Latest news with #TheVarietiesofReligiousExperience
Boston Globe
21-02-2025
- Science
- Boston Globe
Could AI understand Nietzsche? Maybe with the help of these scholars.
Advertisement 'Rebound was born basically as the idea that you can use AI to redistribute original commentary about books,' Kaag said. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up You read Rebind books through a standard web browser. At each page there are icons that let you type in questions about the work, or you can speak questions into Rebind's speech recognition system. Say you're unsure what Nietzsche means when he writes that God is dead. A Rebind reader can ask Clancy Martin, a leading Nietzche scholar who teaches at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Martin distilled his expertise into a 300,000-word commentary on the book. When the reader asks a question of Nietzsche, Rebind's AI ferrets out Martin's answer and displays it on screen, sometimes with additional information located by the AI. Or suppose you're unclear about the meaning of Nietzsche's word 'Ubermensch.' Just highlight it and click to get Martin's explanation of the concept. Many AI applications promise to simplify our lives, but not Rebind. It's for readers who welcome the challenge of complex and demanding books, but who need help over the rough spots. The story of Rebind began two years ago with John Dubuque, who'd made a fortune in the plumbing supply business in St. Louis. But Dubuque's first love was philosophy, a subject he'd studied in college. Having sold the plumbing business, Dubuque reached out to Kaag, a specialist in the study of major US philosophers. Advertisement 'He said, 'Hey, I'd like you to take me through this book that I've always wanted to read but been scared of,'' Kaag said. Dubuque aimed high — he wanted to master 'The Varieties of Religious Experience,' a renowned 1902 book by Harvard philosopher William James. Kaag agreed, and the two had a high old time discussing ineffability, transience, and other concepts that rarely make the newspapers. The experience gave Dubuque an idea. He'd been awed by generative AI systems like ChatGPT, which could serve up sensible though not-always-accurate answers to all manner of questions. Surely a similar chatbot could be trained to guide readers through great books. Then anybody could learn to understand even the most demanding texts, without having to hire a college professor. 'ChatGPT can't do that,' Kang scoffed. But Dubuque believed it could be done by supplementing the AI with an in-depth analysis of the book, produced by a human expert. Martin and the other experts recruited by the company are called 'Rebinders.' Their job is to produce a vast amount of detailed commentary about their assigned books. They also appear in a series of videos that introduce the books and highlight key portions of the texts. It's hard work for the Rebinders, but they're paid five-figure fees for the work. 'I found it to be really, really creatively satisfying,' Martin said. 'You start working on something you love and you wind up pouring your heart into it.' Indeed, he liked it so much that Martin joined Rebind as deputy publisher. 'It was a surprising amount of work,' said Deb Olin Unferth, a professor at the University of Texas who's preparing a Rebind edition of stories by Kafka. Not that she's complaining. 'For me it became like a love project. I just had so much fun doing it.' Advertisement Rebind has recruited several literary stars. Marlon James has signed on to produce commentary for Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' John Banville is doing 'Dubliners' by James Joyce, and New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay is Rebinding 'The Age of Innocence' by Edith Wharton. The company hopes to eventually offer upgrades to each book. By analyzing the questions asked by readers, Rebind will go back to their experts and request additional commentary to fill in any gaps. That way, Rebind books can get smarter over time. In all, 11 books are available through Rebind, and Kaag hopes to offer 20 by year's end. Prices per book vary between $30 and $60. Or readers can purchase a one-year subscription for $120 and get access to every book on the shelf. And if you think the current inventory of books is challenging, here comes the Bible. First up will be selections from the New Testament and the Gnostic Gospels, with commentary by Elaine Pagels, professor of religious history at Princeton University. But Kaag said they're working on the entire Bible. He said the first version will rely on a massive Bible commentary produced by Protestant scholars. He already knows what will happen next. 'We're going to get blowback immediately that we haven't addressed Catholicism or a Jewish interpretation of the Jewish Bible,' Kaag said. 'So what we're planning to do is actually upload multiple interpretations, and then put those into conversation with each other for end users.' Like having a priest, a rabbi, and a minister get into a friendly argument (not at a bar), mediated by AI. Advertisement Obviously Rebind isn't for everyone. In an age of social media and ever-present video entertainment, it's an open question whether such a cerebral technology product can find an audience. 'In times like ours do people really want to slow down and read in a very patient, thoughtful way?' Clancy said. 'Well, there's one way to find out.' Hiawatha Bray can be reached at
The Guardian
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Boyhood of Cain by Michael Amherst review – a terrific queer coming-of-age debut
Michael Amherst's startling debut opens with a quiet description of the unnamed, unmistakably English town in which the novel's action takes place. Amherst's narrator is a faithful tour guide, keen that we don't miss the preparatory school, where the headteacher is the father of our 12-year-old protagonist, Daniel, or the abbey with its Norman tower. Three rivers traverse the town and every winter they 'break their banks and flood the surrounding fields' so that all becomes 'hemmed in and dark with water'. Throughout this taut bildungsroman, threats of inundation appear regularly, powerfully underlining the pressures to contain the self and the desire for freedom integral to Daniel's development. Amherst's Daniel is a richly realised child protagonist. The novel's enigmatic title carries with it a sense of innocence before experience, and, indeed, young Daniel is rather green. He has a charming, wide-eyed callowness – 'receiving a new exercise book was one of his chief joys' – and cannot imagine being as old as the 13-year-old choristers. But, skilfully, Amherst makes him so much more than this. Daniel is contrary: in his ruminations about theology, masculinity and the nature of storytelling, he is preternaturally attuned to complexity, the 'double storied mystery' of existence (to borrow a phrase from William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, which gives this novel its epigraph). He is deeply serious, artistic, 'sickly', prideful, endlessly questioning, knowingly precocious and prone to fabulously funny delusions of grandeur. At one point he wonders, quite po-faced, if he 'might be Jesus'. Elsewhere he berates himself for having not yet finished his first musical score, given that Mozart did so when he was just four. Amherst's unusual, crisp and finely calibrated style elevates Daniel's childhood experiences. We follow his anxious inner life throughout a period bracketed by two significant external changes. First, his hapless father loses his headship at the prep school and the family move from the only home Daniel has known. As the novel closes, Daniel is about to make the terrifying ascent to the unknown world of senior school. Between these poles, in episodic chapters that often have the texture of parables, Daniel tries to better understand himself, the institutions – home, school and to a lesser extent, church – and people around him. Daniel's wistful mother is a 'great beauty' and failed actor who claims to see spirits and 'believes dragons are to be found in the Malvern Hills'. She's also susceptible to bouts of depression; Daniel's father responds to these by spending longer and longer in the village pub. The disarray and shame his mother's illness prompts leads Daniel to sometimes candidly wonder if 'it would be easier if [she] were dead'. In both life and fiction, when the familial setting provides little security, the comforting rhythms of school can offer solace. Initially, Daniel's schooldays are brightened by his classmate Philip. While Daniel is crudely perceived by his peers as 'a prig, a swot, a goody-goody and a show-off', handsome Philip is precisely portrayed by Amherst as Daniel's 'other impossible self', a Jungian shadow embodying abundant social prowess and ease. There is a burgeoning camaraderie between the two, even if the friendship is deeply imbalanced and pungent with Daniel's longing, and a jealousy that calls to mind the implications of the novel's title. To begin with, this bond between Philip and the protagonist is encouraged by the suavely eccentric art master, Mr Miller, and he selects the two of them for private art classes. But, as with Miss Brodie and her elevated 'set', Mr Miller's cruelties and caprice – labelling Daniel a 'genius' one day and a 'Mummy's boy' the next, queasily drawing attention to his lack of 'sex appeal' – make it impossible to ascertain what's required to maintain the teacher's favour. It's approval Daniel hungers for, and prefers much more than the advances of the strange man at the pub who insists on patting his bottom. Equally bewildering, and desperately sad too, is the dissolution of the closeness between Daniel and Philip, which shakes Daniel's belief in his singular 'greatness' and promise. As puberty beckons, Daniel approaches it with a heartbreaking sense of his own lack of worthiness and a subtly explicated dread that his emerging queerness will be another isolating challenge to reckon with. While Amherst offers us a perceptive and closely detailed examination of a unique child's consciousness, the novel is really concerned with what Daniel comes to discover is at the heart of adulthood. Adulthood seems to him a 'resolute and uncaring' state. And Daniel, with his judgmental mien and superiority complexes, his self-loathing and worries about his insufficient masculinity, his sense that his family's frailties are for him to mend, cares profoundly – and suffers the lack of reciprocity painfully. In the middle of the novel, he beseeches, 'Won't anyone look after me?' In the eponymous biblical story, Cain is marked or cursed for his crimes against God, and against his brother. As this exquisitely written novel reaches its brave and elliptical final sequence, we're left wondering if Daniel is cursed to bear, for life, his unique sensitivity in an unfeeling world. Or if, adapting to the norms of adulthood, he will become just as unfeeling himself. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion The Boyhood of Cain is published by Faber (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
