David Tinapple

“But can’t VR at least help us take on the perspective of other people – such as those experiencing homelessness or racial discrimination? After all, two humans are much more alike than humans and cows. However, here, too, VR fails to generate the kind of empathic perspective-taking it’s sold as offering. As with Nagel’s bat, the best we can do with VR is to see what it might be like for us to experience some […]

“Those who have lived their entire lives in functioning democracies may find it hard to grasp how easily minds can be won over to the totalitarian dark side. We assume such a passage would require slow, laborious persuasion. It does not. The transition from day to night is bewilderingly swift. Despite what many assume, civilized coexistence in a culture of tolerance is not always the norm, or even universally desired. Democracy is a hard-won, easily […]

“Are these dark times, or are they unconscionably stupid times? Are they both? Is it the case that the worst, when it comes, comes in a clown car? How did I live so long believing that evil might have its own dignity?” source

https://thebaffler.com/latest/carbon-ironies-stephenson This is a nice review by William T. Vollmann of the baffler. I found this at https://kottke.org/18/06/are-we-completely-fucked-because-of-climate-change “Yes, of course, we’re fucked. (Though it’s important to specify the “we” in this formulation, because the global poor, the disenfranchised, the young, and the yet-to-be-born are certifiably far more fucked than such affluent, white, middle-aged Americans as Vollmann and myself.) But here’s the thing: with climate change as with so much else, all fuckedness is relative. Climate […]