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Every few months you have an explanation for everything amiss in your life, especially pertaining to technology. Mercury in retrograde has became the default explanation of what's wrong with our world. One astrology-based consultant lists what not to do when this cosmic trickster is dancing in reverse: Don't start a new job. Don't close a deal. Avoid traveling. Don't buy anything.
Such astrological theorizing is the New Age equivalent to conspiracy theorists that believe Obama is coming for their guns: stock up on rations, barricade your doors and hide in the dark. Certainly this sort of advice is extreme, however; there must be something to astrology, right?
Interestingly, Mercury's retrograde is an illusion. The planet's rotation slows down and gives the appearance of moving backwards, while in reality it's still soldiering on, just at a slower speed. This optical trick is a perfect metaphor for what astrology does to our brains: it gives order to a seemingly random universe. That doesn't meant it's real, however.
The last time Mercury was messing with us, I noticed two different Facebook friends discussing recent break-ups. At the moment I was in a heart-wrenching tussle myself; it seemed so gratifying to assign the blame to a distant nemesis in the sky. Yet I also observed that three other friends started relationships and were quite happy. While the above consultant might wag his finger I realized that I was simply gravitating towards others in the same state of mind I was in. Ignoring conflicting evidence is making other people's lives a part of my reality, not accepting that things are always in flux, planets be damned.
While most people (I know) who read daily horoscopes treat them as nothing more than cute fodder, others are more manipulative (and manipulated). A music producer friend, for example, missed getting a record deal with a Hawaiian singer not because he wasn't qualified, but because the artist consulted a planetary map and decided he could not step into a studio that month. People's imaginary yearnings often have real economic, emotional and social consequences.
Matthew Remski's recent article on his time practicing Vedic astrology put this neurological trend into perspective. As he writes,
Astrology's confluence of romance, intuition, nostalgic longing and archetype-driven poetry is so not worth the epistemological bullshit it costs. At best, it is a rich engine for psychic exploration. At worst, it capitalizes upon every cognitive bias we have to serve magical thinking and the power imbalances of unacknowledged projection and transference. Between these two extremes, it provides thin gruel for a burning world.
Human beings are by nature reactive. If we were proactive animals, global warming, for one, would not be a contested topic today. A broader range of Americans would be taking steps to counteract the trend. It's a paralyzing conundrum: those who believe in an invisible deity responsible for the planet's well-being refuse to 'believe' that our planet is getting warmer because they cannot 'see' it. How can we really pick the invisible things we don't believe in, or worse, only give faith to those for which there is absolutely no evidence of?
Such is the same in astrological idealizing. We pick out trends that fit our narrative only after they've occurred. Then we write them into the story. False guestimates are forgotten, or excused as some further plot destined by the stars. A Vedic astrologer might help you pick the 'best date' for your wedding, but if the marriage dissolves into a divorce, well, that too becomes part of the 'plan.'
Our ancestors developed pattern recognition as a survival technique. An ear at one end of the bush and tail at the other meant run. If you planted a seed in spring, then by fall you'd harvest the bounty. Today our planet rarely demands of us such pressing needs, and so that cognitive trend is exploited by charlatans using clichéd rhetoric to neatly knit the fabric of existence to tell a story we want to be told.
After suffering my first heartbreak in my early twenties, I consulted one such astrologer-psychic to make sense of my life. I knew going in the advertised ten-dollar charge would not hold. She needed the night to consult her dreams after looking over my chart, which of course cost $125. I begrudgingly ran to the ATM in hopes that an answer would magically appear in her somnolent inbox.
I returned the next day to find out that someone was trying to manipulate me. Who was it, she asked? No one. I had no enemies at the time of my life, a trend I try my best to maintain. There must be someone, she replied. Nope. Ok, in any case, she was going to give me a series of baths that I must take for the next six nights to rid myself of that dark karma I'd been carrying. Total cost: $700.
Even if I had the money at the time in my life, I would not have paid. This is certainly at the more extreme end of astrologically-inclined moneymaking, but the entire system does everything it can to remove us from being present with our situation. Instead of dealing with our own insecurities, fears and uncertainties, we turn to the cosmos for a reason. And there is certainly no dearth of folk ready to offer one up.
Perhaps the best response I've heard to this mindset was given by actor/writer Seth Macfarlane last week. Having discussed the random nature of the universe in his new show, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Maher asked him how he replies when someone says to him, 'You know, everything happens for a reason.' Without missing a beat, Macfarlane replied, "This was not the coffee that I ordered."
Image: Jule Berlin/shutterstock.com
What early US presidents looked like, according to AI-generated images
"Deepfakes" and "cheap fakes" are becoming strikingly convincing — even ones generated on freely available apps.
Abraham Lincoln, George Washington
- A writer named Magdalene Visaggio recently used FaceApp and Airbrush to generate convincing portraits of early U.S. presidents.
- "Deepfake" technology has improved drastically in recent years, and some countries are already experiencing how it can weaponized for political purposes.
- It's currently unknown whether it'll be possible to develop technology that can quickly and accurately determine whether a given video is real or fake.
The future of deepfakes
<p>In 2018, Gabon's president Ali Bongo had been out of the country for months receiving medical treatment. After Bongo hadn't been seen in public for months, rumors began swirling about his condition. Some suggested Bongo might even be dead. In response, Bongo's administration released a video that seemed to show the president addressing the nation.</p><p>But the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=324528215059254" target="_blank">video</a> is strange, appearing choppy and blurry in parts. After political opponents declared the video to be a deepfake, Gabon's military attempted an unsuccessful coup. What's striking about the story is that, to this day, experts in the field of deepfakes can't conclusively verify whether the video was real. </p><p>The uncertainty and confusion generated by deepfakes poses a "global problem," according to a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/is-seeing-still-believing-the-deepfake-challenge-to-truth-in-politics/#cancel" target="_blank">2020 report from The Brookings Institution</a>. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense released some of the first tools able to successfully detect deepfake videos. The problem, however, is that deepfake technology keeps improving, meaning forensic approaches may forever be one step behind the most sophisticated forms of deepfakes. </p><p>As the 2020 report noted, even if the private sector or governments create technology to identify deepfakes, they will:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"...operate more slowly than the generation of these fakes, allowing false representations to dominate the media landscape for days or even weeks. "A lie can go halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on," warns David Doermann, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Buffalo. And if defensive methods yield results short of certainty, as many will, technology companies will be hesitant to label the likely misrepresentations as fakes."</p>The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a number of new behaviours into daily routines, like physical distancing, mask-wearing and hand sanitizing. Meanwhile, many old behaviours such as attending events, eating out and seeing friends have been put on hold.
VR experiments manipulate how people feel about coffee
A new study looks at how images of coffee's origins affect the perception of its premiumness and quality.
Expert drinking coffee while wearing a VR headset.
- Images can affect how people perceive the quality of a product.
- In a new study, researchers show using virtual reality that images of farms positively influence the subjects' experience of coffee.
- The results provide insights on the psychology and power of marketing.
Is empathy always good?
Research has shown how important empathy is to relationships, but there are limits to its power.
