Questions March 17

1. Go ahead and share any thoughts about anything in the first 95 pages of Playground, or about author Richard Powers or any of his previous books (I especially like Bewilderment, Overstory, Echo Maker, Galatea 2.2, Generosity: An Enhancement), or on the general subjects of the environment and/or AI.
2. Re: the dedication (& 23f.): did anyone ever give you a book (or anything else) at around age 10 that had a significant impact on your later life?   Why do you think Clearly It Is Ocean so impacted Todd?
3. Any thoughts on  the Ta'aroa creation story, and the role of artist in bringing gods (and other creative products) into being? Do such stories convey a deeper-than-literal truth? What might that be, in this instance?
4. Why do you think Ina sobbed through the last act of The Tempest? 4   Has any work of art (literature or otherwise) ever moved you to tears? Why? 
5. Is it possible to raise a family "away from the growing sadness of the real world"? 5
6. COMMENT? Todd Keane, "the first person to reach the future" [as the novel will reveal] is now "retreating into the past"... 9    And what does he mean, that when he was young he could "breathe under water"? 13
7. COMMENT? What do you make of the multiple references to "hallucinations"? (16, 19, passim)
8. Rafi frequently dreams of "the first day of first grade"... 20  Do you have any recurrent dreams from childhood? Are they pleasant, disturbing, instructive, ...?
9. Todd's former company's breakthrough, he says, will hasten humanity's "fourth and perhaps final act." 26  What do you think were the first three acts? What do you imagine might be the fourth? 
10. Had you ever heard of Makatea? Any thoughts about its history? 
11. COMMENT? "Makatea helped Homo sapiens subdue the Earth. But in the process, the island was consumed." 31
12. "People and their emotions puzzled me." 33   Do you think this is true of many tech pioneers and computing entrepreneurs? Is it concerning that their creations have come to preoccupy so many people? 33   Were we READY> for the digital/Internet revolution? Are we READY> for the changes AI may bring to society, emotional health, et al?
13. 
    

Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times by Todd May

A surprisingly lighthearted approach to a heavy subject, though not so surprising coming from the philosophical advisor to The Good Place. Most lives are indeed worth living, we may agree, while still also wondering whether the total species impact of humanity hasn't been a net loss for life on this planet.

But wouldn't our self-inflicted extinction be an awful abrogation of responsibility? Don't we owe it to the future of life to stick around and try to clean up the mess we've made?

Well, at least 'til after the WBC final?

"…the idea that humans are destroying life on the planet for many of our fellow creatures or that we could get into a war that would make life unlivable for many others—that's not so crazy. Instead, it's fact. And how about the thought that given what we're doing, perhaps we should seriously consider whether we should go extinct, whether the world would be better off without us? Maybe that's not so crazy either.

The not-craziness of it is why I've been thinking about this for some time now. In fact, several years ago I penned some very preliminary thoughts on it for the (now extinct) New York Times blog The Stone, raising the possibility that human extinction might be at once a tragedy and a good thing. It would be a tragedy for two reasons. First, in addition to the suffering that would precede it, it would involve the loss of much of what humans value and only humans can create: art, science, and so on. Second—here is the classically tragic part—that loss would be caused by humans. We, like King Lear or Oedipus, would be the cause of our demise. But our extinction would not be all bad news. The end of human existence would also be the end of the massive suffering humans cause, largely to non-human animals. (Granted, we also cause a good bit of suffering to one another—and not just through social media.
But, as I'll argue in the next chapter, for most of us our lives, in the end, are well worth living.) It's not that animals don't cause suffering to one another. Of course they do.

But no non-human animal can cause the extraordinary level of suffering that humans do, through factory farming and the consumption that goes along with it, deforestation, plastic disposal into the oceans, scientific experimentation, and the like…"

— Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times by Todd May
https://a.co/0jeNMx01

“Rationalists”

Child's Play

"…Scott Alexander is one of the leading proponents of rationalism, which is—depending on whom you ask—either a major intellectual movement or a nerdy Bay Area subculture or a small network of friend groups and polycules. Rationalists believe that the way most people understand the world is hopelessly muddled, and that to reach the truth you have to abandon all existing modes of knowledge acquisition and start again from scratch. The method they landed on for rebuilding all of human knowledge is Bayes's theorem, a formula invented by an eighteenth-century English minister that is used in statistics to work out conditional probabilities. In the mid-Aughts, armed with the theorem, the rationalists discovered ["discovered"] that humanity is in jeopardy of a rogue superintelligent AI wiping out all life on the planet. This has been their overriding concern ever since…"

https://harpers.org/archive/2026/03/childs-play-sam-kriss-ai-startup-roy-lee

Take a break

 

Orhan Pamuk

Unfortunately Isil wasn't feeling well tonight and didn't get to tell us about Turkish literature. I'm sure any of us in her position, in reverse, attempting to crack the language and culture code of Turkish literature in Turkish, would empathize with the challenge she's been facing. 

Here's one Turkish writer on my To Read list:

"Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, he has sold over 13 million books in 63 languages, making him the country's best-selling writer.
Pamuk's novels include Silent House, The White Castle, The Black Book, The New Life, My Name Is Red and Snow. He is the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches writing and comparative literature. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.

     Of partial Circassian descent and born in Istanbul, Pamuk is the first Turkish Nobel laureate. He is also the recipient of numerous other literary awards. My Name Is Red won the 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, 2002 Premio Grinzane Cavour and 2003 International Dublin Literary Award. 

     The European Writers' Parliament came about as a result of a joint proposal by Pamuk and José Saramago. Pamuk's willingness to write books about contentious historical and political events put him at risk of censure in his homeland. In 2005, a lawyer sued him over a statement acknowledging the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Pamuk said his intention had been to highlight issues of freedom of speech in Turkey. The court initially declined to hear the case, but in 2011 Pamuk was ordered to pay 6,000 liras in compensation for having insulted the plaintiffs' honor." g'reads

Exam review

The March 3 exam will feature objective-format questions about Be Mine, drawn from the questions I've posted each week. The answers will all be provided, you'll just need to match them to the right questions. You get a point for each correct answer, up to a possible 25... so there's no harm in guessing. But with adequate review, you shouldn't have to guess.

Here are some topics and relevant accompanying texts to review:

JAN 27

1. Frank's opening statement about happiness, and on happiness and aging on  p.11 ...
2. Frank on the remoteness of neighbors in America 5
3. Frank's characterization of "white southerners," Pug, etc. 17, 18
4. Frank on fearing death, suffering,  a "good death," denial... 24, 26
5. Frank on understanding, making sense, and meaning, and how to "make living steal a march on dying" 37

FEB 3

1. Frank on making plans for merely-possible contingencies in life 47
2. Frank's thoughts on scattering his ex's ashes 53-5
3. Frank on what you need to do, to be happy 56
4. Frank's remarks on Heidegger 73
5. Frank on having specific life-goals for one's children 77

FEB 10

1. Paul's attitude, and "full awareness of death": "Dying is the last of [Paul's] life's great escapades and the last he would want to undertake with ill-fitting spirits. In this way he aspires to be full of life more than anyone I know..." 89-90; 97
2. Optimists 101
3. Frank on choice 144
4. Nietzsche's view of discourse and happiness 134
5. "Spiritual insulation" and aging 157-9

FEB 17

1. The Mayo Clinic's culture of sickness, and celebration 173, 182-3
2. Paul as escape artist 190
3. What Krista says she explains to people, and her variety of spirituality. 195, 199
4. Mount Rushmore as  "most notional... most American," and "how much lighter on its feet the world would be" etc. 216
5. The "key to happiness" 243

FEB 24

1. "Cashing in," "awful places" 267f.
2. Paul's epitaph choices 281
3. On "looking toward deepest space" 283
4. Why Paul likes Mount Rushmore 324
5. How Paul died "fundamentally unchanged" 331

There will also be a few bonus questions, so you can afford to miss a few and still earn 25 points. Your suggestions for those, in the comments space below, are welcome.

Rebecca Goldstein, philosopher/novelist

"… Or I could write a novel called 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. It was partly inspired by another book I had borrowed from the White Plains public library. It was by the philosopher Bertrand Russell and was called Why I Am Not a Christian
. Are you certain your parents won't mind? one of the librarians gently asked me as I was checking it out. She had met my father, a conspicuously religious man. But, of course, my parents didn't mind—we were Jewish! They were fine with me not wanting to be Christian. This Bertrand Russell, whoever he was, was okay with them. Little did they know..."

https://open.substack.com/pub/rebeccanewbergergoldstein/p/ecstasy-immodesty-and-obedience?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Fwd: You're Invited! MakerSpace VR Night - Wednesday, March 4, 5-7pm!

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Valerie Hackworth <Valerie.Hackworth@mtsu.edu>

Hello Friends and Supporters of the Library, Technology, and the MakerSpace,

You're invited to join us for our Annual Virtual Reality Night in the MakerSpace on Wednesday, March 4, from 5-7pm!

Try out our headsets! You can choose to dance with Beat Saber in Mixed Reality with our VIVE Pro 2 and experience a variety of adventure, art, history, space, and strategy games in our Classic VIVE headsets. Plus, we encourage you to try your hand at flying with our Logitech gear and Microsoft Flight Simulator. And we'd love for you to check out our game cabinet that was Made in the MakerpSpace!

Returning this year, you can test out speaking the new language you've been practicing or try a new language in our Meta Quest 3!

All are welcome! This event is open to the public. Bring your friends and family! Snacks will be provided.

 See you in the MakerSpace!

 Cheers,

Valerie

 

 

 

Valerie Hackworth, MSCIS

She/Her

Manager, Liaison, and Program Director - MakerSpace

Library Technology Department

MTSU Walker Library

1611 Alumni Drive

Murfreesboro, TN 37132

615-904-8545 – LIB 246A

Valerie.Hackworth@mtsu.edu

https://library.mtsu.edu/vhackworth

https://mtsunews.com/tag/makerspace

https://library.mtsu.edu/makerspace

https://library.mtsu.edu/technology

 

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat."
- Thich Nhat Hanh