Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · 9d

Miten löytää iloa ja turvaa epävarmoina ja pelottavina aikoina? Tästä aiheesta kävin sunnuntaina keskustelemassa Ilkka Lahden kanssa TV1:n Sunnuntai-ohjelmassa. Oma osuuteni alkaa 32.00 kohdasta. Vastasin muun muassa kysymykseen "Mikä on sinun oma missiosi?"
areena.yle.fi/1-72847864

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · 12d

Also, I can now refer to my book as "featured on CBS"! 😀

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · 12d

Why is Finland so happy? @cbsnews.com travelled to Finland to find out. I took them to Oodi library and Carita Harju took them to sauna, to get to the heart of the matter. Besides well-functioning institutions, we discussed sense of contentment with what you have:
www.cbsnews.com/video/why-is...

Why is Finland so happy?

For its eighth consecutive year, Finland topped the list of happiest countries in the world, according to an annual report published by the University of Oxford in partnership with Gallup and the U.N....

www.cbsnews.com

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · 15d

Is the World Happiness Report bullsh*t? Professor Yascha Mounk made this provocative claim and Futucast asked us to debate the issue. Despite starting from the opposite sides, I think we ended up finding quite much common ground:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlcP...

Is the World Happiness Report bullsh*t? | Yascha Mounk & Frank Martela #537

YouTube video by Futucast

www.youtube.com

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · 20d

Praise to comedians! They do a vital job of ridiculing those in power, exposing any double standards and empty promises. Democracy dies without laughter. That’s why would-be authoritarian leaders are so eager to silence the comedians - their power pose can’t withstand it being poked with ridicule.

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Reposted by Frank Martela

George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 21d

History rhymes a bit too well sometimes.

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Jacek Debiec, MD, PhD, DPhil 🌎 🧠 @drjacekdebiec.bsky.social · 25d

"Taking drastic measures against AI in higher education is..about creating the conditions necessary for young people to learn to read, write, and think, which is to say, the conditions necessary for modern civilization to continue to reproduce itself"
#AcademicSky
www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

The Question All Colleges Should Ask Themselves About AI

How far are they willing to go to limit its harms?

www.theatlantic.com

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Reposted by Frank Martela

Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 25d

Some personal news:

I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting.

Thread incoming.

substack.com/@karenattiah...

The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced.

I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.

substack.com

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The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · Sep 7

We might be “experiencing an AI bubble,” Rogé Karma argues. “If that bubble bursts, it could put the dot-com crash to shame—and the tech giants and their Silicon Valley backers won’t be the only ones who suffer.”

Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?

The entire U.S. economy is being propped up by the promise of productivity gains that seem very far from materializing.

bit.ly

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 22

"On Saturday evenings, when the rest of the family is already asleep, I end up watching a two-minute video clip featuring Jim Carrey embarrassingly often."
I wrote about Jim, existentialism and the art of being born for the third time:
"The fact that nothing really matters can be highly liberating."

Jim Carrey and the art of being born for the third time – Existentialism explained

How a brief moment on the Fashion Week red carpet revealed the futility of existence and a way out

frankmartela.substack.com

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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · Aug 20

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. ... History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
―Orwell, 1984

Trump says the Smithsonian focuses too much on 'how bad slavery was'

A White House official told NBC News that Trump plans to expand his review of museums beyond the Smithsonian, which is based in Washington, D.C.

www.nbcnews.com

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 7

Kirjoitin tekoälystä asiantuntijatyössä:
"Tekoäly saattaa lisätä asiantuntijatehtävien laatueroja: He, jotka ovat jo valmiiksi osaavimpia pystyvät erottamaan tekoälyn tarjoamista syötteistä jyvät akanoista. Keskinkertaiset tekijät tekevät tekoälyn avulla yhtä keskinkertaista jälkeä kuin aiemminkin."

Luovat loikkaavat, keskinkertaiset kompuroivat? Frank Martela: näin ihmiset pesevät vielä tekoälyn

Tutkija Frank Martela kertoo, missä työtehtävissä tekoäly auttaa parhaiten ja mitkä taidot tekevät edelleen ihmisistä korvaamattomia.

duunitori.fi

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 6

Eight decades: That seems to be the time it took to forget the horrors of WWII, and for leaders to start rip apart the institutions that were meant to ensure that it would happen ”never again.”

Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · Aug 5

We are losing the last of the generation who understand just how evil actual fascism is, how hard it is to rid the world of authoritarian governments once they’re established, and how hard it is to build a successful alternative. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/what-we-lo...

What We Lost When We Lost the Greatest Generation

It's no coincidence that democracy is backsliding in the US exactly eighty years after the end of World War II.

www.doomsdayscenario.co

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 3

“History is best told as a story of organised crime,” Kemp says. “It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 3

“Kemp calls the final Goliath fuel “caged land”, meaning places where oceans, rivers, deserts and mountains meant people could not simply migrate away from rising tyrants. Early Egyptians, trapped between the Red Sea and the Nile, fell prey to the pharaohs, for example.”

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 3

“The second Goliath fuel is weaponry monopolised by one group. Bronze swords and axes were far superior to stone and wooden axes, and the first Goliaths in Mesopotamia followed their development, he says.”

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 3

“Goliath states do not simply emerge as dominant cliques that loot surplus food and resources, he argues, but need three specific types of “Goliath fuel”. The first is a particular type of surplus food: grain. That can be “seen, stolen and stored”, Kemp says, unlike perishable foods.”

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 3

”Kemp uses the term Goliaths to describe kingdoms and empires, meaning a society built on domination, such as the Roman empire: state over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave and men over women. Goliaths began in the bronze age, were steeped in violence and often surprisingly fragile.”

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Aug 3

I definitely need to read Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp that “covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies.”
“People are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.”

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

www.theguardian.com

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Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz.bsky.social · Jul 21

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Jun 17

Israel has stopped pretending that they are targeting Hamas, while killing civilians:
”Almost all the casualties in Gaza in recent days have been linked to the delivery of aid rather than Israeli strikes on Hamas targets.”

www.bbc.com/news/article...

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · Jun 5

In my latest post, I explain why having high self-esteem is "like shoulder pads and mullet haircuts. Big in the 1980s, but all the hype feels a bit embarrassing nowadays."
We should focus on another distinction: that between needy and stable self-esteem:
frankmartela.substack.com/p/untangle-y...

Untangle your self-esteem: It's not low vs. high but needy vs. stable

Introducing 4 steps to get from needy self-esteem to stable self-esteem

frankmartela.substack.com

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · May 30

"Think of happiness more like a thermometer and less like a goal. When the temperature drops, you don’t manifest warmth or suppress the cold. You put on a coat."

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · May 30

The post explains why you should use happiness as a tool similarly to a thermometer: "Happiness is an inbuilt system in your brain that gives you emotional signals about things to avoid and things to seek out. But don’t focus on the tool when it is the environment that needs to be changed."

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Frank Martela @frankmartela.bsky.social · May 30

So you want to be happy? Don’t. Happiness is just a thermometer - Don’t waste your time chasing it.

To celebrate the publication of my new book, Stop Chasing Happiness – A Pessimist’s Guide to a Good Life, I created a series of Substack posts covering themes from the book.

Read the first here:

Happiness is just a thermometer - Don’t waste your time chasing it

Pursuit of happiness can make us less happy. It is time to rethink how to approach happiness.

open.substack.com

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