This causes me to harken back to days of yore. One of my hobbies is visual astronomy. I started in 2000. My mentor Tom knew the night sky like no one else. If you forgot your star atlas, he could keep you going all night by saying, “why don’t you look at M 13 now; it’s just over here, look for these stars, and move down so much and look for a faint smudge and get your scope on it”. There were go to scopes even then, but they were expensive and prone to breaking down. One fellow had a very expensive scope, brought it about 8 hours from home to a famous dark sky site, set it up and found out the electronics had failed. He packed up and went home!
With findersopes and maps, I learned the night sky over several years, then got what are called “digital setting circles” or a computer that tells you precisely where to point the scope to find things. The new ones interface with an excellent map program on my iPad and makes finding faint things a breeze, but I still look things up and try my hand at finding things the old-fashioned way. I cover a lot more territory with the electronic gizmo, but have far more satisfaction tracking things down with a map and finder scopes. If my electronics go on the fritz, I’m not as good as I was about 10 years ago, but the skills are not entirely atrophied (yet). Tom died several years ago, and I owe him a great debt of gratitude. He taught generations of amateur astronomers in our neck of the woods. Find a mentor. Electronics are great, but for everything I gained, there are things I also lost.
I love the timing, as usual. I am visiting family in Tennessee and Georgia and used my husband's phone to figure out where to buy a few real, paper maps. Then I took a few minutes to read this post. My phone is happily almost 2000 miles from me and I love the distance!
I don’t remember more than a few phone numbers these days. With everything in speed dial, memory fades, and I only remember the ones I need to write on forms now. My cell, home phone, and wife’s phone. Before I retired, I knew several work phone numbers, as well. That’s about it. 🤷🏼♂️
Get back into the gym if you're dissatisfied with that. Literally, but figuratively, as well--to abandon the reference and be clear, I deliberately drive without navigation at least some of the time. This simile is kind of basic, but it's sort of like getting back on that bicycle you've ignored for a year (literally true of me) -- those skills are in long term storage, and "muscle memory," with your brain as the muscle, brings it back more quickly than you might imagine if you just avoid using the crutch a little bit more. Easier if you don't move for work every two or three years, but we are where we are!
"Greek Tony Soprano's" challenge, which was spot on, was the equivalent of a 2020 "Do you even lift, bro?" (which we also get from Plato that Socrates said, although the "bro" was more of a para-phrasal. If you don't use the tools, routinely, your ability to do so atrophies. This is easily discerned. As AI-based tools become more widely adopted, humans must ensure that the skills are employed, and the systems and processes that underlie them are understood by the users--don't let the gonkulator replace the workflow, but sure, let it augment it. Otherwise, maybe you get lost in Athens and are a beggar at Tony's door and he hits you upside the head with some wisdom because you didn't see reality, you saw the shadow on the wall, and now you need some 220V adapters. (First time subscriber, couldn't resist any longer. Thanks.)
I really like--I think it's Tyler Cowen's--pieces in The Free Press on this, and his verbal interview with Bari Weiss, in which a "Team Claude" key leader was also involved, was fascinating. I believe that people who know how this stuff works--I forced myself to become one of them to Fix Some Stuff for Work--have to get better guardrails on fast to keep the truck from veering off the edge of the road. Because honestly, it's a dang fast truck.
This causes me to harken back to days of yore. One of my hobbies is visual astronomy. I started in 2000. My mentor Tom knew the night sky like no one else. If you forgot your star atlas, he could keep you going all night by saying, “why don’t you look at M 13 now; it’s just over here, look for these stars, and move down so much and look for a faint smudge and get your scope on it”. There were go to scopes even then, but they were expensive and prone to breaking down. One fellow had a very expensive scope, brought it about 8 hours from home to a famous dark sky site, set it up and found out the electronics had failed. He packed up and went home!
With findersopes and maps, I learned the night sky over several years, then got what are called “digital setting circles” or a computer that tells you precisely where to point the scope to find things. The new ones interface with an excellent map program on my iPad and makes finding faint things a breeze, but I still look things up and try my hand at finding things the old-fashioned way. I cover a lot more territory with the electronic gizmo, but have far more satisfaction tracking things down with a map and finder scopes. If my electronics go on the fritz, I’m not as good as I was about 10 years ago, but the skills are not entirely atrophied (yet). Tom died several years ago, and I owe him a great debt of gratitude. He taught generations of amateur astronomers in our neck of the woods. Find a mentor. Electronics are great, but for everything I gained, there are things I also lost.
I love the timing, as usual. I am visiting family in Tennessee and Georgia and used my husband's phone to figure out where to buy a few real, paper maps. Then I took a few minutes to read this post. My phone is happily almost 2000 miles from me and I love the distance!
I don’t remember more than a few phone numbers these days. With everything in speed dial, memory fades, and I only remember the ones I need to write on forms now. My cell, home phone, and wife’s phone. Before I retired, I knew several work phone numbers, as well. That’s about it. 🤷🏼♂️
So, Socrates was correct, it seems.
Get back into the gym if you're dissatisfied with that. Literally, but figuratively, as well--to abandon the reference and be clear, I deliberately drive without navigation at least some of the time. This simile is kind of basic, but it's sort of like getting back on that bicycle you've ignored for a year (literally true of me) -- those skills are in long term storage, and "muscle memory," with your brain as the muscle, brings it back more quickly than you might imagine if you just avoid using the crutch a little bit more. Easier if you don't move for work every two or three years, but we are where we are!
"Greek Tony Soprano's" challenge, which was spot on, was the equivalent of a 2020 "Do you even lift, bro?" (which we also get from Plato that Socrates said, although the "bro" was more of a para-phrasal. If you don't use the tools, routinely, your ability to do so atrophies. This is easily discerned. As AI-based tools become more widely adopted, humans must ensure that the skills are employed, and the systems and processes that underlie them are understood by the users--don't let the gonkulator replace the workflow, but sure, let it augment it. Otherwise, maybe you get lost in Athens and are a beggar at Tony's door and he hits you upside the head with some wisdom because you didn't see reality, you saw the shadow on the wall, and now you need some 220V adapters. (First time subscriber, couldn't resist any longer. Thanks.)
Count yourself fortunate.
Think of the poor alphabet community they stuck their heads in their pants !
Doing anything with your head in there leaves you unable to navigate life , let alone streets !
They're a tiny subset of a far larger group of people who are still heads-in-pants.
So true. This is what college teachers have to lean into with students: if we outsource memory to computers, is it any wonder that we're tempted to outsource articulation to those same computers via LLMs? Shout out to Michael Sacasas' great substack The Convivial Society. https://open.substack.com/pub/theconvivialsociety/p/re-sourcing-the-mind?r=bl036&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I really like--I think it's Tyler Cowen's--pieces in The Free Press on this, and his verbal interview with Bari Weiss, in which a "Team Claude" key leader was also involved, was fascinating. I believe that people who know how this stuff works--I forced myself to become one of them to Fix Some Stuff for Work--have to get better guardrails on fast to keep the truck from veering off the edge of the road. Because honestly, it's a dang fast truck.