Anything Goes

Using AI for Creative Endeavours Leads to Atrophy of Creativity which Leads, Ultimately, to the Atrophy of the Soul

wphow — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 03:54:12 +0000

Think those people may just already, not really be, already have the atrophy of creativity that I just sort of mentioned. But ultimately, when you engage in a creative act, what are you filling up or fulfilling, or what muscle, as you put it, are you using? I would argue it’s your soul, right? If you just have AI make it, the person that’s making it doesn’t get the same type of feeling they get if they actually like engaged in the act of making art themselves or with another human, you know. So if we let our souls atrophy because we’re not doing anything that you know have been fulfilling to human souls for thousands of years, what does that ultimately mean? You know, it’s interesting. In that same Schmidt Kissinger book, they basically say that AI taking over will lead to one of two consequences. One of them is that the peasants rise up and overthrow the elite. That’s one scenario, and probably not the scenario that Schmidt and Kissinger wants and then the second scenario is that AI spawns the creation of a new religion.

Learning from Things

wphow — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 23:54:37 +0000

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean's current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it towards the heart of the world.

Each thing -
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered 
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So like children, we begin again
to learn from things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Mark of the Spiritual Life

wphow — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 19:36:38 +0000

What makes the spiritual life different from any other life? What are we doing that is so different from what everybody else is doing? The answer is it not what we are doing at all that makes the spiritual life different from the life lived without consciousness. The answer is it is what we are and how we do what we do that is the mark of the spiritual life. It is what we are while we are doing whatever it is we do that makes Benedictine spirituality a gift for all ages.

Joan Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, p164

Dreams

wphow — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 20:55:24 +0000

If we aspire to less than we can be, we will get exactly that.

The size of our futures depends on the size of our dreams.

Our dreams are the path to a new kind of present. They not only show us what we seek; they show us what it will take to get there. Most of all, they make the length and difficulty of the journey worthwhile.

Joan Chittister, The Art of Life: Monastic Wisdom for Every Day, 47-50.

Dark, sacred night

wphow — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 20:41:58 +0000

The Solitude of Night

The problem with this culture may well be that we have destroyed night. Even night is all light and noise and activities now. . . . The loss of night is a loss of human soul, I think, which means that if we do not have it naturally, we need to create it for ourselves: television and computers off, lights out, extra hours of quiet. Then maybe we can find the inside of ourselves again and the voice of God that echoes there so much more clearly than anywhere else.

Joan Chittister, The Art of Life: Monastic Wisdom for Every Day, 37

Seventy

wphow — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 20:33:27 +0000

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Food

wphow — Sat, 03 Dec 2016 20:31:21 +0000

A person should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of life in order that worldly cares do not obliterate the sense of the beautiful that God has implanted in the human soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

R. Paul Stevens on Vocation

wphow — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 23:16:21 +0000

The three signs of our vocation are:

Vocation is the call of God. We are filled by the Holy Spirit to do our work
The passion of our heart is the compass of our vocation. Our hearts are lifted up when we do our work.
The recognition of others confirm our vocation. Friends, colleagues and others recognize our skill.

Work to Love

wphow — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 19:01:10 +0000

In God and the World, his book of conversations with Cardinal Ratzinger who later became Pope, Peter Seewald asks:

Isn’t it remarkable, how in spite of our deep-rooted longing for love, we regard everything else as being more important: success, sex, status, money, power. We use almost all of our energy in learning how to reach these goals. And we devote hardly any effort at all to learning the art of loving.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger answers:

Many of the things you mentioned are short-cuts and substitutes. . . it is an essential part of man’s calling to develop his capabilities–and only thus can he fulfill his mission of loving.

Man is meant to develop and actualize the potential within him; he is meant to do something in this world. That’s because learning work skills and setting about a job in no way conflict with his basic task of loving, but give it concrete shape. I am only fulling my mission to love . . . when I become the person I am capable of being. When I am giving what I am able to give. When I open up those possibilities in creation and in the network of human relationships that help us to get through life together and together to shape the fertile capacity of the world and of life into a garden, in which we can find both security and freedom.

This basic impulse goes astray whenever this vocational education aims at no more than the acquisition of skills; whenever mastery over our environment, improving our earning capacity, and the pursuit of power become dissociated from the inner task of loving, from everyone’s being there for everyone else. Whenever power gets the better of giving. Whenever self-assertion, turning in on oneself, the collecting of things around oneself becomes more than the primary aim and, in this way, man’s capacity for loving is choked off. Man is then dominated by things and no longer knows how to value them properly.

It is important that we not see our abilities, our vocational training, as being in themselves merely secondary. Certainly, all our abilities and all the technological capacity of man should be kept in their proper place, in our minds, and ought not to become autonomous. Whenever power becomes autonomous and is the sole category of judgment for man, then it turns into slavery and is the opposite of love.

The above quote was taken from a section titled “How Do We Learn to Love?” in pages 190-191.

To find out how to develop and actualize your potential, and to become the person you are capable of being, go to Circles of Growth.

2015 Canada election results were highly accurate 40 minutes after polls closed

wphow — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 16:09:43 +0000

You didn’t need to wait long for the overall outcome of the federal elections. Polls closed in British Columbia at 7.00pm on October 19 Pacific time. I was at the pharmacy. When I got home and tuned in to CBC, these were the standings:

7.40pm LIB 184, CON 100, NDP 28, BQ 9, GRN 0 (undecided 17)

The final results posted on the morning of October 20:

Oct 20: LIB 184, CON 99, NDP 44, BQ 10, GRN 1.

The 17 ridings that were undecided at 7.40pm were likely in BC. Of these, 16 went to NDP and 1 was for Elizabeth May, the Green leader on Vancouver Island.

This proves that you don’t have to measure everything to get a high degree of accuracy (up to 90%) so long as the sample is truly random. So for instance, after counting a random sample of 10% of the ballots, the leading candidate will most likely be the winning candidate.

Based on the overall election results, this is what we knew a mere 40 minutes after the polls closed:

The Liberals won a majority and they would form government.
Stephen Harper lost; Justin Trudeau will be the new Prime Minister.
The Conservatives replaced the NDP as the official opposition.

If you were going to have a busy next day, you could go to bed then! So once again, Douglas Hubbard is proven right. In his book, How to Measure Anything, he argues that instead of getting a large enough sample, focus on getting truly random sample. With a truly random sample, you can have a accurate results with a small sample–and save time and money!

In fact, as the night progressed, the results became less accurate before returning to greater accuracy towards the end. Here’s my listing of the results as broadcasted by CBC from 7.40pm to 9.05pm when the speeches started. Of the 338 seats in the House of Commons:

7.40pm LIB 184, CON 100, NDP 28, BQ 9, GRN 0 (undecided 17)
7.45pm LIB 180, CON 102, NDP 32, BQ 10, GRN 1 (undecided 13)
7.50pm LIB 185, CON 103, NDP 33, BQ 10, GRN 1 (undecided 6)
7.55pm LIB 185, CON 104, NDP 36, BQ 10, GRN 1 (undecided 2)
8.00pm LIB 186, CON 104, NDP 36, BQ 10, GRN 1 (undecided 1)
8.05pm LIB 185, CON 106, NDP 35, BQ 10, GRN 1 (undecided 1)
8.10pm LIB 187, CON 107, NDP 33, BQ 10, GRN 1 (undecided 0)
8.15pm LIB 189, CON 106, NDP 32,BQ 10, GRN 1
8.20pm LIB 188, CON 105, NDP 34,BQ 10, GRN 1
8.25pm LIB 191, CON 104, NDP 32, BQ 10, GRN 1
8.30pm LIB 188, CON 103, NDP 36,BQ 10, GRN 1
8.35pm LIB 189, CON 103, NDP 35, BQ 10, GRN 1
8.40pm LIB 189, CON 103, NDP 35, BQ 10, GRN 1
8.45pm LIB 187, CON 104, NDP 36, BQ 10, GRN 1
8.50pm LIB 189, CON 103, NDP 35, BQ 10, GRN 1
8.55pm LIB 190, CON 102, NDP 35, BQ 10, GRN 1
9.00pm LIB 188, CON 103, NDP 36, BQ 10, GRN 1
9.05pm LIB 188, CON 102, NDP 37, BQ 10, GRN 1
9.10pm Concession and victory speeches started.