Teaching a machine to debate involves breaking down how humans debate. It’s complex.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
How Do You Win An Argument? IBM’s New AI Has a Formula https://suhub.co/2MTl1cK
Sample sentence: “Let’s ask my mom. Hey, Mom!”
When it’s standing in for a name, it gets a capital. The same is true of other titles like “captain” or “duchess”.
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
Whether you capitalize “mom” depends on how you are using the word. Is it a nickname, a common noun, or a term of endearment? http://ow.ly/8A4U30kCD7z
“How do we, collectively, allocate wealth?” is one question at the heart of this article. The others are also pretty interesting.
Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger
I’ve heard a lot of discussion about Universal Basic Income and Job Guarantees of late. Some of it seems like a good idea, but I’ve also seen some very thoughtful critiques (from both the Left and the Right) which have convinced me that neither is quite what we’re looking for.
I spent some of a lazy Sunday evening thinking about this some more, where these ideas succeed and fail, and what some of the building blocks of a better solution might look like. Here’s where I am right now — and I should warn you that far from being a perfect answer, these are preliminary thoughts, still uncertain and subject to much revision as we continue to discuss.
While it’s important not to forget about the significant challenges we still have, we’ve come a long way, and the trend is continuing in most places for most people.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
New Evidence That the World Really Is Getting Better https://suhub.co/2yZYitd
Originally shared by Neuroscience News
The Problem with Solving Problems
When problems become rare, we count more things as problems. Our studies suggest that when the world gets better, we become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn’t actually gotten better at all.
The research is in Science. (full access paywall)
This writer did a lot of work researching an experience that she wasn’t part of in order to get it right. Kudos.
Originally shared by Conscious Style Guide
“Was I reinforcing stereotypes, or combatting them? And was I stealing attention from first-hand narratives, or shedding light on them? The first question was a matter of good writing—something I had control over. The second was stickier.”
#fiction #writers #writingtip #writingadvice
[Image: A red “Wrong Way” sign in front of distant mountains.]
For your anti-ageing and recovery-from-brain-injury story needs.
Also, wasn’t Tony Stark in Ultimate Marvel drinking because practically his whole body had turned into neural tissue, making him highly intelligent but also in constant pain?
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Transdifferentiation Can Create An Endless Supply of Brain Cells—And Fast https://suhub.co/2K7J4Yp
The most frequent believability issue I see in “solarpunk” SF is the lack of awareness of how much power you can realistically get from a solar panel or store in a battery.
Because of power-per-weight issues, we would need to improve the energy density of batteries about six times from current levels to make electric aviation feasible on a large scale. But a 6x improvement is not out of the question; we’ve seen much bigger improvements than that in various technologies over the past few years.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Are Electric Planes the Future of Aviation? https://suhub.co/2Na6j1U
To read later – Jo Walton is super-smart, so I imagine this will be good.
Via Adriel Wiggins.
Originally shared by Rick Liebling
Hello! Economics isn’t usually a major consideration in world-building, but it permeates everything that happens in a society.
Jo Lindsay Walton, an editor of Vector, the British Sci-Fi magazine, sat down for a truly amazing Q&A to talk about science fiction economics. It’s a must read if you’re a Sci-Fi writer:
Key takeaway: Things are still not as they should be, but the trend is good. Both parts of that are important.
(Thanos, and real-life politicians like him, should know about #2.)
Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh
Bill Gates like the website. You should too. “One of my favorite websites is OurWorldInData.org. Based at the University of Oxford, it uses statistics—on everything from health and population growth to war, the environment, and energy—to give you phenomenal insight into how living conditions are changing around the world. I asked its founder, Oxford economist Max Roser, to share three facts from the site that everyone should know. Here’s what Max had to say. – Bill Gates
[Max Roser] In the past few years, it has become easy to find many of the important statistics on global development with a quick online search. And since it is now so easy to find the information you need, many argue that it doesn’t make sense to actually remember these statistics. ‘Just look them up when you need them!’ they say.
I disagree with this. Yes, for some details, it makes sense to just search for them when you need them. But for the large global developments, it is important to know some basic statistics that describe living conditions currently and the direction of change that we have seen over the past few decades. Knowing the facts on global changes gives you the context for the daily news and allows you to make sense of new information that you learn. And it must be the basis for political debate, so that we can discuss what we should and shouldn’t do as a society.
And so I compiled a short list of three facts about global living conditions that I want to remember. Each of them describes the current situation and the direction of change.”