

"Information Is Cheap, Meaning Is Expensive" - gruseom
http://theeuropean-magazine.com/352-dyson-george/353-evolution-and-innovation

======
ivanzhao
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have
lost in information?"

T.S. Eliot, 1934

~~~
gruseom
This is in the tradition of the critique of modernity, which holds that
mankind is losing something of great value along with our technical progress.
It is a minority tradition - like a dissenting opinion in a court case - and
has been pretty well drowned out by now. A notable figure in this tradition is
the French thinker Simone Weil, who combined intellectual rigor and spiritual
depth in a particularly compelling way.

It's probably apropos that you posted this in an article about George Dyson,
since Dyson's theme is uncovering the origins and recesses of that technical
progress, but very much from within the modern view.

I love Eliot. His English is exquisite, especially his diction, which is
incomparable. Everything he wrote seems to be in a state of timeless balance.
This quote turns out to be from a play called The Rock (1934):

    
    
      O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
      O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
      O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
      The endless cycle of idea and action,
      Endless invention, endless experiment,
      Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
      Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
      Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
      All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
      All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
      But nearness to death no nearer to God.
      Where is the Life we have lost in living?
      Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
      Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
      The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
      Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. 
    

That's really something. He's talking about modernity, but in a way that reads
like a translation from Sanskrit, with something of the Greek chorus about it
as well. Here's someone trying to get perspective on the present through the
language of the past. I never thought of that before.

~~~
kiba
What do you speak of when we lose something of great value along with our
technical progress?

~~~
gruseom
I assume you mean what does that tradition speak of? Pretty much what Eliot
says in the quote.

There's a positive and a negative aspect to the critique, in the sense of what
it posits vs. what it negates. The positive aspect argues that the Good is
accessible through something other than Reason. They're not against Reason,
but see it as only part of man's heritage and not the most important part at
that. This leads to a critique of modernity because, they argue, modernity
doesn't acknowledge or allow for such knowing.

The negative aspect argues that by regarding everything as a technical
problem, man becomes swept away by relativism, sees himself as the source of
all values, and ultimately lacks any basis for knowing what is good. In this
view, rational humanism is shallow and self-deceptive and Nietzsche, the
prophet of man choosing his own values, is the great distiller of modernity,
the one who took it to its logical conclusion. But where Nietzsche professes
to celebrate that conclusion, people like Eliot and Weil and George Grant see
it as a reductio.

An interesting thing about the thinkers in this tradition is that for a
counterpoint to the Enlightenment view of man (which they reject for its
triumphalist emphasis on Reason) they turn not to the anti-Enlightenment
Romantics but rather to antiquity, before the split between Reason and Spirit
(to use old-fashioned terms) occurred. You can hear this in the Eliot quote.
Weil's lodestones were the Iliad and Plato. She, by the way, was the younger
sister of André Weil. That was one amazing family.

~~~
kiba
What the hell is spirit? Why is man swept by relativism? Do you mean moral
relativism?

I studied Plato in school and I thought he didn't pass the laugh test.
Nietzsche is the least BS philosopher I known so far.

Your comments sound profound but lack substance.

~~~
gruseom
If you know the answers, why ask?

~~~
kiba
Hey, I still have genuine questions.

------
wensing
_completely inanimate objects to RNA_

Has this been mapped out in detail? (Please pardon my ignorance. I'm not an
evolutionist but like to stay current).

------
sausax82
Great quote "When you look at your iPhone to get directions, are you asking
the phone where to go or is the phone telling you where to go?"

~~~
Joakal
Isn't it both? Can you explain why it's a great quote?

~~~
gwern
It seems to me like he's just trying to sound deep, as opposed to be deep (
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/k8/how_to_seem_and_be_deep/> ).

~~~
gruseom
I can see why you'd say that about the quote, but I'm pretty sure he's not
pretentious in that way.

