News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
My apologies for the delay in sending out last week's email newsletter; we had a glitch with our account that held up the email, but I think that is now sorted. In other news, there have been a couple of recent gatherings of local FPR readers. Here's a report from one in the Dallas area:
The Dallas, Texas, area Porch convened its inaugural gathering Sunday, September 29, 2024. Small in number but mighty in our estimation of one another, the group traded stories of what it means to be part of the Front Porch Republic. John Murdock summarized it best as, "saying 'no' to something culture has on offer." Other topics of conversation included - the then - upcoming conference and the constellation of authors that ground us in our respective places. Mr. Wendell Berry, was featured prominently as well as Mr. Paul Kingsnorth.
The Dallas Porch plans on meeting quarterly for the time being, and any interested in joining the next Porch can contact Jay Wright for more information.
- In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about dinosaurs, screens, and symbols.
- David Eisenberg commends the virtue of compromise: "Perhaps one day moral clarity on [abortion] will be found or the values of the American people will align more neatly. Until that day arrives, if ever it does, let the people themselves reach across the proverbial aisle so that they may reach one another."
- Sarah Reardon responds to the garish and creepy Halloween decorations on display in her neighborhood: "Our culture’s celebration of Halloween suggests that we know yet more. We sense not only that we are dust and will return to it; we also sense that life exists beyond death."
- I suggest that maybe we should care less about the presidential election and more about things we can meaningfully influence: "A democracy is not kept by filling in a ballot bubble once every four years. It’s kept by responsibly and virtuously exercising our freedoms in our homes, communities, and institutions day by day."
- Katy Carl reviews Tony Woodlief's new novel and commends its portrayal of people who try to live faithfully: "One of the novel’s achievements is the way that it unfolds this centuries-long story with both clarity and subtlety, establishing a clear feel for right and wrong while casting no irreproachable heroes and very few villains. "
- Samuel Schaefer notes that the weather after hurricanes tends to be ideal for the work of restoration: "After Hurricane Milton, . . . the temperatures began to drop and for the first time in a while we turned off the AC and the house didn’t warm up—it cooled down. All this certainly has to do with changes in pressure and systems brought about by the storms, but there is also something beautiful in the passing of a storm. After the Great Flood, God hangs a rainbow in the sky as a promise to Noah to never destroy the Earth again."
I recently read Leslie Valiant's The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness. He claims to offer a theory of "educability" that can guide both computer learning and human education, given that humans are essentially complex computers (the implications he draws for education are decidedly underwhelming). In laying out his "self-evident" case for why the brain is simply an information processor, though, he makes an interesting analogy to physics. Interesting because physics does not actually explain falling apples; no one knows why gravity exists or what causes objects with mass to be drawn toward one another (or how to reconcile the theory of general relativity with the theory of quantum mechanics):
I, and many others, consider it self-evident that if we are to understand how the brain works, we will need to understand it in terms of information processing. Some skeptics have suggested that information processing is only a metaphor. They point out that there is historical precedent for comparing the brain with the most complicated and prized machines of earlier eras, such as the camera. Perhaps once again we are just comparing the brain with the most complex machine that we happen to have, the computer. Perhaps computation is just one of many possible metaphors for the brain and there is nothing much to choose among them.
I would say that this view is mistaken. Physics is more than a metaphor for the physical world. It relates to falling apples and the motion of the planets more than as a mere metaphorical narrative. It seeks to explain falling apples and the motion of the planets. . . . Computer science is more than just a metaphor for the world of information processing. Its ambition is all-encompassing in aiming to explain every kind of information processing that is possible, whether in biology, silicon, or some other realization.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro