Anna Gát's "Smart Watch": What to Read This Weekend #64
Festival, feminism, fertility. Conspiracy, Communism, how not to lose our minds. Nine-eleven, nihilism, statistics, Homer, and more...!
Hello friends,
It’s HERE! Finally! Ideas of Power — Celebrity, Authority, and Faith in an Election Year 🔥
This is me being bugged to find out what the true nature of POWER is in 2024 - and also Interintellect’s next mini-fest in New York City, on the afternoon of October 6. Come, come along….
We’ll do 3 panels:
On authoritarian charm, fame, and tricks, with Julia Sonevend, John Ganz, led by Tara Isabella Burton
On educating the powerful, with Wesleyan University president Michael Roth and Musa al-Gharbi, led by Skye Cleary
On God, secular vs divine power, with Jennifer Frey and Shadi Hamid, led by me
Then we’ll do a roundtable, and involve the audience to discuss the nature and aspects of power in 2024!
BOOK YOUR SPOT HERE!
Meanwhile, in other news….
I was also on a friend’s podcast — just published. Khe Hy and I recorded this conversation in the middle of a heatwave, and it couldn’t have been more fun! We discussed the essential importance of reading fiction. For your soul, for your relationships, for your self-knowledge, for your career, and most importantly for living a good life. Watch here:
BONUS! You might want to join Agnes Callard, Irina Dumitrescu, and me for an online discussion about Eros, the intellectual monster... 🎟️ BOOK HERE!
Alright, after so much excitement now let’s read…! This week’s harvest is once again quite strong and promising an intellectually eventful weekend for you:
Philosophy of the people
The Platonists of Illinois were centred around Hiram Kinnaird Jones of Jacksonville. The Hegelians of the St Louis Philosophical Society, meanwhile, were led by Heinrich Conrad (‘Henry Clay’) Brokmeyer and William Torrey Harris. These were movements of amateurs in the fullest and best sense: their ranks were composed of non-professional students of philosophy – lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, factory workers and housewives – motivated by personal edification and the earnest pursuit of truth rather than professional achievement or status-acquisition. They conducted their activity against the backdrop of a country reeling from a bloody civil war, tenuously unified and engaged in an energetic campaign of westward expansion and industrialisation. The very intelligibility of their world had been thrown into question, and these readers and thinkers on the prairie found help in the great minds of the past. ‘The time,’ writes Denton J Snider, a member of the St Louiscircle, ‘was calling loudly for First Principles’ – and, for their readers, Plato and Hegel offered paths toward them.
Joseph Keegin; Aeon
How to write love — Tom Stoppard’s exploration of intimacy, over forty years on
“I have to choose who to hurt, and I choose you because you’re mine”.
Maria Margaronis; Times Literary Supplement
Robert Caro Reflects on ‘The Power Broker’ and Its Legacy at 50
Now, in an astonishing turn for a 50-year-old book and its 88-year-old author, “The Power Broker” seems more popular and relevant than ever. Caro’s iconic portrait of Moses — a megalomaniacal city planner who reshaped New York City with his bridges and expressways, often destroying communities that stood in his way — has inspired video and board games, a Broadway play and a “Repeal Robert Moses” movement, led by an organization that aims to reclaim the city from cars.
Alexandra Alter; The New York Times
The underground railroad for Russian deserters
Launched in 2022, the group has helped thousands of like-minded Russians escape their country’s war, even as its vast network of volunteers has helped thousands more avoid military service through legal and logistical support. Clearly, that’s a boon to Russians unwilling to kill and die for their country.
Ruchi Kumar; UnHerd
On Not Losing Our Minds to Technology
Have you ever wondered: why are babies so fragile? Why are they so helpless—and so vocal in their outrage over this helplessness? Maybe this is the wrong question to ask, though. The longer we interact with real people of all ages, the more clearly we see the truth that while most adults do not look obviously fragile the way babies do, we all retain in us these traces of helplessness with which we were born. We are vulnerable and finite; it’s a feature, not a bug…
Nadya Williams; Front Porch Republic
The Men Who Sabotage Women's Fertility
Was the idea that I had to give him time to decide? Decide on what, me? I should tolerate that the man I 100% knew I wanted to marry wasn’t 100% sure he wanted to marry me? I knew we were young, but marriage wasn’t about needing a wedding, a ring, or “half his stuff.” It was about having some kind of definitive promise that he had chosen me. And if I was simply his live-in girlfriend indefinitely, I wasn’t being chosen. I was being tried out.
Cartoons Hate Her
Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI
Human participants described a conspiracy theory that they subscribed to, and the AI then engaged in persuasive arguments with them that refuted their beliefs with evidence. The AI chatbot’s ability to sustain tailored counterarguments and personalized in-depth conversations reduced their beliefs in conspiracies for months, challenging research suggesting that such beliefs are impervious to change. This intervention illustrates how deploying AI may mitigate conflicts and serve society.
Thomas H. Costello, Gordon Pennycook, David G. Rand; Science
The Bookmaker - Nate Silver and the addiction to prediction
In the field of Bayesian statistics, betting has served as a metaphor for the probabilistic calculations that we make naturally—a background, subconscious reasoning that informs every decision we make. But in moving Bayesianism out of textbooks and into the wild, Silver takes the metaphor literally, and in doing so turns a descriptive framework into a prescription for practical success. If everyday reasoning looks like betting, then in order to come out on top, you need to spend your life at the casino—and remake the rest of the world in its image.
Leif Weatherby and Ben Recht; The Point
Who are Britain’s new aristocrats?
Friedman and Reeves boast that their work is “underpinned by the most comprehensive dataset of the British elite that has ever been produced”. By this they mean Who’s Who, the biographical reference book that has served as the atlas of our high society since the Victorian period. Its volumes are compiled semi-secretively. While some of its current crop of 33,000 individuals are entered automatically (MPs, King’s Counsels, FTSE100 CEOs), the rest are elected by a mysterious “board”, whose operations and criteria are fiercely guarded.
Nicholas Harris; The New Statesman
Pro-progress needs to avoid Trumpian aesthetics
Whatever happens in this election, I hope that the next president will pursue a pro-abundance agenda and will enact policies aimed at fostering as opposed to inhibiting scientific and technological progress. For those of us thinking about progress more broadly, I think it’s worth taking a moment and reflecting on how the aesthetics of the movement should look like.
Ruxandra Teslo
‘The Return’ Review: Ralph Fiennes & Juliette Binoche Lead Deeply Satisfying Retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey
Ralph Fiennes is magnificent in a role he’s wanted to play for many years. He brings forth the decades of weariness inherent in the part, the dormant warrior lurking beneath, as well as the craftiness Odysseus is known for. Close-ups of his sculpted face, lit by firelight, as he recounts tales of war have appreciable gravity.
Ankit Jhunjhunwala; The Playlist
Under Siege — A beloved Soviet writer’s path to dissent (2006)
Grossman went on to write “Life and Fate” and “Forever Flowing,” novels that in their warmth of feeling and their historical sweep stand alongside “The Gulag Archipelago” as the most anti-Soviet books of all time. Yet here is this letter, which the American scholars John and Carol Garrard dug up and published in their 1996 biography of Grossman. Was it pro-Soviet?
Keith Gessen; The New Yorker
17 Novels You Need to Read This Fall
Olga Tokarczuk pastiche of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is a dark, feminist novel—atmospheric, creepy, and absolutely perfect. In 1913, Mieczysław Wojnicz goes to a sanatorium in the Silesian mountains to recover from tuberculosis. In the evening, the other men at the guesthouse gather, drink hallucinogenic local liqueur, and have vague, philosophical discussions—“Does man have a soul? Monarchy or democracy? Can one tell whether a text was written by a man or a woman? Are women responsible enough to be allowed voting rights?”—which are (surprise!) actually paraphrased misogynistic utterances from real famous men. Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills: gathering spirits, dead bodies, femicide.
Emily Temple; Literary Hub
My video contribution to the new Strawberry release
Spinoza (the dog) steals the show. As I said to the OpenAI film crew, “Spinoza may not be AGI, but if you leave any foodstuffs near the couch, he will beat anything you people come up with.” That said, when it comes to mathematical, economic, or many other kinds of reasoning, OpenAI o1, the new model, is in the clear lead.
Tyler Cowen; Marginal Revolution
Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser
Letby is serving 15 whole-life orders, making her the fourth woman in UK history to be told she will never be released from prison. Mr Phillips said he had followed the Letby trial and his “instinctive reaction” was to wonder whether the cluster of deaths on the ward could be a statistical coincidence.
… [After] reading a lengthy New Yorker article in April outlining the flaws in the prosecution’s argument, he flagged his concerns to Sir David Davis, who is now intending to bring the matter before Parliament this autumn. The Oxford-educated, multi-prize-winning neuroscientist said that the case seemed to be a “cognitive optical illusion” where each piece of evidence had been used to shore up another, rather than there being any single damning smoking gun.
Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph
Feminism is not about fairness
But feminism is not like Catholicism. There’s no pope, there’s no Catechism. No one has the authority to baptize you and no one has the power to excommunicate you. There are lots of things feminists disagree on and there have always been lots of things feminists disagree on. It’s not at all uncommon for a feminist to call other feminists anti-feminist if they promote a view she disagrees with. But the thing that makes it a disagreement between feminists is that the disagreement is around whether a particular course of action, or a change in norms, laws etc. would lead to greater gender equality.
Regan Arntz-Gray
How to Read Greek Tragedy in a Netflix World
Greek tragedies are like the last episode of The Sopranos.
Ted Gioia
Our attention dilemma is age-old
Mindfulness has deep roots in the quietist tradition of western thought, best exhibited by Stoic philosophy as it was transmitted from Greek culture by Roman authors such as Seneca, Nero’s philosophical tutor. He urges his friend Lucilius to ‘hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow. While we are postponing, life speeds by.’ And yet, its commercialisation in western Europe and America, its dissemination in gamified apps, in faux-profound language of the advertising world and across the legacy media, has led the expansion of a perfectly useful set of simple meditation techniques, and a component of virtually all philosophical and religious traditions, into a pseudo-philosophy of life.
Alastair Benn; Engelsberg Ideas
Charting change in a life’s journey through skills
But perhaps most interesting to me, is that Edison reportedly wanted his lab to have “a stock of almost every conceivable material,” which an 1887 newspaper article reported as: “eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels … silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark’s teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell … cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock’s tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores …” and so on. If Edison’s research and development lab in my hometown of Edison, New Jersey is a model and inspiration for general invention and innovation, I aspire for Skills for Scholars to be a model for the research and development of invention and innovation of ideas across the academic world.
Matt Rohal; Princeton University Press
Human embryo models are getting more realistic — raising ethical questions
Some have proposed revising regulations concerning real embryos to cover some types of embryo model. In the Netherlands, says Nienke, a scientific advisory body proposed a ban on growing the models beyond the equivalent of 28 days in real-embryo terms. France is considering the same limit. Researchers in the United Kingdom did something a little different in July: they published voluntary guidelines for embryo models that do not set fixed limits on how long they can be cultured. The guidelines could eventually lead to the passing of binding legislation — as happened with similar voluntary UK guidelines around embryo research several decades ago.
Smriti Mallapaty; Nature
Station Eleven, 10 Years Later
“I really love what they did in the show, that plot point toward the beginning where Kirsten goes home with Jeevan. I think that’s really smart. That speaks to the power of the television writers room, where you just have all of these people collaborating to build a world, whereas when I’m writing the book, it’s just me alone in my office. And if I were writing it now, I would pay more attention to that uneasy in-between state of just entering or just leaving a pandemic.”
Rebecca Onion; Slate
The Falling Man (2021)
There is something almost rebellious in the man's posture, as though once faced with the inevitability of death, he decided to get on with it; as though he were a missile, a spear, bent on attaining his own end.
Tom Junod; Esquire
Lydia Pettit Channels Female Rage Into Surreal, Haunting Self-Portraiture
Black blood spurts from the blueish body of an unreal woman—an effigy, a dummy with a waxy pallor. Straddling the dummy, and stabbing it furiously with a knife, is a real woman, naked, with shortly cut blond hair. Her pale flesh, her breasts, move with the momentum of her plunging thrusts. Each lunge sends bursts of black blood into the air. The woman pauses at moments, exhausted from the exertion of violence, her breath heavy, only to resume her attack in bursts. And here’s the most distressing detail: the woman and the effigy are mirror images.
Katie White; Artnet
The Great Data Integration Schlep
Obtaining the data is a hard human problem.
That is, people don’t want to give it to you.
…
Why?
Sarah Constantin
We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’ — Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks? The strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people who were on board (2016)
This oral history, based on more than 40 hours of original interviews with more than two dozen of the passengers, crew and press aboard—including many who have never spoken publicly about what they witnessed that day—traces the story of how an untested president, a sidearm-carrying general, top aides, the Secret Service and the Cipro-wielding White House physician, as well as five reporters, four radio operators, three pilots, two congressmen and a stenographer responded to 9/11.
Garrett M. Graff; Politico
The Best Classical Music Albums of 2024 (So Far)
A superb contribution to Bruckner’s bicentenary year from Gerd Schaller, a performance of the composer’s Symphony No 4 that is full of poetry and a powerful sense of journey.
Gramophone
Two mini-reviews: Seeing Like a State; the Unabomber manifesto
James C. Scott says that “tragic episodes” of social engineering have four elements: the administrative ordering of society (“legibility”), “high-modernist” ideology, an authoritarian state, and a society that lacks the capacity to resist. This is a bit like saying that the worst wildfires have four elements: an overgrowth of brush and trees, a prolonged dry season, a committed arsonist, and strong prevailing winds. One of these things is not like the others!
Jason Crawford
How a viral AI image catapulted a Mexican startup to a major Adidas contract — Someone Somewhere proved AI can create jobs for artisans, not replace them
ll told, the marketing post reached more than 50 million people, and was covered on national TV and over 100 media outlets, according to Nuño. On June 21, the companies announced the new collection of Mexican National Team jerseys, hand-embroidered by women artisans from the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico. Each shirt represented more than 11 hours of hand-embroidery work, symbolically representing the 11 players who proudly represented Mexico in the Copa América.
Mary Ann Azevedo; TechCrunch