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"Reason is a Vast Tautology"

Without expectations from the audience who reads these posts, yet with the feeling that the reading of it might provide a benefit to the reader,  I offer this conversation with ChatGPT on Reason and Enlightenment, and their corollary and counter-posed concepts, with continuing conversations leading (I assert and intend) to a enlarged view of mankind and mankind’s development and future on…

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Final Report

Ronald A. Pavellas, Stockholm, May, 2025 All has been said before: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun”. This lover and hater of words dares (“vanity of vanities”) to add his own to the overburdened “dominion of Earth”. (Quotes from the Book of Ecclesiastes, Old Testament). In recent…

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Thus begins my Final Report

Eighty-eight years of living fully, studying and writing… and now to say something in a final kind of way. I started this project upon reaching the 87th anniversary of my birth, intending to complete my Report no later than my 90th. I vowed to issue the Report in two pages, but this is unrealistic. I started by gathering scores of books and other reading materials, many garnered through the…

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Thomas Cromwell & Henry VIII of England

He served the King well, then was executed (I posted this on another of my weblogs many years ago. Since Eva and I are now watching the video series made from the book, Wolf Hall, I reckon it is time to show this book review again) Compelling and believable historical fiction continues to encourage me to look further into non-fiction accounts of historical figures, in this case a complex of…

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Ode to a Swedish Bakery...

… and ‘Boulangerie—Patisserie’ I have enjoyed the ubiquitous coffee shops of Stockholm for almost 23 years. There are many varieties and owners, local and national (the only Starbucks I’m aware of is in Stockholm’s central railway station). Typically, such ‘shops’ are much more than a place to get my cafe latte. There will always be kanelbullar (cinnamon buns) and kardemummabullar (cardamom) and…

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Uniqueness in Humans; Human dependence on other organisms

Still in pursuit of material to consider including in my ‘Final Report’, I continue my conversations with ChatGPT… — What, in the species homo sapiens sapiens, is unique among all other species in the animal kingdom? ChatGPT said: The species Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) possesses several unique characteristics that distinguish it from all other species in the animal kingdom. These…

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A chat with ChatGPT on Vedanta and Zen...

Ron asks: How might Zen koans relate to Advaita Vedanta? ChatGPT responds: Zen koans and Advaita Vedanta, though arising from different traditions—Zen being rooted in Chinese Chan Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism—both deal with the nature of reality and the experience of non-duality. Despite their distinct cultural and doctrinal backgrounds, there are some striking parallels in their…

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"Energy is everywhere, all the time"

Theological Implications — I’m continuing my conversations with ChatGPT. The latest conversation let up my initial question, below, then a follow-up question on the implication of the first answer. Ron: So, energy is everywhere, all the time? ChatGPT said: Yes, in the framework of modern physics, energy is present everywhere, all the time, even in what we might think of as “empty space.” This…

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"If the universe is infinite, it has always been infinite"

My latest discussion with ChatGPT Ron: If space is expanding everywhere, it must be expanding locally too; that is, within our solar system. Is it possible to measure the effect of this expansion locally? forbes.com ChatGPT said: Comprehending the expansion of the universe without reference to it “expanding into something” can be challenging because our everyday experiences are based on objects…

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"The Universe Has No Center"

Here is my latest conversation with ChatGPT: Ron: The subject is the ‘Big Bang’ theory. In images created to illustrate the event, they show a three-dimensional tube-like emanation from a point that expands, over time in a conical manner until the circle of the forward edge of the cone relaxes into a kind of tube going forward in time. My question is, why did the ‘big’ bang’ not emanate from the…

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Satori at Age Eight?

(Posted November 6, 2018 in my ‘Being Old’ weblog, now shut down) At age seven or eight I had an experience which I ever-more perceive as a satori. “Satori (Chinese kāi wù) may be defined as an intuitive looking into the nature of things in contradistinction to the analytical or logical understanding of it. Practically it means the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion of…

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Best Day

(Originally posted March 31, 2012  in my ‘Being Old’ blog which is now closed.) I was eight years old, visiting, for the first time, the home of Mom’s oldest sister, my Aunt Bee, and her husband, Uncle Tommy Thomas. Mom had taken me and my sister Diane, age three, on the train from San Francisco south to Newport Beach for a summer vacation before the three of us were to move with Dad to Brooklyn…

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Words cannot recreate ‘just-as-it-is-right-now’…

… yet, in vain, we continue to issue words. [I have let my weblog “Being Old” lapse. No longer will anyone be able to access the articles I have placed there. I will repost some of them here to preserve access to them. This was posted July 6, 2020] Photo by Jessica Rothman in Mestia, Georgia I am rereading Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals, by Peter Matthiessen. One chapter is an account of…

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Help from a Cat (a Haibun)

Backyard, 62 Theta Avenue, Daly City, CA–1960 I was yielding to the insidious, growing tendency to dwell on my advancing age, as it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the reminders of my deteriorating appearance and function. The inevitable end was quite clear, only the timing and manner remained hidden. It was tedious to “count one’s blessings,” rotely, as a palliative to this recurrent…

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My Latest Conversation with ChatGPT

Ron: Is ChatGPT heuristic? ChatGPT ChatGPT operates based on a combination of heuristic techniques and statistical methods. Here’s a breakdown of how it works in terms of heuristics: Heuristic Elements: Pattern Recognition: ChatGPT uses patterns in the data it has been trained on to generate responses. This can be seen as heuristic because it doesn’t understand the content in a human way but…

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“Political, economic and moral bankruptcy…”

History repeating before our eyes. I’m reading a book published in 1939: The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Universe, by Arthur Koestler. This book seems to fall into the realm of these three books: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, A Study of History [Abridged], by Arnold J. Toynbee, The Decline of the West,  by Oswald Spengler.), but I’m only to page 53 of…

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Conversations with 'ChatGPT', Number 1

In July, 2010, I posted here an essay or opinion about “The Holy Zygote“, which I recently referred to a family member pursuant to a conversation between us. In that I have been, recently, asking many questions of the AI program ‘ChatGPT‘, mostly in the realm of philosophy and physics, I decided to ask this service the question, below. This may be the first of more questions of ChatGPT, and its…