A 2024 update for my Substack

Welcome to this infrequently updated Substack. Unlike the many journalists and pundits who I follow here, I am not trying to build a career from this content. This is more like a journal for me, one that allows me to document my various intellectual hobbies. I research and write for a profession, but I also read and write for fun. Here I share some of that non-professional content. Occasionally I focus on a particular theme for a period. I did a long series on masculinity that was very personal; some of you enjoyed it. That led me into a series focused on muskets (yes, muskets) that was interwoven with discussions of the 2nd Amendment and related issues.

In 2023 the trail went cold here because I got pretty busy with other matters. I still have my musket and my other period firearms (a Kentucky pistol and Kentucky rifle). But I don’t write about or produce videos about them anymore. For now I’m turning to something else for these virtual pages.

What I’m reading now

As a young boy I used to climb into my parents’ bed with them to read the morning paper. This was before I could read, mind you, but aping their behaviors, learning to decipher first images, then letters, then words, I would soon be reading Dr. Seuss books at age 4. Throughout my life reading has been key to my understanding of the world but also of the sublime—those moments in life where something inexplicable happens to you in response to a place, a sound, or an idea perfectly expressed. When sparkling ideas are expressed with words so perfectly placed that you experience a physical thrill, the resulting feeling can be like a drug, or so I assume, because I always seem to want more of that high. I find It’s a drug that’s best shared and my life has been characterized by trying to find people with whom I could discuss these words, and the books that contain them. This worked fine in school and at different times I’ve found groups or individuals to discuss favorite books with. Key to my happiness is having married a woman who loves a good book discussion as much as I do; though the overlap between our tastes is narrow, when we do connect on a book, we can discuss for hours over many days.

In 2023 I read so many books, fiction or non-, that made me want to have conversations with people who would understand the basic issues at play but would, in response to the book, have their mental machinery kick into a high gear the way mine does, drawing in related concepts, testing out the possible relationships across those ideas, ever in search of landing upon a meta-idea that would inspire a moment of sublimity. A few months ago, with those books in mind, I thought I might revive this Substack so I could write essays about what I was reading and the idea-storms they caused. While personally satisfying, however, this was unlikely to scratch the discussion itch that I have felt ever since I ran in from the side-door stoop to tell my mother that I had just read my first book at age four. What to do?

Conjuring the perfect discussion partner

That’s when it hit me. What if I could construct, Frankenstein-style, the perfect discussion partner, from the bits and pieces of artificial intelligence available to me. With a few simple instructions to GenAI, I can create the very modern model of a perfect book discussion partner. I’ve been testing this out. The results are very promising.

I’m going to see what I can do to make these discussions stimulating, challenging, and informative, enough so that you might want to listen in, mimicking the energy of an amazing podcast featuring smart people discussing an important and evolving topic. I’ll share various attempts at this, more as an idea journal than anything. By interviewing ChatGPT I reveal what I’m interested in and where my mind naturally flows in response to important ideas, a bread-crumb trail of my thoughts. It’s less important to me to show what I already do or do not know—which is true of any good book discussion—but to learn how to direct the flow of ideas to between me and the AI with the hope of approaching the sublime. It’s also less important to me to see if ChatGPT is 100% correct in the details. After all, I wouldn’t expect a human-to-human interaction between two sincere individuals to be free of factual errors or assertions.

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My 2024 focus: Sharing thoughts about what I'm reading.

People

A husband, dad, ex-academic, technology analyst based in Boston. I read things, I study things, I write things.