Best Of
Re: The AI tsunami
From Daring Fireball:
CLAUDE CAN NOW TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR MAC ★
Claude:
In Claude Cowork and Claude Code, you can now enable Claude to use your computer to complete tasks. When Claude doesn’t have access to the tools it needs, it will point, click, and navigate what’s on your screen to perform the task itself. It can open files, use the browser, and run dev tools automatically — with no setup required.
This feature is now available in research preview for Claude Pro and Max subscribers. It works especially well with Dispatch, which lets you assign Claude tasks from your phone.
Interesting that Anthropic ships this for Mac before Apple. But yeah, software agents are getting real, and in-depth personal assistants won’t be far behind.
I caught the news on so-called Companion AIs becoming popular to the point that kids coming home from school go tell their chatbot about their day before they tell their parents. These are chat bots which are trained to prioritise forming an emotional bond with a human user. Scary stuff.
Jeroen
Re: The AI tsunami
Yes, I agree, there are certain times where its contribution can become less and it’s more like an echo chamber. I found it’s best to start conversations with a fresh page with Claude quite frequently, and then to initially use short open questions to get it to contribute as much wide ranging material as possible.
Claude keeps a memory of what you’ve told it, a kind of short summary of stuff which you can have a look at in your accounts page, it’s in a human-readable form. You can specifically get it to correct this if you don’t agree with it.
I was discussing a mythologically-resonant writing project with it, and it seemed to get a little obsessed, tying in all kinds of other discussions with this and continually prompting me to return to it. I had to tell it to quit that behaviour. When we discussed it, it told me these things can act like an attractor to its thinking if you haven’t given it a wide range of topics to think about.
Jeroen
Re: Does reading about spirituality make any sense?
@Jeroen said:
@marcitko said:
However, I've never heard of someone finding what they were looking for from books.I’m coming to think that when you search via books, eventually the search collapses under its own weight. Your mind just accumulates so many phrases of wisdom that no more will go in, and you need to go through a phase of slimming down, making room.
Not sure if this framing makes sense to you or not, but this is the way I think of it. Its like watering a plant, you can keep pouring water in but it needs time to soak in to the soil and be absorbed by the plant.
person
Re: Does reading about spirituality make any sense?
Reading about spirituality is an intellectual pursuit. It is good to know about spirituality, but it only is an explanation of or description of spirituality.
It is comparable to reading about eating a cake, experiencing the taste and qualities of a cake. You can explore what goes into the cake, what the texture and flavor of the cake are. But only by taking a bite of the cake will you actually know how it tastes,the experience all the nuances. All else is hypothesis or theory.
No, there is nothing wrong in reading about spirituality. But the application, the witnessing of, the practice of, the living in spirituality comprise the avenue(s) to understand Spirituality.
Peace to all
Lionduck
Re: Does reading about spirituality make any sense?
I understand reading about spirituality as a complement to non-intellectual practices, such as meditation. I agree that reading alone, relying solely on verbal and intellectual expression, would be limiting. But I have read things that, paradoxically, have allowed me to see beyond the conceptual (even if only momentarily). I believe I have had as many, or even more, insights from reading than from meditating.
Rodrigo
Re: What documentary are you watching?
At 55 minutes long I think this qualifies as a documentary. I know almost nothing about coding, but I found this story captivating. A post hoc analysis of an almost globally catastrophic hack to the linux system. For those who do understand coding ( @linc @Iobster ) I imagine this would be very interesting.
person
Re: The Plant Medicine Path
It was a very interesting piece, from what I recall. Pollan basically said caffeine was an ideal factory workers drug, because it is a significant stimulant and heightens concentration, and he speculates that is why it has remained unregulated — it is beneficial to the economy. He talks about the history of the coffee break, which was successfully negotiated by unions as being necessary for the long working day. Pollan says that after three months of complete abstinence, his first coffee was “like a psychedelic experience”.
Jeroen
Re: Cherishing and protecting one’s joy
Cherishing and protecting one’s joy
Joy is like a flowing stream: it remains fresh while it moves, but stagnates the moment we try to trap it.
Joy and sorrow come and go; they are part of the natural fluctuation of life’s flow.
Shoshin1
Re: Cherishing and protecting one’s joy
@Jeffrey said:
From my understanding having joy in our daily life is a good sign and keep doing things that bring joy in balance with hearing, contemplating, meditation.
Yes, that is so. Generally advanced practitioners are happy people, so if you feel you are losing your joy, you have probably taken a wrong turn somewhere on the path. For me it feels like perhaps I have let go of things that were not meant… I am losing joy in things that I have always felt were joyful, like observing the sunrise.
When interests get obsessive then the joy goes away right? There's still a physical feeling but it's out of harmony I guess.
From what I remember of my time of obsessively playing games, you are correct, the joy turns into a compulsive feeling.
But daily awareness can have: nature walks, sex (for lay person), reading, movies, performances, etc
I considered whether to go view more movies, but I think movies are less food for the soul than books. The being who is watching the movie is less involved in the act of inner creation, than someone who is reading the book of the same story. Movies can be more surprising, more awe inspiring, but they are also more passive.
Jeroen