In the age of AI, perhaps we’d be better off with IE. Instead of turning to artificial intelligence when we ask questions, what if we relied on informed enthusiasm?
The phrase comes from Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain. Shepherd, a teacher of teachers, walked the Cairngorms in Scotland for decades before writing her wonderful book during World War II.
The mountains are a fascinating but forbidding place: high winds, the possibility of snow 12 months a year, sudden changes in weather, difficult trekking. Even experienced walkers sometimes die.
In the middle of nowhere, Shepherd ran across two boys bedecked in photography gadgets. They asked directions to the most difficult peak.
The teenagers were city boys, railway workers from England. They’d gotten interested in photography and had made it their ambition to photograph a golden eagle.
They’d read everything they could find on eagles. They knew their habitat and their habits. The young photographers were looking for ledges along the higher peaks.
Shepherd feared for their safety but didn’t try to dissuade them.
Their informed enthusiasm — even if only half informed — was the way in.
This is not a rant against technology but a reminder that our attitudes about technology, our approach to it, might need attention.
Perhaps I’m just an old man, but it seems to me that we have become so used to instant answers to so many of our questions that we forget that there are questions of another kind. Those questions require a part of our lives: an investment in research, yes, but also a commitment to walking into the wilderness, living life — even for just a day or two — in a way we haven’t lived before.
To forget about those questions seems tragic to me. To think they can be resolved by looking at a computer screen seems tragically wrong.
• Source: Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain; New York: Scribner, 2025, p. 64.
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