Zohar Atkins
@ZoharAtkins
Learner & Teacher Founder @lightninginspo Torah @ http://Etzhasadeh.substack.com Philosophy @ http://Whatiscalledthinking.substack.com
I started a new substack to talk about AI, Philosophy, and the future of learning..It's called Second Voice. I hope you'll follow along (link in comments). And if you're a thinker, builder, or teacher, I'd love to feature your perspective. Pitch me.
What’s the best obscure book(s) you’ve ever read that more people should know about?
The value prop of school is not education, but - social network - credential / flex rights - alibi for not working h/t @krishnanrohit If you want to learn, you don't need anything other than an internet connection. The Classics are open source!
The first question you should ask when reading a Platonic dialogue is where it's set. The Republic begins with the words "I went down."
Plato begins the Republic not in a school but “down in the Piraeus”—Athens’ seaport/marketplace, teeming with merchants, soldiers, festival-goers. Not philosophers or rhetoricians. The philosophical life isn’t withdrawn. It goes down into the world & journeys with others.
Cervantes knew how to self-deprecate and flex at the same time.
Tradition drives innovation.
Tradition is not the opposite of innovation but its foundation. Every great innovator is also, in their own way, a great traditionalist.
Tradition is not the opposite of innovation but its foundation. Every great innovator is also, in their own way, a great traditionalist.
You know, dear Reader, when a character breaks the fourth wall and addresses you directly? That's actually a form of what post-structuralist literary theorist Gérard Genette called metalepsis, an ancient rhetorical term. From Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy to David Foster…
You can't navigate to the site you're already on. (Many such cases)
Virgil, with a very Zen-like response, to my demand for a bottom line on Zen.
God, grant me the serenity to QA the things I cannot automate, the courage to automate the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov: “Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here [+]
A truly super intelligent would likely be an outcast shouting out in the wilderness my god my god why have you forsaken me. At least until returning to achieve product-market fit. You can’t vibe code zero to one.
Wonderful book. If I could reanimate one writer to write about today, DFW would be the one.
pillars of the earth. read it in ras al auja
What was the one book written just for you? Where were you when you read it?
A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov. Around 15-16 when I was obsessed with the Byronic Hero. Lermontov brilliantly deconstructs the romantic pretensions of that sort of character.
A Thousand Plateaus, by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, read in the grass on a warm summer day
New and Collected Poems (1931-2001) by Czeslaw Milosz. Particularly this one: