The gleanings

“We have been outsourcing our intelligence, and our humanity, to machines for centuries.  They have long been faster, bigger, tougher, more deadly.  Now they are much quicker at calculation and infinitely more adept at memory than we have ever been.  And so now we decide that memory and calculation are not really part of mind.  It’s not just that we move the goalposts; we mock the machines’ touchdowns as they spike the ball.  We place the communicative element of language above the propositional and argumentative element, not because it matters more but because it’s all that’s left to us.” — Adam Gopnik, “Get Smart”