Disqus - Latest Comments for lukelea

Re: It’s ‘racially harmful’ to reform grade inflation at Harvard, student petition argues

Luke Lea — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 14:27:50 -0000

At Reed College back in the 1960's, when it was still a truly outstanding liberal arts college, grades were given but not divulged (though one could request them after graduation). This led to a kind of collegiality among students: we were all trying to learn, not competing for grades.

Re: AI is changing the World Of Theoretical Physics, Fast

Luke Lea — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 19:53:04 -0000

I wish I had more confidence in her.

Re: The Misuses of the University

Luke Lea — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:02:31 -0000

For the hard sciences, the research university concept makes sense, including the PhD. For the liberal arts, not so much. The former are principally concerned with discovering new truths, the latter with teaching old ones.

As a society, we are in danger of forgetting that a culture--any culture--that is not transmitted from one generation to the next will quickly disappear. This includes the liberal ideals that undergird our liberal institutions. It's happening on college campuses all across America.

University boards need to be reminded that all cultures, including our own, are highly perishable things and should never be taken for granted.

Re: Microsoft team creates ‘revolutionary’ data-storage system that lasts for millennia

Luke Lea — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 18:35:50 -0000

Finally, catching up with the Sumerians!

Re: George Johnson – The Whistling Coon – 1891 (The first recording by an African-American)

Luke Lea — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 20:09:09 -0000

The lyrics would be nice to have.

Re: What Prediction Feels Like: From Thermodynamics to Mind

Luke Lea — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 20:52:22 -0000

You make a good argument. How about physical pain? I have a hard time believing machines can be made to feel. Or should I forget about machines and just think about people (and animals)?

Re: What Prediction Feels Like: From Thermodynamics to Mind

Luke Lea — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:19:37 -0000

Pretty good. What about embarassment?

Re: What Prediction Feels Like: From Thermodynamics to Mind

Luke Lea — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 14:44:57 -0000

It is an interesting hypothesis I admit. How would it account for extreme physical pain, the most primitive human experience, even if only experienced for a brief period of time? Or extreme depression to the point that you wish you were dead? The experience of ecstasy? Of falling in love? A sexual orgasm? Jealousy? The grief of losing a child? The range of human emotions and feelings is so vast. A pin prick? Being tickled? Embarrassment? Isn't the physical ability to move also required? I am thinking of machines here, AI in particular. I'll read your piece again.

Re: What Prediction Feels Like: From Thermodynamics to Mind

Luke Lea — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:05:24 -0000

A fun discussion I admit. The way entropy gives rise to order is especially interesting. I just listened to a fascinating discussion (AI generated it turns out) on that very topic which I think readers might enjoy, including the author of this piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD5awvYQlaM
As for the rest, it's impossible to know. Maybe nature is already conscious and the laws governing physics are what they are because it feels good. I talk about that here: https://shorturl.at/Irp6g

Re: By 2030, the World Will Be Unrecognizable

Luke Lea — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:39:13 -0000

Especially if generative video AI becomes ubiquitous.

Re: The “Hard Problem Of Consciousness” Is Actually Easy

Luke Lea — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:36:58 -0000

The hard problem of consciousness is actually easy. We just are.

Re: Socialism in One City: The ultimate test for Mamdani’s vision will be successful governance—and so far, it appears to be working

Luke Lea — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:23:41 -0000

I like the so-far part.

Re: A computational parallel to collective intelligence in human groups

Luke Lea — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:18:27 -0000

"Through quantitative analysis and mechanistic interpretability methods applied to reasoning traces, we find that reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 and QwQ-32B exhibit much greater perspective diversity than instruction-tuned models, activating broader conflict between heterogeneous personality- and expertise-related features during reasoning."

I bet that clunkhead sentence wasn't written by AI.

Re: Perceptions

Luke Lea — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:15:49 -0000

Cabbage

Re: What were the first animals?

Luke Lea — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 15:23:36 -0000

I vote for the one with nerves and the ability to move.

Re: Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei Debate the World After AGI

Luke Lea — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:40:34 -0000

Here's a good alternative take by someone with no skin in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI7XknJJC5Q

Re: What Are 2D Particles?

Luke Lea — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:34:34 -0000

I always worry if I feel like I can understand an explanation of theoretical particle physics, especially if written by a philosopher. Wilczek would be more believable.

Re: No White Men Need Apply

Luke Lea — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 18:05:39 -0000

Rufo is writing about handing our government contracts, not loans.

Re: After AI

Luke Lea — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 21:33:52 -0000

They've drunk their own cool aid. Never bet against the law of diminishing returns.

Re: has modern neuroscience proved Freud right?

Luke Lea — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 21:27:34 -0000

True, for the first half of the 20th century Freudianism was the climate, but climates change..

Re: The Left’s Deafening Silence on Iran

Luke Lea — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:18:02 -0000

Very revealing. Here is the concluding paragraph from another piece on the same topic:

"Today, as Iranians flood the streets in defiance of a regime that has for decades enforced gender apartheid, the absence of support among Western feminist movements is striking. There is no sustained appetite for solidarity with Iranian women confronting totalitarian clerics. The conclusion is difficult to avoid. The principles these movements claim to uphold are not universal commitments but conditional postures, activated selectively and suspended when they collide with a preferred political narrative. What remains is not feminism as a commitment to women’s rights, but feminism as alignment. And it is precisely this substitution of principle for affiliation that the Iranian feminists of the late 1970s warned against."

https://sjhyde.substack.com/p/iranian-feminists-versus-foucault?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2123039&post_id=184416605&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2sd5o&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Re: How Tech Titans Can Ease AI Anxieties

Luke Lea — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 12:18:34 -0000

My fear is that those who are long on future AI are deluded, that these outsized investments in new data centers will not generate the kinds of revenues required to justify them, leading to widespread bankruptcies, a financial crisis, and worst of all a gigantic waste of capital resources which cannot easily be repurposed.

Re: Where does a liberal go from here?

Luke Lea — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:07:19 -0000

That's a very good question. They could, if they chose, outflank the Republicans on both immigration enforcement (national ID) and trade. I still own the domain bornagaindemocrats.com

Re: Susan Sontag: A Critic at the Crossroads of Culture

Luke Lea — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 17:56:54 -0000

She was a horrible woman.

Re: Politics today is driven by grievances that can never be assuaged

Luke Lea — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 20:37:08 -0000

Before reading, I naively assumed that this article was going to be about the politics of grievance on the left, of which there is more than a little.