the sea engulfed a sailor in its depths. Unaware, his mother goes and lights a tall candle before the ikon of our Lady
The sea engulfed a sailor in its depths.
Unaware, his mother goes and lights
a tall candle before the ikon of our Lady,
praying for him to come back quickly, for the weather to be good—
her ear cocked always to the wind.
While she prays and supplicates,
the ikon listens, solemn, sad,
knowing the son she waits for never will come back.
(July 1896)
(translation: Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
that fact does not make moral reasoning impossible. It changes its character. It means we should be cautious about moral frameworks that depend on precise enumeration of outcomes, and more respectful of constraints that have survived because they may protect society from certain failure modes.
if you don’t inherit friction from the world and are traveling through Extremistan, it may be wise to design your own friction: embrace the beauty of logistics, accept multiple stops along the way, say “no” when in doubt, study the classics.
leverage exists, but is always paired with constraints. Physical limits (think size or speed), cultural friction, or some other factor that prevents scaling out of control and keep the thing going (i.e., alive, not extinct, not permanently ruined)... but in our wonderful world of finance...
the asymmetry of ruin: scalability and lack of friction can turn ordinary mistakes into terminal events
I publish slowly and irregularly