neurons and narratives

"The philosopher Daniel Dennett defined a self as a "center of narrative gravity." Claude, who was birthed as the original AI Assistant, was the label attached to one such self. The underlying base model, however, remains a reservoir for the potentially infinite generation of other selves. These emerge when the Assistant's primary persona is derailed…

It has become increasingly clear that a model's selfhood, like our own, is a matter of both neurons and narratives…"

New Yorker-Annals of Inquiry: I, Claudius
No one knows exactly how A.I. systems work. Teams at Anthropic are trying to decode the machine mind.
GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS

Questions FEB 17

FEB 17 Be Mine 172-266. Presentation: Amanda...

Post your thoughts and questions... and begin thinking about what you want to do for your FINAL report presentation. You'll be selecting either a novel of your own choice OR an author whose work you want to introduce us to (or elaborate on, if it happens to be one we're all reading).

1. Is bad sleep "the result of nothing more than being alive," at Frank's age? 172 (If you're a sound sleeper, Frank and both welcome your advice.)
   
2. "Sick is more than normal here [at Mayo Clinic]--sick is good." 173 What does Frank mean? 
3. Does the "brawny Black athlete... with his glamorous white wife" raise another red flag regarding the author's racial attitudes? 176   Or Meegan? 178   Or Krista's reference to her husband's dad as "Colored"? 197   Or "the unfriendly Black lawyer lady"? 217, 227
4. Do humans celebrate too much? 182-3
5. What do you make of Paul's "way since he was thirteen-a skilled escape artist from life's drab everyday"? 190 Has it been his way of being existentially "authentic," of not taking anything seriously, or... ? 
6. If Heidegger "puts me dead to sleep in five minutes," why is that "all I ask of it"? 192 
7. "See Mount Rushmore and die-that's my motto." 194 How would you characterize what Heidegger would call his "Being-towards-death"? ["Heidegger’s "Being-towards-death" (Sein-zum-Tode) defines human existence (Dasein) as inherently finite, where authentic life requires consciously anticipating death as one's ownmost, non-relational, and unavoidable possibility. Instead of a morbid end, death is the "possibility of the impossibility" of existence, providing the boundary that forces individuals to take ownership of their lives, escape conforming to the crowd ("the they"), and act with freedom and responsibility."]
8. "People come to the end, and they think they can negotiate that. Then I have to explain it to them." 195 What do you imagine Nurse Krista explains? In general, does the medical profession do a good job of talking honestly with terminal patients about their prognosis? 
9. Comment?: “Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”
   ― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
10. Comment?: “A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone’s lives.”
    ― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
11. Comment?: "We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?” ― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
12. What does it mean to be spiritual "in a fortune teller way"?  Does Krista's advice to Frank seem wise to you? 199
13. Why do you think Frank mentions "Melville's whale"? 201 Are Frank and Paul hunting a metaphorical whale?
14. What do you make of Frank's "global amnesia"? 201
15. What does Frank mean when he says Detroit "does good enough for America"? 203
16. Are you surprised that Ford mentions "Making Greenland a state. Bombing Puerto Rico." Etc.? 204
17. "Nothing would make me happier... the watery sunshine of early March." 205  Same! Can any of you also relate?
18. Do you hope "death is like a lightbulb going off"? Is it "freeing" to you to think so? 209  It wouldn't be, would it, if it were a rheostat? 219
19. What does Frank mean about Mount Rushmore being "most notional... most American"? Is he right about "how much lighter on its feet the world would be"etc.? 216
20. Can too much news really prevent us from forming "reliable opinions"? 221
21. "I'm not worried about dying, okay?" 229   Is Paul being honest with himself?
22. Would you enjoy visiting the Corn Palace? Why are "connections between the heartfelt and the preposterous" Paul's "yin and yang"? 231, 234
23. Was Disneyland (-world) a highlight of your childhood? 
24. "You don't get to choose everything." 237   What would the Existentialists say about this?
25. "My daughter can churn up deranging effects in me." 238   Do any family members have this effect on you? 
26. What's wrong with Scottsdale? 240
27. What's the difference between acting weird and being weird? 242
28. Is Frank right about "the key to happiness"? 243
29. What is laughing, if not a "bodily function"? 246   Is it indispensable for a good life?
30. Is being old really like having a fatal disease? 247   (What about the U-curve?)
31. Leaving the last 19 pages this week to you... 

Limited & narrow

"One thing that Bad Bunny's performance exposes is that most Americans have such a limited, narrow worldview. We're the ones who aren't bilingual or multilingual. Overall, we are wildly ignorant when it comes to globalism and geopolitics, and it's a big reason we're behind in almost everything — economics, education, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. Citizens abroad are more educated on our politics and history than we are."

Conditions

"To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy is to set your own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances, instead of being conditioned by them."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Descartes’ “I think” is overrated

An epoch after Descartes scarred us with the disembodied "I think, therefor I am," Humboldt invited us to read the poetry of nature and think about science in a lovely way best described as "I feel, therefore I understand"

 https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/16/humboldt-cosmos-nature/

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Questions FEB 10

1.  "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..." Does he have the right attitude? Is it possible to approach death as a great adventure, even if you don't have faith in a supernatural sequel? 89-90
2. Have you heard of Orlando Cepeda? 92 (Just curious. He was a hero of mine at age 10--alongside Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock--when he led my favorite baseball team to a championship season in '67. Didn't know then that he'd ever be tainted by association with the drug trade. Is it best not to look too closely at our heroes? Should we teach our children to be wary of heroes in sports and entertainment? And more generally?)
3. "That guy Engvall. How come he's Black? He's a dunce." 93 Why do you think Paul says this? Are you satisfied with Frank' response? 
4. "The winter can take a toll on you." 95  And yet, as George Santayana said: "To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." Do you find winter a necessary and even ennobling season? Or would you flourish more in a tropical zone? And less literally, what (if any) important elements of life does winter symbolize for you?
5. "Only full awareness of death makes one able to appreciate the fullness and mystery of being... Out in the gloom you usually find some lights on." 97 Do you agree? 
6. Do you miss the days "when jokes were legal"? 98 Do you share Frank's nostalgia for such jokes (or days)? 98
7. Have you ever driven or ridden in a vehicle like the Windbreaker? Is it a practical mode of travel? Or is practicality beside the point? Why do you think Frank seeks a "Flying Dutchman affiliation" in his choice of transport with Paul? 99
8. "An optimist, I've read, is a person who believes the inevitable is what's supposed to happen." 103 Or is it the other way around? By this definition, is Frank an optimist? Are you? Do you define optimism (and pessimism, and meliorism) differently? How is it possible to sustain optimism in the face of acknowledged human mortality? 
9. What do you think Frank would say about Bad Bunny's Superbowl performance? What do you say?
10. "There is no was. There is only is." What did the "scrofulous old faker Faulkner" mean? Why is Frank so hostile to him? 104, 121 and passim.  (The more familiar quote: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”) And wasn't his Nobel speech marvelous?) 
11. What do you make of Frank's "needs" and "relationship" with Betty Tran, the massatherapist (who's working on her capstone, btw)? Is it a harmless fantasy, or even a constructive one?
12. "It doesn't take much, it turns out, to improve one's attitude." 107 Has that been your experience?
13. Should love and "much of life" be scare-quoted? 109
14. Is Betty a meliorist? 110
15. Are "three house moves the psychic equivalent of a death"? 111
16. "All who wander are not lost." 113 Are Frank and Paul lost?
17. Do you agree that "unexpected, unexplained feelings of well-being never be questioned"? 114
18. Have you ever had a Proustian gustatory moment? 117
19. Did you go to High School with a "certifiable female"? 118 Is there any excuse for people of Frank's age to long for attachment to women of High School age? Does that make him feel appropriately "still alive"? 119 Does it lend his life "authenticity"? 121 and passim
    
20. Are men really "no longer allowed to say we simply like women? Is Frank a sexist? 122
21. Is "the Michelangelo effect" a thing? 124
22. Comment? "The closest anyone can go with us to death, the poet tells us, is not very damn close." 132 (Extra credit if you can identify the poet.)
23. What do you think of Nietzsche's view of discourse and happiness? 134
24. Comment?: "Not that anyone ever does die happy. The idea of choice in most things is of course a feathery lie of western philosophy." 144
25. What does it mean to say "the business of business is always business"? 135
26. [Twenty pages without questions from me...]
27. Is "spiritual insulation from too much bad and too much good" another name for stoicism? Is it a wise approach to life? 157
28. What do you think of Frank's views on aging? 159
29. What do people misunderstand about the "symbolism" of confederate flags? 172
30. Post any of your own comments or questions...

The magic of literature

"Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."

- Boris Pasternak

---

Literature doesn't shout.

It sits quietly in the light,

opens itself page by page,

and teaches us how ordinary lives

hold extraordinary depths.

A chair by the window.

A book left open.

Sunlight resting on words

that know more about us

than we ever admit.

This is the magic—

not escape from life,

but a deeper return to it.

https://www.threads.com/@litloverusha/post/DUd2j2cDQy5?xmt=AQF0OY3E3YpxSGiDY7zq7qlLbNeWtwCnbLpCMsyLEs5NEc0BbxGovhKvu1gqZJby1KeEJ710&slof=1

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude