Who Are We Now?
Blaise Agüera y Arcas' book "Who Are We Now?" delves into identity amidst culture wars, bridging generational gaps. Surveys from 2016-2021 reveal evolving attitudes on gender and sexuality. The book prompts critical thinking on humanity's future amid environmental and demographic changes.
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Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a prominent AI researcher, delves into the complex interplay of biology, ecology, sexuality, history, and culture in his book "Who Are We Now?" The book explores the evolving concept of identity in the midst of today's culture wars, bridging the gap between different generations and urban-rural divides. Through surveys conducted between 2016 and 2021, the book offers insights into people's behaviors, identities, and shifting attitudes towards gender and sexuality, reflecting a changing societal landscape. Agüera y Arcas raises thought-provoking questions about the future of humanity as we face environmental challenges and demographic shifts. The book has garnered praise for its deep exploration of identity and community in the modern technological age. Agüera y Arcas, known for his work in AI and technology ethics, presents a compelling narrative that challenges readers to think critically about these complex issues.
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1 comments- i really liked this design, in a functional/readability sense. for example, how the images appeared in parallel to the text, so you could look at them without really having to look away from the text. another example is the footnote pop-ups (Wikipedia does that too). honestly, i'm a bit disappointed in people in general that this isn't the rule. we've had HTML for very long now. it's not a lot of effort to learn enough of it to be able to produce webpages with functionality like that -- yeah, it's an upfront cost, but then, well, less so than learning your mother language!
- i really don't like, though, the reliance on extrapolation from examples from nature and history. IMO, our understanding of these subjects has been shown many times to be limited and flawed... we can't rely on it that much. also, come on, if you pick and choose from the examples you can pretty much advance any thesis you want. like yeah i bet the chimps and the ancient greeks have a beautiful society if you look at it from this specific point of view, but they also practice infanticide or something like that -- i just made this one up, but i bet it's not hard to make it real. and i felt that the text was especially quick (did not really present justifications) to dismiss what it didn't like and advance what it did...
- finally, i really liked this take on "how many humans does it take to screw on a lightbulb?" -- i'm definitely stealing it. i don't think this is the main focus of the text but it's something that really speaks to me. the comfort of today's society is only enabled by an amount of technology so huge it takes a large amount of people cooperating to keep it running. if we don't want to go back to the wild and die of dumb diseases, we need to be able to cooperate.
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