Nautilus Magazine: Atheism, the Computer Model

Or so says the Pew Research Religious Landscape Study, which in 2015 found that almost a quarter of Americans profess no religious affiliation. Within that group, a third do not believe in God or a higher power of any sort (“nothing in particular,” as the study termed it). Both numbers are up from a similar study in 2007, when 16 percent of the country professed no religious affiliation, and 22 percent of these did not believe in God. Driving the growth are Millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000. As they come of age, 70 percent of them say they do not believe in a higher power.

Pew expects the percent of religious Americans will continue to fall. It suggests older generations will die off and take their belief with them. Outside the U.S., a WIN/Gallup International poll found that more than half of Vietnamese, Koreans, and French people say they are atheists or not affiliated with a religion. For the Japanese and Germans, it’s more than 60 percent, and for the Dutch and British, two-thirds. Certainly, belief in nothing has market momentum. [...]

The idea of trying to model the impact of something as complex as religion in civilization was interesting to Saikou Y. Diallo, research associate professor at VMASC, in part because of the challenge of coming up with ways to model things that are qualitative, like emotions or beliefs. “Obviously, feeling emotion and such cannot be simulated, so we’re not going to attempt to do feelings and emotions,” Diallo says. “We’re going to model theories about why people feel the way they feel, look for explanations of why those feelings occur, not those feelings themselves.” [...]

Religion doesn’t create the shift from Abel to Cain, from nomadic shepherd to town-centered farmer. But it smooths out the transition, Wildman says. It makes early towns more likely to succeed. In part, that’s because religion demands unorthodox behaviors, rituals, appearing at worship services. These show who is willing to participate and who is not, which might help eliminate what economists call the free-rider problem, people who take the benefits of society without contributing to it. Those who won’t perform the rituals can be cast out, or shunned. Meanwhile, shared beliefs soften what Wildman calls “the hatred of being watched by strangers.” Religion mattered in how communities formed, Wildman says. We often think of religion as divisive, forgetting it plays an important role in bringing different people together.

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The Intercept: Her Father Championed Jewish Refugees. She Finances the Anti-Muslim Refugee Movement.

Rosenwald is the founder, president, and primary benefactor of the Gatestone Institute, one of the loudest groups agitating against Muslim migration. Her foundation has also generously funded far-right voices that have opposed accepting refugees, including Robert Spencer of the blog Jihad Watch; Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim activist known for spreading anti-Muslim conspiracies so far-fetched he was banned from CPAC, the popular conservative convention; and Zuhdi Jasser, a controversial Muslim pundit who argued that President Donald Trump has not done enough in vetting Muslim migrants. [...]

But Gatestone Institute has no illusions about the religious motivations behind the ban. “Muslims need to know that the world does indeed have a justifiable and legitimate concern about Islam and actions done in the name of Islam by Muslims,” wrote Nonie Darwish, explaining her support of the executive order, in a piece for the Gatestone Institute. [...]

Rosenwald’s family philanthropy goes back to her grandfather, Julius, who founded Sears and went on to spend his wealth to save Jewish families from pogroms in Russia and on schools for African-American children in the South. Her father, William, served as president of the United Jewish Appeal, the Joint Distribution Committee, and founded the National Refugee Service, touring the country to raise funds for resettling Jews fleeing Nazi terror in Europe. William was a committed supporter of Israel. That advocacy dovetails with his daughter’s current work as a supporter of pro-Israel organizations such as AIPAC.

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Bloomberg: Facebook Plans to Rewire Your Life. Be Afraid

A Danish experiment in 2015, involving people weaned from Facebook for a week and a control group that kept using it, showed that people on the social network are 55 percent more likely to feel stressed; one of the sources of that stress is envy of the glossified lives reported by other users. Users' well-being, research has showed, only tends to increase when they have meaningful interactions -- such as long message exchanges -- with those who are already close to them. [...]

Bragging in his new manifesto, Zuckerberg writes: "In recent campaigns around the world -- from India and Indonesia across Europe to the United States -- we've seen the candidate with the largest and most engaged following on Facebook usually wins." In the Netherlands today, liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte's page has 17,527 likes; that of fiery nationalist Geert Wilders, 174,188. In France, rationalist Emmanuel Macron has 165,850 likes, while far-right Marine Le Pen boasts 1.2 million. Helping them win is hardly something that would make Zuckerberg, a liberal, proud -- but, with his algorithmic interference in what people can see on his network, he has created a powerful tool for populists. [...]

Zuckerberg casts Facebook as a global community that needs better policing, governance, nudging toward better social practices. He's willing to allow some democracy and "referendums," but the company will make the ultimate decision on the types of content people should see based on their behavior on Facebook. Ultimately, this kind of social engineering affects people's moods and behaviors. It can drive them toward commercial interactions or stimulate giving to good causes but it can also spill out into the real world in more troubling ways. 

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The Guardian: 'Forest cities': the radical plan to save China from air pollution

The Chinese equivalent – Boeri’s first in Asia – will be composed of two neighbouring towers coated with 23 species of tree and more than 2,500 cascading shrubs. The structures will reportedly house offices, a 247-room luxury hotel, a museum and even a green architecture school, and are currently under construction, set for completion next year.

But Boeri now has even bolder plans for China: to create entire “forest cities” in a country that has become synonymous with environmental degradation and smog.

“We have been asked to design an entire city where you don’t only have one tall building but you have 100 or 200 buildings of different sizes, all with trees and plants on the facades,” Boeri told the Guardian. “We are working very seriously on designing all the different buildings. I think they will start to build at the end of this year. By 2020 we could imagine having the first forest city in China.”

Boeri described his “vertical forest” concept as the architectural equivalent of a skin graft, a targeted intervention designed to bring new life to a small corner of China’s polluted urban sprawl. His Milan-based practice claimed the buildings would suck 25 tons of carbon dioxide from Nanjing’s air each year and produce about 60 kg of oxygen every day.

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The New York Times: Fake News, Fake Ukrainians: How a Group of Russians Tilted a Dutch Vote

It is unclear whether the Ukrainian team was directed by Russia or if it was acting out of shared sympathies, and Mr. Van Bommel said he never checked their identities. But Europe’s political establishment, already rattled by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the election of President Trump in the United States, is worried that the Netherlands referendum could foreshadow what is to come. [...]

Norway announced this month that Russia-linked hackers had attacked government ministries and a political party. Britain’s defense minister has accused Moscow of “weaponizing disinformation.” German, French and Italian officials have also accused Russia-linked partisans of meddling.

The Netherlands is holding its own national elections on March 15, and domestic intelligence officials say that foreign countries, notably Russia, have tried hundreds of times in recent months to penetrate the computers of government agencies and businesses. Volkskrant, a Dutch newspaper, reported last week that the same two Russian hacking groups that pilfered emails from the Democratic National Committee were among those targeting the Netherlands. [...]

No one has yet come up with concrete evidence that the Russian state, rather than individual Russians, is working to skew the election, and many wonder why Moscow would even bother trying to do so in a small country with none of the geopolitical heft of the United States or Germany. But Mr. de Jong said the referendum last year showed that “a little effort goes a long way” and could help “destroy the European Union from inside.”

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