“... AI researchers of the last thirty years, is a comparatively recent convert to AI doomerism. Until May last year Hinton was, at 75, an active researcher in Google’s AI division. Observing the progress being made, he concluded that, to his surprise, existing algorithms were already better at learning than human brains, and that superhuman levels of ...”

“... pace and narrative. Got to stop it from galloping away.The sense of overspilling delight may owe something to her new romance with V but, even early in the relationship, it seems to rise in her and leave at the same time. H notes ‘the jumping force field of interest between V and me, both mutual and outward, that makes the world seem so rich and ...”

“... and hideous epithets in the English language, meant to dehumanise Black people … Some people may try to defend O’Connor by saying that when she was alive the word didn’t fully hold the freight it holds now, and that the word was commonly used in the South at the time and the use of it is in service of verisimilitude. But surely O’Connor, with her ...”

“... to get married and the destruction of the wedding dress (and the house itself). The conflagration may not be testimony, but it’s evidence of a kind, signalling extremes of eagerness and refusal. Yon’s book doesn’t succeed in either passing it off as accidental or accepting what it would mean for it to be deliberate.She doesn’t scrutinise the ...”

“... in imaginary space. This view allows the possibility, contrary to Aristotle, that space may be infinitely extended and that our cosmos may be only one world among many situated in such a space. Oddly enough, in his account of the impact of the Condemnation, Blumenberg does not discuss Bradwardine’s views, nor ...”

“... on sixty days later. In August 1932, Stalin demanded heavy repression of political enemies, but in May 1933 ordered an end to mass arrests and the release of large numbers of political prisoners. It is not hard to imagine the effect of this confusion and poor preparation on local life. One unfortunate collective farm, cited by Conquest, began in early 1930 by ...”

“... of England and Wales came to acquire its salient features, a transformation which, it now seems, may also bring about some fundamental rethinking in rural planning policies which have long passed unquestioned. The front-runner was W.G. Hoskins, an economic historian by training, who since the Second World War has inspired a great new army of local historians ...”

“... wife, on his motive for travel, on his financial state, his dealings with Garrick, or whatever it may be – there is inevitably a tiny query hovering over the fictions which Sterne devised to cope with such issues. It is the biographer’s job to fix the fleeting, to freeze the volatile gases of personality; the better he is (Cash is pretty good, in this ...”

“... version or the other must be true: but, again, it is the way our minds work. Both interpretations may have their own kind of truth, or lack of it. When T.E. Lawrence wrote in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom of his flogging and rape by the Turkish officer at Deraa, one of his biographers takes the account at face value, and another as total fantasy. A writer who ...”

“... years ago’, Lehman concedes: But though the local reputations of the ‘boa-deconstructors’ may show some slippage, the larger problem has not fundamentally changed. Pure deconstruction is no longer the height of fashion, but the impulse continues in alloyed form, and it is as ubiquitous as ever ... The edicts of deconstruction – merged, to whatever ...”

“... to observe wistfully. The mayor of Brussels was a suitor in her widowhood, and Conrad himself may have proposed and been turned down, although they continued to be on very affectionate terms, and Conrad seems to have expected his wife to wait on Marguerite when she came to visit them in later life. He always had an eye for a grande dame, but Jessie was ...”

“... rhetorical error of any political party by apologising for its own past: the Conservatives may ignore their own past, but they never apologise for it. Labour has done this partly because of the utopianism of many of its activists – to them the best is always the enemy of the good – and partly because of a certain timid and innocent ...”

“... author stands. The curiously affectless tone of the narrative – even in its tragic climax – may be something aimed at, or it may indicate some failure to achieve the exact tone Scruton wants. Whatever, Francesca leaves the reader stimulated, mildly infuriated, and seriously baffled. ‘Final exams were ...”

“... to make money or by inducing a knee-jerk reaction on the Left. Reaganism’s defence of tradition may have appealed to the members of the President’s kitchen cabinet but it had no real foundation beyond a spurious link between morality and religious faith. Bromwich’s quite nasty attacks on Reagan – whose great work was ‘the education of a whole ...”

“... that it was ‘improper’ to ‘urge and rely on Testimonys for matters whose Truth or Falshood may be proved by manifest Reason or easy Experiment’. As Steven Shapin observes in his subtle and learned book, we should get a very misleading impression of the scientific practice of 17th-century England if we were to take this individualistic rhetoric ...”