If you want to understand trends in the history of global violence, look to data, not headlines, says Harvard psychology professor and linguist Steven Pinker. The news cycle will never be a good indicator of historical trends because no reporting occurs where problems aren't also occurring. "Because you never see a reporter standing outside a school saying, 'Here I am in front of Maplewood High School, which hasn't been shot up today,' or, 'here I am in the capital of Mozambique and there's no Civil War.'" So what does the data show?
24 December 2016
Motherboard: Information Won't Make Us Immortal
In the blogosphere, a curious notion is spreading and gaining momentum: namely, the idea that information is the new soul—a kind of Soul 2.0. Something over and above the nitty gritty of the brute matter. Something better. Information is taken to be something different from matter and yet real. This view is becoming the metaphysical undertone of many state-of-the-art technological breakthroughs and commonly-accepted opinions. The view has been propelled by flamboyant declarations of savants and entrepreneurs–the ubiquitous Elon Musk, the futurist Ray Kurzweil, bold entrepreneurs like Martine Rothblatt–let alone the impact of movies–from the classic Wachowski’s Matrix trilogy to the upcoming Rupert Sanders’ adaptation of Ghost in the Shell (2017)–and countless sci-fi novels. [...]
The philosopher Luciano Floridi suggests that we live in an infosphere made of information that is getting more real than the world of objects. Several philosophers have wondered whether the universe might ultimately be non-material—a notion recapped by John Archibald Wheeler’s motto “It from bit." [...]
It is only a sad irony that the number of serious injuries and deaths in which the victims gets either wounded or killed to take a selfie is increasing every year. The craving to upload ourselves into the collective and immaterial cloud is so strong that many individuals seem ready to risk their lives to do so. Yet, this is only the logical consequence of conceiving the digital version of themselves as important as the original, or maybe even more, since it will not decay and perish. The digital version of ourselves, a sort of digital version of Dorian Gray’s painting, will remain forever young and beautiful. In a sense, death-by-selfie could be seen as a form of proto-martyrdom to the dream of a fully digital self.
National Geographic: The Legality of Gender Change
Over a third of countries allow a gender change (to male, female, or another) on documents such as passports. Researchers have only begun to document this fast-changing legal topic.
Al Jazeera: UNSC to vote on ending Israeli settlement activity
The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on a draft resolution that would demand Israel "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem".
Egypt circulated the draft late on Wednesday and a vote was scheduled for 3pm (20:00 GMT) on Thursday.
Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and seen as major stumbling block to peace efforts as they are built on Palestinian land occupied by Israel. [...]
Trump has signalled that he would support Israel in a number of critical areas and not pressure it to engage in talks with the Palestinians.
Obama's administration, however, has been highly critical of Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In October, the US joined the European Union, the UN and Russia in calling for a halt to the settlements in a report released by the so-called diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East.
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