Category Archives: Technology

AI Is Telling People What They Want to Hear?

Posted on Saturday 16 August 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Tom Tomorrow on “defunding the police”; The unreliability of AI, with an example of John Scalzi; An essay about how the future will be mundane; Several links on Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska; Slate’s handy summary of people in … Continue reading →

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How Can AI Tell the Truth? Whose Truth?

Posted on Friday 25 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

More about AI, and how (from Steven Levy) there’s no such thing as a bias-free AI; Speculation on what a MAGA ideologically correct AI would be; Following up on Harari: how would an AI handle inconsistencies among, and within, religious … Continue reading →

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“American” Intelligence?

Posted on Thursday 24 July 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Trump wants AI to be not “woke”; how will he enforce that? And he doesn’t like the word “artificial”; A reel by Yuval Noah Harari about a realistic threat of AI; Heather Cox Richardson on the various deflections Republicans are … Continue reading →

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Jonathan Haidt, THE ANXIOUS GENERATION

Posted on Thursday 16 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” (Penguin Press, March 2024, 385pp, including 90pp of acknowledgements, notes, references, and index.) Here’s the latest by the author of one of my favorite books, THE … Continue reading →

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Remembering Y2k; a Political Commentator admits he was wrong; Fallibilism; Reading Lakoff

Posted on Thursday 2 January 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Back to interesting ideas. Heather Cox Richardson recalls Y2K, 25 years ago on January 1st, and how since the problem was fixed (by the scientists and tech guys) some people felt the problem had never been real. As always, she … Continue reading →

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End of Year Summaries

Posted on Sunday 29 December 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

David Brooks’ favorite essays include one about how Trump’s people have no clue about how to fix complex problems, and one about why people believe *true* things; Two pieces from The Atlantic about 77 facts from 2024, and important breakthroughs … Continue reading →

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Essays by Harari and Chiang

Posted on Wednesday 4 September 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Both about technology, about AI. The Sapiens author has a new book out next week: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. This is an excerpt. NY Times, Yuval Noah Harari, 4 Sep 2024: … Continue reading →

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Infrastructure, the Constitution, Changing Minds, and Fringe Items

Posted on Saturday 31 August 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

How expanding America’s highways doesn’t solve their congestion; Ten ways the heat is changing us, including impacts on the infrastructure; Another perspective on issues with the US Constitution; Changing minds, appeals to fear, or persuasion; Fringe items about a fake … Continue reading →

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Save the Children?

Posted on Thursday 11 July 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Never mind homeschooling; now there’s a cult of “unschooling”; Nascent thoughts about conservative morality, children, MAGA, and the return to a simpler past — which would be, childhood; How Oklahoma is letting right-wing figures (including David Barton) run its social … Continue reading →

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The Flaw of Math, or Perhaps Just the Limits of Human Cognition

Posted on Saturday 2 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Veritasium on math’s fatal flaw, or perhaps just a limitation on the extent humans can understand reality; Considering why cars are built to be able to break the law; A cartoon about religious folks who believe the Bible was written … Continue reading →

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