I have no knowledge to evaluate the “ten percent” claim but this quote seems entirely plausible because we have done this before, most notably with nuclear arms:

At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first — they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.

There is so much money being made on AI. Piles of it are being forked into the frontier labs and Nvidia is growing its revenue by astonishing percentages every quarter. Everyone in this industry has every reason to ignore the danger. We have done this before and I am quite sure we’re doing it again. It may not result in the literal destruction of humanity but there’s no way this rolls on forever without something bad and big.

Nothing makes me feel more out of place than the chit-chat of CPAs at professional education events. I’ve already brushed off conversation with one shiny man saying something about fractional finance. Dude, did you hear me say I’m from Bedford? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Working and remembering

Well, Dad, I tuned up our truck today. It’s the first time I’ve tried that in the twenty years since I inherited it from you. Replaced the fuel filter, spark plugs and wires, distributor cap and rotor. After I was done I drove it for a few miles through Oolitic and Bedford and thought about you. I decided this year to start working on the truck, now that I have the new job and can drive it more regularly.

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It is heartening to see all the people writing remembrances of Wendell Berry and posting quotes from his work. But the question presses forward: what are we going to do in response to such a life? Words alone are empty.

It’s good to hear, from the people who knew him best, that your hero was a truly good man.

Sauron: “I’m helping”

Tolkien, The Fall of Numenor: [Sauron] did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction.

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Dividing the year

We’re in a heat wave right when the Abel house wants to start feeling spooky, so I’m thinking about seasons again. Here in southern Indiana, we have a relatively balanced year. Our summers are hotter than our winters are cold but such is the world at this point. I divide up the year in the following way, based on natural patterns rather than holidays or equinoxes/solstices. Spring March through May

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Me, four years ago: “Unknown/Unknowable”

Well what can I say? No one apart from immediate family has shaped me more than Wendell Berry. He’s been a part of my life for over twenty years and, for the last several, I’ve thought about him nearly every day. He did a lifetime’s worth of good work, the public face of which he left for our bookshelves. What worked in him still works in us. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

“I saw him as I was able to comprehend him.”

Henry Corbin: It goes without saying that the form in which each of us receives the master’s thought conforms to his “inner heaven”; that is the very principle of the theophanism of Ibn ‘Arabi, who for that reason can only guide each man individually to what he alone is capable of seeing, and not bring him to any collective pre-established dogma: Talem eum vidi qualem capere potui. The truth of the individual’s vision is proportional to his fidelity to himself, his fidelity to the one man who is able to bear witness to his individual vision and do homage to the guide who leads him to it.

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