Fritinancy

New writing on Medium: In 1953, you didn't need AI to listen to Socrates

An AI-generated “conversation” between Bill Gates and Socrates jogged my memory. Hadn’t the ancient philosopher been revived decades ago for a different mini-drama? He had. The drama was part of the “You Are There” series, broadcast in 1953 by CBS. I wrote about it—and about why a 70-year-old reenactment remains more effective than cutting-edge AI—in my latest story for Medium.

Read In 1953, You Didn’t Need AI to Listen to Socrates. Don’t forget to clap (up to 50 times!), and check out my referral link to join Medium.

Word of the week: Longtermism

What do we mean when we talk about “the future”? Next year? The next election cycle? The next generation? Or do we stretch our imaginations to conceive of “the next 10,000 years,” as Stewart Brand did when he created the Long Now Foundation in 1996?

Brand’s foundation is dedicated to the principle of longtermism, a philosophy, as the British author Richard Fisher wrote in 2020, that “allows the mind to transcend the stresses of the present, and travel to other times. In times of difficulty, it tells you ‘this will pass’, providing perspective; in times of uncertainty, it can offer a set of secular guiding principles for navigating the world.”

A visualization of “now,” “nowadays,” and “the long now” via the Long Now Foundation.

Word of the week: Miserabilism

Miserabilism: A pessimistic philosophy; a consistently miserable outlook. From miserable combined with the philosophical suffix -ism.

I recently heard miserabilism in an unexpected context: the annual awards lunch hosted by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. (I attended as the guest of a client.) Before we got to the awards, we were treated, or subjected, to a long state-of-the-city presentation by an economist from Los Angeles, which is 370 miles south of Oakland. As it happens, Dan Cohen was in the audience, too.

Prez of Beacon Economics told crowd at @OaklandChamber lunch to chill on #Brexit and not succumb to "Miserabilism" pic.twitter.com/3ymxnprPXf

— (((Dan Cohen))) (@dcstpaul) June 24, 2016