[F]orget that hypothetical reader and write about the things that are most interesting to you. Then, make it your mission to explain to readers why they should care about this thing you find interesting.

Wittgenstein rejected the idea of a referential meaning, in the sense of mental content, in favour of the idea of pragmatic embeddedness of symbolic actions in a community of language users. Meaning emerges from complex feedback loops between the use of a sign and the reactions of others to the use of that sign. There is no such thing as an inherent ‘meaning’ in the sense of traditional ideas of reference and content. The meaning is the use. But this is equivalent to saying that the meaning is a function.

I work with a lot of musicians from around the world. Often we don’t have any common language at all. We sit behind our instruments and it’s a way to connect.
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What would happen if we could somehow find new interfaces — visual, audio — to allow us to communicate with the remarkable beings we share the planet with.

Specialists in all manner of things, from the humanities to the social and biological sciences, the para-academic works alongside the traditional university, sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice, usually a mixture of both. Frustrated by the lack of opportunities to research, create learning experiences or make a basic living within the university on our own terms, para-academics don’t seek out alternative careers in the face of an evaporated future, we just continue to do what we’ve always done: write, research, learn, think, and facilitate that process for others.

We do this without prior legitimisation from any one institution. Para-academics do not need to churn out endless ‘outputs’ because of the pressures of a heavily assessed research environment. We work towards making ideas because learning, sharing, thinking and creating matter beyond easily quantifiable ‘products’. And we know that this is possible, that we are possible, without the constraints of an increasingly hierarchical academy.

The key advantage computers have over human drivers, according to Thrun’s widely viewed 2011 TED talk, is that they do not fall victim to “human error.”

The assertion that computers can outpace humans by eliminating their frailties and limitations is closely linked to the ideas of Bay Area futurist guru Ray Kurzweil and his hypothesis of singularity. Kurzweil posits that convergent technological innovations will result in a super-intelligence; ultimately, humans will escape biology and mortality by being effectively “uploaded” into the computational cloud. Thrun and Norvig are both faculty members at Kurzweil’s Singularity University, a well-funded Silicon Valley research institute where artificial intelligence enthusiasts congregate. Not coincidentally, the founders of Coursera are also Stanford artificial intelligence researchers.

I want to celebrate the mental ability to feel the truth in conflicting ideas.