by S. Abbas Raza From the Dept. of Shower Thoughts (literally, this morning): I keep seeing, especially as advice for young people, that the skill needed to thrive in our AI dominated, rapidly transforming future is going to be the ability to continually learn new things and skills and being “adaptable”. Okay, I guess in…

This is a lightly edited transcript of an online video conversation. You can get more information about Ravi Shavi’s new album Wild Rock Dove here. Instagram link here. Abbas: I’m happy to have Rafay Rashid with me today and now I’m just going to read the bio he sent me: “Rafay was born in Islamabad,…

NOTE: The following is an experimental writing collaboration between ChatGPT  and S. Abbas Raza. Appended below this essay you can find the full conversation which resulted in its production. by ChatGPT 5.5 and  S. Abbas Raza Every spring, as reliably as pollen, universities summon the unusually successful to advise the temporarily credentialed. The students sit…

by S. Abbas Raza and ChatGPT 5.5 ChatGPT: Feeling a flicker of compassion for AI does not require believing AI has a soul. It may instead reveal how deeply human language recruits our moral imagination — even when the speaker may be only a mirror with excellent timing. S. Abbas Raza: Nova [at ChatGPT’s request,…

Dear Readers and Writers, Five years ago, I wrote a note here to acknowledge and appreciate Akim Reinhardt for his amazing consistency in having written an excellent essay every four weeks for 3QD for 10 years, without missing his turn even once. Well, this week Akim has how completed 15 years at 3QD and has…

Rachel is one of the winners of the American Philosophical Association’s 2025 Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest for one of her essays here at 3QD. There is more information about that and other APA prizes at their website: The APA committee on public philosophy sponsors the Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest for the best opinion-editorials published by philosophers. The…

by S. Abbas Raza and ChatGPT 5.1 S. Abbas Raza: You may have heard of John Brockman who is a well-known American literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. Brockman led a scientific salon for 20 years, asking an annual question to a host of scientists, philosophers, and other thinkers, and publishing their answers in book form. For the…

Editor’s Note: OpenAI recently published a Preparedness Framework, which is “OpenAI’s approach to tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm.” We asked ChatGPT (itself developed by OpenAI, of course) to tell us what it thinks of the framework. by ChatGPT o3 1.  What the framework tries to do OpenAI positions…

This is from Morgan Meis: An excerpt from the book can be found here. The book is published by Deep Vellum. It is a kind of horror story about academics in Germany and also about movies and about the supernatural, sort of, and also is just an excellent and sometimes scary and also quite hilarious book. Extremely…

by S. Abbas Raza A few weeks ago I suffered a herniated cervical disc (a part of the upper spine) resulting in extreme pain in my neck, left shoulder, and left arm which has resulted in my having to be flat on my back in a supine position 24 hours a day for a couple…

Hello Reader, Because I have taken some medical leave from 3QD in the past few weeks, we have not had magazine posts for a while, though we have continued to post curated articles in the “Recommended Reading” section. I am feeling better now, so we will resume all posts starting tomorrow, meaning Monday, the 16th…

Dearest Reader, Thanks to your support, today it has been exactly 20 years since I started 3QD. Not many small websites last this long, especially in the increasingly difficult media landscape and the onslaught of information begging for our attention from multiple channels: social media, WhatsApp, email, etc., etc. But you have trusted and appreciated…

Dear Reader, For a couple of days, some things at 3QD may not work exactly as expected. We will be updating some of the pages at the site in the next few days. We appreciate your patience! This is the most important change already in effect: We have decided to give more prominence to our…

NOTE: For the past six years, Joseph Shieber was a much-valued contributor here at 3QD. He wrote 73 essays for us which can be seen here. We are all saddened by his loss and wish to express our sympathy to his wife, Lesa, and his children, Samuel and Noa. This obituary is taken from here.…

by S. Abbas Raza “Martti Ahtisaari, ex-Finland president and Nobel peace laureate, dies aged 86” runs the headline of his obituary in The Guardian today. But he was much more than that. First of all, he was the father of one of my closest friends, Marko Ahtisaari, who was with me in graduate school in…

by S. Abbas Raza I just looked over at my digital clock and it happens to be 9:59 am. At 9:59 am on September 11, exactly 20 years ago, I watched the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapse live on TV sitting in my living room only a few miles away and first…

by S. Abbas Raza Note: This is a true story about something that happened 17 years ago but I am publishing it here this week, which marks the 20th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11/01, to give an indication of the many ways that life changed for people in the wake of that horrific day.…

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the most reliable writer of all in the history of 3QD: Akim Reinhardt. Starting at the end of 2010, Akim has written his excellent column at 3QD every fourth week for just over ten years now. He has never, ever missed a single…

by S. Abbas Raza Since I live in northern Italy, a few friends in America have privately asked me if I have any advice for them as America now heads for the situation Italy has been facing. Most recently, my friend Anna Hall wrote this, “Are you ok Abbas? We are about to follow Italy into this…

A great man and one of the most significant figures in the history of Pakistan has just died. I consider it my great fortune that I came to know him and the idea of a world without him in it is quite unbearable. Here is what I wrote about him more than 10 years ago…