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One obvious theme that the TGS must pursue is nature versus technology. It has been a theme of increasing complexity over the past two decades. Though lots of subjects pertain to this theme, we merely touch upon a couple of major aspects in this post. One in particular will be "intelligence" as it has been associated with life (not with buckets of bits or whatever configuration we might conceive).
Last time, we mentioned one of the native tribes (Nipmuc) of the New England region where the European culture of the U.S. got its start some 400 years ago. Although there are tribes over the entire continent, we will start in New England and learn about Native American culture with respect to the U.S., its past and its future.
In the map shown in the prior post, the region of the Nipmuc tribe included an area called Concord where the English settled. We have several families under study who were associated with the middle and western parts of Massachusetts. We'll pick HDT who was friends with our cousin (Ralph Waldo Emerson) who spent his years after his father died in the environs of Harvard. RW Emerson has been mentioned in several posts.
Today, we consider Henry David Thoreau (Wikipedia, WikiTree). HD was influenced by RW's little tract on Nature. Two of our favorite sources provide the full text of this RW take on matters: Transcendental web; archive[.]org
Venturing further, we can quote a Harvard study published during the time of HD's 200th memorial. The study found this quote of HD, who BTW was a graduate of the Institution.
Instead of helping Harvard, he said, men should consider giving money to their towns to preserve and protect a huckleberry patch.The “commercial spirit” of the day, he said, rested on a love of wealth that made people selfish and greedy. The world would be a better place, he said, if people “made riches the means and not the end of existence.”
For the most part, HD was in New England. Later, in poor health, he ventured out to Minnesota to look for a better climate in which to live. He had struggled with TB. During his time in the St. Paul region (1861 timeframe), HDT was impressed.
To be brief, we provide links to material on DT and his life.
- HDT's Final Journey: Minnesota - Mayo took note of HDT. They provide this quote: “For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life — I wrote this some years ago — that were worth the postage.”
- Thoreau and the Minnesota River - being a naturalist, HD would have wandered under the MN skies.
- The Life of HDT - one bit of activity by HD was forming a school with his brother. HD had taught at Harvard and wanted to spread the good joy of learning. We will be looking at this type of thing in depth, as New England, from its start, emphasized universal education.
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| Information on his supporters. John Keyes (Autobio, WikiTree - brother George) R. W. Emerson (our post) |
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Back to Harvard, we see that they recently performed an experiment with GenAI and classwork. The topic was Physics so that provides a wonderful grounding affect due to the empirical nature of the study. Reminder, back in HD's time, this field of study would have been (actually, was) known as Natural Philosophy.
- Professor tailors AI tutor for Physics - one encouraging result is that this effort followed the theme of increasing human insight using the tool of the artificial tutor. Test results indicate that those in the study who used the AI mode scored better. There is a lot to look at, but this work has to consider psychological and social factors with respect to the tutor experience.
Remarks: Modified: 09/17/2024
09/17/2024 --
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