Ideas, opinions, politics, humanities
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Music labels oppose AI, but they have to accept it
Major music companies have found a way to accommodate artificial intelligence: make it part of their business. The technology can threaten their catalogs, compete for listeners, and weaken their negotiating position. However, it can also generate licensing fees, subscriptions, and new products built around those same catalogs. That tension explains more than a simple story…
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Einstein’s belief in Jesus? “Unquestionably” Actually, questionably
Albert Einstein accepted the historical existence of Jesus. When interviewer George Sylvester Viereck asked him directly in 1929, Einstein answered: “Unquestionably.” Coming from one of history’s most celebrated scientists, that single word carries enormous rhetorical weight. However, a famous name cannot turn a complicated historical judgment into an unquestionable fact. Most biblical scholars agree that…
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Jesus and Augustus: Very little evidence vs. overwhelming evidence
Augustus left coins, inscriptions, monuments, and portraits made during his lifetime. His contemporaries discussed his actions and corresponded with him. Jesus left a much narrower historical record, largely preserved in religious writings and later references. Both belong to the ancient world. Yet the evidence for their existence differs enormously in quantity, variety, and proximity to…
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The biology and environment behind religiosity
Why do some people become deeply religious while others remain indifferent or reject religion altogether? The obvious answer is upbringing. A child born into a Catholic family in Poland is much more likely to become Catholic than a child born into a Muslim family in Saudi Arabia or a Hindu family in India. Yet research…
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“Secret” reasons Europe is lagging in AI
There are basically only two competitors in artificial intelligence: the United States and China. Europe is nowhere to be found. This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a measurable fact. EU member states account for just 5 percent of global AI computing capacity, while the United States controls approximately 75 percent and China roughly…
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From heaven to extinction: AI’s strangely religious future
Artificial intelligence is supposed to represent the future. Yet some of the stories surrounding it sound remarkably ancient. Humanity creates something more powerful than itself. The old world comes to an end. Some people are saved. Others are left behind. Human beings transcend their biological limitations. Death itself may eventually disappear. Replace God with technology,…
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“Pedos should hang”: The U.S.–Europe divide
The language can sound like something from an anonymous social-media account: hang them, execute them, castrate them, make an example of them. Yet some of the most explicit versions have come from elected politicians. In the United States, calls to execute people convicted of sexual crimes against children have moved well beyond rhetoric. Several states…
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Obama on AI: Demagoguery at its best
I have not encountered such a misleading argument about artificial intelligence from a major political figure in a long time. Barack Obama is right about one thing: AI companies want to make money. Of course they do. They are commercial companies with investors, enormous infrastructure costs and valuations to justify. But reducing the development of…
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Morality is not a bell curve: Why humans defy simple rankings
People are often described as if morality were distributed across humanity in the same way as height, intelligence, or many other measurable traits. At one end would be exceptionally immoral people, at the other exceptionally moral people, while most of humanity would supposedly cluster somewhere around the middle. It is an attractive picture. It is…
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Fanatically pro-Israeli Czechs started to support Palestinians
I do it. I read Czech discussions where Palestinians are described as Islamist, stupid, terrorist “brown monkeys” who never work. Where Israel is always right. Where people say immigrants should be shot simply for trying to cross the border. Where Putin should be the leader of the Czech Republic. And so on. It is a…