pocket journal

“We can only begin here to trace the possible effects of such transformations, but consider, for instance, what would remain of our concept of romantic love if we could no longer explain why it matters that an expression of affection is composed by the person professing it, not an LLM trained on a couple’s mutual correspondence. Or how we could educate our children if we could no longer hold them, on pain of hypocrisy or incoherence, to any of the standards of effort and integrity that shaped us. “I am trying to live a life that I do not understand”—with these words another member of the Crow tribe, the medicine woman Pretty Shield, explained to Linderman what it was like to raise her children on the reservation, after the characteristic activities that used to constitute the Crow’s idea of the good life had become unintelligible. If it is hard for us to imagine this happening to us, Lear makes clear that it was hard for the Crow, too—and he shows why it is in our interest to try anyway.”