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…

Dear Reader, there are no algorithms at 3QD—just six human editors trying to keep a human-curated corner of the internet alive. But recent changes in Google search and other AI-driven shifts have cut our already modest advertising revenue to less than half of what it was just last year. 3QD remains mainly a labor of…

Dear Reader, there are no algorithms at 3QD—just six human editors trying to keep a human-curated corner of the internet alive. But recent changes in Google search and other AI-driven shifts have cut our already modest advertising revenue to less than half of what it was just last year. 3QD remains mainly a labor of…

Just something I saw in a children’s playground in Brixen, South Tyrol. Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.

Hello Readers and Writers, We received a large number of submissions of sample essays in our search for new columnists. Most of them were excellent and it was very hard deciding whom to accept and whom not to. If you did not get selected, it does not at all mean that we didn’t like what you…

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…

Hello Readers and Writers, We received a large number of submissions of sample essays in our search for new columnists. Most of them were excellent and it was very hard deciding whom to accept and whom not to. If you did not get selected, it does not at all mean that we didn’t like what you…

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.…

by Camille Noûs1,# 1 Cogitamus laboratory, France # Correspondence to: [email protected] Camile Noûs is a collective author intended to embody the collective dimension of scientific research. The sense of collective work has been devalued and forgotten for two decades in academia, through various neoliberal research policies that prioritize competition over cooperation, and thereby favor individualism…

Maxim D. Shrayer talks to Cynthia L. Haven about her new book, The Man Who Brought Brodsky into English: Conversations with George L. Kline Cynthia, let me begin by asking you to describe your path to the book—a double path that led you to Joseph Brodsky and to George L. Kline. I studied with Joseph…

by Filippo Santoni de Sio[1], along with Marianna Capasso, Rockwell F. Clancy, Matthew Dennis, Juan Manuel Durán, Georgy Ishmaev, Olya Kudina, Jonne Maas, Lavinia Marin, Giorgia Pozzi, Martin Sand, Jeroen van den Hoven, Herman Veluwenkamp[2] Abstract: This article, written by the Digital Philosophy Group of TU Delft is inspired by the Netflix documentary The Social…

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…