Here is a piece by author Jonah Lehrer talking about how machines that seem less like machines and more like beings endears them to us. These mistaken perceptions of agency can dramatically change our response to the machine. When we see the device as having a few human attributes, we start treating it like a [...]

Errol Morris has the first part of an article up on the New York Times Opinionator page discussing “unknown unknowns,” beginning with the story of a bank robber who was too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber. Wheeler had walked into two Pittsburgh banks and attempted to rob them [...]