Month: December 2024

But now we have a word for it – for outputs driven by metrics and features divorced from the reality they are meant to capture – slop.

— Read on bradleyrobb.net/notes/183/

The best available model of such an event is an ultrasecret 1983 Pentagon war game called Proud Prophet. That game was a nuclear test of sorts, and it provided critical lessons that remain crucial today. It was unique in that by design it was largely unscripted, involved the highest levels of the U.S. military and its global warfighting commands and used actual communication channels, doctrines and secret war plans. One of its great strengths was that unlike any other war game involving the possibility of small-yield nuclear weapons, it ran freely and was allowed to play out to its natural conclusion: global devastation.

— Read on www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/magazine/nuclear-strategy-proud-prophet.html

The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein.

— Read on www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/us-culture-moral-education-formation/674765/