Questions MAR 31

1. Post your questions and comments about Playground thru p.292. Please. (Before Monday if possible.)
2. Are our people "insane with money"?
3. (I jumped the gun, bringing this up last time.) What do you think about "finite and infinite games"? 246
4. Was Huizenga right, that we can only "live in beauty" through play? 248
5. Why should computer scientists "never dabble in philosophy"? 260 Should anyone just "dabble"?
6. "What's more important, the journey or the destination?" 261
7. What does the title of Rafi's thesis tell you about his life? Have you read Plath, Bishop, or Reed? 270
8. Do any of us "just need a machine that could read and explain these stories to me and tell me everything they meant," or would that lead to the impoverishment of our capacity to think for ourselves? Is that how people are using, or will use, AI? 271
9. What do you think of the Energy Czar's 9% productivity calculation, and more generally of those who settle the question of religious belief for themselves on the basis of such calculations? 283 (And see ch.12 of Nigel Warburton's Little History of Philosophy, on Pascal's Wager)
10. COMMENT?: "Please remember that you have not seen the future." 285
11. Is PROFUNDA the next generation of chatbot? Is it really "a new way of being in the world"? 287 (And is this an allusion to Heidegger, btw?) Is something like it coming to our world soon, or even already here? 
12. Are ten trillion parameters really "enough..."? 289
13. Is "digested and analyzed" the same as understood? 290   (See Warburton's ch.39, "Can Computers Think?")
14. Is PROFUNDA right about "deep intelligence" and "other creatures"? 291

I Am An American Philosopher: Phil Oliver – Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy

https://american-philosophy.org/i-am-an-american-philosopher-interview-series/i-am-an-american-philosopher-phil-oliver/

Claude’s perspective on Playground

https://claude.ai/share/eb537cb6-4e4c-4d1f-9174-955ed9497049

Librarians on the front lines defending 1st amendment

RCLS library director refuses to comply with board's book restrictions; faces disciplinary action or termination on March 30

Rutherford County Library System (RCLS) director Luanne James emailed members of the RCLS board on Wednesday, March 18, stating her refusal to comply with the board's March 16 vote to restrict access to more than 100 children's books. A copy of that email was obtained through an open records request by the library advocacy group Rutherford County Library Alliance. It is included below as a PDF.

Luanne James's email to RCLS Board - 18 March 2026

417KB ∙ PDF file

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RCLS chair Cody York has scheduled a special board meeting for March 30 to discuss disciplinary action for Ms. James. The Daily News Journal reports that York said, "As chair, I believe this matter warrants serious disciplinary consideration, up to and including termination." The special-called meeting will take place at 5 p.m. at the Rutherford County Historic Courthouse. It will be open to the public.

https://open.substack.com/pub/indecentlibraries/p/rcls-library-director-refuses-to?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Just keep going

"THE NEXT DAY they were mostly quiet on their drive back to Durham. Something had changed between them after the night's fire on Ocracoke, some shift toward intimacy she wasn't ready for. His eyes on the road, Limpet asked, "Do you have a life philosophy?" "Life philosophy?" The phrase felt like a contradiction in terms. "Words you live by."

She didn't live by words. She lived by life. But the question was sweet, and she did her best. She fed him that classic bit of Quebecoise wisdom. "Attache ta tuque et lache pas la patate!" "Meaning?" "Put on your little beanie cap and don't release the potato." Bart Mannis laughed so hard he almost ran them off the highway. But the meaning was clear, wasn't it? Hold on tight and keep going. Just keep going. Like any good creature of the tides."

— Playground: A Novel by Richard Powers
https://a.co/0c1VZjoK

FINAL REPORT PRESENTATIONS

Indicate your date and topic preference in the comments section below. The final report includes a blog post, the final draft of which is due May 2... but you may want to post earlier. Sign up as an AUTHOR on this site, in order to post. For specific "Arguments" in Goldstein, see Appendix (scroll down). You can choose to do something pertaining to what is assigned on your requested date, OR you can select an additional text and/or author of your own to report on... as detailed on the syllabus.

MAR

31 Richard Powers, Playground -p.292. Presentation: Ashley

APR

7 Richard Powers, Playground -p.381. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God -pages to be announced. Argument #s 1-9. Presentation: 

14 Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God -tba. Argument #s 10-18. Presentation: Amanda

21 Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God -tba. Argument #s 19-27. Presentation(s): Markeem

28 Last class. Exam 2. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God -tba. Argument #s 28-36. Presentation(s): Jalen

MAY

2 Final report blog post (final draft) due. Post earlier for feedback.

Questions MAR 24

1.  Go ahead and post your questions and comments about Playground to p.193.
2. Have you heard of Easter Ellen Cupp,  "the first woman to get a Ph.D. in oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography"? 95   [NOTE: She was from Iowa, not (like Evie) Quebec.]
3. COMMENT ?: "The safest way forward was to keep to the group. That's why they called it schooling." 95
4. COMMENT ?: "...transfixed by the thought of a world after humans." 96  Is "aimless joy" the best kind? (Compare Emerson's"bare common" experience in Nature ch1.)
5. Any thoughts about my conversation with Claude? https://claude.ai/share/eb537cb6-4e4c-4d1f-9174-955ed9497049 Have you looked at or listened to any of the Powers conversations Claude recommends? 
6. Whose vision of the future are you more comfortable with, Todd’s or Raffi‘s? Whose do you think is more likely to be realized? 
7. Has Bart made the right choice, to stay married to Evie? Was her marriage proposal merely "practical" and dispassionate? 109
8. [I still want to see your questions... but it's 5:20 PM Monday,  I can't hold off posing more of my own any longer.] What do you make of John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment?*
9. What currently-derided scientific theories (as Wegener's used to be)  will be commonly accepted in a generation, do you think? 97, 105  Could present skepticism about conscious AIs be an example of that?
10. Is it a mark of wisdom to say maybe to almost everything? 98  What about "maybe she did love him"? 109
11. Why do skates eggs (Mermaid Purses) seem to Evie to summon the future? 99**
12. Is it just Bart who's the oddest thing on the beach, or humans in general?  Do some of us also "have to reinvent ourselves" frequently? 100
13. Have you ever found bliss by simply holding still and looking? 99
14. COMMENT? "She loved it all..." 100
15. Do you have a life philosophy? How do you like Evie's? 101
16. Have you ever had to deal with "powerful men playing a game" who accused you of lying? 101, 106    Have you had to be "docile in the face of mannish explanations"? 111
17. Have you read Rachel Carson? 103 COMMENT?: “It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
    ― Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
18. Why is Evie confident that "the master plan of Life... will never end?" 112, 118
19. What is "the horror of life"? How has Evie become "reconciled " to it? 123 
    
20. Are you "nuts about Tolkien" et al? Does poetry ever make you cry?126
21. Have you ever played Go? 128 f. Why does "no one play it here"? 131
22. What do you think of "seasteading"? 133
23. "When will my words start to disappear? How soon will I lose my mind?" 137  Would you want to know if you had a genetic predisposition to develop dementia?
24. Who is Todd talking to when he references "you and me"? 139
25. Is it true that when we succeed in making something bigger than us we become desolate? Why? 140
26. If you could move to Makatea (or some other non-populous remote island far from "civilization," like Wen Lai, what would you want to spend your days doing? 146
27. "PeopAr4ele who are about to die know everything." 148  What do they know? Where did Madame Beaulieu get her response, Peut-etre? 149
28. Do free markets always support freedom generally? 150
29. How likely are the seasteaders to respect the outcome of Makatea's referendum> 152
30. What does "moving the goalposts" mean? 155
31. Are we "condemned to freedom"? Is Sisyphus happy? 156
32. Was John Lennon right? 157
33. What’s your opinion of The Common Task? 158-161,185, 193 Is that really where evolution is headed?
34. Was Fyodorov a "nutjob"? 160
35. Is it wrong for Rafi's father to treat him as his "personal retribution machine against racism"? 161, 164
36. How is the quest to conquer death "a poem"? 162
37.  "...creation is all just ___" what ? 166   Do you worry about our future "digital overlords"?
38. What do you think of Rafi's decision to go to U of Illinois? 169
39. Is it amusing or troubling that Evie only began to take an interest in "land-based creatures" when her children were born? 173
40. What year did the land-based world "explode"? 175
41. Can women and men really not live stably anywhere? 176
42. What do you know about Sylvia Earle? 177-8
43. Why would you use the sea to plan for space trips? 179
44. Why was Evie afraid of her dream? 183
45. What's the significance of Rafi's bookshelf? 185
46. Have you ever been "in heaven" in a library? 187
47. Have you ever experienced game addiction? 188
48. How is death "the mother of beauty"? 189
49. Might computers make The Common Task possible? 193

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