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Embracing Rituals

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Rituals help people transition through what would otherwise be a tumultuous period of their lives. And they let people savor the milestone they have just reached.

Creating stability at times of chaos: Though people associate events like graduations and weddings with joy, these moments also represent chaotic, potentially frightening life transitions. A wedding brings together two people to start a new, interdependent life. Graduation marks leaving the familiar world of school for the unknown world of work and grown-up responsibilities. Funerals and birthdays are two more examples.

In all four cases, there is a before and an after, as people leave their old world and enter into a new, uncertain one — and those transitions can breed anxiety.

It's easy to think that rituals like weddings are pointless and overdone. But that big cake, sparkling white dress or bouquet toss are helping us move through life in a positive and healthy way. There's no need to apologize for embracing it.

Emily Esfahani Smith writing in Mic

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Embracing the Life forced upon You

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From the beginning you are in the victim of circumstances. You're born, kicking and screaming, into an unknown family. As a child, you soak up influences that mold your mind in certain ways. When you finally get a driver’s license and move out of the house, you think, you’re free—but you marry someone who looks like your mother and drinks like your father. By the time you figure out who you are or what you want, a life has already been forced upon you. But it’s never too late to change. Although you can’t begin again from scratch, you can make a splendid ragout from the mishmash of damaged goods in your cupboard.

I choose how to live a life I didn’t choose.

Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflications

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The Individual Journey

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As an adolescent I used to thrill to the words of love the early American poet Ann Bradstreet spoke to her husband: 'If ever two were one, then we.'

As I have grown, however, I have come to realize that it is the separateness of the partners that enriches the union. Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals who are terrified by their basic aloneness, as so commonly is the case, and seek a merging in marriage. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually seeks to cultivate it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.

Significant journeys cannot be accomplished without the nurture provided by a successful marriage or a successful society. Marriage and society exist for the basic purpose of nurturing such individual journeys.

But, as is the case with all genuine love, “sacrifices” on behalf of the growth of the other result in equal or greater growth of the self. It is the return of the individual to the nurturing marriage or society from the peaks he or she has traveled alone which serves to elevate that marriage or that society to new heights.

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Generative AI Models are "trained to hallucinate"

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It’s important to remember that generative models shouldn’t be treated as a source of truth or factual knowledge. They surely can answer some questions correctly, but this is not what they are designed and trained for. It would be like using a racehorse to haul cargo: it’s possible, but not its intended purpose … Generative AI models are designed and trained to hallucinate, so hallucinations are a common product of any generative model … The job of a generative model is to generate data that is realistic or distributionally equivalent to the training data, yet different from actual data used for training.

UCLA Computer Science Professor Stefano Soatto writing for InsideBigData

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Life is in the Digging

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Two brothers decided to dig a deep hole behind their house. As they were working, a couple of older boys stopped by to watch.

"What are you doing?"  

"We plan to dig a hole all the way through the earth," one of the brothers volunteered excitedly.

The older boys began to laugh, telling the younger ones that digging a hole all the way through the earth was impossible.

After a long silence, one of the diggers picked up a jar full of spiders, worms, and a wide assortment of insects. He removed the lid and showed the wonderful contents to the scoffing visitors.

"Even if we don't dig all the way through the earth, look what we found along the way!"

Their goal was far too ambitious, but it did cause them to dig. And that is what a goal is for — to cause us to move in the direction we have chosen; in other words, to set us to digging!

Not every goal will be fully achieved. Not every job will end successfully. Not every relationship will endure. Not every hope will come to pass. Not every love will last. Not every endeavor will be completed. Not every dream will be realized. But when you fall short of your aim, you can say, "Yes, but look at what I found along the way! Look at the wonderful things that have come into my life because I tried to do something!"

It is in the digging that life is lived. And I believe it is joy in the journey, in the end, that truly matters.

A Dozen Things People are Trying to Get AI to Do

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