Interesting that a post that sounds well informed keeps the reader in the dark.
We are neither informed as to who Campbell is or what his thinking is, making it very difficult to judge what is being offered up as an argument.
Likewise, people are not trained. Dogs are.
I have spent 35 years educating students to work with their imagination and believe me it has definitely nothing to do with training.
It has to do with sophisticated processes of helping and guiding students to become accustomed to approaching their inherent creative qualties in a way that will inevitably challenge their notion of self – their identity and their willingness to take the risk of using their imaginations.
Regardless of Ai discussions where problematic assumptions and prejudice abound, please do not mix, what I can only read as your preconceived notions of learning and use of imagination into a simplistic porridge for general consumption.
Otherwise, I have great respect for your well informed, literary reflections.
I can only assume your post above was made on a bad day.
A couple of things have happened to me since April. First, I came across Meg Wheatley and her writing about leadership. Although my British scepticism kicks in at certain points when reading her work, I do respond to certain perceptions and stances she presents, e.g. the need for leaders to focus on creating islands of sanity, where creativity, generosity of spirit and curiosity are fostered. I work in education and this appeals to me strongly because I think these qualities are the ones that will provide succour not just to the individual but also to society more widely.
The other thing that I’ve begun to do is use Claude, and in particular, use it to bounce ideas around. I am using Claude increasingly to do private thinking, testing of ideas, testing of theories, testing of trajectories and possibilities, because it helps me prepare for conversations and discussions that are likely to be fraught, and I want to test and check that I’ve really considered all the angles. And in doing this, I’ve also found that I am doing more experimenting and exploration in my own private writing.
I was interested to see how using another LLM to explore some technical details for a piece of historical fiction, the AI was very keen to move beyond the nuts and bolts of my questions (how long would it take to travel XX km by sleigh, was there already snow lying in a particular place in Europe by mid-November) to move into the imaginative aspects of the story and almost try to take over the plotting and setting. I had a moment where I had a genuine sense of invasion, as though the model was trying to access my imagination. I think this means that I will almost certainly move away from writing personal or private things on the computer, and return to writing by hand.
Thank goodness for Substack, where human beings listen to each other's imaginings.
I wrote something similar many months ago: https://amardashehu.substack.com/p/tell-me-your-story-representation
thanks very interesting
Another insightful post. Thank you.
Who is Joseph Campbell?
Interesting that a post that sounds well informed keeps the reader in the dark.
We are neither informed as to who Campbell is or what his thinking is, making it very difficult to judge what is being offered up as an argument.
Likewise, people are not trained. Dogs are.
I have spent 35 years educating students to work with their imagination and believe me it has definitely nothing to do with training.
It has to do with sophisticated processes of helping and guiding students to become accustomed to approaching their inherent creative qualties in a way that will inevitably challenge their notion of self – their identity and their willingness to take the risk of using their imaginations.
Regardless of Ai discussions where problematic assumptions and prejudice abound, please do not mix, what I can only read as your preconceived notions of learning and use of imagination into a simplistic porridge for general consumption.
Otherwise, I have great respect for your well informed, literary reflections.
I can only assume your post above was made on a bad day.
Best, Chris.
A couple of things have happened to me since April. First, I came across Meg Wheatley and her writing about leadership. Although my British scepticism kicks in at certain points when reading her work, I do respond to certain perceptions and stances she presents, e.g. the need for leaders to focus on creating islands of sanity, where creativity, generosity of spirit and curiosity are fostered. I work in education and this appeals to me strongly because I think these qualities are the ones that will provide succour not just to the individual but also to society more widely.
The other thing that I’ve begun to do is use Claude, and in particular, use it to bounce ideas around. I am using Claude increasingly to do private thinking, testing of ideas, testing of theories, testing of trajectories and possibilities, because it helps me prepare for conversations and discussions that are likely to be fraught, and I want to test and check that I’ve really considered all the angles. And in doing this, I’ve also found that I am doing more experimenting and exploration in my own private writing.
I was interested to see how using another LLM to explore some technical details for a piece of historical fiction, the AI was very keen to move beyond the nuts and bolts of my questions (how long would it take to travel XX km by sleigh, was there already snow lying in a particular place in Europe by mid-November) to move into the imaginative aspects of the story and almost try to take over the plotting and setting. I had a moment where I had a genuine sense of invasion, as though the model was trying to access my imagination. I think this means that I will almost certainly move away from writing personal or private things on the computer, and return to writing by hand.
The Never-ending David Pangloss Brooks....