On limits
I’ve been reading Wendell Berry this week:
The problem that ought to concern us first is the fairly recent dismantling of our old understanding and acceptance of human limits. For a long time we knew that we were not, and could never be, “as gods.” … But beginning in science and engineering, and continuing, by imitation, into other disciplines, we have progressed to the belief that humans are intelligent enough, or soon will be, to transcend all limits and to forestall or correct all bad results of the misuse of intelligence.
Part of the fundamental dis-ease with the AI discourse is the “selling point” that AI can transcend our human limits. Or as Berry puts it, that we can be “as gods.”
I learned a new word for a feeling that I’ve had for a long time: a Fine-Grained City.
And I learned what a Party-Wall is and why its return could make our cities more human!
That is the larger research agenda: to define a best-practice system for granular development that captures the efficiencies of coordinated production while preserving small-scale ownership, adaptability, and succession. The fine-grained city does not eliminate coordination. It achieves enough coordination for its pieces to remain independent, and enough independence for the city to keep changing.
Mike Sacasas on what we might gain and lose from LLMs:
My contention, then, is that when we are confronted with the opportunity to outsource the labor of articulation, we will find that possibility more tempting to the degree that we experience a sense of incompetency and inadequacy, a sense which may have many sources, not least among which is the failure to stock our mind, heart, and imagination
This is in large part what I hope this project might present - sources that stock our mind heart and imagination to articulate the good, true, and beautiful.
Currently restoring my wife’s grandmother’s pocket watch from 1889. I love how beautifully crafted objects can stand the test of time and provide a connection and link to one’s past.
Robert Farrar Capon on peeling an orange:
Peel an orange. Do it lovingly - in perfect quarters like little boats, or in the staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than the orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.
What a delight to find a review by Ali Holcomb of a book (The Supper of the Lamb) that I was gifted many years ago, but only just finished reading now. If the quotes here don’t pique your interest to read it, there is something defective with your sense of humor!