Francis Spufford once said that Bletchley Park was an attempt to build a computer out of human beings so the credit for this metaphor belongs to him. But it can be generalised to any bureaucracy. They are all attempts to impose an algorithmic order on the messiness of the world, and to extract from it … Continue reading The Vatican is the Oldest Computer in the World
Category: blog post
Owning vs. Having
https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/1650145537683759104?s=20 I enjoyed this quite a bit, also available as a Substack article.
Brief Comments on Consensual Hostility
"Once consent becomes the only value by which an individual can assess sex to be good or bad and justify their assessment to their partner or anyone else, all that’s left of seduction is contract negotiation fueled by whatever mix of horniness and loneliness brought the two parties together. There’s an alternative. As Srinivasan herself … Continue reading Brief Comments on Consensual Hostility
NixOS for the Impatient
"NixOS is a Linux distribution configured using Nix. It is declarative, meaning that the entire system state can be defined in a single .nix file; and reproducible, meaning you can have multiple computers set up identically. If this sounds like a bullshit timesink like Arch or Gentoo: it’s not. There was a time when the idea of spending … Continue reading NixOS for the Impatient
Exploit, Explore, Copy
"Instead of looking at two strategies [such as Exploit or Explore], Laland and associates included a third: observe. That is, you can watch other people deal with a situation, and then copy them. Arnold Kling, "Exploit, Explore, Copy." arnoldkling.substack.com. May 30, 2023 Exploit seems like optimize. You create efficiencies based on scale, refining processes or … Continue reading Exploit, Explore, Copy
Lowering Our Boggle Threshold
"Paranthropologist Dr Jack Hunter, editor of the newly released anthology Deep Weird: The Varieties of High Strangeness Experience, notes that psychical researcher Rene Haynes coined the concept of the ‘Boggle threshold’ to describe this phenomenon – “the point at which a researcher says ‘no I’m not taking that, I’m not accepting that any further, it’s too weird’.” … Continue reading Lowering Our Boggle Threshold
Reality vs. Dualism: Raw or Pasteurized Dairy
"There exists a tendency to see all dairy foods as being either raw or pasteurized. Like most dualistic concepts, this is a oversimplification, and there exists a rainbow between black and white. If we want to move beyond what is actually a legal definition, to understand how different ways of processing milk impact the microbiology … Continue reading Reality vs. Dualism: Raw or Pasteurized Dairy
Cargo Cult X
"Good listeners do often reflect words back—but not because they read it in a book somewhere. Rather, it’s cargo cult advice: it teaches you to imitate the surface appearance of good listening, but misses what’s actually important, the thing that’s generating that surface appearance. The generator is curiosity. When I’ve listened the most effectively to people, it’s because I was … Continue reading Cargo Cult X
Ideological Amazon & Punk Nazis
"The words are violence crowd is right about the power of language. Words can be vile, disgusting, offensive, and dehumanizing. They can make the speaker worthy of scorn, protest, and blistering criticism. But the difference between civilization and barbarism is that civilization responds to words with words. Not knives or guns or fire. That is the bright … Continue reading Ideological Amazon & Punk Nazis
Tragedy vs. Comedy Modes
As Brown notes, Meeker argues that Western Civilization is mostly founded on the “tragic mode,” inspired by the great tragedies in which a “larger-than-life character attempts to bend the world to his (and it’s always his) image.” The character’s success “is also his undoing,” and tragedies end in bloodshed, death, and a funeral of some kind. Our … Continue reading Tragedy vs. Comedy Modes
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