“Why Are We Funding This?”, David Samuel Shiffman defends the value of scientific curiosity in American Scientist.
The Validation Machines by Raffi Krikorian, the Chief Technology Officer of Mozilla. Humanity thrives on friction—so why are the tools of the future built to make everything seem so easy?
If humanity loses the ability to challenge—and be challenged—we lose more than diverse perspective. We lose the practice of disagreement. Of refining our views through conversation. Of defending ideas, reconsidering them, discarding them. Without that friction, democracy becomes a performative shell of itself. And without productive disagreement, democracy doesn’t just weaken. It cools quietly until the fire goes out.”
— Raffi Krikorian
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Progress without proof is just trust on credit.
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter. Erudite and magisterial biography of John Maynard Keynes and his transformative impact on not just economics but also politics, society, power and war (audiobook). 5/5.
For some reason The Reenchanted World by Karl Ove Knausgaard and How Big Tech killed literary culture by Nicholas Carr seem to gel together in my head. Not very obvious why, but fascinated by both the pieces.
A Website to Destory all Websites, by Henry Desroches. That is one visual eassy!