DIY Confucian scholarship: the Four Books (Great Learning, Analects, Book of Mengzi, Doctrine of the Mean). Head of Confucian Technologies at @Daoxue_Academy.
East Asia
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The chief reason [for the American resistance to Chinese Philosophy] is the Western concept of philosophy, which insists that it must be a theoretical study of concept and laws of knowledge, reality, and value. Chinese philosophy fulfills this definition only to a limited extent. While there are theoretical discussions on the principle and nature of things, they are intended not for knowledge for its own sake, but to support a way of life the conclusions and convictions of which are arrived at not through idle speculation but through actual handling of human affairs.
– Professor Wing-tsit Chan, “Reflections on Teaching Chinese Philosophy to American Students” (1959)
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RT @Vermeullarmine: It’s funny in a slightly grim way to see people rediscovering that the traditional precepts of the natural law are not…
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Sol 솔 retweeted
FOUR BOOKS: CONFUCIAN CLASSICS — the monthly update is now live on the App Store and Google Play:
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Premium Matcha imported from Japan, with a cautionary note from the wife.
(Apparently, this is the go-to brand, so we will see how it holds up in practice in my afternoon translation session.) 🍵🧠
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Since Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5 (which they claim they fixed) keep violating clear communication in EVERY turn, I had to go as far as this...which probably won’t help either since these models just ignore our response-style preferences. @bcherny @trq212 @lydiahallie
A brief public rant about Fable 5.1 degradation…
Frankly, I don’t care about Opus 5.5. What pisses me off is that Fable is now completely retarded. It got nerfed in the week or two leading up to the new model’s release, and post-release it has not recovered. Specifically, it is brain-dead and lazy (silently not following skills, playing dumb, doing the minimum possible, making careless mistakes). This is a completely different model from the hyper-diligent one Anthropic launched.
As for the communication style on technical jobs, it is the same opaque and verbose style it has always been. That was always a problem, but it was forgivable when Fable could one-shot my requests. Now it is insufferable to have to make ten nagging requests to get it to do something, and then decipher its ten impenetrable alien communications.
I have been a Claude user from the beginning, and Anthropic has been doing this on every release for about a year now. May I say that I am *really* sick of this company jerking us around while claiming it does not adjust model quality. That’s just calling me a liar. I use the tool consistently on dead-stable tasks, so it is very obvious when the output quality jerks down like this.
If you are marketing to professionals in the corporate world, I can tell you that we want dependable and consistent workhorses. Think Bloomberg Terminals. Not THIS!
@bcherny @trq212 @lydiahallie
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This gives me an opportunity to post my horse sashimi lunch from a few weeks ago in Jeju. Decided not to post earlier on account of the sensitive Americans. Blame Bryan for normalizing this, I did nothing wrong.
In a chat full of American weebs but when I tell them horse sashimi goes great with beer at the izakaya they act all shocked and horrified, smh, do they not actually like Japanese culture?
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A brief public rant about Fable 5.1 degradation…
Frankly, I don’t care about Opus 5.5. What pisses me off is that Fable is now completely retarded. It got nerfed in the week or two leading up to the new model’s release, and post-release it has not recovered. Specifically, it is brain-dead and lazy (silently not following skills, playing dumb, doing the minimum possible, making careless mistakes). This is a completely different model from the hyper-diligent one Anthropic launched.
As for the communication style on technical jobs, it is the same opaque and verbose style it has always been. That was always a problem, but it was forgivable when Fable could one-shot my requests. Now it is insufferable to have to make ten nagging requests to get it to do something, and then decipher its ten impenetrable alien communications.
I have been a Claude user from the beginning, and Anthropic has been doing this on every release for about a year now. May I say that I am *really* sick of this company jerking us around while claiming it does not adjust model quality. That’s just calling me a liar. I use the tool consistently on dead-stable tasks, so it is very obvious when the output quality jerks down like this.
If you are marketing to professionals in the corporate world, I can tell you that we want dependable and consistent workhorses. Think Bloomberg Terminals. Not THIS!
@bcherny @trq212 @lydiahallie
Introducing Claude Opus 5.5, the first model in our new Claude 5.5 family.
It performs at the level of Claude Fable 5.1 for most tasks, and costs 40% less to run than Opus 5.
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Sol 솔 retweeted
One claim about the history of philosophy I see repeated all the time is that “metaphysics” is so named because it pertains to what is beyond the physical world or beyond the natural order of things. This is at best a hypothesis and it doesn’t have a great deal of support. 1/🧵
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This little ditty was made with Opus 5.5.
Put the guqin in just intonation (never equal temperament!!). Natural language audio mixing: “ride the reverb trail up as the last note fades out,” “wood block plays triplets and odd time.” Set LUFS loudness to -15 dbfs. Crazy.
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Sol 솔 retweeted
Medical books describe numbness of the hands and feet as the absence of humanity. This is an excellent description. The man of humanity takes Heaven and Earth and the myriad things as one body, with nothing that is not himself. Having recognized them as himself, what place does he not reach? But if they do not belong to the self, they naturally have no concern with it—as when the hands and feet are numb, the animated force no longer flows through them, and they no longer belong to the self. (Cheng Hao : Lunyu 6.28)
醫書以手足痿痹為不仁，此言最善名狀。仁者以天地萬物為一體，莫非己也。認得為己，何所不至；若不屬己，自與己不相干。如手足之不仁，氣已不貫，皆不屬己。
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FYI, anytime you see a phrase from me labeled “apparently,” “presumably,” or “one would think,” that means I don’t know what I’m talking about (I diligently label gaps in my knowledge). All unlabeled phrases are to be taken as known and correct.
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Essentially a Xunzi-esque negative take on human nature. His answer was teachers and ritual: “The nature of man is evil; his goodness is the result of his activity.” Although, starting from a negative is unnecessary and seems counterproductive.
Every human being is born broke, naked, ignorant, and violent.
THIS is the "state of nature."
The question is: what changes it?
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Sol 솔 retweeted
"Life is like an open book exam. All the answers to this open book exam can be found in history. You ignore history at your own peril."
Professor Farrokh Langdana
Rutgers Business School
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An elegant and simple proof by Zhu Xi of the existence of Natural Principle (tianli 天理, the “Principle of Heaven”).
This Confucian doctrine of “reaching others from oneself” has been compared to the golden rule. Now, to “treat others the way you want to be treated,” you must assume some commonality, that people want the same things. Unless this assumption is true, the rule does not work.
The Confucian version reads: “To be able to draw a likeness from what is near at hand may be called the method of humanity” (Lunyu 6.28). As Zhu explains, “To draw a likeness of others from one’s own person is to liken what one desires oneself to other men, knowing that what they desire is just the same.” To then extend what one desires so as to reach others is the method of humanity (ren 仁).
Therefore, that this is even possible proves by inference that some common pattern, order, or principle flows through all men without interruption (and through all things, as man and nature form a unity). Li 理 (“principle”) is just a name for this observed natural standard. As it is formally defined, principle is the reason a thing is as it is, and the standard for what it ought to be.
Without this natural order, the whole business would not work.
To reach others from oneself is the heart and mind of the man of humanity. Looking at it from this point of view, one may see that the Principle of Heaven (tianli 天理) flows through all things without interruption. (Zhu Xi : Lunyu 6.28)
以己及人，仁者之心也。於此觀之，可以見天理之周流而無閒矣。
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