By Eva FrederickDec. 23, 2019 , 3:00 PM

One day in 2014, primatologist Yuko Hattori was trying to teach a mother chimpanzee in her lab to keep a beat. Hattori would play a repetitive piano note, and the chimp would attempt to tap out the rhythm on a small electronic keyboard in hopes of receiving a tasty piece of apple.

Everything went as expected in the experiment room, but in the next room over, something strange was happening. Another chimpanzee, the mothers son, heard the beat and began to sway his body back and forth, almost as if he were dancing. I was shocked, Hattori says. I was not aware that without any training or reward, a chimpanzee would spontaneously engage with the sound.

Hattori has now published her research showing that chimps respond to sounds, both rhythmic and random, by dancing.

This study is very thought-provoking, says Andrea Ravignani, a cognitive biologist at the Seal Rehabilitation and Research Centre who researches the evolution of rhythm, speech, and music. The work, she says, could shed light on the evolution of dancing in humans.

For their the study, Hattori and her colleague Masaki Tomonaga at Kyoto University played 2-minute clips of evenly spaced, repetitive piano tones (heard in the video above) to seven chimpanzees (three males and four females). On hearing the sound, the chimps started to groove, swaying back and forth and sometimes tapping their fingers or their feet to the beat or making howling singing sounds, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. All of the chimps showed at least a little bit of rhythmic movement, though the males spent much more time moving to the music than females.

To find out whether the animals were dancing to a specific beator whether any series of sounds would move themHattori singled out one chimp, Akira, who was an enthusiastic dancer on past trials. She and her colleagues tested Akira over a period of 24 days to see whether he would sway in response to random sounds as well as rhythmic beats. Unlike humans, Akira danced just as much on average when he heard a random sequence of sounds than when the sounds were lined up in a measured tempo, the team found.(Experiments testing for rhythmic responses in human babies show that people are much more likely to move in response to a sound when its rhythmic, like music, instead of random, like speech.)

The lab chimps lack of discrimination lines up with chimpanzees behavior in the wild, Hattori says. The animals are known to perform rain dances, swaying and strutting when they hear the random sound of raindrops falling in the forest. Movements in response to random natural sounds may be the beginning of the evolution of dance, Hattori says, with humans later narrowing the behavior to rhythmic sounds.

The matching of sound and movement, Ravignani says, was likely the most important event in the development of dance. One of the key differences between us and our closest living relatives might be that somewhere our evolutionary history, these two things got connected, he says.

Chimps and other animals likely began to make rhythmic sounds as a coping mechanism for loud and overwhelming stimuli in nature, Hattori speculates. Somewhere along the line, human ancestors probably developed an awareness of rhythms, and then began to match their body movements to the beat.

Other animals such as Snowball the cockatoo and some California sea lions have been observed bobbing their heads in time to music or beats. What makes the chimps different, Hattori says, is the fact that they do it spontaneously, with no reward offeredand that theyve been seen dancing in nature.

The study raises the idea that great apes are perhaps better living models for human ancestors than they have been acknowledged for, says Adriano Lameira, a primatologist and evolutionary psychologist at the University of Warwick. (Lameira himself has shown that chimpanzees have dance moves: He recently analyzed zoo chimps caught on camera in the midst of a conga line, although no music was playing in that case.)

But Lameira says the new study might not add much to the current understanding of the evolution of dance for a number of reasons. For instance, previous studies had already shown primates showing rhythmic displays, so although the new works reveals that the creatures dance in response to a few different kinds of sounds, the behavior itself is not entirely novel.

Lameira also notes the researchers use a loose definition of rhythmic. For the chimps in the study to exhibit a rhythmic behavior, they simply had to do the same action three times. Instead, he says, rhythm should be defined as a behavior that obeys a precise, strict tempo.

Originally posted here:
Dancing chimpanzees may reveal how humans started to boogie - Science Magazine

Last fall, UC Berkeley hosted Half Earth Day, a symposium to explore the idea of setting aside 50 percent of Earths lands and oceans for conserving biodiversity. The Half Earth concept was conceived by E.O. Wilson, the eminent biologist, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and noted myrmecologist (thats someone who studies ants). As Wilson wrote in the January/February 2016 edition of Sierra:

Only by committing half of the planet's surface to nature can we hope to save the immensity of life-forms that compose it. Unless humanity learns a great deal more about global biodiversity and moves quickly to protect it, we will soon lose most of the species composing life on Earth. The Half-Earth proposal offers a first, emergency solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: By setting aside half the planet in reserve, we can save the living part of the environment and achieve the stabilization required for our own survival.

The ambitious goalwhich Wilson calls a moonshothas galvanized conservationists. Many environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, are now calling for preserving 30 percent of wild nature by 2030 as a stepping stone toward the Half Earth goal.

On the eve of the UC Berkeley gathering, I got the opportunity to sit down with Professor Wilson at the Graduate Hotel in Berkeley. Heres part of our conversation.

*

Sierra: I'm curious what your feelings are about the reception of the Half Earth idea. Are you in any way surprised by how people have responded?

E.O. Wilson: I was surprised when it first was presented in my book, Half Earth, in 2016. At that time, I expected that it probably would get a lot of opposition and dismissal, for no other reason that it's just too muchtoo far, too fast. But when I arrived at the quadrennial meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in Honolulu, where I expected to receive either dismissal or a lot of objections and so on, I found almost universal enthusiasm.

What the book had done was just suggest that [the biodiversity crisis] was a big complicated problem that could be solved in one stroke. I called it a moonshot. Because conservation efforts around the world had consisted of targeted procedures to save a species here or there, or to save a habitat here or there. And the aggregate of all of this was supposed to be the protection that nature neededif [the procedures] were intense and wide enough to carry it through. But we knew even then, in 2016, that only about one-fifth of the species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red Listthat is, species in some immediate danger of going extincthad had the slide toward extinction slowed by all these efforts around the world. I think most of us realized that we were achieving many victories in a losing war. And now seemed appropriate, to me at least, that we go for a moonshot and try to see if we could do it all at once.

For folks who havent read the book, why half? Why not 35 percent or 65 percent? I mean, it's got a certain kind of equitable elegance to itfifty-fifty but why half from a biological or ecological standpoint?

I arrived at that figure partly for the reason that you just intimatedthat it's easy to remember. And half was, as it turns out, a hefty object to lift. But it would go far to solve the whole problem worldwide. In particular, from my theoretical measurements of what we knew about extinctions and the extinction process, [half] would be enough to save probably more than 80 percent of all the species on Earth, maybe 85. Now, when I arrived at this figure, I went back and thought about the theory that a young professor at Princeton University, Robert MacArthur, and I devised almost 50 years previously. I was a young professor at Harvard, and I decided to see if we could work out a projection of how area affects the numbers of species, because we were interested in what determines the variety of life on an islanda small island, a medium-sized island, and so on. And we recognized eventually that what we were doing applied to nature reserves as well.

This is the idea of island biogeography?

That is correctthe theory of island biogeography. And it has one result, which is immediately relevant at the present time. At this period, about 15 percent of the land has been put into reserves explicitly to try and protect the animal and plant species that are there, the biodiversity that is there. Fifteen percent of the land, and about seven and a half of the sea. (And that figure for the sea is, primarily, not open ocean but territorial waters.) So this 15 percent and seven and a half percentwhat would it do for us if we stuck with those figures? And it turns out that we would do much better than we thought we were doing [because of] the theory of island biogeography. That is based on the actual measurements that show that the number of species on an island (or in a reserve) increases as the fourth rootyou know, the fourth times to the figureof the area increases. If that is true, then saving about 10 percent of an area where you want to protect fauna and flora would allow you to save as much as 50 [of the species]. So then I started thinking, we need a moonshot. We need to do one big thing that people could get together on that would solve the problem. And I said to myself, well OK, how much should we be ready to really fight for? And it occurred to me that 80 percent or maybe 85 percent sounds pretty good. So, how much land would that be? Half.

What I'm hearing is that the Half Earth concept is, in a way, island biogeography scaled to an island that's floating in space.

Yeah, the figure of one-half came out of island biogeography. Actually, its more than just a guess. From databases, I knew that if we could save one-half of a given reserve, then we were somewhere in the vicinityat least a predictionthat 85 percent of the plants and animals would be saved.

Given that we're still pretty shy of the one-half goal, what needs to happen politically, globally to fulfill this vision? The numbers I'm hearing thrown around are trying to get to 30 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by the middle of this century. There's the political angle, and there's also the scientific angle. You've written about how little we know about the entire planet and all of its many inhabitants. Is there more research that needs to be done to also inform this?

Well, we have to start somewhere. I like to quote John Kennedy, when he announced that we were going to put a man on the moon in a decade. He did not say in his famous speech, We will, by the end of this decade, make significant progress toward putting a man on the moon and bring him home. He said, We will put a man on the moon and bring him back in by the end of this decade. So it was really important, in my mind, that we do a similar thing: We will put half of the surface of land that contains substantial amounts of native-born flora and fauna in reserve for nature. And keep it that way. And we will save the great majority of species on Earth.

When I look at the landscape of environmental politics, it seems to me that climate change sucks a lot of air out of the room. And yet there's this twin crisis of the extinction emergency. Do you sometimes get the sense that this other twin crisis is not getting as much attention?

Well, there is the possibility that our struggle to halt destructive climate change is going to make most of the people around the world very conscious of changes on the planetary level that need to be stopped, and species extinction is in that category. . . . Let me just suppose there are three great crises of the environment. What we will see soonit is on the horizonis a second great environmental crisis, and that's a shortage of freshwater. It's a shortage of freshwater that is rapidly growing, that's causing some of the most tragic humanitarian problems . . . in North Africa, and also in Central America, where climate change has destroyed a lot of the agriculture. A great many of the people who are hoping to come to this country are coming to basically avoid that problem. OK, that's a second great environmental crisis that we are now beginning to be aware of, and its going to get worse and worse.

And the third is the one that you and are seated here together to talk aboutand that is the mass species extinction. Even if you were to say, Well, we can do with fewer kinds of plants and animalsGod forbid we would ever take a position of indifference of that kindbut even if we did, then we would have to take into account the collapse of ecosystems. When you take out enough speciesparticularly the ones that we call the keystone species, the ones that have a big, positive impact on the rest of the ecosystemyou'll have a substantial possibility of seeing a complete collapse of the ecosystem. And then you have one of those irreversible impacts of human activity.

When you look at the literature, are there [species extinctions] that really keep you up at night? I'm thinking like the American chestnutsomething that so many other species depend on. Are there other species that you really worry about, or let's say a genus?

I specialize in ants, right? And believe it or not, there are species of ant that are endangered. And so I've mounted my own expeditions out of Harvard, to assess their status and to figure out how we can prevent these species from going extinct. One was in Sri Lanka. Ants that used to be dominant in the age of dinosaurs, they make up an entire family, the Aneuretinae.

I rediscovered them on the island of Sri Lanka and proposed what needs to be done to keep this ancient lineage alive. I also recently went to the country of Vanuatuused to be the New Hebrides, near the Solomon Islands in New Guineabecause it was there that a species of bull antsa big, hard stinging ant and the only species of that kind ever known outside of Australia, where the type is very commonhad been discovered on New Caledonia and then apparently disappeared around the 1880s. I mounted an expedition to find it on far-off Vanuatu just to make sure that something that interesting still might be saved. And we found it. And we prescribed what it needs to keep that alive.

Now, one species of ant on a place most people have never heard ofit's not exactly earthshaking. But the era that we have to create ahead of us is going to have to include action and research of that kind, in multiplicity. I mean, lots and lots of people involved in order to keep the whole planet and all the plants and animals in it. The role of each one could be important. We just haven't worked out what their importance might be. We should be able to save them long enough to understand them, and then find out howspecies by species and reserve by reservewe can hold on to them.

The fate of a single ant species on a single island, and the question of what is it good for, takes us back to your point about indifferencewhich is that we want to preserve these species, not just for their potential ecosystem services or their functions to us. They've got a right to exist in and of their own selves.

True. They are precious in themselves. And moreover, we need to study them all eventually, in order to understand how the living world works. We need case after case of the study of rare species, of common species, of species on the equator, species of the far Arctic. And we need to be constantly adding that knowledge and putting it together to determine where life came from, where we came from, and what we need to be preserving in order to make Earth a livable, habitable placea planet to be our home.

You're well known as being a synthetisttaking many different topics, themes, combining them. And youre also known as a great scientist in your own field of studying ants. This makes me think about your bookLetters to a Young Scientist. What's the push-pull between the microscopic view and the telescopic view?

That book, Letters to a Young Scientist, has in some ways been my most successful book, because, in part . . . well, let me put it this way: Its so American. The book could be titledHow to Be a Success in Science. It's a book that tends to challengealthough I don't do it very explicitly in the bookthe whole concept of STEM, which now dominates teaching. STEM: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

I'm very uneasy about telling young people who are enthusiastic about going into scientific studies and being part of the future of technology, telling them, Oh, to be a success and get that job, you need to go into science. Oh, and by the way, if you're going into science, and say, biology, especially, you're going to need chemistry. You gotta study chemistry. And while youre at it, says the STEM philosophy, to really understand the chemistry you need to remember that chemistry is based on physics. So plan on learning some physics; at least take a few courses of it. And while you're at it, I have to remind you that most sciences have a mathematical foundation. So don't be afraid of math. You've got to plunge in and learn some math. And once youve got all that stuff going, why, then you'll be ready to go on and become a junior scientist.

I think that's sort of the mood that we're creating now. And I'm against that vigorously. I think they got it backward. I think that kids should do the best they are able, and their mentors can help them to become scientists right away. And then as they develop enthusiasm, this would include, for example, going out and studying an ecosystem anywhere and finding out what species are there and what they're doing. Or going out and looking for a rare species of frog thats known to exist in the area. This is the kind of thing that gets kids going and excited. And once they get movinglike one who has been planted in front of a piano and so loves hammering those keys that in six months youve got to buy that kid a piano, and then give him or her the lessonthis student that you begin that way is going to believe you when you say, Well, now let's talk about what physics you need and what chemistry you need.

It seems to me that's equally applicable to the citizen scientists and the hobbyist naturalistsfollow your passion and the findings will come, the insights will come.

That's quite correct. There are so many people who find the greatest satisfaction in their lives to go out and enjoy nature. And as they do, become amateur field biologistslearning the birds, learning the frogs, learning the different species of flowering plants, and so on. This is a rapidly growing activity, of people brought back into science and enjoying every bit of it. And even contributing to science, by finding species, seeing the behavior of organismsbirds, for example, or grasshoppers or antsthat are very interesting. Then those findings get picked up by the active scientists.

You had boyhood experiences of being out in the woods, fishing, watching birds, and watching insects. Young people today have less of that access. This is really just musing, maybe we're way out on a limb here, lets say we accept your biophilia hypothesis that we've got this instinctive trait for an affinity for wild nature. As an increasingly urban species, what if there's an epigenetic on-off switch? You know, might this be a trait that could atrophy?

I'm not sure about that. Actually, we see in biophilia something like a true human instinct that's acquired and manifested following a period of learning. Actually, what we inherit as an instinct is a propensity to learn one thing and not another. So it's called program learning, gene culture co-evolutionthat phrase is the key to understanding the relationship between heredity and learning in human behavior.

For example, when we have a free range of options to follow, as a species, to select certain environments and surroundings, this leads automaticallydepending on the degree of freedom we have as to where we live and what our income is and so onto a propensity to select certain environments to live in. Experiments conducted around the world discovered that people choose to live in an environment that has the following traits:

Youre on a rise. You have behind you a wall, a cliff wall, or a dense forest. You're looking out over grassland, dotted with copses trees. In other words, you're looking out over a savanna. And you have your place of residence next to a body of waterall those things together. And that's what experiments have shown, thats what people around the world prefer, that combination. And this, of course, when we were evolving as a species, was what gave our very, very different distant ancestors more safety and comfortable living. To live a little on a rise, where we can see animals we will hunt and enemies coming. Grasslands where the big animals live, which provide a good deal of our food to the extent that were carnivorous. Then, of course, water. Water that provides not just living but transportation and food, particularly in times of drought and hardship on the land.

In terms of what were evolutionarily developed for, youve pointed out that species that work well togetherants and termites and humansare the species that have taken over the planet. And yet, our knack for cooperation also seems increasinglyaccording to a lot of metricsself-destructive. I'm wondering, what are the other kinds of evidence of cooperation that you see that leave you more hopeful?

[Long Pause] Thats a very interesting question. Let me just think. [Pause] What sort of cooperation do I see? Perhaps you could say intrinsic, to human instinctive behavior?

I would say all cooperation except war, or other forms of violent inter-group activity. I believe the evidence is quite strongand now we're about to get into another subject altogetherthat the human species, through the Australopithecines and first direct human progenitors, all the way through primitive forms of likeHomo erectus and the Neanderthals has been marked by an evolution that included, as a driving force, competition between groups. Competition of group against group, with cooperation constantly increasing as a result of the competition. Because groups that are more cooperative among the members have been, I believe, a driving force of evolution.

The way it can be expressed: Within groups, selfish members beat altruistic members. But altruistic groups beat groups of selfish members. And that is a driving force that I think has been extremely important in the formation of what we consider us. Its the best trait of the human species.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

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A Conversation With E.O. Wilson - Sierra Magazine

Its two days before Christmas, a bright and crisp day, and one can sense the world slowing down as people prepare for the holiday. Theres a casualness in the air, and people who dont even know one another exchange greetings.

In a second-floor office in the Chamberlain Block Building on Central Square in Keene, its still busy in the law office of Richard Guerriero. There are phone calls to be made, clients coming in for appointments and research tasks that must be completed for upcoming criminal cases.

Every case has little pieces to it, and preparation is all, doing the work is everything talking to everyone, reading everything, says the 59-year-old Guerriero, whose office windows look out upon the Cheshire County Courthouse, only a chip-shot away.

That vital preparation is why he often puts in 60-hour workweeks. There is no end to the work.

His office is expansive, with one large conference-room table loaded with pending-case files, and the large wall behind his desk festooned with framed credentials, no doubt reassuring to clients with whom he meets. Among them are his law degree from Louisiana State University, and bar membership certificates from the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals, before both of which hes tried cases. Theres also a certificate of membership to the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers.

Guerriero is a criminal trial defense lawyer, the type most often depicted in television shows or movies. Yet hes quick to point out that the dramatic Hollywood version of criminal law bears little resemblance to what actually occurs.

Its not like television or in novels; its a whole lot more complicated than that, he says. Rarely does it involve winning by some clever legal stroke.

Also, he says, the legal system works slowly and deliberately, sometimes achingly so for defendants in criminal cases, placing people in limbo.

He has been defending people charged with crimes since the time he earned his law degree and passed the Louisiana Bar at the age of 24. Hes been working as a defense attorney in New Hampshire since 1994.

I love practicing law because the right to counsel is the difference between justice and mob justice. A defendant must be protected against the mob and from the government. Im here to make sure the government follows the rules, he says.

I see people after theyve made the worst decision of their life. But theyre still human beings. And for their sake and ours, we have to treat them fairly.

Guerrieros long, winding road to where he is now begins in Baton Rouge, La., where he was raised, the eldest of four children, three of them sisters. After high school he enrolled at Louisiana State University in that city and graduated in three years, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with a bachelors degree in philosophy. He then enrolled in LSUs law school.

I hated my first year of law school. he admits. So, I quit.

That summer, though, he secured a job at a law firm consisting of defense attorneys in Baton Rouge. There, he was assigned research duties for pending criminal cases.

Once I got involved in real cases, it all made sense to me, he says. He changed his mind about law school, and re-enrolled. He worked three jobs to earn his tuition money and became a member of the Louisiana Law Review while there.

From 1984 to 1985, he clerked for Justice James Dennis at the Louisiana Supreme Court in New Orleans, who he says was his mentor, and the hardest working lawyer Ive ever known. Dennis is now a federal judge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

After the clerkship, he entered into private practice in Baton Rouge, where from 1985 to 1993 he had a general litigation practice, with most of his cases involving criminal defense.

Guerriero recalls his first time in court as a practicing attorney, in the criminal court division in Baton Rouge. I was nervous. A lawyer is constantly worrying about whether or not theyve thought about everything, he says, something that never goes away no matter how long an attorney has practiced.

He met his wife, Anne, in Baton Rouge, where she was working in the program Teach for America. She was moonlighting at the YMCA, and thats where we met. At the end of 1993, the couple moved to Boston because Anne wanted to return home to her native New England, and to enroll in graduate school at Boston College.

This was a big change for Richard, whod spent all of his life in Louisiana.

We first lived on Commonwealth Avenue, where everyone fought over parking spaces theyd carved out during snowstorms, he says. I remember the Boston Globe sponsored a contest to guess if the citys winter snowfall would be higher than Robert Parish, the 7-foot-tall Boston Celtic.

In 1994, Richard secured a job as an attorney at the N.H. Public Defender, a nonprofit law firm in Concord; its purpose to provide defense services to indigent citizens charged with federal and state crimes. Its the largest law firm in the state, employing 130 attorneys, and last year handled 27,866 cases from its 10 statewide offices.

He said that when he joined the firm, there were openings at several of the law firms offices, among them Keene.

We came to Keene, saw Main Street, ate at Timoleons and drove around the city. We loved it. His wife Anne eventually got a job as a math teacher at Keene Middle School, where she still works.

He began working at the firms Keene office, but later transferred to its Concord and Manchester offices. From 2000 to 2012, he was the firms litigation director. He served on a committee established by the N.H. Supreme Court to compile the N.H. Rules of Criminal Procedure, and served on the advisory committee for the United States District Court in Concord. In 2009 he received the N.H. Bar Foundations Frank Rowe Kenison Award for community service, named after the chief justice of the N.H. Supreme Court from 1952 to 1977. And, he was twice named Champion of Justice by the N.H. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Also, Guerriero is vice president of the N.H. Bar Association, slated to become president in 2021.

In 2013, he and a longtime colleague at N.H. Public Defender, Ted Lothstein, formed their own firm, Lothstein Guerriero, with offices in Keene and Concord, specializing in criminal cases throughout the state. I put 30,000 miles on my car a year, he says. We go to court a lot.

Also, unlike television, criminal defense attorneys rarely go before juries, most of the cases being negotiated through plea agreements. Were in front of juries maybe two or three times a year, he says. If everyone had a jury trial, the system would grind to a halt. Its not possible to have jury trials for everyone, or even wise.

His years defending those charged with crimes have given him many insights into both human behavior and the intricacies of the legal system. For example, he says that incarcerating those who are convicted often makes things much worse. Despite that, he recognizes that there are some evil people on this earth. Ive met them; I know there are some people who are so dangerous they cant live in society. Theyre rare, yet they should be treated fairly and humanely. But at a certain point, you have to protect people.

On the other hand, he says, most people are capable of changing their lives around. Not everyone, but most.

Guerriero also admits that people frequently lie and that many are unreliable.

All of us are limited by our perspectives, and we make assumptions when we make our decisions. Its hard to get to the truth even when everyone has good intentions, but truth is a pretty complicated and nuanced thing. Theres always more to a story.

Guerriero has, in the past, during his training of public defenders, used the case from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird to illustrate the complexity of the role of a public defender.

While the plight of the character Atticus Finch in the novel is complicated, Imagine being the court-appointed attorney for the character who spits on Atticus and later organizes the lynch mob that kills the defendant.

He says that the aim of criminal law is not simply to win, but to strive to see that defendants receive a fair result or negotiate a fair result.

In that regard, he claims that Cheshire County has an exemplary criminal justice system.

Were lucky in this county. Were very progressive with such things as the drug court and early-case resolution. He gives credit to County Prosecutor Chris McLaughlin, with whom he has a comfortable working relationship.

Guerriero says that he never tires of the tasks before him providing counsel to those who find themselves on the other side of the law, and cant imagine being retired, despite working as a defense attorney for 35 years.

This is what I love to do.

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'The right to counsel is the difference between justice and mob justice' - The Keene Sentinel

Sing, O Muse, of geeks in garages. Then tell of Big Technologys fall.

Somewhere an epic tale is taking shape, and it goes something like this: Once, we found ourselves in a garden of information. Facts would set the world free. But too late we discovered that rumor, falsehood, and molten hatred could course along the pathways meant for truth. Age-old human impulses proved as adaptable as cockroaches, and have planted their flag in our new digital utopia.

Heightened by misgivings over the 2016 election, the backlash against Big Technology is now in full swing. The coming year promises new efforts to hold it to account, as Congress considers antitrust action and privacy initiatives, and Americans fret over the misuse of their personal data.

Until our great epic arrives, the growing spate of books on the Internets dark side will have to do. In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff lays important groundwork, conceding that her exhaustive study is just an initial mapping of the terrain.

An emerita professor at Harvard Business School, Zuboff began studying the rise of surveillance capitalism (her coinage) in 2006. Today, her alarm is palpable. In her estimation, virtually all of us are now imprisoned in a digital cage. A new, unprecedented form of power has entered the world. Promising greater connection, it concentrates might among a small number of companies. These companies have not naturally advanced the world toward the democratization of knowledge; instead, their formidable power serves commercial ends, through the manipulation of human behavior. Americans caught in this Faustian snare can either be defensive or pretend nothing is happening, but they cannot escape. If Zuboff is right, only a new era of progressive reform can save us.

Like most writers on what Big Tech has wrought, she ponders its prime movers, describing their mind-set as radical indifference. In The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, Margaret OMara identifies an anti-authoritarian streak among the founders, tracing their mentality to post-Vietnam disillusionment. Her wonderfully accessible history of Big Technology spans 50-plus years, and brings home just how extraordinary the rise of the digital world has been.

As OMara notes, the key players combined disdain for authority with an entrepreneurial fervor. Both fell nicely into the political slipstream of the Reagan years. Yet as she also demonstrates, to a large but underappreciated extent, government aided the rise of Silicon Valley. By opening the Internet to commercial activity in the early 1990s, it provided a crucial foothold. As tech companies grew, politicians hung back from intervening, partly because they did not understand what they were regulating.

Big Tech was tightly controlled by a coterie whose heedless, white male ethos masqueraded as the free market. Nevertheless, OMara tends to give these titans the benefit of the doubt: Geeks caught up in designing cool stuff could not be expected to reckon with bad actors exploiting their creations.

Journalist Noam Cohen suggests, to the contrary, that todays tech billionaires have simply been masters at letting themselves off the hook. If anything unites them, it is their shared belief in their own benevolence. In The Know-it-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball, Cohen presents a digital-age rogues gallery.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and others figure in a set of interlinked portraits illustrating how Big Techs disruptive dream darkened, infecting the world with a libertarian outlook that has been great for winners but destructive for almost everyone else. Amid Cohens hard-nosed cast is Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, still evidently resentful toward his upbringing in small-town Wisconsin. Cohen wonders, not altogether facetiously, whether the world is being made to answer for Andreessens years of chopping wood and suffering through gym class.

New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz presents the Big Tech players as, primarily, naive optimists. In Anti-social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, he probes the destructive forces unleashed by their creations.

For years, online social networks have been used to promote a white nationalist agenda. Intrigued, Marantz entered the world of right-wing extremists and returned a changed man. While outlets such as Twitter and Facebook have begun to crack down, their overlords still seek cover in a First-Amendment absolutism.

The most disheartening aspect of Marantzs journey may be the fierce animosity toward mainstream news organizations he encountered along the way. Thanks partly to algorithms that tap into high arousal emotions, we seem locked in an inane contest between globalist elites and the real Americans. Marantz has turned into a reluctant institutionalist, defending the role of traditional media in what may be an emerging form of conservatism. In the meantime, he and others are creating a vital chronicle of an unprecedented era.

M.J. Andersen is an author and journalist who writes frequently on the arts.

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A boom, a backlash, and a reckoning with Big Tech - The Boston Globe

December 23, 2019

Its not easy being teen. Negative images of adolescents populate the media and are associated withwords like moody, selfish, impulsive, disrespectful and even dangerous. Suicide rates among teens and young adults have reached their highest point in nearly two decades.

Adolescence is a particularly malleable time for mental and social development. Gaining a better understanding of the teenage brain and behavior can make this time an opportunity, rather than a calamity. In their recently published book, "Wildhood: The Epic Journey from Adolescence to Adulthood in Humans and Other Animals," authors Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and science journalist Kathryn Bowers reach across species to help us explore the teenage brain. Download Full Image

In their recently published book, "Wildhood: The Epic Journey from Adolescence to Adulthood in Humans and Other Animals,"authors Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and science journalist Kathryn Bowers reach across species to help us explore the teenage brain.

Natterson-Horowitz will visit Arizona State University on Thursday, Jan. 16, to share her insights with anyone who is curious about teenage behavior. Free and open to the public, the event will take begin at 5:30 p.m. at theBiodesign Instituteauditorium.

Natterson-Horowitz is an evolutionary biologist and a visiting professor in the Department of HumanEvolutionary BiologyatHarvard University. She is also acardiologistand professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology atUniversity of California, Los Angeles.She is a New York Times bestselling author of the book "Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing,"co-authored with Bowers.Her new book makes the case for a species-spanning approach to research that includes veterinary and evolutionary perspectives.

Before reading 'Wildhood,' I had no idea that adolescence was ubiquitous in the animal world. 'Wildhood'is an extremely innovative work of science and communication that brings together so many different fields to better understand human adolescence, said Athena Aktipis, director of the ASU Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative and co-lead of theArizona Cancer Evolution Center. Aktipis is also a professor atASU Department of Psychology.

According to the Washington Post, the authors make clear that, in a fundamental sense, adolescent animals and teen humans encounter the same sorts of challenges and that what may strike elders of any species as nutty, exasperating behavior is not only inevitable for most creatures in that stage of development but truly valuable.

Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers write, The same four universal challenges are faced by every adolescent human and animal on earth: how to be safe; how to navigate hierarchy; how to court potential mates; and how to feed oneself. Safety. Status. Sex. Self-reliance. How human and animal adolescents and young adults confront the challenges of wildhood shapes their adult destinies.

Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers tell a story of the California sea otter. One specific kind (of otter) joyrides into the death zone, and its not the mature adults. Its certainly not the baby pups. No, the magnificent knuckleheads that swim into the cold, barren, shark-filled Triangle of Death are adolescents. Sometimes they die in a flash of teeth and a swirl of blood. But more often than not, these thrill-seeking animal 'teens' emerge with hard-won experience, newfound confidence and more sea smarts than they had as parent-protected, dependent juveniles.

Human "adolescents frequently put themselves in danger deliberately," Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers write, adding: "Adolescent risk-taking is seen throughout the animal world."

Natterson-Horowitzs visit is sponsored by the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center at ASU, funded last year with $10.8 million from the National Cancer Institute.

The goal of the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center aligns with Natterson-Horowitzs work in that the research team applies evolutionary and ecological models to cancer biology in an effort toadvance the fundamental understanding of cancer and its clinical management. Led by Carlo Maley, the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center team has studied how cancer evolves in whales, elephants and other animals. Ultimately, their end goal is to surface new ways to prevent and treat cancer. Maley is also an associate professor in the School of Life Sciences.

Barbara Natterson-Horowitzs work looking across species to learn about health, disease and behavior is really pushing the boundaries of medicine, Maley said. Her work is also inspiring for the kind of work we do at the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center, learning about cancer from studying patterns of cancer across species.

For more information, contactCristina.Baciu@asu.edu.

Written by Dianne Price

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Cliques, binges and bullies: What animals tell us about teen behavior - Arizona State University

Lots of comments on my column supporting giving to beggars. I wrote the column expecting that I might produce only one or two notes of agreement, but my heart was lifted by the number of soft-hearted readers who, like me, give to beggars. Of course, there were a few like this one from W...

In this day and age your answer was absolutely wrong! Enabling begging, alcohol and drug addicts exacerbates the problem!

Many of these people will not accept help from shelters because their addiction is more important to them! By funding their habit, you are making their circumstances worse.

Encourage people to give generously to shelters and organizations that assist the homeless. This is the Christian thing to do!

I respect that point of view, but I disagree with it. In our broken world, it is almost always the case that we cannot change the big things but can have an impact on little things. As Mother Teresa wrote, God does not call us to do great things. God calls us to do small things with great love. Amen.

The following notes lifted my heart and convinced me that many people are doing small things with great love...

(From K)

I read your piece on giving to the homeless. So many people have the same questions in our church. So now we have prepared snack bags that have a short blessing attached. When we see homeless people, we hand them a bag and they are always appreciative. My husband and I have always felt that any money we give no matter where is given in Gods name and no longer belongs to us and we dont question how its used.

(From J in New York)

I have worked in NYC for the past 38 years. I too had a dilemma about giving to the less fortunate. I finally realized that I was in a better place than those who asked for a handout. I then made sure that I always had a couple of singles in my pocket and would give to anyone who asked. Or I would put a couple of granola bars in my pocket and distribute them. If there was someone I saw on a regular basis, I would ask if there was anything I could get them. Usually they would ask for personal hygiene items. If I ever saw tube socks for sale, I would also give them out. The bottom line is that God, for whatever I did, has granted me and my family a very comfortable life. Thank you very much for this article, if only more people felt this way and not make assumptions, we would be a better society.

(From N)

I believe that most homeless people fall into two categories people with mental health problems and those who fell into homelessness because of circumstances. I fell into the latter category and without the help of friends and family I would have been living on the street. I agree with you saying not to judge others, assuming they are druggies or scammers. Most of these people are down on their luck and, as you said, who in their right mind would want to beg just to survive? It must be humiliating. I thank God every day for being here with me through the good and especially the bad things in life.

(M from Gainesville, FL)

I thank you for the reply you wrote regarding giving money to beggars. I would like to add one thing: I sometimes see someone who is asking for handouts accompanied by a dog. Rather than just give money, I prefer picking up a small package of dog food to give them. They always accept it with a smile. One even said that he was sure that his friend would share it with him!

And my favorite response that came from B...

I read your column often and often feel lifted up and given water by a greater soul than mine. I have traveled a lot and far these past six-plus decades. I have seen the beggars, the homeless, the needy, the liars, the helpless, the drug addicts, the lost, the hopeless, the lonely, the predators, the starving, the thieves, the spiritually bereft, the seekers, the musicians, the broken. This I avow to you. That every one of those descriptions of human behavior I have been and done! I give to anyone broken. I give that lousy dollar. Not to feel better about me. THEY are me! Greater souls than mine have pointed out that divinity is in the shadows of human action. My last gasp is a quote from you Great changes come from small change. I thank you with fondness and am looking forward.

Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including Religion for Dummies, co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman.

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GOD SQUAD: Reader responses to giving to the homeless - New Haven Register

Here we are in the last column before the odometer rolls over to mark another year. The past year has been notable for reasons both personal and otherwise. Ill begin with the first.

Its not the years, its the mileage, said Indiana Jones via the pen of Michigans own Lawrence Kasdan. In truth, I put a lot of mileage on this foul rag and bone shop of the heart during the past six decades, eventually suffering a relatively minor heart attack only weeks before my 60th birthday.

That was the downside of this momentous year. The upside was becoming a grandfather for the very first time and witnessing the publication of another daughters significantly researched first book. Im immensely proud of my offspring, and both indeed are worthy of a fathers adulation specifically and objective praise in general.

For reasons unknown, the Worlds Most Beautiful Woman has asked me to refrain from effusively praising her sheer awesomeness. Suffice it to say, each year spent by her side seems to get better and better.

Outside my immediate sphere, the world continues to spin. Acquaintances, family members, friends, and old classmates shuffled off the mortal coil, flourished or maintained their course.

Never before this year have I witnessed more the mercurial temperament of the cosmos. Likewise, never before have I embraced more the birthday lines of Dylan Thomas: Four elements and five senses/And man a spirit in love. Ahh, but I do go on!

Just as Thomas indicated in his lifes last completed work, faith has a peculiar way of returning with a vengeance, if thats the correct word. Faith as a child is easy, faith as an adult requires some heavy lifting. But once the muscles of faith are exercised and developed, it becomes once again second or even first nature.

Henceforth most everything seems a blessing. Faith awakened, it spins its morning of praise persistently and perpetually while coloring reality in the radiant hues of Gods limitless palette.

Sometimes, the coloring is inside the lines, my friends. Humankind explores and adds to its repository of knowledge regarding the natural world. After millennia of practice, were still repeating the same mistakes and following blind alleys, however. Unfortunately, were imperfectible human beings too often succumbing to easy solutions or clever machinations resulting in unforeseen consequences.

Other times, the colors leak outside the prescribed lines of what can be interpreted as normal into the supernatural and metaphysical. In this realm, a temporal utopia is recognized as impossible and human nature fatally flawed yet still kissed by the Divine.

For the time being, at least; the past century has witnessed a surge in movements led by those too clever by half. For them, religion was interpreted as inconvenient to their immediate agendas, disparaged as an opiate in their attempts to elevate half-understood science and crackpot theories.

While it is true some Christian religions have veered from the path of righteousness in pursuit of earthly glory in hellish ways, the secular obeisance to human institutions has resulted in dramatically worse the past 100 years. In fact, theres no legitimate comparison to be made.

The willing retreat of Christian faith from the public square or the forced banishment thereof in service of the separation of some invented church-and-state, either/or balderdash has provided to a large degree diminishing cultural returns from art and politics to society and human behavior.

When we aspire to a heaven on earth rather than aim to attain a berth in an eternal heaven, we forfeit the necessity to act properly in the moment and often instead embrace an ends-justify-the-means credo.

No government on earth can deliver on utopian promises, nor can any human. To paraphrase rock sage Pete Townshend, You gotta have faith in something bigger.

Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a Morning Sun columnist and Midwest Regional Editor for The Center Square.

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Column: This year's last column | Opinion - The Morning Sun

I grew up studying the architectural drawings on the back pages of The Register-Guard in Florence, Oregon. Later, I graduated from Southern Oregon University where I was in the first class to graduate with a bachelor's of science in environmental science with geography and economic honors. I've lived most of my life in various rural Oregon communities. I have a master's degree from Cornell University in planning. I studied geographic information systems and predicted the rise of Google Maps in my thesis.

Family has brought me to Portland, and during this time I have gotten to know the Rose Quarter Freeway Widening Project. My children are slated to attend Harriet Tubman when they reach middle school. I also was in a cargo bike crash at the Rose Quarter. When I see a problem I want to solve it. This area is a puzzle of rivers, street cars, bridges and people. As a former sub-contractor for Oregon Department of Transportation, I took it upon myself to figure out a solution, for the kids.

As you know, Portland's freeways are congested most parts of the day. There are no easy solutions. Building more roads leads to more congestion and Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector keep rising with every additional freeway lane. This phenomenon is called "induced demand" and, in short, the more connections in a system the slower it goes. This is observed on the freeway network from downtown Portland to downtown Vancouver, there are too many interchanges too close together with outdated merging patterns and safety features.

At the Rose Quarter where I-84 and I-5 converge is where ODOT has been pushing an additional auxiliary lane to ease congestion and increase fluidity. Its project proposal was put out for an environmental assessment consultation in the spring of 2019. The analysis for greenhouse gas emissions used false data (predicted vs. surveyed). The National Environmental Protection Act process utilized auxiliary lane loopholes generally applied in rural areas and comes with a heavy price tag. Five hundred million dollars from House Bill 2017 has been earmarked for this project. Eighty-nine percent of Portland region comments rejected the freeway widening proposal.

We can't afford another freeway boondoggle like the Columbia River fiasco in 2014. This was the source data that was used for the Rose Quarter. It's wrong! The outsized interchanges of the Columbia River Crossing proposal had an additional $1 billion price on top of the actual CRC bridge proposal. Interchanges add to congestion, they don't solve it. Traffic models are notoriously bad for modeling human behavior in slow-merging patterns. That's why models never predict congestion. This is common knowledge in traffic modeling circles. It's common sense.

We need a mature network-based approach to managing the freeways for high-priority vehicles like freight and buses. State Sen. Lee Beyer's (D-Springfield) 100% environmental scorecard with the Oregon League of Conservation Voters belies the harm he has done to our urban transport network in Portland.

I urge you to contact Beyer and ask him to do a better job and respect the National Environmental Protection Act protection for vulnerable and minority populations. The Rose Quarter Freeway Widening deserves a full environmental impact statement, which would allow climate activists a chance to find high-capacity solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Please consider your vote for Beyer a vote for more increases in transport related greenhouse gas emissions.

For the last eight years, Beyer has been on, or chaired, the highest transportation committees in Oregon. In Portland alone, we have experienced more than 45 traffic fatalities in the last year. This is traffic violence on a regional scale for Portlanders, a situation that is unknown to most rural Oregon residents. Kids, elderly and the disabled are harmed the most. I've watched Beyer on these committees and he doesn't seem to care.

Maybe he's too busy with other committees to realize he is no longer fit to be offering transport planning advice to Portland commuters.

Roberta Robles was a GIS NEPA consultant for ODOT Bridge Replacement program 2003-05 and continued as freight and transport planner in New Zealand for four years. She is from the rocky Oregon Coast where the Siuslaw River meets the long white dunes.

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Guest View: Beyer must step up on transportation - The Register-Guard

Share on PinterestHaving a plan in place to deal with tense topics can help you avoid conflict at your next holiday gathering. Getty Images

While the idea of all things jolly during the holidays is comforting, the reality of getting together with friends and family can sometimes include figuring out how to navigate less-joyful topics of conversation.

With the current divisive political climate, this season may be particularly packed with tense talk at your next gathering potentially putting a damper on your holiday celebration.

The problem, especially when we talk about politics, is that people take it so personally. They make part of their identity the political ideology or the person. So if you so strongly identify with the president of the United States, and someone says something bad about him, then you feel like youre being attacked personally, Patrick Wanis, PhD, a human behavior expert, told Healthline.

If you identify with a particular political ideology and someone attacks that, then you feel like youre being attacked personally, he added.

However, for some people, spirited talks are healthy if they involve a dialogue where both people are genuinely interested in understanding the others position rather than trying to get them to buy into theirs, said Karen Ruskin, PsyD, a relationship and human behavior expert in Gilbert, Arizona.

If youre trying to sell your perspective, then that creates disharmony and discomfort and friction and misunderstanding and not feeling like your voice is heard, Dr. Ruskin told Healthline.

She explained that the political debate between family and friends is not just about politics.

It becomes about feeling not understood and not heard and when we as humans dont feel understood and heard, especially by the people we care about most it hurts us. Thats why talking about something that can be such [a] difference of opinion can be harmful for the relationship, Ruskin said.

However, the following tips may be able to help you navigate difficult conversations that crop up at your next holiday gathering:

Jacob Z. Goldsmith, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, said that while it takes practice, setting boundaries is the best way to navigate difficult conversations.

People think of boundaries as inherently problematic, as if the healthiest relationships would be ones with no boundaries. Healthy relationships definitely involve boundary setting. If someone is unwilling to respect your boundaries, its a really good sign that thats not a healthy relationship, Dr. Goldsmith told Healthline.

He advised people think of setting boundaries in terms of communicating with and managing people.

Ideally, we want to communicate with people. We want to say, I love you and we need to stop talking about this right now or Im happy to have a conversation about this, not at the dinner table in front of everyone else. Lets have a cup of coffee tomorrow and hash this out,' Goldsmith said.

Telling those in the discussion that youre overwhelmed and need to take a time out is another communication approach he recommended.

If communicating doesnt work, going into management mode is needed, which involves leaving the table during a heated discussion or not attending a family gathering to avoid a person.

Ill acknowledge that in some families thats necessary, if you have a really toxic family member. But the first choice is to openly communicate, said Goldsmith.

Dr. Wanis said the biggest sign that boundaries have been crossed is when personal attacks are made.

Its fine if people debate passionately about something they believe in. The problem isnt when its conflict, its the type of conflict and its when conflict becomes a personal attack, he said.

Other signs that a conversation should end include:

If setting boundaries is difficult around a person who intentionally pushes your buttons, Wanis said recognizing the reason why the person aims to argue with you can be helpful.

He explained the following are usually the main reasons why:

Once you understand their motivation, Wanis said it can be easier to not react to their provocations.

Its learning to detach yourself from an outcome. If you want this person to approve or validate [you] then they have control over you, he said.

You hear the words and you dont react because you dont have to prove anything, he continued. The moment you believe you have to prove something or that you have to convince someone of something is when youre going to get yourself in trouble.

Wanis pointed out that another strategy is to ask questions.

Say, Why do you like President Trump so much? or Why do you not like President Trump so much? And if you are just willing to listen, not only will you learn something, but you might learn something about the person and might get a greater insight into their core values, and you might realize they are probably not that different than you, he said.

If you need to change the subject, he advised saying something along the lines of, If President Trump bothers you so much, dont think about him. And then ask the person to tell you about what theyre most passionate about in life to change the subject.

When youre the host, so much goes into making sure your guests feel comfortable and welcome. If you anticipate heated discussions at your party, here are a few ways to set the tone:

Include a simple statement on the invitation, such as, To ensure a fun time is had by all, please respect that there will be no political discussions.

If you want to allow the discussion, Wanis says to set the ground rules and tell your guests upfront, Im happy for you all to be at my table, and to discuss and debate, but the moment there is a personal attack on someone, I will ask you to leave,' he said.

If its a dynamic going on within the family or with friends, then there is humor and seriousness to this. Put a sign on your front door that says, Leave the attitude at home,' Ruskin said.

If you know theres someone who tends to be really provocative, talk to them ahead of time or pull that person aside when they arrive and tell them to leave the politics, religion, and other hot topics aside.

Its harder when there is a power dynamic, so if youre a young adult and hosting and its your parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle, you may not feel comfortable pulling that person aside and saying, Hey, you tend to antagonize people when you talk about politics, so then you need to tell someone else to [speak with them]. If its a grandparent, ask a parent to talk to them, Goldsmith said.

If you want to avoid sitting around and talking all night, Ruskin said its a good idea to plan activities or games throughout the night.

Pace the games, too. Maybe plan a game before the meal to set the tone, and after the meal to [break up dinner conversations], she said.

If theres a topic you want to discuss with family and friends over the holidays, Goldsmith said to prepare your thoughts and know when its time to stop talking.

Before the holidays, think about what your [goal is], because if you want to have a difficult conversation you cant just jump into it particularly after everyone has had two or three drinks in the middle of Christmas dinner. Its going to feel like a gotcha moment and the alcohol doesnt help, he said.

Goldsmith suggests asking yourself how you want to feel at the end of the talk. Avoid going into the talk with the goal of convincing people to think or believe a certain way.

When you think about it that way, you are able to take radical responsibility for your own behavior and own experience. Doing that allows you to insert a pause where youre not just impulsively or reactively jumping in, but rather moving in a mindful and committed way, he said.

Once you share your thoughts, be prepared to listen and be empathic of what other people are saying even if you dont agree.

The hallmark of really deep conversation is empathic listening, which doesnt mean you have to agree, but that you have to step into the other persons shoes long enough to understand how and why they feel what they feel, Goldsmith said.

When we experience tension, we experience tension emotionally and physiologically because theyre connected, Ruskin explained.

We dont compartmentalize our emotions and our brains from our body, she said.

For instance, if youre feeling angry or anxious about a dialogue, your body goes into fight-or-flight mode.

Your heart rate will go up and if your heart starts to pound, the brain thinks, Alert. Something is wrong, because the brain doesnt know the distinct difference between why the heart rate [is increasing], it just thinks theres a problem, and now the brain isnt as calm as it was because youre not getting as much oxygen to the brain [when] youre feeling tense, Ruskin said.

Goldsmith agreed, noting that research shows being under enormous amounts of stress has both physical and mental side effects.

However, he said, theres a balance because being able to express yourself with loved ones has mental health benefits, too.

Many people dont feel mentally healthy when they are holding inside a lot of things. Its important for a lot of people to feel close to their family and the holidays are a time for a lot of people to get their one shot at getting a break being away from work and relaxing for a little while, so to have that taken away if there is tension can feel really lousy, he said.

In the short term, its more stressful to talk about this stuff, but in the long term it can feel way better to develop relationships in which you can actually talk about these things, Goldsmith said.

Cathy Cassata is a freelance writer who specializes in stories around health, mental health, and human behavior. She has a knack for writing with emotion and connecting with readers in an insightful and engaging way. Read more of her work here.

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Impeachment, Politics, and Keeping the Peace at Holiday Gatherings - Healthline

Chanukah is generally presented as a commemoration of a landmark victory for religious freedom and human liberty in ancient times. Big mistake. Chanukahs greatest triumph is still to comethe victory of the human soul over artificial intelligence.

Jewish holidays are far more than memories of things that happened in the distant pastthey are live events taking place right now, in the ever-present. As we recite on Chanukahs parallel celebration, Purim, These days will be remembered and done in every generation. The Arizal explains: When they are remembered, they reenact themselves.

And indeed, the battle of the Maccabees is an ongoing battle, oneThe battle of the Maccabees is an ongoing battle embedded deep within the fabric of our society. embedded deep within the fabric of our society, one that requires constant vigilance lest it sweep away the foundations of human liberty. It is the struggle between the limitations of the mind and the infinite expanse that lies beyond the minds restrictive boxes, between perception and truth, between the apparent and the transcendental, between reason and revelation, between the mundane and the divine.

Today, as AI development rapidly accelerates, we may be participants in yet a deeper formalization of society, the struggle between man and machine.

Let me explain what I mean by the formalization of society. Formalization is something the manager within us embraces, and something the incendiary, creative spark within that manager defies. Its why many bright kids dont do well in school, why our most brilliant, original minds are often pushed aside for promotions while the survivors who follow the book climb high, why ingenuity is lost in big corporations, and why so many of us are debilitated by migraines. Its also a force that bars anything transcendental or divine from public dialogue.

Formalization is the strangulation of life by reduction to standard formulas. ScientistsFormalization is the strangulation of life by reduction to standard formulas. reduce all change to calculus, sociologists reduce human behavior to statistics, AI technologists reduce intelligence to algorithms. Thats all very usefulbut it is no longer reality. Reality is not reducible, because the only true model of reality is reality itself. And what else is reality but the divine, mysterious and wondrous space in which humans live?

Formalization denies that truth. To reduce is useful, to formalize is to kill.

Formalization happens in a mechanized society because automation demands that we state explicitly the rules by which we work and then set them in silicon. It reduces thought to executable algorithms; behaviors to procedures, ideas to formulas. Thats fantastic because it potentially liberates us warm, living human beings from repetitive tasks that can be performed by cold, lifeless mechanisms so we may spend more time on those activities that no algorithm or formula could perform.

Potentially. The default, however, without deliberate intervention, is the edifice complex.

The edifice complex is what takes place when we create a device, institution or any other formal structurean edificeto more efficiently execute some mandate. That edifice then develops a mandate of its ownthe mandate to preserve itself by the most expedient means. And then, just as in the complex it sounds like, The Edifice Inc., with its new mandate, turns around and suffocates to deathThe Edifice Inc., with its new mandate, turns around and suffocates to death the original mandate for which it was created. the original mandate for which it was created.

Think of public education. Think of many of our religious institutions and much of our government policy. But also think of the general direction that industrialization and mechanization has led us since the Industrial Revolution took off 200 years ago.

Its an ironic formula. Ever since Adam named the animals and harnessed fire, humans have built tools and machines to empower themselves, to increase their dominion over their environment. And, yes, in many ways we have managed to increase the quality of our lives. But in many other ways, we have enslaved ourselves to our own servantsto the formalities of those machines, factories, assembly lines, cost projections, policies, etc. We have coerced ourselves into ignoring the natural rhythms of human life, the natural bonds and covenants of human community, the spectrum of variation across human character and our natural tolerance to that wide deviance, all to conform to those tight formalities our own machinery demands in the name of efficacy.

In his personal notes in the summer of 1944, having barely escaped from occupied France, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson of righteous memory, described a world torn by a war between two ideologiesbetween those for whom the individual was nothing more than a cog in the machinery of the state, and those who understood that there can be no benefit to the state by trampling the rights of any individual. The second ideologythat held by the western Alliesis, the Rebbe noted, a Torah one: If the enemy says, give us one of you, or we will kill you all! declared the sages of the Talmud, Not one soul shall be deliberately surrendered to its death.

Basically, the life of the individual is equal to the whole. Go make an algorithm from that. The math doesntThe life of the individual is equal to the whole. Go make an algorithm from that. The math doesnt work. work. Try to generalize it. You cant. It will generate what logicians call a deductive explosion. Yet it summarizes a truth essential to the sustainability of human life on this planetas that world war demonstrated with nightmarish poignance.

That war continued into the Cold War. It presses on today with the rising economic dominance of the Communist Party of China.

In the world of consumer technology, total dominance of The Big Machine was averted when a small group of individuals pressed forward against the tide by advancing the human-centered digital technology we now take for granted. But yet another round is coming, and it rides on the seductive belief that AI can do its best job by adding yet another layer of formalization to all societys tasks.

Dont believe that for a minute. The telos of technology is to enhance human life, not to restrict it; to provide human beings with tools and devices, not to render them as such.

Technologys ultimate purpose will come in a time of which Maimonides writes, when the occupation of the entire world will be only to know the divine. AI can certainly assist us in attaining that era and living itas long as we remain its masters and do not surrender our dignity as human beings. And that is the next great battle of humanity.

To win this battle, we need once again only a small army, but an army armed with more than vision. They must be people with faith. Faith in the divine spark within the human being. For that is what underpins the security of the modern world.

Pundits will tell you that our modern world is secular. Dont believe them. They will tell you that religion is not taught in American public schools. Its a lie. Western society is sustained on the basis of a foundational, religious belief: that all human beings are equal. Thats a statement withAll human beings are equal. Thats a statement of faith. no empirical or rational support. Because it is neither. It is a statement of faith. Subliminally, it means: The value of a single human life cannot be measured.

In other words, every human life is divine.

No, we dont say those words; there is no class in school discussing our divine image. Yet it is a tacit, unspoken belief. Western society is a church without walls, a religion whose dogmas are never spoken, yet guarded jealously, mostly by those who understand them the least. Pull out that belief from between the bricks and the entire edifice collapses to the ground.

It is also a ubiquitous theme in Jewish practice. As Ive written elsewhere, leading a Jewish way of life in the modern era is an outright rebellion against the materialist reductionism of a formalized society.

We liberate ourselves from interaction with our machines once a week, on Shabbat, and rise to an entirely human world of thought, prayer, meditation, learning, songs, and good company. We insist on making every instance of food consumption into a spiritual, even mystical event, by eating kosherWe liberate ourselves from interaction with our machines once a week. and saying blessings before and after. We celebrate and empower the individual through our insistence that every Jew must study and enter the discussion of the hows and whys of Jewish practice. And on Chanukah, we insist that every Jew must create light and increase that light each day; that none of us can rely on any grand institution to do so in our proxy.

Because each of us is an entire world, as our sages state in the Mishnah, Every person must say, On my account, the world was created.

This is what the battle of Chanukah is telling us. The flame of the menorah, that is the human soul The human soul is a candle of Gd. The war-machine of Antiochus upon elephants with heavy armorthat is the rule of formalization and expedience coming to suffocate the flame. The Maccabee rebels are a small group of visionaries, those who believe there is more to heaven and earth than all science and technology can contain, more to the human soul than any algorithm can grind out, more to life than efficacy.

How starkly poignant it is indeed that practicing, religious Jews were by far the most recalcitrant group in the Hellenist world of the Greeks and Romans.

Artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for good, but only when wielded by those who embrace a reality beyond reason. And it is that transcendence that Torah preserves within us. Perhaps all of Torah and its mitzvahs were given for this, the final battle of humankind.

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Chanukah and the Battle of Artificial Intelligence - The Ultimate Victory of the Human Being - Chabad.org