Practical Wisdom (Part VI)

I was sitting in a familiar spot doing a familiar thing. I was sitting in Msgr. Frank Lane’s office listening. Over the years, I’ve often wished I had recorded our conversations. This would give me enduring access to his encyclopedic knowledge. Alas.

During my most recent visit, he made a reference to a book titled The Spiritual Franciscans but he couldn’t remember the author. So, he set off trying to find it in his personal library. As he struggled to locate it, he said, “I love having to hunt down books and references, because along the way, you find other interesting things.”

He could have simply used AI to learn about the elusive author. Instead, he was intentionally inefficient because setting off the find the answer on your own means you’ll find other interesting things along the way. And, we did. He talked about a few other books on his shelves that would be of interesting to me. As you find these interesting things, you’ll probably raise some new questions you didn’t know you had and explore previously unimaginable inquiries. In all of this, the human mind expands and agency increases. And none of this happens when in the highly efficient engineering of a prompt that’s served up to a chatbot who spits out the answer in a matter of seconds.

Oh, and David Burr authored The Spiritual Franciscans.