Arts

A fantastically interesting hypothesis on the development of consciousness: The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. A taste:

Julian Jaynes proposes a radical answer to these questions: until a few thousand years ago human beings did not ‘view themselves’. They did not have the ability: they had no introspection and no concept of ‘self’ that they could reflect upon. In other words: they had no subjective consciousness. Jaynes calls their mental world the bicameral mind. It is a mind with two chambers, the mind that is divided in a god part and a human part. The human part heard voices and experienced these as coming from gods. These gods were no judging, moral or transcendent gods, but were more like each person's personal problem solvers. They were hallucinated voices that provided the answers when a person entered a stressful situation which couldn't be solved by routine.
On a different note: Stormtroopers twerking. Could it get any better?
I've also been enjoying Big Boi's Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors. Goes a little sideways in places, but by and large, a pretty good album.

Tech

Eugene Wallingford on one reason we need computer programs, to bridge the gap between theory and data. Programming a solution forces a codification of how we handle edge cases, missing values, etc.