Interesting articles, videos and other tidbits from around the web.
In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom made an ingenious argument that we might be living in a computer simulation created by a more advanced civilization. He argued that if you believe that our civilization will one day run many sophisticated simulations concerning its ancestors, then you should believe that we’re probably in an ancestor simulation right now. His reasoning? If people eventually develop simulation technology — no matter how long that takes — and if they’re interested in creating simulations of their ancestors, then simulated people with experiences just like ours will vastly outnumber unsimulated people.
Nick Bostrom is the author of Superintelligence. (Check out Tim Urban’s take on it for Wait but Why.)
He makes a compelling argument with, again, grave consequences.
How a simple rice cooker uses the physical properties of water and magnets to cook perfect rice.
My day was completely ruined yesterday when I stumbled upon a fun fact that absolutely obliterated my mind. I saw this tweet yesterday that said that not everyone has an internal monologue in their head. All my life, I could hear my voice in my head and speak in full sentences as if I was talking out loud. I thought everyone experienced this, so I did not believe that it could be true at that time.
When World War 2 started, the Civil War felt as far away to Americans as WW2 feels to us now.
Also, remember when Jurassic Park, The Lion King, and Forrest Gump came out in theaters? Closer to the moon landing than today.
Many incredibly fascinating facts.
Andy Grove passed away the same day that Apple announced the iPhone SE. One of Grove’s best decisions reminds me of this launch.
Apple’s Phil Schiller explains how Apple has perfected its attention to detail over time, and how it manifests in products like the new MacBook.
Booze, Sex, and the Dark Art of Dealmaking in China
A collaboration between a Stanford ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet.
Panos Athanasopoulos says bilinguals view the world in different ways depending on the specific language they are operating in.
How Xi Jinping took control of China.
Meg Jay for The New York Times:
Sliding into cohabitation wouldn’t be a problem if sliding out were as easy. But it isn’t. Too often, young adults enter into what they imagine will be low-cost, low-risk living situations only to find themselves unable to get out months, even years, later.
Study shows that modern hunter-gatherer tribes operate on egalitarian basis, suggesting inequality was an aberration that came with the advent of agriculture