Archive

Performing States

We have now in twen­ty years moved half the world’s pop­u­la­tion, give or take, to one city. And we all live in one city. And we keep walk­ing out into the street and get­ting past­ed by trams. And we don’t even under­stand what the trams are. We not only do not know how to live togeth­er online, we don’t even real­ly under­stand that it’s a problem.

Religion and World Politics part 14
The Hindu State

Is there actu­al­ly any such thing as a Hindu state? Mr. Modi, the Prime Minister of India is the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the BJP, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which stands for Hindu val­ues. Hindu val­ues as foun­da­tion val­ues for the Indian state. And yet it’s very dif­fi­cult to talk about such foun­da­tion val­ues for an Indian state as if it had exist­ed since time immemorial.

AI Threats to Civil Liberties and Democracy

In a world of con­flict­ing val­ues, it’s going to be dif­fi­cult to devel­op val­ues for AI that are not the low­est com­mon denominator.

Does the Apple Fall Very Far from the Tree?

What is cook­ing? We are all born into cer­tain cul­tures. And the cul­ture is like a moth­er. We run away, we exper­i­ment. We are mod­ern peo­ple, we try and find new things, we want to find the best lob­ster, the best cray­fish. We want to cook it in amaz­ing ways with some­thing we’ve just for­aged from the forest.