Paul Shen

on the atlas — 8

• Cosmos: working notes, 124 savers
• Cocktail party ideas11 savers
• chrome.commands - Chrome Developers2 savers
• PromptChainer: Chaining Large Language Model Prompts through Visual Programming - YouTube1 savers
• Overview ‹ λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language, Featuring Ideas from Lambda Calculus — MIT Media Lab2 savers
• attending to the other - by Jasmine Wang 🌱15 savers
• andy_matuschak · Twitter · This question's gauche, but: given the prevalence of $400k++ comp pack...1 savers
• Rethinking Visual Programming with Go · divan's blog1 savers

highlights — 10

• What is really striking, to me, is the depth of Feynman's feeling. This is something very close to the core of him2: I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing…I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell…possibly.

  Cosmos: working notes, 1

• But he also repeatedly switches to another point of view, in which humanity is tiny and insignificant. And then he will switch back again to the human level. This repeats multiple times, powerfully juxtaposing two vastly different points of view, points of view in what might seem superficially like strong conflict. The net effect is an expansion of consciousness, as you begin to merge these two types of consciousness.

  Cosmos: working notes, 1

• After having done this many times, my opinion is that the root cause of this is generally that many people who have a superficial understanding of topic assume that the topic is as complex as their understanding of the topic instead of realizing that only knowing a bit about a topic means that they're missing an understanding of the full complexity of a topic.

  Cocktail party ideas

• I wish you attention

  attending to the other - by Jasmine Wang 🌱

• Attention is not sufficient, but I think it is a prerequisite for all that is good and valuable and worth living for.

  attending to the other - by Jasmine Wang 🌱

• The sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls a similar mode of relating resonance. Instead of viewing ourselves as closed off, independent systems bent on controlling the other, we should leave ourselves open to being affected by the world, responsive to its call, and thereby allow ourselves to transform and be transformed by it.

  attending to the other - by Jasmine Wang 🌱

• I cried listening to jazz, upon understanding a particularly difficult math equation, walking up a grand set of stairs. I was in an elevated state of receptiveness that people have induced for millennia, and that performance artists like Abramovic have practiced to achieve incredible feats of endurance that transcended the needs of the body.

  attending to the other - by Jasmine Wang 🌱

• The art of attention requires, among other things, an openness to being moved and transformed, the development of language, and the resistance of algorithmic life.

  attending to the other - by Jasmine Wang 🌱

• The ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone, and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them, and to have believed in them, and sometimes, just to have accompanied them, for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone".

  attending to the other - by Jasmine Wang 🌱

• This question's gauche, but: given the prevalence of $400k++ comp packages for ~30-year-olds in Big Tech, why aren't there lots more "gentle[wo]man scholars"? i.e. people quitting to do non-remunerative creative projects I can think of some, but shouldn't there be thousands?

  andy_matuschak · Twitter · This question's gauche, but: given the prevalence of $400k++ comp pack...