![]() ![]() The Axial Age was when agricultural and economic advances provided a burst of energy: upwards of 20,000 calories per person per day in food, fodder, fuel, and raw materials. «It was not an aura of spirituality that descended on the planet but something more prosaic: energy capture. But as information-processing systems become more sophisticated-as their representations of the world become richer, their goals are arranged into hierarchies of subgoals within subgoals, and their actions for attaining the goals become more diverse and less predictable-it starts to look like hominid chauvinism to insist that they don’t.» (22) ![]() ![]() «Of course it’s natural to thin twice about whether your cell phone truly “knows” a favorite number, your GPS is really “figuring out” the best route home, and your Roomba is genuinely “trying” to clean the floor. «This book is my attempt to restate the ideals of the Enlightenment in the language and concepts of the 21st century.» (5) Chapter 2: Entro, evo, info What follows are the passages I highlighted in my copy of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (New York, 2018). ![]()
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