From AI to abortion, the scientific failure to understand consciousness harms the nation

Scientific gaps have become political and ethical ones

The recent July 4th holiday was expressed in a burst of Americana, in which I happily partook, along with a brief obligatory national cohesion. But it felt forced, for this nation of mine is bulging at the edges, straining to contain all its different and incompatible worldviews. I am unsure that, in the last decades of living memory, there have ever been such fundamental differences between how people want to live their life, and what they envision for the future of the country. My hope is, of course, that this is a merely a local peak of tension, which will soon fade away (perhaps it…

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