Mindful: Attentive, Aware, Conscious, Thoughtful, Alert.
Miscellany: A collection of various items, parts, or ingredients, especially one composed of diverse literary works.
Welcome to the tenth edition of A Mindful Miscellany. A brief update on writing endeavors, as well as an around the horn of things that made it through my relevance realization filter over the last month. Spring is here! In Western NY, it advances slowly, day after day. A time for renewal and reflection on things to come.
Writing Update
The Struggle is Real
I read some amazing books this month—Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri, The Upswing by Robert Putnam, and The World Beyond Your Head by Matt Crawford. All of them are devoted to figuring out how to make sense of this age and point towards how we should posture ourselves individually and collectively. I posted about them on LinkedIn here, here, and here. Briefly: Gurri—the power of social media has exposed the imperfections and incompetence of our Elites, which has allowed the Public to tear at the institutions of governance and stability. Putnam—in the 1960’s the United States took a decided individualistic turn. At some point in the next decade we as a mass of Americans may decide that a return to a more community-oriented focus is on order. Crawford—Modern life, with its exploitative corporate models and digital technology has disembodied, dislocated, and alienated us. Find a craft to call your own, that fills you with meaning, purpose, autonomy, and accomplishment. Be aware of what technology is doing to us and search for real connection to other humans and reality.
On the fiction front, I rewrote the first several thousand words of the novel and made a timeline/daily word count for the rewrite so I can finish by the end of summer. I have several half-finished essays and incubating projects in progress as well—I am noodling on a “reality navigation template” I am calling the A Frame that I will probably send out this coming month.
I’m digging deeper into Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things, both through the books and the accompanying YouTube Series. This graphic describes his first book, The Master and His Emissary. The tendency is to dismiss “Logical Left Brain/Artistic Right Brain” dichotomies because, well, that has been debunked thoroughly. Sadly, that makes it more difficult to talk about actual differences in the brain hemispheres. Although there is a good deal of overlap between the hemispheres, there are specific things we can say about their differences. One of McGilchrist’s major points is that western society has largely grown too focused on left hemispheric reduction, analysis, and exploitation of the world, without the accompanying holistic understanding and synthesis of the right hemisphere. We need both to flourish, as individuals and groups.
Graphic from Sloww.co
Watched/Read and Recommended
Why we hunt Witches:
Video description: “Host of The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, Megan Phelps-Roper (Who herself grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church), sits down with Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis, author and entrepreneur Luke Burgis, and cofounder of Wait But Why, Tim Urban, to discuss the mob mentality that has subsumed college campuses, publishing houses, medical organizations, and other elite American institutions. What are the underlying psychodynamics of the behavior we’re seeing? How has the internet exacerbated the problem? And what can we do to move forward?”
The AI Dilemma:
Creating a Golem to Bedevil Humanity
Sidenote- The video uploader put the Cyberdyne Systems logo at the front, which is both brilliant and terrifying in equal measure….. Random notes from the presentation:
3 Rules of Technology
1. When you invent a new technology, you uncover a new class of responsibilities.
2. If the technology confers power, it starts a race.
3. If you don’t coordinate that race, it will end in tragedy (Multi-polar traps, First Mover Advantage, Race to the Bottom of the Brain Stem).
Screenshots From the Presentation: First Contact with AI— Curation. Second Contact with AI— Creation, Generative Models.
Name for the level of AI we’re talking about— Generative Large Language Multi-Modal Model, or GOLLEM….. Even AI experts are misjudging the pace/speed of advancements.
Some recommendations:
Nuclear war comparison — another technology with dangerous implications for humans and the movie “The Day After.”
We need to tell a better story about what’s happening so we can grok the implications.
Selectively slow down the public deployment of the models, not the research itself. Harris and Raskin address national security implications in a logical way at the end of the video.
Bottom line: We have an opportunity now to put safeguards in place before AI is entangled within society/economy.
Takeaway—the cultivation of discernment and digital literacy is a lifelong process. Money quote: “In our new age of infinite misinformation, the counter-misinformation complex’s methods are obsolete, and its goal of a world where people can trust what they see is hopelessly naïve. Its attempts to censor the misinformation pandemic will achieve nothing but momentarily quarantine a few online platforms from the inevitable, lulling their users into a false sense of trust, delaying the development of their doubt, and ultimately making them more vulnerable to bullshit.
We should therefore strive to do the opposite—to let misinformation spread so it becomes a clear and constant presence in everyone’s life, a perpetual reminder of the fundamental dishonesty of the world. Deceit is part of nature, from the chameleon’s complexion to the Instagram model’s beauty filters, and it will never be legislated away while life still exists, so let’s stop trying to prevent people from seeing lies, and instead teach people to see through them.”
On being a Renaissance Human:
Let’s be specialized generalists— have a few things you’re pretty good at and a decent grounding/understanding in many other key fields. This allows you to make connections between domains/disciplines as well as flourish properly as a human. In the words of Shawn Coyne, you need to be able to survive, thrive, and derive meaning in this life. That will look different for each of us, but certain base things will remain standard. Here’s science fiction writer (And Ring Knocker/USNA Graduate) Robert Heinlein’s take on it:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
That’s all for now—whatever you’re doing out there, do it well.
A wealth of information!!
Good. I love the way your mind works,,,but formatting and design could be featured more. You are simply too brilliant for the masses, but then you're prob not reaching for the masses.
A lot of topics presented here; all of which i cannot remember, and i also cannot scroll back without leaving this page and maybe losing my comment. I was going to quote one particular thing you stated. I will review and formulate a more cogent and succinct response .