Confronted with computers that can produce fluent essays, instead of being astonished at how powerful they are, it’s possible that we should be surprised that the generation of language that is meaningful to us turns out to be something that can be accomplished without real comprehension.
— Paul Lay, writing in the London Review of Books via Memex 1.1
Good afternoon.
I think and think and think. I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
— Jonathan Safran Foer
In contemplation I have no idea what to call what I find so I don’t call it anything.
What is found in contemplation is not unknown, but unknowable by name.
The most annoying thing about LLMs is the flattery.
We’re not meant to be here, we just happen to be.
We’re not meant to be anything, we just happen to be everything.
Look long enough, hard enough, and most importantly, honestly enough and you will surely find your own heart of darkness.
It seems we have an endless capacity to turn nothing into things and things into nothing.
But there is no should. There is only this: to rise, to touch what is near, to speak what is true enough, to tend to what is falling apart without pretending it can be saved.
— Robert Saltzman
Good morning.
Even if, juristically speaking, we were not accessories to the crime, we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melée. None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow.
— Carl Jung
Good afternoon.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
— Terry Pratchett
This is the return to ordinary, uncomplicated living. Emails, menopause, coffee, internet trolls. It’s the same body-mind moving as before. It still looks and feels like a self. Only now, it’s no longer believed to be about anyone. It’s no longer the identity.
As you walk the Spiritual path It widens Not narrows Until one day It broadens To a point Where There is no Path left at all.
— Wayne Liquorman
Good morning.
Suffering doesn’t disappear from life, it disappears into life.
— Barry Magid, Ordinary Mind Zendo.
…then perhaps Zen is the name of the rug that we pull out from under ourselves to collapse any mysterious shapes. Including Zen itself.
Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final.
— Rainer Maria Rilke