine were more likely to die than those who didn’t get the shot. Except that paper was based on data from the 1980s, regarding vaccines that are no longer used and with questionable methodology. Plus, multiple other studies — including from the same authors — came to different conclusions.
This sort of detail makes readers’ eyes glaze over, so reporters rarely spend time parsing it. That gives anti-vaccine activists room to claim that the traditional media — indeed the entire political establishment — is against them.
That is what crushed me on Thursday — that sense of victimhood that nearly everyone in the conference shared. It is anger and fear and despair, emotions that are so easily preyed upon by opportunistic politicians. “Something happened to our kids,” Kennedy said, and the audience applauded.
That’s not a sentiment one should ridicule lightly.
It’s never about rational analysis.
\\\
NY Times, opinion by Brett Stephens, today: The Literary World’s D.E.I. Checklist
Last week, the longlists for the National Book Awards were announced. Among the 20 authors in the fiction and nonfiction categories, nearly all are straight white males. Most are also on the political right, some even on the far right. Remarkably, mainstream media outlets haven’t reported this, perhaps because they don’t think it’s noteworthy. It’s as if we were living in 1956 rather than 2026.
He’s complaining about the narrow range of topics in the finalists, both fiction and nonfiction, for this year’s National Book Awards.
Hannah Lillith Assadi’s novel, “Paradiso 17,” is “inspired by the life of her late Palestinian father.” Kimberly Blaeser, a poet, is the “founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets.” Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian American writer whose novel “Dèy” reflects on “the many forms of mourning experienced through immigration, gentrification and diasporic identity.” Julián Delgado Lopera’s novel “Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You,” set in 1990s Bogotá, “explores Colombia’s queer underground community.” Louise Erdrich, the highly acclaimed author of “Python’s Kiss,” is identified in her N.B.F. biography as “a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.” Marlon James’s novel “The Disappearers” is a “queer epic” set in Kingston, Jamaica. Valeria Luiselli is a writer born in Mexico whose “Beginning Middle End” spans “continents, languages and four generations.” Kenan Orhan is a Turkish American writer; his first novel, “The Renovation,” is a story about a family migrating from Istanbul to Italy. Morgan Thomas’s book “Mad Eden” is about “a trans health care worker” who has been diagnosed with autism.
A commentator on Facebook points out that a couple of these books aren’t even out yet (judges get advance copies), so Stephens could not have read them yet.
I have a different but parallel reaction. That all the books judges for awards like this select as finalists are about marginal groups… in contemporary American culture… in one era of history… and they consistently ignore books about big issues about science and philosophy.
\\\
Music
There’s a new Beck album out! I heard about it in the New York Times, on Sunday! And that it’s a sequel, or third in a trilogy, of earlier Beck albums Sea Change and Morning Phase. The latter has my favorite Beck song, maybe my favorite song of all time: Turn Away.
Here’s a full YouTube video, though it has ads.
Now listening for the third time. Nothing has quite jumped out to me yet.
