Sparks 👁️

That is, we’ve traded our craftsmenship for management. We now are less immersed in the exact pieces we’re putting together and more interested in the outcome of the work. To us, programming has now become a means to an end, instead of an end in itself.

But we don’t always have access to a retreat center, a monastery, or a library, what we do have is this place, a base camp, a landmark for thinking beyond thought.

The metaphor of the base camp is particularly apt for this kind of contemplative scholarship. Like the mountaineer’s base camp—a place of preparation and return, of gathering resources... See more

Intelligence is not central to the success of most life on Earth. Consider the grasses: they’ve flourished across incredibly diverse global environments, without planning or debating a single step. Planarian worms regrow any part of their body and are functionally immortal, a trick we can manage only in science fiction. And a microscopic virus... See more