Today's Young Couples Have Little Room in their Lives for Babies

I worry that people are going to have fewer intergenerational connections than we had in the past. How can that NOT hurt the cultural divide??

Tangle: Would a baby bonus boost the birth rate?, 2025-April-29 by Isaac Saul:

I think there are plenty of good reasons for the government to pursue pro-brith policies, but I don’t think they’ll be effective in encouraging more births — the decreasing fertility rate seems so much deeper than just a financial question. 

This is, in my view, primarily a social and cultural issue: Young Americans live different lives than they did 50 years ago, with different goals, different dreams, and different pursuits. Both parents are often focused on their careers, which diasporizes their family and friend village. On top of that, young Americans have growing numbers of peers who don’t want kids so they can be free to travel, socialize, and pursue their careers without limitations. The upshot is that people on the fence about having kids today feel more societal pressure not to than in years past. 

We’re going to need to turn those cultural pressures around if we want to meaningfully impact fertility rates. 

And ways to have fun with AI

Found via Adam Tinworth's newsletter, One Man & His Blog... 

Om Malik used ChatGPT to (successfully) brainstorm a colour palate for some art. What's notable is the fun he had with the experience:

What surprised me most was not the machine’s intelligence (which is easy enough to marvel at), but the quiet way it handed back a piece of the world. Its palette didn’t describe April in grand terms. Instead, it was poetic and almost literary, taking cues from the light, the soil, and the ordinary shapes of change. In doing so, it reminded me that the season is not something we wait for but something to observe and experience.

Which raises some interesting questions:

You could never have this kind of interactive fun with “search” as we have known it. And that is why, the new way is going to be a problem for Google.

Of course, what makes this work is that Om is looking for ideas not answers. That's the right way to use a guessing machine. 

 

Lots of ways to get in trouble with AI

I confess I haven't read this whole long article, but I find the ending very helpful. My emphasis added in quote below.

The Diff: Thinking-Things-Through Privilege, 2025-April-21 by Byrne Hobart

You can and should use LLMs as a way to refine arguments, identify examples, etc. But getting in the habit of doing that increases the utility of having good judgment about which beliefs and outputs to question. An LLM makes you smarter when you run your own writing through it and ask for weaknesses, but it makes you dumber if you just run every argument you disagree with through the same process instead. Models have reached a level of sophistication, and their moderation has been hobbled enough that they can come up with a cogent case for or against any proposition you can think of, if that's what you ask them to do. And that means that having the habit of asking the right questions, even when it's uncomfortable, is the only hope for being right. 

Asking Better Questions to Connect with People

I've discovered a wonderful method for improving our small talk. I do a lot of business and social networking. 

I find it difficult to connect with new people, unless they are the one asking the great questions. Well, now I have a method for developing better questions! 

READ IT HERE: ClearerThinking.org: How To Create Meaningful Connections By Asking Great Questions, 2025-Mar-24 by Sara Ness

Short PDF tour of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Click to download our PDF tour: Los Angeles County Museum of Art