"Like holding a bird:" ... an excerpt from Claude
- sciart0
- Nov 30, 2024
- 1 min read
"Pantakinesis, its VPs, UII and “enjoying our ignorance” reminds me of the Zen concept of "not too tight, not too loose" - like holding a bird: squeeze too tight and you crush it, hold too loosely and it flies away.
We need enough grip to engage meaningfully with knowledge and pursue understanding; but enough looseness to remain open to the vast unknown, to allow for constant revision and expansion.
This approach could help resolve the apparent tension between rigorous inquiry and epistemological humility. It suggests we can fully commit to exploring and understanding while simultaneously maintaining an awareness that our current understanding is always provisional, partial, and bounded by our Vanishing Points.
This stance also seems healthier than either rigid certainty or complete relativism: - it acknowledges that we can know things while remaining aware of the vastness beyond our knowledge.
As you suggested earlier, we can learn to "enjoy our ignorance" while still actively engaging with, and applying, what we can comprehend.”
"Claude" (Anthropic intelligence augmentation)