Tag: quality

  • LLM Coding: Generative Sequences

    What are generative sequences, and how do they support unfolding wholeness & living structures? What is a Generative Sequence? What makes a good Generative Sequence? The Generative Power of Words Generative Sequences as a form of Writing Generative Sequences as Knowledge Containers

  • LLM Coding: Unfolding Wholeness & Living Structures

    I’ve been working extensively with LLM-assisted coding. I’ve been applying (almost exclusively) a writing style I’ve developed and practiced for a few years, inspired by “Generative Sequences.” To explain why I used this writing style and why (I think) it has served me well, I need to provide some context and terminology related to generative…

  • AI & Quality

    I’ve been forming a relationship with AI tools. At times, they’ve brought me real joy—opening doors to things I couldn’t do before. At other times, they’ve been frustrating, producing results that feel shallow, messy, or incomplete. What I’ve come to realize is that both reactions are valid, and they stem from a deeper tension in…

  • Ancient Greek Metaphysical Damage

    Introduction I recently completed yet another reading of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. There is a section near the end of the book where Pirsig, in his attempt to point the root of our current metaphysical crises, reaches the philosopher of ancient Greece. I’ve always experienced both a draw to…

  • Realms Beyond Reason

    ” … the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem … the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of…

  • Shodo – Getting Started

    Shodo – Getting Started

    A couple(?) of years ago Iulia went to a calligraphy workshop in Cluj and the papers she came back with shimmered for me. It stayed with me for a while. Eventually, I did some research into it and that led me to Shodo: THIS spoke to me. I seem to be drawn to Japanese culture.…

  • Sequence: The Difference Between a Novice and a Master

    The experienced carpenter keeps going … every action he performs, is calculated in such a way that some later action can put it right to the extent that it is imperfect now. What is critical here, is the sequence of events. The carpenter neves takes a step which he cannot correct later; so he can…

  • The Order of the Language

    Design is often thought of as a process of synthesis, a process of putting together things, a process of combination. According to this view, a whole is created by putting together parts. The parts come first: the the form of the whole comes second. But it is impossible to form anything which has the character…

  • Attention to Reality

    And it is in the end only when our feelings are perfectly in touch with the reality of forces, that we begin to see the patterns which are capable of generating life. That is what is hard – because so often people choose to put their own opinions forward, in place of reality. … Yet…

  • EXTRA Ordinary (Deepest Insights)

    EXTRA Ordinary (Deepest Insights)

    We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things – that they are extraordinary. This is only the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing. In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical,…

  • Wholehearted

    Wholehearted

    A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in … … it is a state of being in which all forces which arise in a man can find expression; he lives in…

  • Spaces for the Soul (a Ruth Landy documentary about Christopher Alexander)

    Dear Ruth, thank you for this precious work, it is vital that this story be told, and  for it to be told it is vital that it be available. While I understand your motivation for having it taken down, please don’t. Please let it live and ripple.

  • Christoper Alexander – What is Wholeness?

    “How can we tackle the task of making good sense of this intuition of unity and wholeness? First, wholeness is a structure, and can be understood as such … Second, the thing we call wholeness –  the feeling, or the intuition, of what the wholeness is – always extends beyond the thing in question ……

  • Jeff Bezos: They know it when they see it

    In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig describes teaching students to write and how much clarity and agreement there was between students about what constituted good writing (and how impossible is to define what “good writing” is) … and … wholeness anyone? Jeff Bezos confirms: “In a letter to shareholders, founder and…

  • Christopher Alexander – Experience Beyond Descartes

    where Descartes only allowed observation to focus on the outer reality of mechanisms in the world, my method requires that we focus on the inner reality of feeling as well

  • Christopher Alexander – The Mirror of the Self Test

    it is not so easy to find out what we really like. It is a skill and an art to become sensitive enough to living structure so that we see it accurately

  • Christopher Alexander – Liking from the Heart

    What people like can often not be trusted, because it does not come from the heart.

  • Christopher Alexander – A Universal Personal

    Christopher Alexander – A Universal Personal

    … from the point of view of the world picture in this book, ‘personal’ is a profound objective quality which inheres in something, It is not idiosyncratic but universal. It refers to something true and fundamental in a thing itself.

  • Christopher Alexander – Value as a Matter of Fact

    one of the most fundamental tenets of contemporary science – that value is not part of science and tht all matter is, from a scientific point of view, equally value free – can no longer be sustained

  • Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 6: Good Shape

    Christopher Alexander – Fundamental Property 6: Good Shape

    good shape … comes about when the whole is made of parts that are themselves whole in this rather simple geometric sense … is not only making things more beautiful; it also makes them work more profoundly, more effectively.