In Conversation

Found myself in conversation with a much younger colleague this morning related to all things AI. I've been wanting such a conversation for some time since all things AI have been much on my mind. Tried to articulate some of my concerns and in the process realised just how very deep those concerns are, despite not articulating them terribly well.

Was struck both by the intelligence of my interlocuter and how distant her perceptions were from mine. Not surprising really given the sheer magnitude of what we were touching upon. Gained several insights, not the least of which related to how local writers - in the very broadest sense - are reacting and responding to the new technology (if it makes sense to call it that.)

Trying now to pin down not what I think (which is a mess) but how I feel (which is even messier.) Let's try following the rule of three: Uneasy - very. Excited - richly. Discombobulated - deeply.

A Bit Biased

Brief follow-up to yesterday's brief musings: all this unpleasantness in lit texts - is it the result of something hard-wired into us - the negativity bias that means it's the angry faces in the crowd that grab our attention? And does that mean that focusing on the Stanleys of this world distorts our understanding of the way things are? Maybe life's not so bleak as Euripides would have us think?

Hope so. And I think the greatest art manages somehow to attain a balance between the light & dark. Helps us live in the shadows. Somehow finds reasons to be cheerful.

A History Of Violence

It suddenly occurred to me today, teaching A Streetcar Named Desire, specifically the bit where Stanley brutally rapes Blanche, that all four of the texts I've been teaching my Language & Literature classes across the last couple of years, feature, in varying degrees, moments of grotesque violence. And all, in some degree, admit of the possibility that inflicting violence on others might be satisfying in some sense.

Gosh, that's a dark, disturbing idea. 

The problem is that it's true, for some people at least. I wonder how many. A few outliers? Or most of us? On a bright & shiny day I think I can convince myself it's the former. But today was a bit of a grey one. A bit too dark. A bit too Kowalski-ish. 

Making An Assertion

I received an email today recommending an outline course which someone, somewhere found suitable for me, given my profile. The title of said course: Mastering the Art of Assertiveness for Professional Effectiveness. 

I'd just like to assert that I suspect they profiled the wrong man.

Thinking Of Cheesecake

The chapter What's Up with the Arts? in Gazzaniga's Human, which I read over the weekend (the chapter that is, not the book) provoked me into thinking of yet another little reading project - one that looks like supplanting my rather silly plan of becoming a bit of a (strictly amateur) minor expert on cognitive psychology. The original plan involved a rereading of four of Steven Pinker's books in this area before moving on to the latest I could find in scholarly articles of weight (obviously as yet unread.) But that's not going to happen, much as I enjoy Pinker as writer and thinker.

What is going to happen - at least, this is the plan of sorts I'm now formulating - is to read the appropriate chapters in Pinker on his ideas about the arts in relation to the workings of the mind (encompassing the controversial stuff about music as auditory cheesecake, etc.) and then expand into other thinkers on aesthetics more broadly (just the ones on my shelves, like Scruton on Beauty) with the aim of settling on a definite position of my own regarding why I see The Arts (capitalised this time) as being central, crucial, vital to human experience. Because I do; but I'm not sure why I do.

At the moment I fall back on Joyce's brilliant theorising through his alter ego Stephen in A Portrait as a way of explaining to myself what I can't articulate, or think through clearly. And I've been doing that, one way and another, since I was twenty. Time to move on just a little more, I think.

Searching

It's that time of year when I feel the need to acquire an appointment diary for the year ahead (as the dates start coming in.) And it has to follow the week-to-a-view format. Time was there would be many available, but not these days, I'm afraid. And the ones I've managed to acquire for the last three years have been shoddily put together. This year's fell apart a month ago and I needed to apply the sellotape, as in 2025, to hold it together. Not sure it will last to the end of December.

Anyway, we popped into the fairly large Popular Bookstore at Clementi Mall just now, where Noi had noticed some diaries for 2027 on the shelves a few days back, but there was nothing for me. Plus they didn't stock the kind of red pen I need for marking purposes, the type of post-it notes I prefer, or the kind of little black notebook I favour (for jotting down the names of all my enemies. Hah!)

Something tells me I'm grievously out of step with the modern world. But, then, I've known that for the longest time.

Double Negative

Question: What's worse than having nothing?

Answer: When you ain't got nothin' you got nothin' to lose.

Context: Me, on the elliptical trainer just now. Last two minutes. Less than zero.

All Too Human

A couple of years ago I started thinking of pursuing what I thought of as little 'projects', particularly with regard to my reading. I suppose I was experimenting with ways of giving a bit more purpose & direction to the life of the mind, given an enhanced consciousness of my years being numbered. I figured that the notion might help me prioritise my limited allowance of time.

But I'm doubtful that this idea has real legs. As an example, I've just abandoned a project to get myself broadly up to speed in the field of cognitive science. I think it's reasonable to make the claim that I'm fairly well-informed of matters pertaining to the workings of the mind, but not in any systematic manner. And I'd intended to reread all the stuff on my shelves related to the field and make a determined effort this time round to remember stuff. So I picked up Gazzaniga's Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brian Unique a few months back for a slow but purposeful read to make sure the key points really went in this time round. (Which I knew had not been the case on my first reading some ten years ago - I think it was.) And now I'm at the halfway point, and much as I've enjoyed the reread I know that I still don't really know what I think I know. Yes, I understand this stuff conceptually; no, I couldn't teach it to anyone else.

I can see a possible solution: to make systematic notes and commit these to memory. But I'm afraid I don't quite see the point, since I'm not in any way seeking to become some kind of accredited practitioner in this area. So I'll carry on reading and enjoying and vaguely remembering but generally forgetting.

Slow Learner

Those good people at Apple TV sent me more than one message with regard to the new series of Slow Horses getting underway yesterday. Unfortunately when I tried to access the first episode of Series 6 I couldn't find it anywhere and settled instead for a re-run of a couple of episodes we'd watched already (from Series 5.) Funnily enough I found these very watchable, despite the fact I'd seen them before. I suppose that's a sign of being a fanboy.

Astonishingly I actually managed to find the new material earlier today, more by luck than by design. Not sure why most people find it easy to negotiate streaming services and the like, but I certainly don't. Show me an interface and I'll find a way not to be able to figure it out.

Now it just remains to start watching, but The Missus is deeply engaged in the production of her curry puffs and that must take priority. Patience is, of course, a virtue to cultivate, and even as a very slow learner I've taken that lesson on board.

Uncertainties

They managed to be thoroughly confused and still seize power because the Provisional Government simply vanished, just as the vaunted autocracy had vanished. Thus Kotkin makes a kind of sense of the events in Russia of October 1917 in his captivating biography of the young Stalin. The despot and monster to be isn't yet the Stalin we're all familiar with; indeed, in many ways he's very far from that figure in the year of the two revolutions. Not exactly likable, and obviously possessed of a drive that makes him far from ordinary, but not a man necessarily destined for power - and nor, as Kotkin makes clear from the quotation above, were the Bolsheviks. 

Previously in my encounters with the events of this period I've tended to read in the inevitability of it all. Not in Marxist terms, but just those of the common human experience of the betrayals of revolutionary energies. Now I'm thinking it was all a bit of a mess, a series of sometimes quite daft accidents & coincidences  - like all history. 

At one point Kotkin suggests that a couple of well-aimed bullets taking out Lenin & Trotsky would have changed everything, and that feels true somehow. How much suffering might have been avoided if someone with a gun and a bit of authority had listened to the British military attaché Alfred Knox? Mind you, things could have turned out even worse. You never really know, do you?