With the supremacy of the chess machines now apparent and the contest of "Man vs. Machine" a thing of the past, perhaps it is time to return to the goals that made computer chess so attractive to many of the finest minds of the twentieth century. Playing better chess was a problem they wanted to solve, yes, and it has been solved. But there were other goals as well: to develop a program that played chess by thinking like a human, perhaps even by learning the game as a human does. Surely this would be a far more fruitful avenue of investigation than creating, as we are doing, ever-faster algorithms to run on ever-faster hardware.
This is our last chess metaphor, then—a metaphor for how we have discarded innovation and creativity in exchange for a steady supply of marketable products. The dreams of creating an artificial intelligence that would engage in an ancient game symbolic of human thought have been abandoned. Instead, every year we have new chess programs, and new versions of old ones, that are all based on the same basic programming concepts for picking a move by searching through millions of possibilities that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s.
Like so much else in our technology-rich and innovation-poor modern world, chess computing has fallen prey to incrementalism and the demands of the market. Brute-force programs play the best chess, so why bother with anything else? Why waste time and money experimenting with new and innovative ideas when we already know what works? Such thinking should horrify anyone worthy of the name of scientist, but it seems, tragically, to be the norm. Our best minds have gone into financial engineering instead of real engineering, with catastrophic results for both sectors. — The Chess Master and the Computer By Garry Kasparov.
A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, "Everything is possible again." It was the perfect thing to write, because that was exactly how it felt. The world itself had another chance. — Jonathan Safran Foer in Against Meat. From the Food Issue of The New York Times Magazine.
"In the pre-internet age…," he observes, "there came a moment when you turned off the TV or the stereo, or put down the book or magazine… You stopped doing culture and you withdrew — or advanced — into your solitude. You used the phone. You went for a walk. You went to the corner bar for a drink. You made love… You wrote a letter.
"Now, more often than not, you go to the computer and online. There you log on to a social networking site, make an entry on your blog, buy something, try to meet a romantic partner… You might send an email, but no one ever just sends an email. Every online activity leads to another online activity…"
Siegel exaggerates for effect maybe, but any one of us who spends a large part of his or her day – for work and leisure – in front of a screen will recognise at least the contours of that behaviour. Your computer invites habitual usage, from email to bookmarked sites, to Twitter followers, to YouTube favourites, and it is a circular rather than a linear progress; if you plotted your history folder I'm guessing you would discover it was not about narrative, but repetition. This circumnavigation of our familiar haunts may suggest exploration, or at least the possibility of it, but there is a compulsive sameness to the quality of the experience. Some of this has to do with the computer's illusion of constant novelty (constantly disappointed), some of it has to do with its inbuilt solipsism, its anti-social quality, which can give rise to that mean-spirited tone of generally anonymous debate and comment that the New Yorker writer David Denby has recently dismissed as "snark". — Tim Adams, Will e-books spell the end of great writing? - The Observer.
The reader whom these things do not interest, has only himself to blame if he reads farther, and I do not desire any other indulgence from him than that of bearing in mind that for him these pages were not written.
His education is very interesting firstly focusing on the "aids and appliances of thought" then moving onto having his own thoughts:
From about the age of twelve, I entered into another and more advanced stage in my course of instruction; in which the main object was no longer the aids and appliances of thought, but the thoughts themselves.
Education. His father was his teacher. His father wouldn't give explanations until after Mill had full thought everything through and felt the "full force of the difficulties". Mill humbly outlines how debates with his father progressed through the years:
I thought for myself almost from the first, and occasionally thought differently from him, though for a long time only on minor points, and making his opinion the ultimate standard. At a later period I even occasionally convinced him, and altered his opinion on some points of detail: which I state to his honour, not my own. It at once exemplifies his perfect candour, and the real worth of his method of teaching.
Religion:
On religion in particular the time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known; at least, if they are among those whose station or reputation gives their opinion a chance of being attended to. Such an avowal would put an end, at once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is called, very improperly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities either of mind or heart.
Education. The new style of teaching attempts "to render as much as possible of what the young are required to learn, easy and interesting to them."
I rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to them.
French vs English national character:
[T]he contrast between the frank sociability and amiability of French personal intercourse, and the English mode of existence, in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, or no exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore.
Marginal contents:
[H]e made me perform an exercise on the manuscript, which Mr. Bentham practised on all his own writings, making what he called "marginal contents"; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general character of the exposition.
Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful. — The Question of Global Warming - The New York Review of Books.
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This promises to capture the raw energy of Mogwai’s live performances. I can’t wait!
