Category: update

L’Illusion de la lumière

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1–2 minutes

Un court message aujourd’hui.

Je travaille à la traduction de The Illusion of Light : Thinking After the Enlightenment (L’Illusion de la lumière : Penser après les Lumières) en français, avec l’aide de quelques outils linguistiques et d’un peu d’intelligence artificielle. J’ai bon espoir que le processus sera fructueux. Souhaitez-moi bonne chance.

Je dois beaucoup aux penseurs français, d’hier comme d’aujourd’hui. Traduire ce texte est donc, à ma manière, une forme de reconnaissance. Mon plus grand défi sera de préserver un français à la fois contemporain et fidèle à ma voix – moins prosaïque que poétique.
Mes excuses d’avance aux Québécois.

Image: “We have confused the act of exposure with the act of understanding.”

In English, I am translating The Illusion of Light into French, so I’m leaving just this short note today.

I don’t know any other languages well enough to attempt a translation myself, but with a few capable software partners, I’m confident the process will end well.

For the record, I’m using these tools:

  • Reverso — I’ve used it for years and still find it helpful. It provides plenty of contextual examples, which helps ensure I’ve captured the right nuance.
  • ChatGPT — My go-to AI partner; it gets the second pass.
  • Claude — I’m consistently impressed with its suggested amendments. Where Reverso is precise, Claude tends to catch idiomatic usage better.
  • Mistral — It’s French, after all. What can I say? A bit pedantic, perhaps, but another set of virtual eyes can’t hurt—can they?

Whilst I’m sure these tools could manage other languages, I want to be able to evaluate what they’re doing. In French, even if I don’t know a particular word, I can verify it, and I understand the grammar. With other languages, I’d simply be trusting a black box.

Besides, French culture and philosophy have influenced me so deeply that the least I can do is offer something back. As this translation is an overview of my English-language essays, I hope it provides some in-language context.

I know how difficult translated works can be to read, so if I’m overseeing the process, at least there’s one fewer filter between my thoughts and the reader.

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Written by Bry Willis

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Waiting for a New Book: Illusions of Light

Posted in Audio, modernism, philosophy, quote, updateTagged , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
2–3 minutes

This is not the announcement of a new book – The Illusion of Light: Thinking after the Enlightenment.

“Have the courage to use your own understanding.”

— Immanuel Kant, ‘What Is Enlightenment?’ (1784)

I hate the business of business. I am wrapping up another book project, but it’s been delayed by the government shutdown in the United States. I want a Library of Congress number (LCCN), but submissions must wait for an employed person to assign it.

Too clever by half and smarter than the average bear, I thought I could release an audiobook version first; audiobooks don’t need an LCCN. To be honest, neither do books. As some do with ‘Patent Pending’, I could follow suit. The book receives an LCCN, but it isn’t printed on the copyright page with the other administrivia.

My idea worked – partially. I rendered an audio version and published it – though it won’t be available until the start of November. Even so, I need distributors. It’s always something.

Meanwhile, I’m sharing an excerpt for your listening pleasure. Read along if you please.

Audio: The Illusion of Light: Thinking after the Enlightenment; Preface — Reading by Residual Light

Preface – Reading by Residual Light

To read these essays is to move slowly from the glare into the dimmer spaces where things regain texture. The Enlightenment taught us to equate light with truth, but illumination has always been double-edged: it clarifies outlines whilst erasing depth. What disappears in the brightness are the gradients – the in-between shades where thought and feeling meet, where contradiction still breathes.

The half-light is not a retreat from knowledge; it is where knowledge stops mistaking itself for salvation. It is the hour before dawn and after dusk, when perception is most alert, and everything seems both clearer and less certain. That is the discipline these essays practice: a sustained attentiveness to what persists when certainty burns away.

This project does not ask readers to abandon reason, only to notice what it has excluded. It invites a kind of intellectual night vision – the patience to see without spotlight, the willingness to sit with what does not resolve. In the half-light, the world no longer arranges itself around the human gaze; it reveals itself as unmastered, partial, alive. Here, we will learn to dwell in that half-light – not as a retreat from knowledge, but as a discipline of seeing what the Enlightenment’s glare erased.

The Enlightenment promised that truth would make us free. Perhaps it made us efficient instead. What these pages attempt is smaller and slower: a freedom measured not in control but in composure – the ability to live with what cannot be fixed, to keep tending meaning after its foundations have collapsed.

If there is light here, it is not the triumphant blaze of discovery but the ambient glow that remains after something ends. It’s the light of screens left on overnight, of cities at rest, of the mind still thinking long after certainty has gone to sleep.

Step carefully. Let your eyes adjust. The world looks different when it stops pretending to be illuminated.

The rest of the story…

I consider The Illusion of Light to be a sort of capstone project to the Anti-Enlightenment Project. It provides both a perspective and insights into the essays that constitute it.

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Written by Bry Willis

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Pre-Meditations on Nothing

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Meditations on Nothing

The proofs have arrived. Two small volumes, both titled Meditations on Nothing: one subtitled Notes Before Existence, the other A Critical Companion.

They are, in some sense, twins—one aphoristic, one expository. The first speaks in fragments; the second replies, with slightly more patience. Together they form the quiet beginning of what I now call The Anti-Enlightenment Project—a long experiment in writing without faith in reason’s permanence.

Image (Link): Instagram announcement of the received proofs.

This is not yet an announcement. The books aren’t public, and I haven’t decided whether to call their eventual release a publication, a disclosure, or a mistake. For now, they simply exist, bound and silent, sitting on the table where the idea of meaning once lived.

When they are released, I’ll post details here. Until then, consider this the sound a thought makes before it commits to paper.

—BW

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Anniversary of Sorts

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1–2 minutes

WordPress has just informed me that my blog is having an anniversary. Technically true, though a little misleading: this blog has been around since 1 January 2017, but I’ve been loitering on the platform since 2006. Before that I dabbled in the great blog diaspora of the early internet—Google, Yahoo! 360, Blogger, and a few others that have long since evaporated into the ether.

Each space had its own flavour. One I recall from around 2010 was devoted to an experiment in World of Warcraft: levelling a pacifist character. The premise was simple—no violence allowed. My Human Priest, suitably named Passivefist, managed to crawl his way to level 7 before stalling out. The challenge was never to attack other NPCs, only to survive by gathering, healing, or sneaking through hostile terrain.

This was my grand opening statement back then:

I am creating this account to track my progress as a pacifist in World of Warcraft. Others have done this before me and are, in fact, way ahead of me. Nonetheless, it is the challenge I am setting. I have created a Human Priest on Kael’thas named Passivefist.

Of course, in later expansions Blizzard eventually added pacifist-friendly content, making my small crusade somewhat redundant.

As for this blog, it’s taken a different path. I’ve recently crossed the 100,000-word milestone—101.4K, to be precise. Not that I’ve been counting obsessively, but it’s a nice marker, even if much of my writing also leaks into other projects: other blogs, manuscripts, and workaday scribbling.

As for this blog…

The intent here remains the same as when I started in 2017: to keep a space for philosophic musings, digressions, and the occasional provocation. I’ll continue publishing when I have something worth saying—or at least something worth testing out in public.

Here’s to the next 100K.

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That’s Never Happened Before

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Famous last words, I know.

I was working with ChatGPT, discussing various concepts. We chatted for several hours over the course of a few days, and we came to, let’s say, a conclusion. What ChatGPT 5 did next was something I had never seen. In fact, I’m sharing the actual response.

I won’t share my thesis here, but this is one of the field verification projects it recommends.

tl;dr: £120k

One-page grant prospectus — Provenance Pilot

Project title
Provenance First: Testing provenance packages & slow-mode deliberation to improve municipal decision quality

Lead investigator
Bry Willis — Independent Researcher (contact: [REDACTED])

Summary (1–2 lines)
Test whether mandatory, machine-readable provenance packages plus a 60-day slow-mode and rapid adversarial audits improve decision quality (DQI), reduce reversal rates and increase public legitimacy in municipal planning decisions.

Problem statement (why fund this)
Policy decisions are frequently hijacked by headline pressure and low-provenance inputs; municipalities lack lightweight, testable protocols that make inputs traceable and give deliberation time. This pilot operationalises the “provenance-first + slow-mode” institutional fix and measures whether design moves increase robust decision outcomes rather than performative actions.

Objectives

  1. Test whether provenance packages + 60-day slow-mode increase Decision Quality Index (DQI) vs business as usual.
  2. Measure effects on Provenance Completeness Score (PCS), reversal rates at 12 months, and public legitimacy.
  3. Produce an open replication pack (data, code, provenance schema) and practitioner guidance.

Design & methods (12 months)

  • Setting: medium-sized city planning board; 12 eligible planning items over 12 months.
  • Randomisation: items randomly assigned (stratified by leverage) to Treatment (provenance package + 60-day slow-mode + funded rapid audit) or Control (standard process).
  • Intervention: standard JSON provenance package template (raw data links, code where relevant, funders, changelog), public portal posting, 60-day live comment + one adversarial rapid audit (48–72 hrs) on contested claims.
  • Primary outcome: Decision Quality Index (DQI) — composite of: evidence completeness, process reversibility, and independent expert accuracy score (pre-registered rubric).
  • Secondary outcomes: PCS, reversal at 12 months, public trust (survey), time to decision, stakeholder satisfaction.
  • Analysis: pre-registered mixed effects model (item-level with panel-level random effects), intention-to-treat.

Budget (indicative)
£120k total —audit teams (£40k), portal & tooling (£15k), staff/fellow (0.5FTE, £35k), survey & evaluation (£15k), admin/contingency (£15k).

Deliverables

  • Pre-registered protocol on OSF; open data & replication pack (anonymised where required); policy brief and practitioner playbook; 1 peer-reviewed methods paper.

Success criteria (pre-registered)

  • Cohen’s d≥0.4 improvement in DQI for treatment vs control; PCS improvement >25 percentage points; no more than 30% increase in unacceptable delay (pre-agreed threshold).

Risk & mitigation

  • Delay risk: cap slow-mode at 60 days; urgent items can request expedited review (documented override).
  • Capture risk: audit funding ring-fenced and administered by independent trustee panel.

I’m just curious now. Have you ever had a generative AI process end with a cost of goods and services?

Derrida’s Deconstruction Summarised

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David Guignion describes Derrida’s Deconstruction in under three minutes.

Video: YouTube short on Derrida’s notion of deconstruction.

The confusion he mentions is why I chose a different term – dis-integration – to describe “deconstructing” communication to discover underlying metanarratives.

I am busy editing my next novel, so that’s all the time I want to allocate to this matter, but David is a trusted resource of mine. Meantime, check out my deconstructed cover image.

2024 Adminstrative Review

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Happy New Year 2025 🥳🎉

In 2024, I produced 154 blog posts here – a total of 122K words. More importantly, in 2024 the blog had more than twice the number of visits than in 2023. It’s seen an increase in traffic every year since its inception in 2017 – despite my neglect from being distracted elsewhere.

As nickdruryfad63dc877 rightly noted, some content is less focused than others. In this case, I was busy. To borrow from Pascal, “I’d have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” As I responded to him, not only was the post meandering and an amalgamation of 4 or 5 – not necessarily mutually exclusive – topics, I didn’t even make the point I set out to make, so the topic remains a prime candidate for a future release.

I want to share more here but have other blogs and interests. It’s not a full-time profession, but it could be. Content creation is difficult. It’s even harder when one creates unevenly in several domains. We’ll see where this year goes.

Currently, I am putting the finishing touches on a Metamodernism Worldview Survey that is a culmination of earlier ideas. I am also finishing a couple of books and an essay, plus some short stories, some related to this blog, others not so much. I’ve also neglected my associated YouTube channel, so I’d like to render more content there, too.

Meantime, things to do, people to see. Cheers!

Slice of Life

Posted in language, philosophy, updateTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

This is a timeline of foundational ideas on which I’ve built my Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. I spent a day compositing this timeline in Adobe Illustrator. I hadn’t used Illustrator in decades. It’s got a lot of options, so I’ve been leveraging ChatGPT as a help guide. It seems the UI/UX could be improved, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I’ve got another couple dozen to go. I’m hoping a learning/efficiency curve kicks in.

WordPress wouldn’t accept or render my first few file types, even though they are listed as acceptable – SVG, PNG, TIF, WEBP – so I opted for gold, old-fashioned BMP, so it’s pretty hefty for inline rendering on a blog. I want to share, and so here is a late draft.

I’m no graphic artist, so it’s relatively primitive. I’ve been experimenting with colours, but the book is black and white, so I’ll probably just keep it the same.

There are a lot of data points to fit on this timeline, and I’m limited to a 6″ x 9″ form factor. Except for the first 3 entries, the items are to-scale by year. I have more information, but I can’t really fit it in. In fact, this started as two timelines. There was so much cross-over that I merged them into one, forcing me to remove some meta information and lose some detail. Design is hard.

It looks fine on the page. I don’t want to reduce the font sizes to cram in more info. I’ll probably put the more descriptive copy in an appendix, if not on a facing page.

Language Insufficiency Hypothesis, Chapter One

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Well, a word cloud anyway.

I’m busy focusing on the manuscript for Chapter One of my Language Insufficiency Hypothesis. Scanning the copy—over 4,000 words—I noticed some repetition. My eye caught ‘fundamental’, which I use often in speech as well. I decided to try a word cloud to illustrate common words.

As this is a hypothesis on the limitations of language, the fact that these are prominent is no surprise, but 34 instances of ‘fundamental’ seem fundamentally off—see what I did there? And this is only the first chapter of eight.

I’ll review the content to see if I can remove some instances—perhaps entire sentences—or choose a synonym to see where it leads.

The manuscript is in its fourth full revision, and it feels closer to completion. I aim for an early 2025 release date, but time will tell.

Ass usual, I employ AI (Claude, in this case) to do some heavy lifting.

Having analysed the chapter, I’ve identified several places where “fundamental” could be substituted or removed to enhance the linguistic diversity and rhetorical effectiveness of the text. Here are some examples:

  1. “These limitations, we argue, manifest not merely as practical challenges but as fundamental features of how meaning systems operate…”
    • Alternative: “These limitations, we argue, manifest not merely as practical challenges but as intrinsic features of how meaning systems operate…”
  2. “This theoretical perspective fundamentally reframes several longstanding problems in linguistics and philosophy.”
    • Alternative: “This theoretical perspective radically reframes several longstanding problems in linguistics and philosophy.”
  3. “These patterns suggest inherent rather than circumstantial constraints – limitations that emerge from language’s structure itself rather than from inadequate definition or imprecise usage.”
    • Here, “fundamental” could be omitted entirely without losing the core meaning of the sentence.
  4. “Understanding these constraints as systematic features rather than implementation failures provides a crucial theoretical foundation for the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis.”
    • Alternative: “Understanding these constraints as systematic features rather than implementation failures provides a vital theoretical foundation for the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis.”
  5. “These cognitive constraints manifest not as mere practical impediments but as necessary features of how meaning is processed and transmitted through human neural networks.”
    • Here, “fundamental” could be replaced with “essential” or simply omitted.

Notice that 3 of the 5 recommendations didn’t include the offending word. Rather, they already employed synonyms. This gives us insights into how LLMs translate language with fuzzy logic. Perhaps that’s an article for another day.

Slow News Day

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This post is primarily throwaway content—a boast, really. November 2024 was the busiest month for this blog since I started it in January 2017. By the end of November, this blog had twice the visitors it had in the entire year of 2023. Hooray for me.

My most popular story has been the book review of Thomas Ligotti’s ‘The Conspiracy Against the Human Race‘. In fact, anti-natalist and pessimistic philosophy are the top performers. What’s a bloke to do?

Book Review: Conspiracy Against the Human Race

This isn’t the only place I publish, though I give it the most attention. I’ve been publishing online since the mid-’90s. Unfortunately, some of the blog hosts went out of business, so the content it lost to history.

One of my favourite pieces is a publication I wrote in 2013: Cultural Impact on Digital Design. I wrote it while working at Critical Mass, a digital marketing agency. It’s been viewed just shy of 20,000 times. I revised it today because I couldn’t recall the name of Geert Hofstede, a reference I am including in my Language Insufficiency Hypothesis book.

Speak of my book, time to refocus. Ta!