Readings
Seeing Like a State
Chapter 8 - Taming Nature: An Agriculture of Legibility and Simplicity
The necessarily simple abstractions of large bureaucratic institutions, as we have seen, can never adequately represent the actual complexity of natural or social processes. The categories that they employ are too coarse, too static, and too stylized to do justice to the world that they purport to describe. (p 262)
My purpose, rather, is to show how the imperial pretensions of agronomic science - its inability to recognize or incorporate knowledge create outside its paradigm - sharply limited its utility to many cultivators. Whereas farmers, as we shall see, seem pragmatically alert to knowledge coming from any quarter should it serve their purposes, modern agricultural planners are far less receptive to other ways of knowing. (p 264)
testPatrick Viafore - Robust Python (2021)
note to self - move this to 2025 reading
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Robust Python
Clean code expresses its intent clearly and concisely, in that otder. When you look at a line of code and say to yourself, “ah, that makes complete sense,” that’s an indicator of clean code. (p 3)
There are often specific practices tied to writing clean code, including:
- Organizing your code in an appropriately granular fashion
- Providing good documentation
- Naming your variables/functions/types well
- Keeping functions short and simple (p 3)
The first step to making code that lasts is being able to communicate through your code. (p 5)
testVannevar Bush - As We May Think (1945)
This is what today looked like, by people 80 years ago. It is incredible to imagine this was written in 1945. Even though the techniques he describes are foreign and primitive by today’s standards, the future he envisioned is entirely relatable.
Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length.
testKarel Capek - War With the Newts (1937)
War with the Newts is a spellbinding classic novella written nearly 100 years ago by Czech writer Karel Capek. Written in 1936, only two years before Capek’s death at the young age of 48, it is captivating in an old, yet effective way, even in the English translation. Any number of analogies, both real and fictitious, come to mind when reading about the imperial oppression of the Newts, a gentle sea-faring creature that is slowly exploited by Man. And since it is the 1930s, it is indeed men participating in this cruelty for the most part. The female characters of the book express gentle reservations about the treatment, but would today be considered complicit in the act.
testUrsula K. Le Guin - The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1973)
This short story appears to be a variation of the trolley problem in philosophy. Is the utopian happiness of an entire village worth the sacrifice of one miserable child? Does it help that everyone understands the child’s misery, and in fact is the reason for their perspective? What does it mean when people leave the village, never to return?
I think the silent departure of these people is very meaningful. First, they do not inform anyone as to why they are leaving, for fear of bursting the bubble and making the village aware that what they are doing is wrong. Second, it seems to resemble the plight of the immigrant - how does one tell their home place that it is deeply flawed in a way that is irredeemable and impossible to fix?
testNate Silver - On The Edge: The Art of Risking Everything (2024)
testJonathan Basile - Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality (2018)
I lack the background to follow the philosophical connections Basile makes. I did appreciate the contradiction and impossibility in trying to describe the layout and architecture of the library. I also liked how Basile revealed the algorithm behind his website, www.libraryofbabel.info, something I have wondered about for years and wish to recreate some day.
testAbraham Flexner - The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939)
https://www.ias.edu/sites/default/files/library/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf
testJCR Licklider - Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network (1963)
testJana Bacevic - Epistemic Autonomy and The Free Nose Guy Problem (2022)
https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/epistemic-autonomy-and-the-free-nose-guy-problem
testBill Watterson - Some thoughts on the real world by one who glimpsed it and fled (1990)
https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html
It’s surprising how hard we’ll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated.
We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running. You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of “just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people’s expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.
testG.H. Hardy - A Mathematician's Apology (1940)
https://archive.org/details/AMathematiciansApology-G.h.Hardy/page/n19/mode/2up?view=theater
testJean-Jacques Rousseau - Émile, or On Education (1762)
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5427/pg5427-images.html
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