Five Things: The Boss, Syria, War Crime Prosecution, Superhuman AI, Barf Bag
It's Sunday. Read this now.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
I am appalled by the so-called pro-palestinian protests that are being staged at universities in Western democracy since October 7. While I respect different opinions and think it is necessary to critizise the Israeli government, almost all these demonstrations are blatant anti-semitic in nature and call for the end of the state of Israel. Anti-semitic violence is on the rise everywhere as an outcome of this. A jewish couple was just killed in Washington, D.C. because of the normalization of anti-semitism. This deeply saddens me.
We have to do everything in our power to make sure that we get back to a civilized discourse about the future of the region. Obviously, as a German, I grew up with the notion that free speech has its limitations and we should enforce this much more when it comes to anti-semitism to make sure that our free and liberal societies can thrive. And at the same time, I am appalled that Trump is using these demonstrations as an excuse to clamp down on universities and the open discourse that is the foundation of scientific excellence. This will backfire.
Here are five great articles for you to read!
Springsteen Gets America in Ways Trump Never Will
This conflict is not going away. But nothing Trump says, or does, will change the fact that Springsteen is a patriot in the tradition of Tom Paine—a proud American with the wisdom and the courage to challenge leaders who have gone awry while at the same time speaking, without irony or artifice, of “the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years.”
The Boss.
What Would It Take to Rebuild Syria?
Despite the hardship, there’s an undercurrent of optimism. From coffee trolley vendors to shopkeepers, people I spoke with said they hoped conditions would soon improve. The general relief at Bashar’s ouster was visible in the graffiti, which alternated between cursing him and celebrating his departure—and in the marked absence of giant posters and statues of him and his father, which once towered over the city pristinely while everything around them crumbled in neglect. Now, the only effigies of the al-Assads I could see were caricatures on the soles of socks for sale at the Souk Al-Hamidiya, a covered market in the Old City.
Rebuilding Syria will lead to more stability and prosperity in the region.
My Father Prosecuted History’s Crimes. Then He Died in One.
My father had spoken with survivors about their murdered family and friends. He was proud of his work and good at it. But it wounded him. One night, he came home from a deposition, uncharacteristically emotional. He told my mother that relatives of a defendant had approached him, begging him not to deport their loved one. He was a young father, and he knew how terrible it was to break up a family. He understood that the relatives were victims too, after a fashion.
What a story.
The Danger Of Superhuman AI Is Not What You Think
Once you have reduced the concept of human intelligence to what the markets will pay for, then suddenly, all it takes to build an intelligent machine — even a superhuman one — is to make something that generates economically valuable outputs at a rate and average quality that exceeds your own economic output. Anything else is irrelevant.
The talk of AGI and the necessary regulation of AI to protect mankind was a nice marketing stunt.
The Airplane ‘Barf Bag’ Is A Genius Invention Most People Never Think About, And Using One Blew My Mind
Thankfully, my aim was perfect and I avoided making a mess. But what I didn’t see coming was the awkward aftermath. See, I just more or less unloaded into a paper bag, and the plane had only just left the ground. I had no way to dispose of the bag and nowhere to discreetly store it, either. No, instead, I just folded the top like a lunch bag and sat there holding the contents of my stomach as the lady next to me tried to watch some documentary about Megan Thee Stallion. The whole time, I hoped that I was actually holding an air sickness bag and not any normal paper bag. Only I would have such bad luck that I would accidentally barf into a typical paper bag and have the bottom of the bag fail on me.
I never had to try this, but it is good to know that science has solved this issue a long time ago.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico