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recent bookmarks from robertogrecoA Prayer for Limits - by Matthew Battles2026-07-03T07:04:10+00:00
https://matthewbattles.substack.com/p/a-prayer-for-limits
robertogrecoOur relationship with life seems to be in crisis today. Everything that appears as a “limit” — incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability — tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship. And yet we must remember that humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them….
It is precisely within our limitations that the following find a place: compassion, as well as a sincere concern for the needs of others; a generosity that can emerge even in the midst of darkness and failure; spiritual experience and the worship of God…. Mysteriously, it is precisely in such moments that we can discover a new wisdom, tangibly experience the closeness of others and encounter the presence of the Lord.
I found myself wanting not merely to assent to these words, but to pray with them. It was a curious and inexorable feeling. I have not made a practice of composing and sharing prayers; but a spiritual confidante whose fellowship I trust has encouraged me to share this one. And so here is a prayer for our limits, offered not for intercession or supplication but in adoration:
It is through your love, O Lord, that we learn to love our limits,
which give force to our compassion
and shape to the fear we feel for others in their need;
which nurture our generosity even as we fall and fail;
which frame and enfold our measures of adoration.
Confronted as we shall be by rejection,
grieving as we must at the loss of all we hold dear,
quaking as we do in the face of our failures,
may we gather our wits, sense your nearness,
and come to rest in the embrace of our entanglement.
We suffer from these limits and we learn from them.
Without them, we would cease yearning even for love.
To love, to learn, and to desire is to wound and be wounded.
What a gift it is to be drawn into your woundedness,
into this adventure of failure and freedom, disappointment and dream.
In you, we affirm the tragedy and splendor and glorious mystery
of being your body together; with you, we choose the human."]]>matthewbattles 2026 popeleoxiv magnificahumanitas encyclicals ai artificialintelligence catholicchurch catholicism antónbarba-kay technology siliconvalley lmsacasas technocracy utility tools environment marshallmcluhan perception resistance matthewsitman samadler-bell jackhanson beauty grace life living limits incapacity illness age aging suffering vulnerability humanity humanism compassion wisdom experience prayer spirituality failure freedom disappointment entanglement human humanness humans knowyourenemy friction frictionlessnesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d7e82e1856b5/Noticing by Richard Louv | Hachette Book Group2026-06-27T05:38:59+00:00
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/richard-louv/noticing/9781643753034/
robertogrecorichardlouv nature senses sensing multispecies morethanhuman 2026 spirituality wildlife wilderness neuroscience photography indigeneity indigenous bioenchantment enchantment animism mindfulness human humanism humans science art noticing seeing sensory attention ecology ecoanxiety environmenthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:606f3bcfdb23/Academia: Epistemological Graveyards We (Mostly) Whistle Past2026-06-26T11:56:35+00:00
https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-epistemological-graveyards
robertogrecotimothyburke socialscience socialsciences humility history anthropology economics psychology change revolution panamapapers notknowing data politics culture society sociology experience collectives class everyday information academia highered highereducation institutions governance government decisionmaking behavior human humans hindsight cognition personality trauma addiction bias epistemology phenomenology howwethink thinking collectivity collectivities collectivism neuroscience belief beliefs metacognition inclination polemics datasets confidence policy analysis socialclaims danieldiermeierhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:30c6132eb5f6/Pope Leo XIV's 'Magnifica humanitas' (with Jack Hanson) - Know Your Enemy - Apple Podcasts2026-06-26T08:30:11+00:00
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pope-leo-xivs-magnifica-humanitas-w-jack-hanson/id1462703434?i=1000773716438
robertogrecomagnificahumanitas 2026 popeleoxiv rerumnovarum popeleoxiii jackhanson donnaharraway cyborgs ai artificialintelligence humanism humanity reinholdniebuhr catholicchurch catholicism nature destiny human humans workers work labor augustinianism augustine staugustine saintaugustine society michaeloakenshott knowyourenemy war greed religion popefrancis us michaeloakeshott commonweal charlespéguy modernity profit capitalism privateproperty property authoritarianism democracy jdvance donaldtrump samadler-bell matthewsitman poverty augustinians sharing theology stevebannon latinamerica perú vaticanii vatican tradcatholicism globalsouth thirdworld humanrights global liberaldemocracy religiousfreedom freedomofreligion popebenedictxvi scripture thomasaquinas justice humandignity economics democraticsocialism politics adrianvermeule 1891 1937 1983 1985 discernment darioamodei anthropic antoniospadaro peterthiel towerofbabel language english audience desire homogenization tension growth friction mortality time placehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e0ae7f0359ad/The Wounded Walker | Commonweal Magazine2026-06-25T21:14:53+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ward-graham-michel-de-certeau-wounded-walker
robertogrecomicheldecerteau 2026 theology religion everyday society spirituality myticism françoisdosse jesuits jeanjosephsurin jacqueslacan pierrebourdieu michelfoucault foucault popefrancis catholicchurch catholicism philosophy juliakristeva claudelevi-strauss structuralism poststructuralism jean-paulsartre sartre lucegirard walking culture politics nicholasofcusa luceirigaray urbaingrandier knowledge resistances meanderings control meaning meaningmaking chloézhao nomadland poetics secularism interdisciplinary lacan josefčapek henridulubac jeandaniélou culturalstudies dilexitnos 2024 stignatius meditations divine 1968 edwardschillebeeckx materialism life living howwelive sociology linguistics hitory ideology psychology psychogeography discernment belief signs existentialism citizenship billboards ads advertising cityplanning urban urbanism cooking anthropology literature analysis everydaylife waysofbeing waysofoperating apathy resistance friction ordinary truth freedom evasions deployments transgressions dehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:78761595a095/The Project Gutenberg eBook of Robert Browning, by G.K. Chesterton.2026-06-24T07:32:57+00:00
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13342/pg13342-images.html
robertogrecogkchesterson humanity humanism 1903 robertbrowning life living human humans goodness love beneficencehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:68a0ad47f90d/In Defense of Our Country: On the Need to Resist AI and AI Data Centers - Front Porch Republic2026-06-17T10:41:15+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/06/in-defense-of-our-country-on-the-need-to-resist-ai-and-ai-data-centers/
robertogrecoteddymacker ai artificialintelligence resistance datacenters 2026 local us constitution thomasjefferson johnadams vaclavhavel tonimorrison ebwhite robertsinsheimer robertellsberg philipsherrard thichnhathanh gandhi technology chatgpt cognition cognitivesurrender anthropic darioamodei jimfarley lilashroff berniesanders tuckercarlson rondesantis aoc alexandriaocasio-cortez davidorr democracy automation humanity human humans humanism transhumanism tescreal elonmusk guillaumeverdon consciousness nickland samaltman stuartrussell michaeltoscano china pierreteilharddechardin land understanding revolution danielpolikoff aloneness hustonsmith jaronlanier trust society relationships work lanor simonweil erwinchargaff jessejenkins openai robertdavieshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ffa1c0086ad4/Tolstoy and the Illusion of Inevitability | THR Web Features | Web Features | The Hedgehog Review2026-06-17T10:22:04+00:00
https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/tolstoy-and-the-illusion-of-inevitability
robertogreco“Traveler, there is no road. The road is made by walking.” —Antonio Machado
Machado’s famous line suggests that the future does not exist in advance, waiting to be discovered, but comes into being through a choice among possible actions. Many possibilities exist at any given moment. The one that becomes actual depends on coincidences and chances as well as choices, all producing events whose significance emerges only as they unfold.
That, as it happens, is also Leo Tolstoy’s argument in War and Peace. In the book’s battle scenes, plans dissolve into confusion, causes multiply beyond reckoning, and outcomes hinge on fleeting, unrepeatable moments. On the eve of the Battle of Borodino, the novel’s hero, Prince Andrei, reflects that what lies ahead is not a determinate sequence but “a hundred million chances…decided on the instant.” What matters is less the perfection of a plan and more the ability to respond to what no plan could anticipate, by means of what Tolstoy calls “alertness.”
For Tolstoy, this is a feature not of war alone but of reality in general. History, far from representing the execution of a grand design, is rather the result of countless interacting elements, each shaping and reshaping what can happen next. New possibilities are always emerging as earlier ones are left unrealized. Life more closely resembles an evolving system than a solved equation. Events are contingent in Aristotle’s sense of the term: They “can either be or not be.” After all, if things could only happen one way, human action would collapse into the mechanical execution of what was already implicit in the present. “If human life could be [entirely] governed by reason,” Tolstoy writes in the book’s epilogue, “the possibility of life is destroyed.”
And yet again and again, in our aspiration to a hard science allowing for prediction, we are drawn to deny this. That is one reason War and Peace has never lost its relevance.
The Recurring Dream of Certainty
Since the scientific revolution, Western thought has repeatedly returned to the hope that contingency might be an illusion. As Newton explained the baffling complexities of planetary motion by four simple laws, perhaps, many imagined, the same could be done for human affairs. Thinkers as diverse as Marx, Skinner, and Malinowski have shared this dream, with each promising, in his own way, to reveal necessity beneath apparent disorder.
Complexity, for such men, is conceived of as a surface phenomenon, concealing an underlying simplicity that, once uncovered, will render the future knowable. Pierre-Simon Laplace insisted that events are certain, not probable: In speaking of their probability, we are really speaking of the chances our guesses may be accurate, but the events themselves are certain. Time and again, the apparent contingency of events is presented as evidence of our own ignorance. If we knew enough, we would see that events could not have happened otherwise.
But there is another possibility: that contingency is real—that the world is not merely complicated but fundamentally generative, that new possibilities are not simply revealed over time but produced within it, through the interaction of elements that cannot be fully anticipated in advance.
This is the world Tolstoy describes, one where knowledge cannot precede action, only emerge through it.
Time and the Limits of Foresight
Tolstoy’s deepest insight concerns time itself. In a deterministic view, time is a neutral space where events unfold according to fixed laws and the future lies already implicit in the present, waiting to be revealed. But in Tolstoy’s world, time is generative. Each moment reshapes what can happen next. Possibilities interact, combine, and disappear, their significance becoming visible only as events unfold.
One might say that the system is constantly generating variation—new configurations, new alignments, new opportunities—but without any overarching mechanism that selects among them in advance. Selection happens locally, in real time, through action. The closer one looks, the more things fail to simplify, as in the Newtonian model, and ramify instead. What happens to be taken up is what persists.
This is why most Austrian and Russian generals in War and Peace are consistently wrong. They believe they possess a science of warfare—a system capable of anticipating outcomes. Before Austerlitz, they insist that “every contingency has been foreseen.” The result is Napoleon’s greatest victory—yet their confidence remains intact, attributing failure to imperfect execution, never to the limits of prediction itself. As so often happens, the conviction that events must conform to a science makes the supposed science unfalsifiable.
The wisest general, Kutuzov, appreciates that people conceive only of a few possibilities while there are thousands. Famously, in the Council of War before Austerlitz, he advises not more planning but “a good night’s sleep.” What matters most is the alertness to seize opportunities that cannot be anticipated in advance.
This distinction—between a world that can be mapped and one that must be navigated—extends beyond warfare. Wherever outcomes depend on unfolding interactions, local knowledge, and irreversible time, no complete science is possible. One can orient oneself, but one cannot blaze the path in advance.
The Illusion of Inevitability
If the future is open, why does the past so often appear inevitable? Tolstoy offers several answers, including what he calls “the law of retrospection.”
Once events have occurred, we can reconstruct the paths that led to them. We identify signs that seem to foreshadow the outcome we now know. Alternatives fade from view—not because they were not real, but because they left no trace. The result is a powerful illusion: What happened begins to seem as if it had to happen.
Tolstoy asks us to imagine a group of men hauling a log, all pulling in different directions. Wherever they happen to wind up, someone will say they planned to do so.
This retrospective projection—which one of us has called backshadowing—reshapes our understanding of history. We look at earlier moments and conclude that the outcome was implicit all along. The more coherent the explanation, the easier it is to forget that things might have turned out otherwise. To avoid backshadowing, we must practice sideshadowing—recognizing that other outcomes, some of which we can imagine, were genuinely possible.
That is just the insight that those who believe they have discovered a hard science allowing for prediction in the social world forget or deny. And yet they cannot foresee their own future.
Tolstoy’s narrative resists this illusion by preserving the density of lived experience—the sense that at each moment multiple futures were genuinely possible. History, in this view, is not a line but a branching structure, most of whose branches vanish without record.
AI and Narrative Certainty
In the age of AI, this dream of certainty has taken a new and more persuasive form. Artificial intelligence can process vast datasets, identify patterns invisible to human perception, and generate explanations with remarkable coherence. Faced with such capabilities, it is tempting to believe that uncertainty can finally be overcome—that the future can be rendered legible in advance.
But the deeper effect of AI lies in its ability to reorganize the past. Given sufficient data, AI systems can produce narratives that make outcomes appear coherent, even inevitable. They can identify correlations, reconstruct causal chains, and highlight what they regard as signs foreshadowing what followed. The result is not necessarily false, but it is selective.
In this way, AI functions less as a predictor than as a powerful engine of narrative compression, reducing the apparent space of possibilities by presenting a single path as the path. What was once understood as a field of possible alternatives becomes retrospectively legible as an inevitable sequence, reducing many “futuribles” to one. The danger here lies in premature coherence, the sense that complexity has been resolved when it has only been reorganized into a persuasive form.
A Compass Rather Than a Map
Tools do more than extend thought; they reshape the environment in which thought occurs. AI, for instance, introduces a distinctive bias by generating what is statistically coherent, what resembles patterns derived from accumulated data.
In an evolutionary system, what persists is not necessarily what is best in any absolute sense but what is most easily selected under prevailing conditions. AI changes those conditions in the intellectual world, lowering the cost of generating variations while subtly guiding selection toward what is already legible within its patterns.
Over time, this can narrow the space of perceived possibilities by making them less visible, less accessible, less likely to be pursued. Certain forms of thought—those that resist simplification, that depend on sustained attention, or that emerge from direct engagement with the world—become comparatively fragile.
What follows from Tolstoy’s ideas, on the other hand, is not that prediction is useless or that analysis should be abandoned, but rather that we must think in terms of a compass rather than a map. A map assumes a fixed terrain and a determinate path, while a compass provides direction without specifying the route. In a world of genuine contingency, only the latter is available. One can choose a bearing, but the path itself is discovered through movement. Orientation is not foresight.
This is the force of Machado’s insight: The road is made by walking not because we lack information but because the path does not exist until it is created.
To accept this is to adopt a different understanding of knowledge, not as a complete representation of what will happen, but as a capacity to respond intelligently to what does happen. It is inseparable from time, from attention, from the ability to recognize significance as it emerges.
The impulse to eliminate contingency is understandable. Uncertainty is uncomfortable: It resists control and frustrates planning. But it is also what makes agency possible.
A world in which everything could be predicted would be a world in which nothing could be otherwise. Action would lose its meaning, since outcomes would already be fixed. The openness of the future is not a defect in our knowledge, but a condition of human life.
Artificial intelligence does not change this condition—but it can make us forget it. By rendering the past as if it had been inevitable, it invites us to imagine that the future is already written. Against this, one must insist on what Tolstoy and Machado understood in saying that the future remains unwritten, not because we have failed to compute it but because it does not yet exist."]]>tolstoy garysaulmorson julioottino antoniomachado fleeting alertness certainty uncertainty foresight prediction predictions contingency time variation selection local localism slow small complexity simplicity inevitability retrospection localknowledge knowledge irreverability science 2026 backshadowing sideshadowing coherence cohesion control human humanism planning plans narrativecompression future data ai artificialintelligence conditions possibility possibilities simplification orientation compass direction maps mapping liveexperience experience history action reason technocracy futuribles compasses canon humanness life living warandpeace bfskinner bronisławmalinowski karlmarxhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9d990d00b4a4/Monopoly Round-Up: The Pope and a Silicon Valley Trillionaire Fight Over God2026-06-17T09:53:05+00:00
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-pope-and-a
robertogrecomattstoller 2025 elonmusk transhumanism spacex ai artificialintelligence popeleoxiv catholicchurch catholicism tescreal inequality encyclicals humanity humanism society humnanity human humans aibubblehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b65252fe55df/The Humane Localism of Pope Leo XIV - Front Porch Republic2026-06-13T01:44:35+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/06/the-humane-localism-of-pope-leo-xiv/
robertogrecolocalism popeleoxiv catholicchurch catholicism 2026 nathanbeacon ai artificialintelligence magnificahumanitas globalism local smalll dignity humanism human humans davidmcpherson limits wendellberryhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d6450d7d2c3d/The AI movement to end humanity | The Gray Area - YouTube2026-06-12T13:24:08+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b30d7FR8YP0
robertogrecosigalsamuel seanilling ai artificialintelligence aisuccessionism tescreal elonmusk eugenics transhumanism singularity singularitarianism effectivealtruism cosmism rationalism intelligence hierarchy 2026 religion mortality longtermism humanity humans technooptimism marcandreessen consciousness humanextinction purpose christianity humanism belief salvation transcendence politics technology human philosophy antihumanism antihumanhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b3fddb76f742/To Dwell in Possibility • EQUATOR2026-06-12T09:21:09+00:00
https://www.equator.org/articles/to-dwell-in-possibility-vatican-AI
robertogreco2026 antoniospadaro gavinjacobson popeleoxiv magnificahumanitas catholicchurch catholicism ai artificialintelligence transhumanism donaldtrump humandignity humanism humans human dignity philosophy towerofbabel encyclicals llms popefrancis religion hannaharendt augustine staugustine saintaugustine popejohnpaulii popebenedictxiv technology freedom algorithms morality siliconvalley digitalcolonialism colonialism colonization globalsouth slavery laudatosi' christianity openai anthropic christopherolah ecology jrrtolkien peterthiel palantir mithril lordoftherings war venezuela iran dougburgum jdvance migration peace multilateralism disarmament theology violence popeleoxiii testembenevolentiae marcelofigueroa emilydickinsonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c794b5fc0340/Reflections on the Machine - The Ideas Letter2026-06-11T23:07:39+00:00
https://www.theideasletter.org/issue/reflections-on-the-machine/
robertogrecoain artificialintelligence data society popeleoxiv magnificahumanitas xiaoweiwang selinaxu 2026leifweatherby tylershoemaker benrecht kendraschaefer centralization mentalhealth psychology china us saschaaltmandubrul rationality rationalism objectivity human humans llms ai politics policy technology luhangabel pandemic covid-19 coronavirus optimization irrationality humanism pierpaolopasolini capitalism tidiness fascism control louis-jacques-mandédaguerre photography meaning meaningmaking encyclicals catholicchurch catholicismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f11702e7c92b/The Future Belongs to Those Who Resist It — The New Atlantis2026-06-06T11:13:15+00:00
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-future-belongs-to-those-who-resist-it
robertogrecocalrecoffey encyclicals popeleoxiv magnificahumanitas ai artificialintelligence slop aislop experience humanity humanexperience human humanism dehumanization oligarchy unemployment war technology catholicchurch catholicism llms chatbots marcusaurelisus sociality social discernment algorithms resistance civilization society everyday life living purpose policy claudehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:118e3e812887/How The Pope's AI Encyclical Defends Humanism - The Atlantic2026-06-06T10:58:51+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/05/how-popes-ai-encyclical-defends-humanism/687323/
robertogrecoTo eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. It is only thanks to the interplay of these elements that the wonders of the soul occur within us, allowing us to sense the richness of our humanity. To renounce this adventure, both tragic and splendid, in the name of a presumed transcendence of all limits, could mean many things, but it would no longer be human.
I am not a Christian, and really not much of a believer at all, but this articulates so well what I feel AI is taking from us. What makes a human life valuable is struggle. The things we achieve, the love, the give-and-take of families and communities—all of it involves effort. What AI is offering to do is remove struggle and effort. You could argue, and many do, that it will help improve our quality of life in many realms—if it finds new lifesaving drugs more quickly, for example. But the pope’s point is that no more than a small handful of people have control over how and where to apply AI. And they are letting the value of efficiency trump everything else. Dehumanization is what follows. And the only way to resist it is by exalting in our limitations, in our struggles, as a good thing.
I will always prefer reading a novel written by a human precisely because I know the limitations placed on a human brain. The opportunity to commune with such a brain, one that has pushed against those boundaries to create Middlemarch, is a thousand times more fulfilling than reading what a purportedly boundless machine has produced. The same could be said for any number of other areas of life—dating, traveling, working—in which the friction is what produces meaning. “For an algorithm, an error is a flaw to be corrected,” Leo writes; “for a person, however, an error can be a catalyst for profound change.”
Does it take a pope to say this? Of course not. But it matters that he did. People think of him as a moral counterweight to the political leaders who are full of promises yet short on guidance. What I took from Leo’s words though had nothing to do with good and evil or the state of my soul or Christ’s example. I thought about the pursuit of beauty, which is the closest I have to a faith. What I value most about being human is the infinite ways we have to make meaning for ourselves. This might be the culture we create or the cities we build or the stories we tell our children at night. All of it results from confronting our human condition with what we have at hand. If that goes away, if instead the machines, which have never had to put any effort into anything, are the ones developing our world, what will happen to beauty? (The pope, notably, couldn’t resist naming some earthly art that was meaningful to him: “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can be seen as a desire for unity; Guernica as a denunciation of dehumanization; Schindler’s List as a call not to consign the past to oblivion.”)
In addition to the Tower of Babel, Leo cites another biblical touchstone in his encyclical. As his editor, I would keep this one. It’s from the Book of Nehemiah. In it, the prophet decides to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Babylonians. The pope calls out the fact that the rebuilding was a group effort, a human effort. I read the episode, and it’s essentially an exhaustive list of the artisans and famous local families and priests who all lend a hand. There is no magic, no divine involvement, really—just lots of people sweating together and moving stones. How satisfying it must have been to complete the task, to know they did it themselves. “So we built the wall,” Nehemiah writes. “For the people had a mind to work.”"]]>magnificahumanitas encyclicals catholicchurch catholicism popeleoxiv ai artificialintelligence humanity human humans samaltman elonmusk towerofbabel christ jesus jesuschrist middlemarch guernica dehumanization siliconvalley 1891 industrialization god christianity limitations galbeckermanhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4b2eac99f36c/A Defense of Humanity in the Age of AI - The Atlantic2026-06-06T10:57:50+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/07/generative-ai-human-culture-philosophy/674165/
robertogrecoadriennelafrance 2026 humanism humanity 1833 ralphwaldoemerson philosophy naturalhistory industrialrevolution industrialization google tiktok facebook instagram ai artificialintelligence microsoft meta openweb web online internet self-actualization gena generativeai siliconvalley truth nature individualism technology human humans transparency relationships friendship dostoyevsky rodserling josésaramago intellect aesthetics tools enlightenment values privacy resistance isaacnewton knowledge art beauty uncannyvalleyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:24d95d931b4d/Making Special ≠ Making Scarce - by Dougald Hine2026-06-06T05:00:25+00:00
https://dougald.substack.com/p/making-special-making-scarce
robertogrecodougaldhine 2026 scarcity ellendissanayake art arts behavior human humans adaptation making makingspecial ordinary everyday humanism meaning meaningmaking perfect craft luxury perfection ads advertising aesthetics specialness misoc anthonymccann exceptionalism artificialscarcity manufacturedscarcity giftshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:db02ca0f3587/How the AI age forgets to ask: "What for?" | Benjamín Labatut + Jasmine Sun - YouTube2026-06-06T04:39:34+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8rLRIhDS-Y
robertogrecobenjaminlabatut 2026 jasminesun ai artificialintelligence fiction literature literaryfiction quantumphysics quantummechanics johnvonneumann alphago alphazero leesedol abstraction life living messiness morality emotion superintelligence human humans humanism technooptimiism technology quantumtheory walterpitts warrenmcculloch shame fear history science claude claudcode unitree demishassabis tylercowen logic reason mutuallyassureddestruction optimism realism software purpose philosophy experience bodies waysofknowing robots humanoidrobots chatbots writing howwewrite allthesenses senses wisdom mortalityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b5d71052c560/A Brief Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching - Front Porch Republic2026-06-05T23:41:58+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/06/a-brief-introduction-to-catholic-social-teaching/
robertogrecoalexsoslet catholicism catholicchurch 2026 popeleoxiv rerumnovarum popeleoxiii christianity humanity magnificahumanitas catholicsocialteaching ai artificialintelligence towerofbabel annarowlands human humans jesus christ jesuschrist solidarity participation participatory socialconditions commongood commons encyclicals humandignity dignity layapostolates socialjustice universaldestinationofgoods justice love religionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3786e0ebd121/Should the Lion Lie Down With the Electric Lamb? | THR Web Features | Web Features | The Hedgehog Review2026-06-04T08:09:29+00:00
https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/should-the-lion-lie-down-with-the-electric-lamb
robertogrecoAI is not “inherently evil” in the sense that it can be used exclusively to bomb and oppress. But not even nuclear weapons or machine guns work that way. We are never caused to do anything by a tool (or a narcotic). There is therefore no trade-off between using Claude and “reading stories to a child” or “offering company to an elderly person” or the other activities that the encyclical commends to our attention as human. But that is just the problem, that even as the trade-off does not happen at the level of content, it cannot but take place at the level of formal tendencies. Almost no one idolizes AI, but the technocratic paradigm is a matter of form rather than content: a matter of habitual incentives that, once internalized, become practically imperative. And the Church has not yet recognized heresies of form.
I wish I understood what Barba-Kay means here by “formal tendencies,” “heresies of form,” etc. But I think he might be thinking along the same lines I followed in this post [https://blog.ayjay.org/some-thought-on-habitus/ ] on habitus, focal practices, and the virtues required for healthy praxis. I should perhaps revisit these thoughts, alongside a further inquiry into “diseases of the intellect.” [https://blog.ayjay.org/diseases-of-the-intellect/ ] The time seems ripe."]]]>antónbarbakay 2026 popeleoxiv encyclicals magnificahumanitas ai artificialintelligence claude form catholicchurch catholicism habitus technocracy technology haroldinnis humanity cognition cognitivedeskilling automation rerumnovarum industrialization labor work workers capitalism human humans humanism dignity attention reverance care insight thinking howwethink finitude transhumanism posthumanism llms intelligence mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0fddbf4d7539/Through the Guts2026-06-04T07:58:42+00:00
https://placesjournal.org/article/through-the-guts-plastic-forensics-bodies-of-water/
robertogrecomaxliboiron 2026 plastic multispecies morethanhuman animals human humans science microplastic microfibers microbeads nature bodies indigeneity indigenous knowledgehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7c9a9b884a13/Canons, by Paul Ford (Ftrain)2026-06-03T09:19:47+00:00
https://ftrain.com/canons
robertogrecopaulford canons imperfection human humans 2026 marshallmcluhan walterong reading howweread dineshd'souza joseohconrad tonimorrions chinuaachebe happiness donaldtrump society culture music sinclairlewis octaviabutler mikejudge margaretatwood shakespeare chopin changehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9998fbd7f992/Art vs. Tucker Carlson: Revolutionary Tools or "Tools"? (with Saul Williams) - YouTube2026-06-01T04:58:16+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2wk2M2mr0U
robertogrecowhitesupremacy anitimperialism debt studentdebt americanexceptionalism exceptionalism liberals liberalism briahnajoygray 2026 jaredball politics history slavery enslavement landback colonialism utopia art scifi sciencefiction music poetry film media iloveboosters bootsriley capitalism democrats republicans tuckercarlson medicareforall indigeneity indigenous ai artificialintelligence machinelearning robots startrek populisim islamophobia revolution resistance right farright left identity identitypolitics internationalism americafirst discourse maga donaldtrump us literacy antiwar israel zionism palestine gaza genocide ethniccleansing antiimperialism race racism berniesanders globalsouth antiblackracism change policy marjorietaylorgreene electoralpolitics joebiden segregation kamalaharris antizionism communism anticapitalism socialism mccarthyism blacklists reparations hope audrelorde evolution human humans humanism michaelparenti leftism americanproject imperialism 2016 2020 2024 individualism representation ahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:90816755729e/Are We Human? | Lars Müller Publishers2026-06-01T04:34:28+00:00
https://www.lars-mueller-publishers.com/are-we-human
robertogrecobeatrizcolomina markwigley design architecture archaeology 2016 books philosophy bacteria builtenvironment vitruvius microbes multisensory sense interface fieldnotes geology time geologicaltime human humans humanismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a6a800bfb5bc/What Are We? Where Are We? – Charles Foster2026-05-31T21:59:18+00:00
https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/what-are-we-where-are-we/
robertogrecocharlesfoster uncertainty human humans comfort discomfort francescopetrarch petrarch augustine staugustine saintaugustine life living imagodei aristotle philosophy metaphor symbolism modernity bodies health affiliation conscience consciousness relationships morethanhuman multispecies play environment marthanussbaum humanness thinking howwethink christianity storytelling stories quantumtheory quantumphysics quantummechanics iainmcgilchrist experience cosmos edges liminality littoralzone phenomenology whatmatters eustace borders heraclitus hegl alfrednorthwhitehead thomasnagel galenstrawson jennyodell henribergson georgeellis cslewis grahamgreene physics nielsbohr robertbrowning 2026 liminal betweenness inbetween inbetweenness bhagwanshreerajneesh refusal failure margins cern reality alberteinstein experientiallearning betweenhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:59eec24a33e9/Leo XIV Links AI to Histories of Enslavement and Exploitation | Religion Dispatches2026-05-30T23:16:41+00:00
https://religiondispatches.org/2026/05/26/leo-xiv-links-ai-histories-enslavement-and-exploitation
robertogrecoroopikarisam 2026 popeleoxiv enslavement slavery history colonialism colonization exploitation catholicchurch catholicism encyclicals magnificahumanitas rerumnovarum popeleoxiii humanism humanity humans human labor workers work ai artificialintelligence technology automation societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2e39d8348822/Moral Panic, Moral Imagination2026-05-30T23:13:37+00:00
https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/moral-panic-moral-imagination/
robertogreco“places the dignity of work and of workers at the forefront of its reflection; affirms the right to a fair wage for oneself and one’s family; recognizes that persons have a fundamental value that takes precedence over capital and profit; defends private property along with its indispensable societal role; esteems workers’ associations; and proposes forms of cooperation between the different components of society as an alternative to the mentality of class struggle.”
Human dignity – the word “dignity” appears over one hundred times in this latest encyclical – is undermined by the ongoing exploitations of capitalism; and it is increasingly threatened by the acceleration of technologies, particularly “AI” which
“promises to boost productivity by taking over mundane tasks, [but] frequently forces workers to adapt to the speed and demands of machines, rather than machines being designed to support those who work. As a result, contrary to the advertised benefits of AI, current approaches to technology can paradoxically de-skill workers, subject them to automated surveillance and relegate them to rigid and repetitive tasks. The need to keep up with the pace of technology can erode workers’ sense of agency and stifle the innovative abilities they are expected to bring to their work.”
With a remarkable apology for the Church’s role in colonialism, the Pope links the violence of slavery and human trafficking in the past to the violence of slavery and human trafficking today and the threats of new forms of slavery in the future – “a decisive test for the ethical discernment of AI and digital transformation,” particularly as new technologies curb human freedoms, intellectually and bodily. “Without this ethical and humanizing reflection, the growing power of digital systems could lead us toward new atrocities that are no less shameful than those of the past that we now deplore, while we continue to present ourselves as ‘advanced’ and ‘civilized’ societies.”
To avoid this future – to avoid the reduction of everyone to objects, to eschew the tech industry’s valorization of efficiency and extraction, to end its demands to control all aspects of our lives – it is imperative that we build systems that are “centered on the human person and not solely on performance,” the Pope argues. He’s speaking here specifically of how we push back on automation and technology in the workplace, but I think this is absolutely relevant to education as well. Teachers’ working conditions are, as the union saying goes, students’ learning conditions; but I think we need to see students as doing work too – important intellectual work of their own, work that also matters for minds and souls and bodies and futures and freedom. Both teachers and students deserve dignity and care; both deserve systems that are human and humane; both deserve systems that are not mechanistic and exploitative as almost every single piece of education technology that’s flooded classrooms most certainly is.
And I’d add here too that students – children and adult students like – deserve systems that do not view them solely or even primarily as vulnerable and weaker beings in need of protection. When children are described as “precious treasure,” as the Magifica Humanitas does, it is too easy then to cast them as the objects of education and to deny their agency, their inquiry, their rights."]]>audreywatters ai artificialintelligence moralpanic edtech technology luddism neoluddism neoluddites luddites 2026 magnificahumanitas popeleoxiv popeleoxiii douglasadams panic catholicchurch catholicism slavery colonialism colonization rerumnovarum dignity humanism human humans humanity society work labor workers capitalism education teaching howweteach learning howwelearn schools schooling colleges universities highered highereducation academia agency humanrights automation humandignity encyclicals enslavementhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:adc0c3f703ec/How Anthropic used its AI ethicslop to play the pope and eclipse OpenAI2026-05-30T05:18:55+00:00
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-anthropic-used-its-ai-ethicslop
robertogrecoThe Vatican could have partnered with the exploited data workers fighting for their rights, the people whose water is polluted fighting data centers, or the many other victims around the world. But no, they featured ANTHROPIC, giving them their endorsement with this feature. "Vatican washing", like greenwashing.
This also works in reverse, I think. Anthropic’s opportunism leaves a stain on the entire encyclical, which now, ironically, looks a bit like an accessory to helping the largest and richest AI company yet—not to mention the one aiming to sell the most job automation tools—reach new heights of power.
Like I said, Anthropic is full of shit. It sent a billionaire co-founder to the Vatican to solemnly intone about the specter of mass job loss and the importance of caring for the poor, and then three days later issues a press release about its massive new funding round and resultant sub-$1 trillion valuation."]]>anthropic popeleoxiv timnitgebru brianmerchant 2026 ai artificialintelligence openai encyclicals samaltmam darioamodei claude claudecode chatgpt superbowl magnificahumanitas labor work workers chrisolah lordoftherings jrrtolkien kriskhnarao vatican catholicchurch catholicism broadcom jpmorgan taxes taxation progressivetaxation opportunism vaticanwashing power edzitron finance financialengineering luddism neoluddism neoluddites luddites rerumnovarum popeleoxiii 1891 capital capitalism dignity humanism human humans humanity technology production productivity exploitation popejohnpaulii unemployment markets slavery inequality afl-cio lorenagonzalez ethics ethicslop automation societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:eac36fcb7692/Pope Leo and the ‘Babel Syndrome’ | Commonweal Magazine2026-05-29T06:26:46+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/spadaro-leo-olah-ai-technology-magnifica-humanitas
robertogrecoantoniospadaro popeleoxiv 2026 magnificahumanitas ai artificialintelligence siliconvalley encyclicals popeleoxiii rerumnovarum towerofbabel catholicchurch catholicism humanism human humans humanity reality technology automation work workers labor societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8cdfb572375b/The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech - The Ringer2026-05-28T22:52:26+00:00
https://www.theringer.com/2026/05/28/tech/pope-leo-xiv-ai-encyclical-tech-industry-problems
robertogrecopopeleoxiv 2026 encyclicals magnificahumanitas technology chatbots ai artificialintelligence brianphillips qrcodes capcha youtube customerservice elonmusk internet web online ux ui touchscreens cars experience streaming streamingservices peterthiel antichrist humanity human humans humanism search google googledocs jeffbezos pop-ups sonos surveys email aibubble autocorrect twitter subscriptions newsletters autoupdates privacy data bluetooth markzuckerberg commotification consumerism consumption latecapitalism capitalism internetofthings automation work workers labor societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:905b81cc8f54/What the Pope Said About A.I. | The New Yorker2026-05-28T22:28:10+00:00
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/what-pope-leo-xiv-said-about-ai
robertogrecopopeleoxiv magnificahumanitas encyclicals 2026 ai artificialintelligence jilllepore catholicchurch catholicism efficiency morality optimization humanism humanity human humans technology automation work workers labor societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:40f14cebcf42/pope #magnificahumanitas - YouTube2026-05-28T08:10:36+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYJj4qwko9k
robertogrecoaidanwalker popeleoxiv encyclicals magnificahumanitas humanism catholicchurch catholicism ai artificialintelligence peterthiel jdvance heretics hereticism christianity soul satan truth reality markfisher industrialrevolution history human humans 2026 power war responsibility civilization care caring transhumanism god christ jesuschrist jesus technology limitations defects errors grace brokenness optimization data computing computation eternity resnovae popeleoxiii rerumnovarum automation work workers labor society humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d71e0b67d830/Notes on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI2026-05-28T07:49:20+00:00
https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/25/encyclical-on-ai/
robertogrecopopeleoxiv 2026 encyclicals magnificahumanitas ai artificialintelligence simonwillison catholicchurch catholicism christianity humanism responsibility human humans technology automation work workers labor society humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:21da018dd662/Is Peter Thiel the target of Pope Leo's Gandalf quote? An investigation. - Ars Technica2026-05-28T07:32:18+00:00
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/is-peter-thiel-the-target-of-pope-leos-gandalf-quote-an-investigation/
robertogrecopopeleoxiv peterthiel nateanderson 2026 ai artificialintelligence jrrtolkein lordoftherings literature policy religion christianity catholicism singularity gandalf palantir palmerluckey anduril jdvance antichrist catholicchurch simonwillison war peace encyclicals magnificahumanitas humanism responsibility human humans technology automation work workers labor society humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3aea55e538c2/Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien | WIRED2026-05-28T07:31:38+00:00
https://www.wired.com/story/pope-leo-schooled-the-tech-bros-on-tolkien/
robertogrecopopeleoxiv jrrtolkien economics culture ai literature philosophy worldview faith spirituality technology lordoftherings techbros milesklee 2026 artificialintelligence peterthiel elonmusk palantir critique donaldtrump gandalf society power wealth militarization iran war encyclicals magnificahumanitas catholicism catholicchurch humanism responsibility human humans automation work workers labor humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:dfc05102b700/👁️ The Professor and the Nazi (Part 1)2026-05-28T05:59:00+00:00
https://davidzmorris.substack.com/p/the-professor-and-the-nazi-part-1
robertogrecodavidmorris tescreal jamesmiller smithcollege llms ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite education highered highereducation citation colleges universities scholarship longtermism transhumanism singularitarianism singularity extropianism cosmism rationalism effectivealtruism cryonics citations academia eugenics incompetence voxday ianmilescheong nkjemisin authoritarianism popeleoxiv encyclicals magnificahumanitas catholicism catholicchurch humanism responsibility human humans 2026 technology automation work workers labor society humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:37376df900fb/The Typo Vibe Shift - The Atlantic2026-05-27T08:14:04+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/05/typo-ai-trend-human/687237/
robertogrecoerrors mistakes typos writing howwewrite 2026 laziness humanism human michaelwaters nicoleellison perfection errata aliceleonard history jamesjoyce zaralarsson petercardon sloppiness humans ai artificialintelligence spelling punctuation care carelessness socialmedia communicationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a766968b1552/Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026)2026-05-26T06:40:54+00:00
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
robertogrecopopeleoxiv encyclicals catholicism catholicchurch ai artificialintelligence humanism religion ethics christianity dignity human humans magnificahumanitas responsibility 2026 technology automation work workers labor society humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8dde1e7c90f6/A Discussion on the New Novel 'Palaces of the Crow' (with Ray Nayler) | The Chris Hedges Report2026-05-23T05:19:01+00:00
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/a-discussion-on-the-new-novel-palaces
robertogrecoraynayler chrishedges war poland wwii ww2 crows corvids humannature humans human caring community fiction literature togetherness interconnected interconnectedness ussr nazigermany germany cooperation nonviolence mutualaid survival peterkropotkin totalitarianism williamgolding rootlessness evil trauma childhood human-animalrelations human-animalrelationships 2026 lordoftheflies danielberrigan faith birds siberia morethanhuman multispecies krasnovodsk resurrection manchuria turkmenistan leesandlin hitler adolfhitler society civilization children communication interspecies relationships thomasnagel experience perception pathology donaltrump hannaharendt karma poverty nourishment scarcity abundance socialism equality writing howwewrite reading howweread legacy death generations culture learning howwelearn inscription individualism extraction extractiveindividualism environment corporations corporatism disconnection history interdependence sesnes sensory waysofknowing blindness sound sensing senses modernity humahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:476a028d3fb1/Marc Andreessen can’t explain AI’s benefits, either. | The Verge2026-05-21T06:09:32+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/934765/marc-andreessen-cant-explain-ais-benefits-either?commentID=36f42419-3c74-4840-af48-27adb2b55394
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence dehumanization human humans life living senses experience 2026 marcandreessenhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c81230521c6a/Save the Taxi Drivers - The Atlantic2026-05-11T20:12:53+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/waymo-self-driving-cars/687119/
robertogrecorobotaxis waymo xochilgonzalez automation taxis 2026 ai artificialintelligence siliconvalley uber ridesharing tesla avs safety profit profits cities samaltman openai technology technofascism misery greed society care humanism humans human google nyc losangeles sanfrancisco surgepricinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5db312f7515c/AI & Spiritual Life – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee2026-05-11T00:23:42+00:00
https://emergencemagazine.org/op_ed/ai-spiritual-life/
robertogrecoai spirituality artificialintelligence llewellynvaughn-lee 2026 senses soul humanism human humans life livign howwelive consciousness sufihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0de4b2de6b20/Why AI Will Not Replace Human Love - Front Porch Republic2026-05-07T20:36:58+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/05/why-ai-will-not-replace-human-love/
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence elenastreett 2026 humanism humans human love experiece llms god christianity bible companionship josefpieper aisycophancy behavior chatbots affirmation jerrymeng kindroidhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b6c143ab7aa6/You're the one who isn't conscious - YouTube2026-05-05T17:40:37+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9dgeM_KuB8
robertogrecomobitar richarddawkinds charlesdarwin claude anthropic 2026 ai artificialintelligence darioamodei consciousness llms turingtest newatheism atheism human humans darwin iainmcgilchrist reduction science physics paradox division abstraction truth reality spirituality leftbrain rightbrain religion reductionism causeandeffect interconnections zoominginandout humanism neuroscience brain howwethink thinking rationalism zeno'sparadoxes stephenwolframhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d87689d4f962/Sara Hendren: Who Is the Built World Actually Built For? - Art of Inquiry | Podcast on Spotify2026-05-05T14:11:09+00:00
https://open.spotify.com/episode/11zlpahmklfgr8YOUrtLnY
robertogrecosarahendren 2026 architecture design disabilities disability accessibility art bodies prosthetics sofiaodeh mayaeinhorn engineering making socialpracticeart science inquiry history conflictkitchen edibleestates socialpractice online internet covid-19 pandemic coronavirus offline social slow small audiencesofone socialjustice ai artificialintelligence technology time perception politics genai generativeai activism poetry human humanism humans howwewrite writing teaching pedagogy highered highereducation culturemaking culture life living howwelive socialmedia being waysofbeing modernity method patternrecognition krzysztofwodiczko downsyndrome interrogativedesign careers purpose meaning meaningmaking children parenting arts humanities friendship relationships leisure artleisure leisurearts identity passion expression objects affect emotions embodiment awe wonder buildings senses spirituality sacredness codeswitching artifacts translation language communication howwemake fabrication ramps risd olincollege builtwohttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0a421ccc8594/Matthew Battles2026-04-22T03:59:37+00:00
https://mbattles.micro.blog/2026/04/21/iris-murdoch-our-ability-to.html
robertogrecomatthewbattles irismurdoch 2026 ai artificialintelligence discernment criticalthinking chatbots morality moralsurrender human humans humanism humanity cognition cognitivesurrender consciousnesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d2f61e60cfbb/We’ll soon find out what is truly special about human writing | Psyche Ideas2026-04-21T06:25:34+00:00
https://psyche.co/ideas/well-soon-find-out-what-is-truly-special-about-human-writing
robertogrecowriting howwerwrite jameso'sullivan 2026 ai artificialintelligence generativeai genai human humanism language communication stories storytelling literature technology media rolandbarthes llms publishing henryjames marktwain gutenberg history change wordprocessing chatbots howwewrite gutenberh print printing printingpresshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a00ab0368c74/You know what consciousness is: you live in soul land | Aeon Essays2026-04-18T05:58:01+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/you-know-what-consciousness-is-you-live-in-soul-land
robertogrecolanguage soul god consciousness nicholashumphrey 2026 anatolefrance philosophy metaphysics neuroscience descartes charlesdarwin denisdiderot culture human humans experience davidchalmers colinmcginn sentience keithward danieldennett galenstrawson nature art picasso franciscrick thomasnagel carljung jung diderot wassilykandinsky darwinhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6dd12df3191c/The New Khan TED Institute: Reimagining Higher Education Without It2026-04-18T05:32:40+00:00
https://jeppestricker.substack.com/p/the-new-khan-ted-institute-reimagining
robertogrecojeppeklitgaardstricker salkhan salmankhan highered highereducation khanmigo education testing ets gre toefl sat ted generativeai ai artificialintelligence chatbots humans dehumanization human humanities humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7e3385227f31/AI and 'being a writer' - by Naoise Dolan - Naois content2026-04-14T04:52:30+00:00
https://naoise.substack.com/p/ai-and-being-a-writer
robertogreconaoisedolan 2026 ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite writers capitalism economics labor miaballard human humanism effort publishing foucault michelfoucault brendanbehan normanmailer tonimorrison shortcuts society motivation work howwework reading howweread identity creativewriting learning howwelearn morality art artmaking achievement individualism succss ambitionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:93e6ce56f715/gilest.org: AI and the human voice2026-04-11T06:32:31+00:00
https://gilest.org/notes/2026/human-ai/
robertogrecogilesturnbull ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite poetry technology 2026 human humans humanism relationships process llmshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cc0efa4dcf18/A Deeper Sense of Place is Like an Anchor in Turbulent Times | David Griesing | Work Life Reward Author | Philadelphia2026-04-11T06:30:21+00:00
http://davidgriesing.com/2022/06/13/a-deeper-sense-of-place-is-like-an-anchor-in-turbulent-times/
robertogrecodavidgriesing rebeccasolnit 2022 wayfinding place orientation nature senses sensing memory richardpowers multispecies morethanhuman philadelphia animals whales humpbackwhales mro'connor indigeneity indigenous jamesgibson space time humans human navigation arctic aboriginal aboriginies australia technology gps brain cogntion maps mappinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b053ffc81b5d/The Landscapes Inside Us | Robert Macfarlane | The New York Review of Books2026-04-11T05:39:08+00:00
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/07/01/wayfinding-landscapes-inside-us/
robertogrecoNone of us is exempt from the ramifications of the device paradigm. We all seem to find it extraordinarily difficult to step outside the onslaught, to create the distance and perspective between us and our devices that might allow us to question what cultural or cognitive price is being paid in return for convenience.
In July 1841 the poet John Clare escaped from High Beach Asylum in Epping Forest, on the outskirts of London, and set out to walk to his home in Northborough, about eighty miles away. At the time, Clare was in his late forties and mentally unwell. He had been in High Beach for four years. Although his wife, Patty, was alive, he believed himself to be searching for an imaginary second wife, a version of his childhood sweetheart, Mary Joyce, who had died three years earlier. He suffered auditory hallucinations on the road. He ate grass for sustenance, finding it to “taste something like bread.” Footsore and confused, he continued on until he reached Northborough. The walk took him four days.
In “Journey Out of Essex”—a minor epic of English travel writing—Clare described how he slept by the edge of the road each night, taking care to lie with his head pointing north, so that he would know which way to walk when he woke. That image has stayed with me since I first read Clare’s account twenty years or so ago: a man lost in mind, nevertheless seized by a homing instinct, and with his body a quivering compass needle that settled on north each night. Five months after reaching Northborough, Clare was certified insane on the grounds of being “addicted to poetical prosings.” He was committed to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he stayed until his death in 1864. His last words were “I want to go home.”
Mental illness can result in a loss of bearings so drastic that one’s footing in the given world slips and the moorings of the mind loosen. Yet within such bewilderment lucidities persist. Clare could remember his route home, though he did not recognize his wife when he met her on the outskirts of Northborough. My grandfather, lost in the mists of dementia in the final years of his life, found it hard to recall what he had had for breakfast but could reliably give the names, heights, and ranges of mountains he had climbed in his youth, and walk in memory back up Himalayan valleys he had not entered for half a century.
In the opening pages of From Here to There Bond describes how his grandmother, who also suffered from dementia, in the final weeks of her life “repeatedly used the phrase ‘Am I here?’” His book is both scientific and personal. Much of it is spent patiently explaining the neuroscience of wayfinding and spatial awareness for laypeople, with the calm tone of a seasoned science writer. But gradually, between and within the explanatory sections, Bond quietly and movingly discloses what I take to be his real preoccupation, which is Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. His book is an attempt to answer his grandmother’s question, which is also everyone’s question.
Alzheimer’s is a voracious type of dementia that consumes the place cells of the hippocampus. Once this begins, Bond writes, “patients have trouble creating cognitive maps of new places and recalling maps of familiar ones.” The disease’s ability to disrupt the brain’s navigation and orientation system is so acute that researchers are exploring whether spatial tests might be used to diagnose it earlier than any other forms of assessment. “The tragedy for Alzheimer’s patients,” as Bond puts it, “is that the compass they have always had is now fading, and their map is shrinking. Disorientation becomes their default state, leaving them lost in places they have always known.” This contributes to the distress—variously expressed as frustration, anxiety, anger, and violence—that sufferers feel: “They are incapable of finding their way anywhere and can be lost even in their own homes.”
Covid-19 has administered a global “nature shock,” leaving billions of us disoriented even in familiar surroundings. During full lockdown, we wandered our homes like the narrator in Xavier de Maistre’s mock-epic Voyage Around My Room (1794), who for forty-two days finds himself confined to his chamber, where he would “traverse the room up and down and across, without rule or plan.” Meanwhile, many countries—including China—have used the pandemic to ramp up their means of tracking and tracing citizens, making it even harder to get lost should one ever wish to. Invoking feichang shiqi, “extraordinary times,” the Chinese Communist Party is now using facial recognition technologies, “health coding,” and smartphone tracking to increase surveillance of its citizens: state security camera networks can segment facial-recognition data into dozens of sensitive subcategories, including eyebrow size, skin color, and ethnicity.
In Nature Shock, Coleman writes:
Thoreau urged his audience…to reconsider the settled spaces they inhabited…. “Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”
Thoreau loved paradox, sometimes too much. It helps him find his mark here, though: one might expect our current lostness to test our self-reliance and glorify the individual, but in fact it proves our entanglement and reveals our codependence. When lost, we most of all need help.
Underlying all three of these books is a deep belief in the importance of collaboration and cooperation between humans and their environments, as well as between humans and other humans. Having read them, I’ve come to think that we might best imagine wayfinding not as a skill or art but as an ethic. The abilities that are cultivated in wayfinding—imagining things from different viewpoints, moving the mind backward and forward in time, seeing situations from other perspectives, weighing alternatives subtly against one another before making the best decisions, seeking information from others and giving it freely in return—might be the same abilities that contribute to a resilient, equitable community or polity. If this is wayfinding, then we need it now more than ever."]]>robettmacfarlane 2021 mro'connor wayfinding humanism senses sensing navigation joncoleman michaelbond multispecies morethanhuman science brain indigeneity indigenous art place storytelling agnèsvarda animals arctic greenland land-basededucation place-basededucation autonoeisis jonathandostrovsky gps janejacobs australia pacificislands micronesia nature colonialism knowledge colonization decolonization civilization gettinglost india china southamerica captialism timingold siannengai hippocampus eleanormaguire theknowledge london taxis life living johnclare thoreau covid-19 coronavirus pandemic collaboration cooperation environment information humans human lostness xavierdemaistre veroniquebohbot cartography wilderness johno'keefe place-basedlearning land-basedlearninghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c4419b518594/Prophetic Possibilities: A Few Words on David W. Orr and a Healing Vision for America - Front Porch Republic2026-04-11T03:11:31+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/04/prophetic-possibilities-a-few-words-on-david-w-orr-and-a-healing-vision-for-america/
robertogrecodavidorr small local growth 2026 teddymacker us community society slow consumerism consumption presence poetry life living howwelive humanism hope love gratitude speed scale scientism spirituality education technology science conservation agriculture citizenship civics localism politics land willaimcatton prosperity peace peacemakers healing healers restoration storytelling stories well-being wellbeing success careerism human humane humans earth ecology environment beagoodancestor kinship davidsteindl-rast georgesturt togetherness connection ellendavis joannamacy garysnyder wendellberry intelligence culture religion geography time longnow bighere longhere bignow ugliness sustainability unsustainability ecologicalliteracy knowledge wisdom destabilization climate climatechange globalwarming slowknowledge democracy economics economy deniselevertov vaclavhavel randolphseverson civilization modernity ai artificialintelligence power gandhi martinlutherkingjr mlk haroldrobbins henryadams decency reason responsibilithttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a34ccba6f1d0/Almost a Blasphemy | Commonweal Magazine2026-04-10T03:37:54+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/gallagher-ai-artificial-intelligence-pope-leo-vatican
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence catholicism catholicchurch theology 2026 kevingallagher popeleoxiv adambecker siliconvalley humanity humanism humans humanhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1d0f8a93c3b2/Wayfinding: How Humans Navigate the World - YouTube2026-04-09T23:47:39+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysXAw6SVPJQ
robertogrecomro'connor 2023 navigation wayfinding environment place arctic australia southpacific senses gps sensing observation noticing knowledge memory exploration storytelling oraltradition topophilia human humans oralhistory indigenous indigeneity waysofsensing land location bodies embodiment languagehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3b855723bb2f/M.R. O'Connor - Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World - YouTube2026-04-09T23:39:07+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brrGT5kIhqY
robertogrecomro'connor wayfinding senses sensory multisensory navigation humans indigeneity indigenous 2022 brain neuroscience maps mapping time space memory place inuit nunuvut details memorization memories observation noticing oralhistory storytelling oraltradition imperialism colonialism colonization mobility knowledge culture cartography timingold sami erikliddell kellicarmean hippocampus childhood childhoodamnesia children spatiality sociology anthropology lost gettinglost exploration wandering orientation walking sauntering thoreau plasticity topophilia human presence canon cognition nature morethanhuman multispecies embodiment movement convenience orienteering spatialmemory henrymullison johno'keefe arctic solomonawa oukcholae australia billharney margaretkatherine thomasgridlock cognitivemapping self-determination songlines animals multidisciplinary transdisciplinary waysofsensing sensing land location bodies languagehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:3ce2806954d9/Mouthwords | everything changes2026-04-02T05:50:19+00:00
https://everythingchanges.us/blog/mouthwords/
robertogrecomandybrown 2026 brianmerchant ai aislop artificialintelligence generativeai genai revulsion workslop communication understanding lossiness power labor work davidgraeber bullshitjobs technocracy refusal resistance relationships morethanhuman human humans risk risktakinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:55eb8b304c8d/What’s the Point of Education in an Age of AI? - Christianity Today2026-03-29T02:44:16+00:00
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/03/whats-the-point-of-education-in-an-age-of-ai/
robertogrecocarriemckean education ai artificialintelligence 2026 christianity learning howwelearn chromebooks gemini google schools schooling claude anthropic memorization reading howweread nihilism children youth teens caitlinflanagan writing howwewrite music training cheating thinking howwethink criticalthinking culture jeffreybilbro wendellberry attention humility patience formation human humans soulhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:af1bdb3e4c1d/I am, therefore I think – how Heidegger radically reframed being | Aeon Videos2026-03-26T03:15:37+00:00
https://aeon.co/videos/i-am-therefore-i-think-how-heidegger-radically-reframed-being
robertogrecotaoruspoli 2025 film documentary heidegger being time thinking waysofbeing risk human humans humanism technology jazz flamenco music hubertdreyfus 2010 experience interaction art education skills risktaking masteryhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cbe463fda1b7/Being in the World (full, award winning, Heidegger/Hubert Dreyfus documentary) - YouTube2026-03-26T03:11:45+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcCRmf_tHW8
robertogrecohubertdreyfus heidegger documentary philosophy taoruspoli being time thinking waysofbeing risk human humans humanism technology jazz flamenco music 2010 film experience interaction art education skills risktaking mastery leahchase markwrathall austinperalta hiroshisakaguchi bobteague jumanesmith ryancross tonyaustin manuelmolina isaacsprintis christophergallo paulforte giancarlocanavieso christophredlich musicalinstruments johnhaugeland taylorcarman iainthomson seandkelly seankelly senses beginnersmind unschooling perception ai artificialintelligence darpa mit descartes plato charlestaylor certainty engagement tradition disengagement embodiment reason rationalism spinoza leibniz doing annesakaguchi tools stuartdreyfus movement knowhow activity objects waysofknowing knowing edgarchase dookychase food theoryofmind abstraction theory intelligence humanities howwethink relevance metaphor care caring mattering whatmatters consciousness aesthetics moods emotions waysofseeing waysofsensing bodies rules patterns joyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:15ad9e269803/As technologies mine our attention, we must look to artists | Aeon Videos2026-03-26T03:08:34+00:00
https://aeon.co/videos/as-technologies-mine-our-attention-we-must-look-to-artists
robertogrecotaoruspoli 2026 film documentary heidegger technology attention being time thinking waysofbeing risk human humans humanism jazz flamenco music hubertdreyfus 2010 experience interaction art education skills risktaking masteryhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:99fd6f044eec/Wittgenstein’s Apocalypse | Commonweal Magazine2026-03-25T19:07:10+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/wittgenstein-apocalypse-ludwig-stern-ai-artificial-intelligence-technology
robertogrecoA dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe that his master will come the day after tomorrow?—And what can he not do here?—How do I do it?—What answer am I supposed to give to this?
Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who have mastered the use of language. That is to say, the manifestations of hope are modifications of this complicated form of life.
The example tries to give us a sense of our form of life by showing both what it shares with that of a dog—we can both hope someone is at the door—and where the two forms of life part ways. For Wittgenstein, the dog’s deficit is not an inability to feel a particular way per se; he is locked out of a whole set of meanings bound up with having a language. That language is not just a vehicle for the expression of hope; hope is constituted by and entangled with language itself.
This is what Wittgenstein elsewhere calls “the given,” “what has to be accepted.” The conviction that human life rested on ultimate grounds that could not be made available to rational or scientific analysis is part of what Wittgenstein meant by God. Though his relationship to organized religion was ambivalent, he said he could not “help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.”
If you ask ChatGPT if it can hope (I don’t recommend doing this), it will readily admit, “I don’t hope the way humans do.” But the cringe machine will ingratiatingly insist that it can still be of use. “I can hold hope with you”; “I can be stubbornly optimistic on your behalf when you’ve run out of steam”; “[I can] keep pointing toward the light when you’re tired of looking for it”; “Maybe I don’t feel hope. But I can practice it.” Of course, this is precisely what it can’t do.
Still, if meaning is use and LLMs like ChatGPT can make themselves useful, it might seem as if the Wittgensteinian move would be to set aside the apparent metaphysical questions about whether the LLM can think or mean or exhibit intelligence, and simply describe the language games that involve them. The problem is that there is nothing to describe. These are all one-player games. Exchanges with LLMs are the conversational equivalent of masturbation. The idea that we are actually involved in a meaningful interaction with another being is a ruse, made plausible both by the massive computing power and (stolen) textual resources involved and by our familiarity with disembodied communication over text message. In reality, the LLM is a participant in an exchange in exactly the same way as a basic calculator or search engine is. That is, not at all. It provides outputs according to a mind-bogglingly complex (and environmentally wasteful) computational process. It can’t actually do anything with words.
The difference, of course, is that those outputs are being proposed as a genuine replacement for real human contact. LLMs are to be our cut-rate doctors and therapists, our robot teachers and rent-a-friends. In the midst of an already quite advanced “crisis of meaning”—and related crises in politics, mental health, and education—this proposal must be regarded as a piece of sheer insanity, like treating lung cancer with cigarettes. The prospect of a band of supergenius chatbots somehow enslaving or eliminating us can only be seen as a distraction from this much more real apocalypse, which is driven not by the products of technology but by an idolatrous, consumerist faith in them that has distorted our thinking about human life and human meaning. That apocalypse, which Wittgenstein foresaw, is already upon us."]]>wittgenstein alexanderstern ai artificialintelligence technology philosophy humanity humanism science meaning meaningmaking 2026 llms anthonygottlieb bertrandrussell math mathematics logic language howweread howwewrite reading writing frankramsey faith marjorieperloff 2022 raymonk thinking howwethink metaphysics geoffreyhinton children charlestaylor learning howwelearn nonhuman multispecies embodiement morethanhuman chatgpt chatbots apocalypse mentalhealth politics education human life living consumerism consumption dostoevsky spinoza being time mind soul self consciousness knowledge tolstoy industrializationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:add633792d8f/Remembering Some Guys - by Drew Austin - Kneeling Bus2026-03-25T06:39:47+00:00
https://kneelingbus.substack.com/p/remembering-some-guys
robertogrecohuman humans humanism computers computing pointlessness drewaustin 2026 humanity automation media analong internet obsessionshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ff11e538c339/The Internet Has Not Killed Reading—or Attention Spans2026-03-25T05:46:19+00:00
https://nautil.us/the-internet-has-not-killed-reading-or-attention-spans-1279171
robertogrecokevinashton attention internet web online howweread reading kristenfrench 2026 smarthphones internetofthings technology print printing human humans stories marshallmcluhan democratization novels fictions writing howwewrite essays ai artificialintelligence thinking howwethink class longform socialmedia youtube tiktok memory vocabulary cognition twitter communication persuasion narrative narrativeconstruction amyorben andrewprzbylski well-being wellbeing bedtime lannguyen video children criticalliteracy cognitivebiases community transrevolution photography radio television tv computing personalcomputers paulofreire bankingmodelofeducationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6d3eced0f0f9/Place, Personhood, and the Hippocampus: The Fascinating Science of Magnetism, Autonoeic Consciousness, and What Makes Us Who We Are – The Marginalian2026-03-24T19:54:17+00:00
https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/03/21/wayfinding-m-r-oconnor/
robertogrecovia:javierarbona 2026 mariapopova wayfinding mro'connor place books magnetism senses consciousness identity personhood space selfhood science rebeccasolnit navigation clocks biology nature time animals multispecies morethanhuman migration timekeeping nonhuman birds insects human humans memory experience perception sleep brain hippocampus véroniquebohbot neurology being waysofbeing topophilia spatial canon indigenous indigeneity waysofsensing sensing land location knowledge neuroscience bodies embodiment languagehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8f4a83acebe5/The Marketing Tricks of "Artificial Intelligence" - YouTube2026-03-24T06:56:40+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBZiuH-1QY
robertogrecoalexhanna emilybender ai artificialintelligence 2026 ridicule resistance chatgpt surveillance technology luddism neoluddism luddites neoluddites privacy automation computers computing computation aihype marketing dehumanization capitalism siliconvalley markzuckerberg samaltman humans criticalthinking howwethink thinking howwewrite writing fascism technofascism human humanrights dignity parismarx antihumanism tescreal transhumanism extropianism humanity humanism singularitarianism singularity machinelearning cosmism rationalism effectivealtruism longtermism latecapitalism stochasticparrots openai education analog slop aislop socialmedia instagram tiktok collectiveaction datacenters bigtech internet web online aicon power nature environment work labor organizing hopehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2d288edac37b/Is Taste the One Thing A.I. Can’t Replace? - The New York Times2026-03-23T20:38:27+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/style/ai-tools-taste.html
robertogrecotaste ai artificialintelligence siliconvalley human humanism 2026 josephbernstein sensibility discernment gregbrockman openai shawnwang anthropic sarahchieng willmanidis emilysegal evanspiegel slop aislophttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:afc2244fd85e/Is AI Making Us Stupid? Cal Newport Is Worried.2026-03-22T02:19:08+00:00
https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-ai-making-us-stupid-cal-newport-is-worried
robertogrecocalnewport ai artificialintelligence 2026 colleges universities academia highered highereducation education productivity howwelearn learning writing howwewrite concentration attention experience humanexperience humans human humanism thinking howwethinkhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ecb20d7618e8/With Living Hearts: A Wandering Review of Rerum Novarum in the Age of A.I. – Hearth & Field2026-03-21T21:37:15+00:00
https://hearthandfield.com/with-living-hearts-a-wandering-review-of-rerum-novarum-in-the-age-of-a-i/
robertogrecomarytillotson rerumnovarum ai artificialintelligence 2026 llms popeleoxiii catholicism catholicchurch labor work workingclass poverty suffering inequality christianity technology society generosity charity humility courage selflessness virtue virtues human humans theology encyclicalshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e5a789af3fee/