unforgiven – The Homebound Symphony
…Isaac with his indifference to any moral excellence he himself does not care to practice…
How much of our self-righteous conflict emerges from the result that we each, being limited, fight our moral battles on particular fields, and when we find others who have left our chosen fields to fight in others, deny them moral excellence?
Our moral rubrics are always weighted toward our passions.
I was inspired by Chris Aldrich’s post to purchase, clean, and repair an old typewriter. I never realized what marvels these things are. This instrument works just about as well as it did in the forties.
It makes me think about machines a bit differently.
Because Large Language Models are trained on human language about reality, their chatbots can often sound like they are in touch with reality. Sometimes they give remarkably lucid responses about things in the world that we would all agree with. But that can hide the fact that these models have no basis in reality whatsoever…only in the recorded interpretations of reality available to them.
Humans are meaning making machines. We are constantly interpreting the randomness of the world as stories which more or less work, but may also not be objectively true. This is why the events of the world continue to surprise us, or cause us anguish when they do not fit into our stories.
Chatbots don’t do that because they don’t know reality, just our stories about reality.
It would be like asking someone about the ocean who has read many books about the ocean, but has never actually experienced the ocean. You could learn a lot, but you’d always be a layer or two (philosophers can argue about this) removed from reality. And I think that makes a difference.
This is not an imposition, it’s a kindness. The point of a suspense file isn’t to nag others into living up to their commitments, it’s to form a network of support among collaborators where we all help one another make those conscious choices about what we’re not going to do, rather than having the stuff we really value slip away because we forgot about it.
This is important…I’ve often wondered about good boundaries around reminding other people of their obligations. Should I send out a reminder email about the meeting, or assume we’re all adults? Instead of seeing it though through the expectation of perfection, if I admit that we all need help (this is why I have a Getting Things Done system after all), reminding others turns into a collaborative system in which we’re all trying to do our best.
Pirkei Avot 1:1 & English Explanation of Pirkei Avot 1:1:1 from the Talmud
Making a fence around the Torah is another principle of supreme importance in Judaism. There are many laws that are not strictly obligatory upon a person from the Torah, but rather were instituted by the Rabbis to prevent a Jew from transgressing a Torah law. An example is the use of money on Shabbat. The Torah itself does not prohibit using money on Shabbat. However, the Rabbis said one should not do so, lest one write, which is prohibited by the Torah (at least the midrashic understanding of the Torah).
Prior to legalism, with which my theological background is very concerned, there is a purpose for rules – to keep us out of trouble. I like the image of the fence one puts up to keep others from coming into harm. Here, the Talmud means the ‘lesser laws’ which keep one from encroaching on the Torah commandments. But really, aren’t all the rules a fence? They try to keep us from coming into harm. Just because we are bound to fixate on the fence and abuse it doesn’t mean it wasn’t put up with gentle kindness in mind. Even when we are impaled on it.
But goodness, is it difficult to get many editors interested in books that aren’t somehow implicated in (or can somehow be shoehorned into) the American crisis discourse.
The “American crisis discourse” is real and I think I’m infected: I often come across ideas and wonder where they fit into our crises. There is a difference between “how does this idea apply to now” and “how does this idea fit into the current outrage discourse.”
As a long time user and admirer of Apple’s products, I find myself in a new situation: I am not only unenthusiastic about the anticipated virtual reality headset – I’m against the whole idea. The headset sure seems like a step in the wrong direction for a company that recently has been so focused on health. In what way does a VR headset contribute to health? Mental, physical, social, whatever?
Steve Jobs was famous for using the analogy of the bicycle. Like a bicycle, a computer can enhance the natural power of a human. It’s like a bicycle for the mind. I’ve used my iPhone to help me find my destination. I’ve used my Apple Watch to help me train for athletic competitions. Bicycles.
Maybe I have poor imagination, but I can’t see a VR headset enhancing my natural power. Only tricking it. Sure, I can attend a more visceral virtual meeting. Maybe the attendees will even have legs. But it’s still a virtual meeting. Something that feels more real isn’t actually more real or healthy.
In that way, a VR headset feels more like a treadmill. You can move a lot, but never go anywhere.
It’s a treadmill for the mind.
If you use an iOS device and you’ve upgraded to iOS 12, do yourself a favor and add this Shortcut, “Ten Minutes of Peace”. You’ll need to download Apple’s Shortcuts app if you haven’t already.
All it does is turn on your Do Not Disturb setting for ten minutes and then turn it back off again. But during that time – no buzzing, dinging, vibrating: bliss.
Add it to Siri and get yourself ten minutes of peace just by asking.
Is Facebook evil? Everything bad about Facebook is bad for the same reason — Quartz
Without question, Facebook enables brutal and immoral hatemongers. I can hear Facebook arguing that they cannot possibly take a stand on moral issues without becoming censors and losing objectivity. Facebook cannot make those decisions without messing up a lot of the time. I agree. Its scale is just too massive.
That’s just the thing: Facebook can’t admit it, but it’s possible that the most moral thing is for Facebook not to exist.
I can’t say ‘favorite’ because these are basically the earliest books I loved, or the latest books I have loved.
