How do you discern the difference between humility and self-abnegation?
All of the virtues are interconnected. Humility (the opposite of pride) and self-abnegation (selflessness - aka self-abnegation - which is the opposite of selfishness ) are connected in that selflessness requires humility properly understood.
“Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chpt 8 - The Great Sin
Two experiences came to mind reading this: (1) running a translation workshop the year DeepL got big; (2) running an indie bookstore when every book we sell is available on amazon cheaper and faster. In both cases I had a genuine experience of: "The market has already provided the fastest most efficient thing! Great! We are free to pursue other, more human values!" and it was uncomplicatedly joyful. "Let computers be computers so humans don't have to be" is turning out to be a more resilient philosophy than I thought it would be
I have a hard time distinguishing between humility and self-abnegation. Your comments made me wonder whether I'm doing that well. After several years of praying the Litany of Humility daily, I made a huge amount of progress (ahem, the Holy Spirit made a huge amount of progress in me) in worrying less about getting credit for things and in making fewer attempts to draw attention to myself. This deserves more thought.
I had to give up a sense of myself as doing when I had four foot surgeries in two years. Each surgery involved six weeks entirely off my feet, another six weeks of extremely limited mobility, and months after that of rehabbing my gait. It was an extremely painful process, both physically and (especially) mentally. I've always been a do-er. Then I got melanoma and thought for a while I might be dying (I'm not). The lessons are hard but the other side of them is so much more freedom...I think...I go in and out of having learned them. :)
What are we doing here; in what sense are generative tools “best” at any human activity of significance? A system that can only regurgitate a remix of its inputs cannot apply intelligence — that is, genuine innovation and leaps of reasoning — to any unsolved problem.
My life now faces no serious conversation about what it is to be human amid new horizons in tech marketing, because no machine can change a diaper or care for my ten-month-old in any other way. Before the official president of rape and child abuse chose to eliminate my livelihood, however, I had observed that acting like machines would not be the salvation of editors and other “generative” workers; rather, it would be emphasizing our particular human attributes that would prove our worth to the detractors. (https://whova.com/embedded/session/BcvXcPTSowI%40zyoy%40ytJjEISxcjSRUejaL%40eeccOf2k%3D/4371863/?widget=primary)
Otherwise, I find that the use of a clearly synthetic image or text is a sign of disrespect and inattention: The LinkedIn user (how many there are!) or WhatsApp publicist doesn’t care enough about me to try to connect with me by their own effort. It’s like a contractually obligatory report, written in haste and read by nobody — except they expect me to appreciate it.
I think vibecoding has a strong resemblance to the shift to WYSIWYG editors like Wix, etc, to build websites, where non-coders have a way to specify outputs without understanding everything about the guts of how that output is produced.
Very bad if you are e.g. building a bank website and need to be totally confident of your security, but helpful if you are building a low-stakes, personal project a la Robin Sloan's An App Can Be a Home Cooked Meal: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
I think the distance between LaTeX and WordPerfect is meaningfully smaller than the distance between algebra and Copilot (or whatever). I suppose algebra and Copilot (or whatever) both involve building on other people’s ideas, but there’s a difference between “we are confident about this because Pythagoras figured it out” and the way generative tools are built on theft, techno-serfdom, or both.
Whether I think they’re good for the user? I suppose it can be harmful to feed delusions of grandeur in exchange for a hefty fee (see: 95% of self-publishing). I think the printing press is okay; maybe I just think it’s spiritually healthy to be 15-20 years behind the times.
Also, Kasparov is an odd example, as he channeled his post-“obsolescence” efforts into promoting the idea that most written history is a deliberate forgery. I’d rather he’d have stuck to Russian democracy.
How do you discern the difference between humility and self-abnegation?
All of the virtues are interconnected. Humility (the opposite of pride) and self-abnegation (selflessness - aka self-abnegation - which is the opposite of selfishness ) are connected in that selflessness requires humility properly understood.
“Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 3, Chpt 8 - The Great Sin
Two experiences came to mind reading this: (1) running a translation workshop the year DeepL got big; (2) running an indie bookstore when every book we sell is available on amazon cheaper and faster. In both cases I had a genuine experience of: "The market has already provided the fastest most efficient thing! Great! We are free to pursue other, more human values!" and it was uncomplicatedly joyful. "Let computers be computers so humans don't have to be" is turning out to be a more resilient philosophy than I thought it would be
I have a hard time distinguishing between humility and self-abnegation. Your comments made me wonder whether I'm doing that well. After several years of praying the Litany of Humility daily, I made a huge amount of progress (ahem, the Holy Spirit made a huge amount of progress in me) in worrying less about getting credit for things and in making fewer attempts to draw attention to myself. This deserves more thought.
I had to give up a sense of myself as doing when I had four foot surgeries in two years. Each surgery involved six weeks entirely off my feet, another six weeks of extremely limited mobility, and months after that of rehabbing my gait. It was an extremely painful process, both physically and (especially) mentally. I've always been a do-er. Then I got melanoma and thought for a while I might be dying (I'm not). The lessons are hard but the other side of them is so much more freedom...I think...I go in and out of having learned them. :)
What are we doing here; in what sense are generative tools “best” at any human activity of significance? A system that can only regurgitate a remix of its inputs cannot apply intelligence — that is, genuine innovation and leaps of reasoning — to any unsolved problem.
My life now faces no serious conversation about what it is to be human amid new horizons in tech marketing, because no machine can change a diaper or care for my ten-month-old in any other way. Before the official president of rape and child abuse chose to eliminate my livelihood, however, I had observed that acting like machines would not be the salvation of editors and other “generative” workers; rather, it would be emphasizing our particular human attributes that would prove our worth to the detractors. (https://whova.com/embedded/session/BcvXcPTSowI%40zyoy%40ytJjEISxcjSRUejaL%40eeccOf2k%3D/4371863/?widget=primary)
Otherwise, I find that the use of a clearly synthetic image or text is a sign of disrespect and inattention: The LinkedIn user (how many there are!) or WhatsApp publicist doesn’t care enough about me to try to connect with me by their own effort. It’s like a contractually obligatory report, written in haste and read by nobody — except they expect me to appreciate it.
I think vibecoding has a strong resemblance to the shift to WYSIWYG editors like Wix, etc, to build websites, where non-coders have a way to specify outputs without understanding everything about the guts of how that output is produced.
Very bad if you are e.g. building a bank website and need to be totally confident of your security, but helpful if you are building a low-stakes, personal project a la Robin Sloan's An App Can Be a Home Cooked Meal: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
Well, I’m sure that’s none of my business, then.
I am sincerely curious if you think WYSIWYG editors are bad for users!
I think the distance between LaTeX and WordPerfect is meaningfully smaller than the distance between algebra and Copilot (or whatever). I suppose algebra and Copilot (or whatever) both involve building on other people’s ideas, but there’s a difference between “we are confident about this because Pythagoras figured it out” and the way generative tools are built on theft, techno-serfdom, or both.
Whether I think they’re good for the user? I suppose it can be harmful to feed delusions of grandeur in exchange for a hefty fee (see: 95% of self-publishing). I think the printing press is okay; maybe I just think it’s spiritually healthy to be 15-20 years behind the times.
Also, Kasparov is an odd example, as he channeled his post-“obsolescence” efforts into promoting the idea that most written history is a deliberate forgery. I’d rather he’d have stuck to Russian democracy.