1. The Most Useless Robot Ever
Assuming a robot paper weight hasn’t been invented yet, this, I think, currently tops the charts as the most useless robot ever designed. It’s comical means of locomotion should be set to kazoo music.
2. Atheists: Worse Than Hitler?
Interesting article about a study exposing the biases of most Americans against atheists as unworthy of trust. A study showed that people were far more likely to assume an individual performing relatively immoral acts was an atheist (with “rapist” being a close second) than a Muslim or a Christian.
3. Religious Right Wandering In The Wilderness
Speaking of prejudicial and irrational evangelicals, one of the upsides of the weak GOP field seems to be that the religious right is left without a clear champion (perhaps I should say “viable champion,” since Santorum really checks all the boxes for Christian fundamentalists), though all of the candidates have had their moments of shameless pandering.
4. The World of Tomorrow
Some pie-in-the-sky predictions of the technologies of the future. Some are more realistic than others.
5. Knowledge (Or Rather Possession of Data) Is Power
Yet more reason to believe the future of our species lies in first developing AI that knows literally everything (in terms of raw data) and can reliably recognize patterns and make accurate predictions of future events (the Palantir program is a nascent version of this superbrain) and then joining ourselves to it. Over the extreme long term it’s easy to imagine that we’d have less and less use for our physical bodies, to the point that we may discard them altogether.
