A man would have no pleasures in discovering all the beauties of the universe, even in heaven itself, unless he had a partner to whom he might communicate his joys.
~ Cicero
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On this day
December 30thAverage, or worst?
Over the last few years, deep-learning-based AI has progressed extremely rapidly in fields like natural language processing and image generation. However, self-driving cars seem stuck in perpetual beta mode, and aggressive predictions there have repeatedly been disappointing. Google’s self-driving project started four years before AlexNet kicked off the deep learning revolution, and it still isn’t deployed at large scale, thirteen years later. Why are these fields getting such different results?
~ Alyssa Vance from, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/28zsuPaJpKAGSX4zq/humans-are-very-reliable-agents
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This makes the interesting distinction between average–case performance, and worst–case performance. People are really good by both measures (click through to see what that means via Fermi approximations.) AI (true AI, autonomous driving systems, language models like GPT-3, etc.) is getting really good on average cases. But it’s the worst–case situations where humans perform reasonably well… and current AI fails spectacularly.
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What to seek
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise, instead, seek what they sought.
~ Matsuo Bashō
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Overshadowed
Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able—be good.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Slips
I was leisurely tinkering my way through my morning, and my mind kicked out a few ideas. It always does that. Yes, I talk about my mind in the third person, because sometimes I think I have a Tulpa.
The first idea that popped up was about sending a message to someone to wish them a Happy New Year. At the time, I had not yet awakened the sleeping dragon—my computer. (I could say: My personal Eye of Sauron was still closed.) Things change for me once I awaken the dragon each day. But I have this idea to send a message, and it’s important, but I don’t dare awaken the dragon to ask if I can just send this one quick message. I’ll look up again and it’ll be 4 in the afternoon. Instead, I grabbed one of my precious slips and jotted a note.
Holding the slip I realized this was brilliant. I recently bought a brick of 1,000 3×5 cards because the slipbox is voracious. I have plenty of these little slips. So why hadn’t I done this for the past year that I’ve been keeping a slipbox? Why did it happen for the first time today? It happened because I used to see the slips as precious; They were nice, heavy, beautiful 3×5 cards that sit close at hand and are supposedly waiting to become immortal slips in the slipbox. Just the other day, I used the last one of my original stash, and I broke open that new brick… and realized I’d bought cheap-ass crappy Amazon knock-off 3×5 cards. (I had only spent $13 for 1,000 so I wasn’t too upset.) When that idea to send a message popped into my brain, I thought: “well, I have 1,000 crappy slips to use up . . .” and this little queue of individual ideas quickly appeared on my desk.
The lesson I re-learned this morning is that even a slight change of context can have an outsized affect on something. (In this case, my “precious” slips [you’re hearing Gollum aren’t you?] had become “crappy” slips.)
Setting aside what you think of my specific anecdote here, where might you make a small change and discover some surprising benefit?
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A journey of small daily steps
Starting on Saturday, January 2nd you and I will be going on a journey of small daily steps. Today’s post is a preamble for you, my cherished regular readers.
I’ve prepared 60, daily posts designed as a journey of reflection for your new year. The final one will appear on March 1st. Tomorrow (Dec 31st) and Friday (Jan 1) will be two preliminary posts that set the stage for the sequence through March 1st.
The tone of these coming posts will be familiar, so I think you will be delighted. My hope is simply that these posts help you find tranquility as we head into 2021.
As always, I’m just a Reply-button away. I’m always delighted by any thoughts, feedback or conversations these posts instigate.
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One more walk
A few years ago, I started walking to Mordor. Based on my counting and tracking, I’m at walk number 499 and I think I can finish the mileage in the final walk.
…but I’ll cover the details when I’m done. Today I want to linger on the feeling of knowing that the end is nigh.
My motto for 2019 was, “no.” It wasn’t intended as a sour-puss negativity sprint, but rather an attempt to get myself to be mindful about what I commit to. As the year closes, and my walking goal nears completion, I want to think very carefully about what I expect to feel and experience. Where did I first hear of the goal? Why did the goal call to me? What did I want to accomplish by setting out on the journey? What will change when I finish the goal? How am I different?
Most importantly, I want to not replace the goal—and the work, and the time investment, and the mental energy—with another thing. Am I able to have a little less daily work? Am I able to have one less project in the works? Am I amble to have one less thing on my mind?
…or am I going to scurry back to the comfort of “busy” and add something?
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Traditions you love
Make a list of the traditions you love, and that you don’t love.
~ Leo Babauta from, https://zenhabits.net/simplify-holidays/
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A couple of less-usual ones that I particularly love: The idea of having Friends-giving dinners, and a randomly-scheduled, rotating hosts, dinner party thing I have with a group of my second-cousins.
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Living Stoically
http://philosophybites.com/2015/06/william-b-irvine-on-living-stoically.html
This podcast episode, from the superlative Philosophy Bites podcast, is a great, brief introduction to Stoicism.
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Religious liberty and marriage equality
In my view, one basic principle is: No one should be forced to participate in a religious ritual. That’s why I don’t want teachers leading prayers in public school classrooms, especially when the children are too young to make a meaningful choice about opting out. For the same reason, it would be wrong to sue a priest who refused to perform a Catholic marriage ritual for a marriage his church did not sanction.
~ Doug Muder from, http://weeklysift.com/2014/03/03/religious-liberty-and-marriage-equality/
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Happiness
I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
~ J. Richard Lessor
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