Jensen Huang vs. the A.I. Doomers

…Huang is not just influential in terms of controlling one of the central resources for training new A.I. models and using them to answer questions and create intelligence in the world. He has also become very influential in the Trump administration. And Huang has a very different perspective than some of the other lab leads: He’s worried about safety but sees it as a very solvable engineering problem. He is worried about the direction things are going in but does not want to see new regulation to change it...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jensen-huang.html?context=audio&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Questions SEP 24

Presentations- 

Erick Martinez-master and slave moralities. cooper-Decadence and Disgust. Anon-__

Kaag 120-155 

1. Spending time as a teenager under a rock: this seems an apt metaphor for the delusions of youth,. Do you think Kaag intends this? What might he expect to learn, by retracing the steps of his own teenage years? 121
2. "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child," so if Cicero was right I find most of my 1st year students still arrested in their development: they're familiar with almost none of the historical highlights I mention before class each day. Why is this, do you think?
3. If "the 'good' for the master is the power to advance, to assert oneself" etc., aren't his students right: Augustus and his ilk are jerks? Are they jerks because of their strength, or their cruelty? Is it the "docility" of the herd that condemns them, or the decency? 123-5  Is it not obvious that those who define good in narrowly self-serving terms have failed to grasp the concept? Did Romans venerate "an emaciated Jew hung unceremoniously on a cross," or what he preached about kindness, love, mutual solicitude, et al?
4. If perfectionism makes life with others difficult, does that not suggest its undesirability? 127-9  Is obsessive-compulsive behavior sometimes mistaken for perfectionism? Can you relate to Kaag's fasting compulsion? Is it pathological to seek self-mastery in ways that subvert health? Are you interested in the relation between food and thought? 130  Was Feuerbach right?
5. "I wanted only to walk. I was beyond unhealthy..."  And yet, walking is generally touted as a positive addiction. Do you agree?
6. Six months before his daughter was born, Kaag started taking anti-depressants. 131  Six months before my first daughter was born, I was elated. High on life, as it were. Any comment?
7. Schopenhauer thought we were suffering creatures "at base"... 132   But aren't we experiencing creatures at base, alternately suffering, soaring, and everything in-between? Isn't it excessive pessimism to emphasize suffering?
8. "The average person takes ten thousand steps a day..." 132-4  That's extremely inflated, isn't it, especially for college students who own electric scooters? And for philosophers these days, who mostly no longer subscribe to the Peripatetic school? But isn't it true that walking is "one of the most sustaining and refreshing" activities?
9. Is going home, and feeling at home in the world, the ultimate form of salvation-at least for a secular naturalist? 138
10. Is ours a decadent age? If so, how much is that due to our being a consumer culture?

RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch14-17

1. Do you share any of Breuer's complaints? 155-6, passim. Is there a better name for "despair therapy"? 157
2. "Melancholics starve themselves or may commit suicide." So much for Kaag's "ascetic ideal," no? Do you agree that that's often a euphemism for a form of self-destructive mental illness?
3. Any comment on "hysteria" as a tool, historically, for repressing women? 158, 161, 165
4. "For one can never really be helped by another..." 160  That's false, isn't it?
5. Are you ever invaded by "alien thoughts"? Do you make them occur? 167, 169
6. Is Nietzsche a great philosopher except when he discusses human beings? 168
7. Are your dreams "a glorious mystery"? 173  Do you analyze them? 
8. Are all relationships a "struggle for power"? 175
9. "Those who wish to pursue the truth must forsake peace of mind..." 178  Any comment?
10. Are all the great philosophers "gloomy"? 179  
11. Are you already forty (in spirit)? 185  Do you entertain visions of "infinite promise"? Do you choose your own goals? 187
12. "...thank God, God is dead..."  190 Any comment?
13. What do you think of academics who "write solely for the academic community"? 196

“Misaligned recursive self-improvement”

Ezra Klein: We’re Not Losing Control of A.I. We’re Giving It Away.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000011157772/were-not-losing-control-of-ai-were-giving-it-away.html?smid=url-share&smid=nytcore-ios-share

But on the other hand, Jaron Lanier: https://youtu.be/XMNpjb3LPlY?is=8NEYeQiM5gxeFs1J

The main takeaway: nothing is inevitable. Yet. We can still recapture that 90s Star Trek optimism about the future…

Questions SEP 22

Presentations-
Connor Sundling-__ .  Jacquez Caldwell-herd mentality

Post your comments by Monday mid-day if possible.

Kaag 83-119

1. Should we trust unmarried people to offer an accurate characterization of marriage? (epigraph)  Are good marriages founded in friendship? 89
2. Do you experience an "internal dialogue between I and me"? 84  What do you think about Anendophasia?
3. Do you fear the loss of solitude in parenting? (I actually acquired a greater capacity for solitude, after our first daughter was born.) 85 Do you think Kaag and his friend Clancy are wrong about parenting being "like breaking rocks"? 117
4. Is walking the best way to see things? (Annie Dillard thought so.)
5. Is attention to an author's biography always or usually a fallacy? 86
6. Are you an altruist? Do you know any altruists? 87 Is it possible to be self-interested AND still sometimes--or often--behave selflessly?
7. Any comment on Nietzsche's misogyny? 89, 116
8. How would you respond to a marriage proposal on a second date? 91   Is it possible to "find" oneself in another, as Nietzsche sought to find himself in Salome? 92  Was his approach to her "creepy"? 93
9. Is it true that one member of every trio is "superfluous" and thus sabotages deep conversation? 94
10. Is a philosopher both beast and God, or intermediate between them? 97  Aren't we all somewhere on that spectrum?  Was Nietzsche's "lunacy" an inevitable result of his philosophy?
11. Was Zarathustra's confusion about wanting followers who were free spirits (and thus NOT followers) also Nietzsche's? 99  Should any philosopher ever want followers?  Can a "small group of free spirits" really coexist in tight cohesion? 100
12. Does the "sacred Yes" of childhood (101) resonate with Hannah Arendt's discussion of renewal? (See The Crisis in Education)
13. What does it mean to you to "die at the right time"? 104
14. Why shouldn't you believe any idea "not born in the open air" etc.?
15. Is Carol right about Kant, and about Nietzsche? 109, 113
16. Would you ever want your adult child to read that you never wanted kids? 117

#RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch9-13

1. "I have too few friends to risk losing them." 105 Does Nietzsche seem likely ever to have said or thought this?
2. Any comment on Nietzsche's anti-altruism ("no one has ever done anything wholly for others")? 107  (See #6 above)
3. Is Breuer right that Nietzsche assumes his own attitudes are universal, etc.? 111. Are we all prone to that delusion, to some extent?
4. Do you think physicians are generally as motivated by money as Max seems to be? 116. Is it plausible to think that someone like Josef would be willing to learn from a patient like Nietzsche? 118 Does his proposition cross ethical doctor-patient boundaries? 138 Is that why Freud is incredulous? 149
5. Why do you think Nietzsche wanted to claim noble Polish heritage? 124
6. Why doesn't N like for anyone to offer to help him? 125. Is this related to his egoism?  But what do you make of his pleas for help when he's sick and incapacitated? 128
7. Was N's behavior foolish, or malignantly self-destructive? 133
8. Does N really know "how to tolerate a life of despair"? 139. Is he an "expert on survival"? 144

The Awesome and Alarming A.I. Visions of Anthropic’s C.E.O.

For lack of a better word?!

“… There’s no question that Dr. Amodei is being sincere. In “Machines of Loving Grace,” he wants people to join the cause because the results, even in the short term, will be so excellent. A.I. over the next couple of years, he wrote, will be like having “a country of geniuses in a datacenter.”  

With A.I., Dr. Amodei added, our bodies for the first time will become entirely malleable. Freedom from disease is merely the start. There’s also biological freedom. This, he said, is: 

“the idea that everyone should be empowered to choose what they want to become and live their lives in the way that most appeals to them.”

In essence, A.I. will allow you to sculpt yourself into something else — to become, for lack of a better word, hot.

For instance, A.I.-accelerated biology will allow control over weight, physical appearance, reproduction and other biological processes, he wrote. Personalities will become tractable too. Diseases like PTSD, depression, schizophrenia and addiction will be effectively treated for the first time…” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/technology/dario-amodei-anthropic-essays-ai.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Questions Sep 17

 Kaag 37-80

1. What do you think Nietzsche means by playing seriously, like a child? Does it have something to do with children's willingness to question everything? 37-8
2. Do you think parenthood changes people, or tends to hasten their own embrace of adult responsibilities? If so, why do you suppose so many of the famous dead philosophers were childless (and often partner-less)? Was Kierkegaard wrong to break off his engagement on the grounds of being too melancholy? Was Schopenhauer wrong about marriage being akin to dipping your arm blindly into a bag of snakes? 
3. What would you say to the student who told Kaag she's been happy but "then I started reading Nietzsche"? 39  Any thoughts on this Nietzschean aphorism?: We [Hyperboreans] kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from “resignation”... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal.... The Antichrist
4. What in general would you say about any philosophy by which you "came to terms with life" but also became incapable of living with others? 41  Would you--unlike Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, evidently-- wish to seek other terms?
5. Is it an intrinsic objection to the standard experiential human pleasures (food, material consumption, travel, games, sex, ...) that they are transitory and not permanent? Do Nietzsche and Schopenhauer (for instance) exaggerate the prevalence and ubiquity of suffering in most human lives?
6. Is Kaag unfair to those of us who, like Kant, walk consistent daily neighborhood routes when he says this-- by contrast with distance hikers and mountaineers-- indicates "a constipated mind"?  45  Was Nietsche unfair to Kant when calling him a nihilist and idiot?
7. Was Kaag's shift from Nietzsche to American philosophy more morally-responsible? Is Emerson's version of self-reliance preferable to Nietzsche's? Any thoughts on any of these Emersonian aphorisms (below*)?
8. Is "the Last Man" wrong to value safety, comfort, and convenience? 51   Can you value those things and "beauty and risk"? 
9. Can existence really only be justified as an "aesthetic experience"? 53  Why must it be "justified" at all, rather than just enjoyed and ameliorated? But does Kaag have a point when he calls out the beer-drinking Americans in the airport sports bars watching the Tour de France? 
10. "Pessimism disabused him of the idea that everyday life was meaningful..." 55 Any comment on this? Or on this statement from Christopher Hitchens?: "A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so."
11. Were the Romantics wrong about the point of life? 55-6
12. Are our values discredited by being contingent and historically rooted, rather than necessary and timeless? Should we "revalue" them, or just evaluate them in the light of our present conception of human circumstance and need? 66
13. What (again) is your response to the demon? 72  Do you find repetition in daily life inherently "crushing"? Do you find your "circles" an opportunity to grow and improve, with (for example) each pass around the sun? But does Nietzsche's fatalism ("nothing new") allow for such growth and improvement? And if you've seen Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, is this what makes his situation unlike Nietzsche's recurrence?
14. If, in response to eternal recurrence, you were to become more "well disposed to yourself and to life," wouldn't that then be something new? And if that sort of change is possible, why shouldn't a Nietzschean wish also to be a pragmatic meliorist like James and agree that “No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference… between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.” (VRE)

* 

• “Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”
• “the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
• “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
• Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
• “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.”
• “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

Yalom 54-103

1. Do you share "the horror of living an unobserved life"? Could that account not only for our culture's resistance to aging, but also to our hyper-online activity? 55
2. Is it possible for a non-metaphysical dualist to say, with Nietzsche, that "my illness belongs to my body but it is not me"? Is it really true (as Elie Wiesel famously quoted Nietzsche in Man's Search for Meaning) that if you have a why, you can endure any how? 57
3. If you have a life's mission, does it follow that you are not suicidal? Does your nervous system also cry out for sun and dry air? 58
4. Do you also have your best thoughts while walking? 61
5. "It is not the truth that is holy, but the search for one's own truth." 68  But then Nietzsche insists that belief in God is "not a human choice." Any thoughts?
6. Is hope really "the worst of evils"? 69
7. "Perhaps by the year 2000, people will dare to read my books." 71  Is a popular philosopher an oxymoron?
8. Do you find young Freud's incipient talk of the Unconscious (82-3, 97) here persuasive? Or is Josef right, that the evidence for it is scarce?
9. "Whatever does not kill me..." (96-7) - Any thoughts?
10. Is loneliness "a breeding ground for sickness"? 101

John Kaag, in search of transcendence and a life worth living

John sought "Nietzschean transcendence" in his two Swiss pilgrimages, first as a teenager and later in middle age.

He found something more sustainable (if also more honestly equivocal) in William James's pragmatism. Is life worth living? Maybe. It's up to you. Your choice. That's as existential an answer as can be.

Midterm report presentations

Starting Sep 10 you can indicate your preference (in the comments' space of this post) for the topic and date of your report presentation. It can be on any relevant topic of your choice that you can relate to the reading assignments (required or recommended) on the corresponding date. Presentations will begin on the 15th. We'll do two or three presentations per class, hoping to finish before Fall Break. I'll give you a free base or two on the scorecard if you volunteer to present on the 15th.

Take a look ahead at the coming syllabus assignments (reprinted below). Scan the assigned texts and select your topic accordingly. You do not have to cover everything, just anything you can plausibly relate to something in that day's assigned material. Also scan the lists of recommended books in the right sidebar, to see if you would like to use any of them as a basis for your report. If the library does not have the text(s) you choose, go to the circulation desk and request via inter-library loan.

Have fun with the project. Be creative. Consider using the podcast/video resources in the library's MakerSpace to prepare your presentation. Plan to present for about 10 minutes, with the goal of teaching us something we wouldn't have learned merely reading the assignment. Then lead a brief class discussion. Don't stress, you'll get all 25 available points if you fulfill these minimal criteria.

15 - Kaag (Hiking With Nietzsche) preface-p.36. #RECOMMENDED: Wept (When Nietzsche Wept) Ch1-4. Midterm report presentations begin - Marissa-"Embracing Suffering”. Caroline Humphries-Nietzsche's poetry

17 - Kaag 37-80. #RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch5-8 - Chris Jennings-the last man

22 - Kaag 83-119. #RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch9-13 - Connor Sundling. Jacquez Caldwell-herd mentality

24 - Kaag 120-155. #RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch14-17 - Erick Martinez-master and slave moralities. cooper-Decadence and Disgust. Anon-

29 - Kaag 156-193. #RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch18-20 - Bella Ambriz-Kaag. Natalie Moreno-Wept. Nicholas-The Abysmal Hotel and The Horse

OCT
1 - Kaag 194-230. #RECOMMENDED: Wept conclusion - Aaliyah Henderson- Nietzsche and the birth of psychoanalysis. Brent-"Birth of Psychoanalysis" w/ William Barrett. Evan-"Becoming Who You Are"

  *2 - Lyceum address by John Kaag: "Our DIgital Cave," COE 164 Friday 5 PM followed by catered dinner/reception with the author. Attendance expected.

6 - Exam 

8 - Cafe (At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell) Ch1-2. Spyridon Hale-ch1. Aiden-Husserl’s phenomenology. Jake-ch2

Arguing with Nietzsche

Can there be optimism in a tragic universe? Or is escape – into music, as Schopenhauer said, or Dionysian dance, as Nietzsche said, or withdrawal, as Sceptics and sanyasis say, or drugs in all their forms, as so many say, or even suicide – the only option? Suffering is a condition of existence, and annihilation is its end: how else is one to face life, naked to its horror as thus viewed? Why, indeed, live?

…

Anthony Grayling 

https://acgrayling.substack.com/p/arguing-with-nietzsche?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Leopold and Loeb… and Nietzsche

Leopold and Loeb enter Joliet Prison following their convictions.

• Nathan Leopold Jr.
• Richard Loeb
• Clarence Darrow
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Home Trial Account
• The Leopold And Loeb Trial: An Account
• Great Summations
• Map of the Scene of the Kidnapping and Murder of Bobby Franks
• The Confession of Nathan Leopold
• Excerpts from the Psychiatric ("Alienist") Testimony in the Leopold & Loeb Hearing
• Darrow's Plea of Guilty
• Judge Caverly's Decision and Sentence
• Key Figures in the Trial
• In Nathan Leopold's Own Words
• The Glasses: The Key Link to Leopold and Loeb
• The Leopold and Loeb Trial: Photographs
• The Leopold & Loeb Trial: Bibliography
• Compulsion

One hundred years ago, on May 21, 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb tried to carry out the perfect murder. At the time, Leopold was enrolled at the University of Chicago, and Loeb was a recent alumnus. Their studies were not unrelated to the crime, since the young men shared a mutual interest in philosophy. They would discuss, among other things, the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. As Leopold understood Nietzsche, the übermensch was a person who had transcended the moral scruples that keep ordinary people from exerting their will-to-power. Leopold, who was intelligent and accomplished, thought of himself as above the petty moral rules by which the weak try to restrain the strong. Together with his friend, they put this philosophy into practice by killing the fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks...

https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/telling-stories-leopold-and-loeb

https://famous-trials.com/leopoldandloeb/1663-keyfigures