[{"id":308634,"date":"2026-08-07T06:00:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T10:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=308634"},"modified":"2026-08-03T01:34:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T05:34:28","slug":"the-odyssey-of-old-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/the-odyssey-of-old-age.html","title":{"rendered":"The Odyssey of Old Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Nils Peterson<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Greek poet Cavafy begins his fine poem \u201cIthaka\u201d:<\/p>\n

When you set out for Ithaka
\nask that your way be long,
\nfull of adventure, full of instruction.
\nThe Laestrygonians and the Cyclops,
\nangry Poseidon–do not fear them:
\nsuch as these you will never find
\nas long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
\nemotion touch your spirit and your body.
\nThe Laestrygonians and the Cyclops,
\nangry Poseidon-you will not meet them
\nunless you carry them in your soul,
\nunless your soul raise them up before you.<\/p>\n

Here I am, cast up on the shores of 92 years. I have things to weep over, yes, and things to rejoice over, yes. Most of my companions have gone. I find myself wanting to tell my story, and so I do in poems that remember and in bits of memoir. My court is the internet where friends sometime listen and sometimes, sometimes I say, catch the attention of an unknown who\u2019s wandered in looking for wine and a little food and some entertainment.<\/p>\n

Well, my \u201cthought\u201d was not always \u201clofty\u201d so I\u2019ve met Cyclops, \u201cangry\u201d Poseidon, many sirens, maybe even a tribe of Laestrygonians.<\/p>\n

And the story is always with me, a continual source of imagery, a way of understanding myself and a help in explaining my self to others. (See the little gift you get from the difference between myself<\/em> and my self<\/em>? a readerly gift.) I\u2019ll come back to this.<\/p>\n

I was a reading a poem by Derek Walcott whose opening obliquely refers to Homer\u2019s story and I found myself wondering how long it would be before the Homer mentioned in those lines would go unrecognized by everyone except scholars. I fear the loss of the mythologies of Greece and Rome that provided a binding field of imagery and felt-meaning to centuries of poets of the West. Yes, it is part of the general downgrading of the humanities but also an understanding that one can no longer be well-educated and eurocentric. And we are finite. We do not have \u201cworld enough and time,\u201d memory enough and time. So much must be lost, replaced, forgotten. But the Odyssey<\/em>? I need it.<\/p>\n

Once I was talking with a storyteller and explaining to her about a poem I\u2019d written about how another storyteller, at the moment of telling, chose the story she\u2019d tell.<\/p>\n

Footnote<\/p>\n

Dusk. Just before one turns on the light.
\nI\u2019m telling a storyteller about my poem
\nabout a storyteller, in which I\u2019d imagined her
\ntraveling like Odysseus into the underworld,
\nan underworld of stories, where a hundred
\ntales jostled each other longing to be told.
\nThere, in my mind, I saw her stand, holding
\n\u201cthe sharp sword of her attention\u201d until
\nshe knew which story was needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow masculine a thought,\u201d says my
\ncompanion, peering over a glass of wine
\nthe color of twilight. \u201cFor me it\u2019s like
\nwalking in a garden and picking what\u2019s
\nripest.\u201d And yes, I feel a little masculine
\nchagrin as I peer down into my own glass.<\/p>\n

Of course I\u2019m referring to Odysseus having to go into the underworld to talk to the sage Tiresias to find out how to get home. It\u2019s an extraordinary moment when he must even hold off for awhile the shade of his mother to get to the needed understanding. Let that resonate a bit.<\/p>\n

Here is another poem of mine that uses the story in quite different way.<\/p>\n

Thinking About Painting as an Odyssey<\/p>\n

A line is a point
\nsetting off on a journey
\na location that wants to go
\nelsewhere.<\/p>\n

Paint is a storyteller.
\nColor, a voice.
\nShape, a history.<\/p>\n

An artist\u2019s brush
\nis a bow
\nno one else can pull.<\/p>\n

Canvas
\nis the court
\nwhere he must tell
\nhis story.<\/p>\n

Of course one of the things that Odysseus does to prove his identity when he\u2019s gotten back to Ithaka is to string the bow that no suitor of Penelope could. And isn\u2019t it true that an artist\u2019s brush is uniquely his or her own? So our story gives us a way of talking, a way of of understanding, a way of seeing riches. The way of words.<\/p>\n

You can say \u201cWell, Odysseus won\u2019t be lost. Look at Matt Damon.\u201d Yes look. Looking is not listening. Looking is not language. They inhabit, I think, different parts of the brain. Consider the emoji. An emoji is a way of avoiding language. What you want to \u201csay\u201d is communicated by picture. You don\u2019t have to think about how to say a thing (I mistyped thing<\/em> to think<\/em>, but I find I want that here too), you push a button. It\u2019s almost as if the you of you is missing, the world as clich\u00e9, comfortable and easy. Centerless. Think of Matt Damon on the screen as sort of a colorful emoji. (Actually, I like Matt Damon, The Bourne Identity<\/em> so much fun.)<\/p>\n

Will the Odyssey<\/em> be forgotten or remembered vaguely in general and not its specifics. I think there\u2019ll always be stories about a return home, a space odyssey maybe from a trip to Alpha Centaurus. But who will think Odysseus\u2019s bow, artist\u2019s brush Aha! \u2013 if the story exists only in the library, or a PhD thesis? or on a screen. This year we\u2019ll be seeing it, but seeing it is different from reading it and we\u2019ll be different if we give up one for the other.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll be even more eye-centered and less ear-centered than we are. We\u2019ll miss the joys, the musics of language. I\u2019ve always feared the eye-reader as opposed to the ear-reader (though I think I was one when I was young). The one wants facts, the other wants music. It\u2019s the difference between AI and spirit. ( I may have changed when I first read Shelley\u2019s \u201cOde to the West Wind”: \u201cOh wild West Wind thou breath of Autumn\u2019s being\u201d \u201cOh wild West Wind.\u201d What a joy to pay attention to the dancing doubleyous of your mouth, though the eye is helpful here too in picking up the capitals of personification.)<\/p>\n

A last thought from another poem of mine:<\/p>\n

The Bed<\/p>\n

After he\u2019d lain again with Penelope,
\nOdysseus, awake, listened to her gentle
\nsnore and smiled. He\u2019d forgotten it, or maybe
\nit had come while he was away. Restless,
\nhe found himself restless and wondering,
\nat home, in a bed he\u2019d made, yet restless, restless.<\/p>\n

How many nights had he longed to be just here
\nwhen sea-wracked or caught in the arms
\nof a goddess. He rose and padded out
\nto the palace garden, moon shining so bright
\nthe trees cast shadows. The saplings planted
\nwhen Telemachus was born, towered over the walls.
\nThe sons he had not planted would never be.
\nYoung, he\u2019d thought a life could have many voyages
\nbut now he saw there was only one.<\/p>\n

Yes, when you get to the Ithaka of old age, you realize there was only one voyage and it\u2019s the one you took.<\/p>\n

Except \u2013 Odysseus is not yet done with his travels when the tale is over. He has another trip. Tiresias told him that to finally appease Poseidon he must walk away inland with an oar over his shoulder until he comes to a place so far from the sea that people mistake it for a winnowing fan (an instrument that helps with the harvest) and there he must make a sacrifice to the sea god.<\/p>\n

What does that mean for me? Maybe my task has been to write this piece for someone who wonders what all that kerfuffle over the Odyssey<\/em> is about. Maybe my hours at the computer are my sacrifice, a joyful one here in my ninety- second year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Nils Peterson The Greek poet Cavafy begins his fine poem \u201cIthaka\u201d: When you set out for Ithaka ask that your way be long, full of adventure, full of instruction. The Laestrygonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon–do not fear them: such as these you will never find as long as your thought is lofty, as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":486,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/486"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308879,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308634\/revisions\/308879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":308798,"date":"2026-08-07T05:00:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=308798"},"modified":"2026-08-07T06:49:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T10:49:48","slug":"mental-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/mental-stuff.html","title":{"rendered":"Mental Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Christopher Hall<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Generated with ChatGPT<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Philosophers aren\u2019t under the same obligations as scientists; they may come to a conclusion first and then work backwards through the argument. This may be because the alternative to a given conclusion is undesirable; Derek Parfit, for example, spent his career defending moral realism because, to him, the alternative was a relativism which meant that ethics didn\u2019t really exist at all. There is a danger, of course, in arguing for what we want to be true instead of simply letting the argument take us where it will. But if the argument is ultimately sound, who cares what impulse originated it? I\u2019m mentioning all of this because, as a very amateur philosopher, I\u2019d like to believe that, even if I very much want something to be true, that doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m always bound to create shaky arguments for why it is <\/em>true.<\/p>\n

So, one thing I\u2019d like to be true is that AI will never achieve anything like human consciousness. Please note that this is not the same as the claim that AI already has achieved consciousness; that\u2019s a claim that I think is pretty readily dismissed. Even if chatbots are by now easily capable of passing the Turning test, that merely demonstrates that we have no reliable method for determining the existence of consciousness anywhere<\/em> other than through words and actions, which may be well generated without any conscious thought-process behind them. And I\u2019m actually less threatened by the world-imperilling potential of a conscious AI (the world is already plenty imperilled by more imminent dangers) than I am with aesthetic concerns. I can reject all AI writing as slop at this point purely because it\u2019s an exercise in mindless regurgitation. An AI isn\u2019t thinking about the color red when it writes \u201cthe red dress,\u201d and it most certainly isn\u2019t thinking about more complex subjective experiences like \u201cthe red dress she wore that particular day in late autumn in Toronto.\u201d Without this interiority as a basic reference point, the writings of AI are nothing more than the noodling of a p-zombie.<\/p>\n

This position isn\u2019t particularly novel or innovative. The problem, of course, is with that \u201cnever\u201d \u2013 can I say with absolutely confidence that an AI will never have the interiority \u2013 the conscious basis of experience \u2013 that it takes to write great works of literary art? It\u2019s at this point that my belief in the inherent limitations of AI clashes with some more basic intuitions about the nature of consciousness itself.<\/p>\n

We may take it that consciousness is dependent on a certain arrangement of matter. Humans are conscious because our brains somehow produce this consciousness, and if the brain is disrupted or destroyed, that consciousness is either altered or, presumably, disappears. Other arrangements of matter, exclusive to biological beings, also produce forms of consciousness. I\u2019m reasonably sure that my dog has at least a kind of consciousness, as it\u2019s at least sometimes evident that there\u2019s a \u201cthought process\u201d he\u2019s going through. (I\u2019ll stay away from the question of where those lower forms of consciousness end; are mosquitos conscious? Even cockroaches, apparently, can have friends\u2026<\/a>) But it takes a kind of human, or even just biological, chauvinism to believe that only particular biological arrangements of matter can ever produce consciousness. Why can\u2019t a mechanical arrangement of matter, if sufficiently complex, end up being conscious? We can\u2019t arbitrarily set up barrier where consciousness resides exclusively behind what evolution has produced in certain biological beings.<\/p>\n

Thomas Nagel, in Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False<\/em>, argues that the irreductibility of subjective experience to mere physical explanations means that we must understand that mental stuff co-evolves with physical stuff, even if it only manifests itself in the form of conscious minds at a late stage in the process. But there\u2019s nothing to suggest that the long march of evolution is the only route to this manifestation. Of course, the ability to reason well enough to produce something like artificial intelligence is itself ultimately a product of evolution.<\/p>\n

Of course, the \u201carrangement of matter\u201d hypothesis doesn\u2019t need to be taken as a given. If consciousness is, as panpsychists believe, a fundamental element in the universe, at least as fundamental as matter (if not more so) that still doesn\u2019t get us away from the problem; in fact, it makes it worse. If consciousness is just \u201cout there\u201d then it is even more likely, to my mind, to be found in things that aren\u2019t human. This doesn\u2019t entail the idea that inanimate objects are conscious \u2013 I don\u2019t think rocks think \u2013 but it does make it at least more probable, to my mind, that new and different arrangements of matter might bring complex, human-like consciousness into being. Unless we take a position we can\u2019t really support with evidence \u2013 that evolution alone is capable of making conscious minds \u2013 then we are stuck with the possibility of other routes. The ineffability of subjectivity, and its lack of accessibility to empirical verification, is bringing us to a point where we need to start thinking about kludges like \u201cbenefit of the doubt:\u201d it would, of course, be an ethical obligation to treat something as conscious if we have any reasonable suspicion that it might be so.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the real rub: I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any reason currently<\/em> to take AI writing seriously.\u00a0 But I wonder if, within my lifetime, some robot might write a novel and whether I\u2019ll dismiss it not because it did not emerge out of the robot\u2019s interior, imaginative life but rather, simply, because it wasn\u2019t written by a human. An obligation I think philosophers should labour under, even amateur ones, is to not argue oneself into atrocious positions, nor to make cruelties intellectually palatable. Will ignoring what future AIs have to say be an act of, essentially, bigotry, or merely the plausible defense of territory which is, and ought to be, the exclusive domain of human minds?<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Christopher Hall Philosophers aren\u2019t under the same obligations as scientists; they may come to a conclusion first and then work backwards through the argument. This may be because the alternative to a given conclusion is undesirable; Derek Parfit, for example, spent his career defending moral realism because, to him, the alternative was a relativism…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1798,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1798"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309082,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308798\/revisions\/309082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309051,"date":"2026-08-06T14:45:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T18:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309051"},"modified":"2026-08-06T05:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T09:50:07","slug":"review-of-mario-vargas-llosa-by-gerald-martin-the-peruvian-leftist-who-fell-in-love-with-margaret-thatcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/review-of-mario-vargas-llosa-by-gerald-martin-the-peruvian-leftist-who-fell-in-love-with-margaret-thatcher.html","title":{"rendered":"Review of “Mario Vargas Llosa” by Gerald Martin \u2013 the Peruvian leftist who fell in love with Margaret Thatcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pratinav Anil in The Guardian<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cA<\/span>t what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?\u201d Those words on the opening page of\u00a0Conversation in the Cathedral\u00a0<\/em>announced the arrival of a writer who understood that national history could become the organising principle of fiction. At precisely the moment when\u00a0Latin America was discovering the intoxicating possibilities of magical realism \u2013 a form whose exuberance had an elective affinity\u00a0with revolutionary politics, collapsing\u00a0the distinction between the\u00a0marvellous and the possible \u2013 Mario\u00a0Vargas Llosa plumped for old-fashioned realism instead.<\/p>\n

It was a question of sensibility as\u00a0much as politics, Gerald Martin suggests in this chatty yet coolly analytical biography. He traces the path\u00a0of a novelist who began by dissecting oligarchy with surgical precision and ended happily dining among its ranks, completing one of literary history\u2019s most spectacular political migrations \u2013 from the hard\u00a0left to the hard right, over the\u00a0course of\u00a0half a century.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/div>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pratinav Anil in The Guardian: \u201cAt what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?\u201d Those words on the opening page of\u00a0Conversation in the Cathedral\u00a0announced the arrival of a writer who understood that national history could become the organising principle of fiction. At precisely the moment when\u00a0Latin America was discovering the intoxicating possibilities of magical realism…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309051"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309054,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309051\/revisions\/309054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309047,"date":"2026-08-06T13:45:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T17:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309047"},"modified":"2026-08-06T05:44:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T09:44:48","slug":"how-headlights-got-brighter-whiter-and-more-blinding-after-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/how-headlights-got-brighter-whiter-and-more-blinding-after-dark.html","title":{"rendered":"How headlights got brighter, whiter, and more blinding after dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew MacConnell at Ars Technica<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"Before cars became the modern mode of transportation, horse-drawn carriages used oil lanterns to light the way, as roads were largely unlit outside of towns and cities. These lanterns weren\u2019t particularly bright, though, meaning that after-dark collisions and near-misses were common.<\/p>\n

The late 1880s brought the motorcar, which used railway-style oil lamps. These emitted light like a candle and were prone to spilling, which could cause the vehicle to ignite.<\/p>\n

Acetylene lamps arrived in the early 1900s. Like oil lanterns, they were dangerous, primarily because they relied on an open flame and produced highly flammable acetylene gas. If the gas nozzle became clogged or leaked, pockets of concentrated acetylene could build up and ignite, causing localized explosions.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew MacConnell at Ars Technica: Before cars became the modern mode of transportation, horse-drawn carriages used oil lanterns to light the way, as roads were largely unlit outside of towns and cities. These lanterns weren\u2019t particularly bright, though, meaning that after-dark collisions and near-misses were common. The late 1880s brought the motorcar, which used railway-style…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309047"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309050,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309047\/revisions\/309050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309045,"date":"2026-08-06T12:45:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309045"},"modified":"2026-08-06T05:37:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T09:37:29","slug":"jo-marchant-physics-neuroscience-and-the-case-for-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/jo-marchant-physics-neuroscience-and-the-case-for-free-will.html","title":{"rendered":"Jo Marchant: Physics, neuroscience and the case for free will"},"content":{"rendered":"