Math, Antitrust and Labor – Front Porch Republic

“Computers can’t do math.” David Schaengold wrote a clear and provocative essay on the differences between computer “thinking” and human thinking: “We can be sure that there are world states beyond the understanding of any artificial intelligence. And I suspect that these countries of the world will not necessarily be the ones that seem extreme to us. We won’t have to reverse the moon’s orbit. It will be a matter of strange, seemingly incomprehensible phrases. Or putting on cardboard boxes, as some U.S. Marines recently did in an exercise to try to avoid an AI-powered camera setup. In the case of the AI, the boxes may as well have been stealth cloaks, and the marines walked right past the camera. It is as if the boxes shifted the representation of the state of the world to a hidden integer, and in doing so, the Marines simply disappeared from the computer’s conceptual apparatus. We have become accustomed to human intelligence, but whatever capabilities a computer may have, intelligence is not one of them.” (Recommended by Adam Smith.)

“I heard Ol’Neil.” Bill Kauffman remembers two independent Canadian thinkers, George Grant and Neil Young: “George Grant understood that healthy nationalism – or, much better, healthy patriotism – was based on love and loyalty, not on resentment or naive anti-ism . “

 “Lina Khan’s antitrust policy is actually conservative.” Matthew Yglesias explains the paradoxes Khan must deal with while leading the FTC: “Is antitrust law a tool to protect consumers from higher prices or to protect small businesses from large ones? The implications of this answer are more than theoretical. One approach to antitrust law is brilliant and new, and has won praise from both left and right for Khan, but it has not been tested legally. The second solution is a bit boring and often criticized, but there is a lot of legal precedent behind it.”

“The Littlest of My Brothers: Sally Thomas” Works of mercy” Abigail Wilkinson Miller reflects on the wisdom of Sally Thomas’s novel: “Many of us lament the lack of a vibrant and supportive community in our neighborhoods and towns. But can we really have community without the discomfort of real flesh-and-blood encounters with other people? A quick conversation with a grocery store clerk, children arguing during mass, listening to the man at the end of the row chewing popcorn too loudly during a matinee movie – it’s all part of being human. It is the discomfort of specificity that also allows us to practice virtue.

“Work of art”. LM Sacasas warns that offloading seemingly tedious or unpleasant tasks to machines can reduce our ability to work more creatively. This is an enduring paradox: Wendell Berry, for example, sharply disagrees with WB Yeats’s neat dichotomy: “The intellect of man is forced to choose: the perfection of life or work” and Kathleen Norris’s little book Cotydian secrets he also reflects on how everyday work can serve artistic and spiritual purposes. As Sacasas put it: “I wonder, in other words, whether the work of washing or washing dishes – these are almost always examples, but they replace a number of similar activities – might not provide some necessary artistic basis, tying them to the world in a vital way, rather than muddling”.

“When kids talk to machines.” July Sedivy distinguishes the way computers learn language from the way humans do it. People rely heavily on social interactions, perceived motivation, and trust: “With the hype around AI, it’s important to remember that humans don’t learn like machines; what matters is not only the availability of information, but also the social context in which that information is experienced – a fact that helps explain the disappointing learning outcomes associated with MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which have suffered from low student engagement and persistently high rates of dropouts leaving school, especially in less wealthy countries.

“What’s Wrong with Congress (and How to Fix It).” Yuval Levin defends the filibuster and suggests other policies that could improve U.S. policy, requiring the difficult but necessary work of building cross-party consensus. Narrow majorities in Congress “are trying to govern alone, and a half-century of congressional reform has encouraged them to keep trying and thus avoid the hard but necessary work of expanding coalitions. For the sake of Congress, and in order to reduce the division of our society, would-be reformers in today’s Congress should emphasize this bipartisan coalition-building work rather than help Congress avoid it.

“Is there a common Canadian culture?” Jean-Christophe Jasmin examines Quebec’s history and present to grapple with fundamental questions about what it means to support local or regional cultures in an age of globalism and amnesia: “The culture common to Quebec and Canada is not Canadian. This is American. This raises an existential question at the heart of Canadian identity: What distinguishes this country from its American neighbor?”

“University and Community Engagement: Latest Approaches.” Craig E. Mattson reviews several recent books exploring various dimensions of how universities can better serve their local communities: “friendship corrects the institutional bias toward greatness. Institutions like to present grand visions of their place in the world. This trend, as old as the Tower of Babel, is also as modern as a Christian college brochure promising to turn students into world changers. But by drawing the highly global away from the humble, local, friendship can test institutional greatness. Making friends and being friends means giving in to the temptation to be together, or at least wish be together.”