Anna Gát: What to Read this Weekend
My selection from the Interintellect forum
In the ring with Mailer - The author’s gladiatorial contest of art
“Mailer’s pugilistic itch was inseparable from his artistic ambition – which led to more than forty books, multiple bestsellers and a role in American culture unimaginable for any writer today. For decades it mattered what Mailer thought about Vietnam, JFK, Hollywood, race or feminism. He was the nation’s wild-eyed diagnostician; even his nuttiest ideas helped set the terms of debate.” (Times Literary Supplement)
How should AI systems behave, and who should decide?
“Striking the right balance here will be challenging–taking customization to the extreme would risk enabling malicious uses of our technology and sycophantic AIs that mindlessly amplify people’s existing beliefs.” (OpenAI)
Religious Seekers, or Cultural Thieves?
“[Liz Bucar] worries that many of her students were ‘considering religious ritual merely something to instrumentalize for personal growth.’ She’s concerned about the ‘existential risks’ such a trip creates, the ‘crises of faith’ it might precipitate even for Catholics.” (Commonweal)
The Enlightenment as reading project
“Above all, the freedom that matters to Kant is the freedom to question religious authorities on matters of faith. Kant’s Enlightenment thus strengthens secular authority in order to create the space required for a critique of religious authority.” (The Critic)
Tyler Cowen and Shruti Rajagopalan on Interintellect
An excellent - recorded - salon on India, talent, innovation, and intellectual scenes. (Interintellect)
How Women Talking reimagines the rape plot
“As they weigh up their choices – stay and fight, or leave – it becomes increasingly clear that for them, there is only one option.” (New Statesman)
“It’s not a matter of debate anymore: AGI is here, even if it is in an extremely beta form with all sorts of caveats and limitations.” (Erik Hoel)
A Sensitive Movie About a Literary Oddity
“[Emily Brontë is] a literary oddity, a creature whose reserved disposition seemed to belie a wildly inventive imagination.”