It's interesting to think about how the culture around AI can also loosely be considered as coalescing between these two camps. But the camp who are the descendants of Leavis, if we can call them that, includes many scientists who (before AI) would have agreed with Snow.
> He sees these scientists as strong men, willing to wrestle with the tragedy of existence by increasing the amount of happiness in the world. That struggle makes them optimists.
Kind of off topic, but anyone finds the "Subscribe to the newsletter" jarring?
You're in the middle of a read and suddenly you get this annoying interruption. It makes me feel like the article is no longer worth it.
You're there, trying to build all the mental scaffolding to properly understand, and then "Subscribe!"
Just put it at the end, please!
If you put it in the middle it cheapens the content, yeah, you may get more "engagement", but it's probably shallow.
It's interesting to think about how the culture around AI can also loosely be considered as coalescing between these two camps. But the camp who are the descendants of Leavis, if we can call them that, includes many scientists who (before AI) would have agreed with Snow.
> He sees these scientists as strong men, willing to wrestle with the tragedy of existence by increasing the amount of happiness in the world. That struggle makes them optimists.
Loved that.
And his actual book on the two cultures is worth reading too (and only 54 p.).