1. I came across this Sagan quote from The Demon-Haunted World the other day:
“Let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
2. From writer Ted Chiang, a really insightful piece on Silicon Valley and unfettered avarice: Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear
“I used to find it odd that these hypothetical AIs were supposed to be smart enough to solve problems that no human could, yet they were incapable of doing something most every adult has done: taking a step back and asking whether their current course of action is really a good idea. Then I realized that we are already surrounded by machines that demonstrate a complete lack of insight, we just call them corporations. Corporations don’t operate autonomously, of course, and the humans in charge of them are presumably capable of insight, but capitalism doesn’t reward them for using it. On the contrary, capitalism actively erodes this capacity in people by demanding that they replace their own judgment of what ‘good’ means with ‘whatever the market decides.’ “