David Gelernter, Yale University computer scientist and subject of one of the stupider (not to mention more lazily partisan) newspaper headlines in recent memory,* has some pretty interesting things to say in a recent Atlantic piece.
On whether beauty is objective: “Take any civilization, ask for its artistic masterpieces; today, they are almost guaranteed to be valuable all over the world. There’s almost nothing less subjective than the sense of beauty.”
On taking new architecture seriously: “Take a chance, dammit.”
On raising children without comprehensive ethical views: “…a recipe for one of the riskiest experiments in history.”
On understanding artificial intelligence: “The people who know the mind best aren’t neurobiologists, they’re novelists & poets.”
On music: History’s greatest composer is Franz Schubert, but “Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, his op 110 and 111 sonatas, his string quartet in C# minor and the Gross [sic] Fuge are the greatest music of all.”
*It was just a year ago that Time magazine called him an “arch-genius.”
