Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagTitanic

titanic-at-belfast-date-1912-stockpack-adobe-stock
Titanic at Belfast. Date: 1912

The Titanic: A Sobering Tale About the Fragility of Technological “Progress”

The hopes of the Enlightenment were tragically short lived
Much like the Titanic, and a bit like the Titan, so much was expected at the glorious launch of the experiment in human reasoning. Read More ›
titanic-at-belfast-date-1912-stockpack-adobe-stock
Titanic at Belfast. Date: 1912

The Titan and the Titanic: Bookends of Progressivism

Nature, despite all our technological innovations, remains extremely powerful

I read, with great sadness, of the wreck of the Titan. There were, undoubtedly, technical reasons why this submersible, carrying five human souls, broke up, lying now in the same graveyard as the Titanic. We pray that the impacted families might find peace in this moment—and in the coming times when lawsuits are filed, and horrible things are spoken about their loved ones. There is a great lesson to learn from this disaster—not the obvious lessons about the all-to-human failings of individual engineers or managers. The lesson we take from this should be broader. We should learn a lesson about man’s confidence in his own abilities, in our ability to overcome nature, and in a certain kind of progress. The Read More ›