roughly

Well we’re all very smart, you must understand

Don’t make me tap the Matt Bors comic.

She is, they just didn’t mention it in the article.

Sitting quietly at home? Like, not going into work, and possibly negatively affecting GDP?

“How do we solve this?”

By hiring other people who actually know what they’re doing - product managers, marketers, designers, etc - and then, here’s the crucial part: listening to them. There are a whole set of people who are _not_ technologists, who do things that are _not_ building shiny widgets, and who have skills that are useful nonetheless and that we cannot trivially replicate just by thinking about it a lot.

Hm, that’s a fair note, and you’re right, that changes the flavor here.

And, 30 years is impressive, but it’s one lifetime.

There’s a balance, sure - I’m asking you what you put on the long side of the ledger.

Regarding houses - American architecture starting around the 40s divorced itself from its locale, but a great deal of older houses were built to be long-term dwellings, and this is reflected in their architecture, where they sit, how the wind and sun move across the structure, the materials they use, etc in a way that still generates value today. They may be harder to run a CAT5 through, but they’re a hell of a lot easier to keep cool in the summer.

Yes. All of the writing at the time indicates this was the case.

For these monks and their church that may not be the point, for medieval churches it very much was. God was not something that a small group of people in the church believed in, God was a fact to those living in those places at those times. You’re right that folks here have a different world view, but you can’t understand the cathedral without understanding the world view of those who built it.

And - “this building has no point whatsoever apart from how the monks see it” is true for everything and every viewpoint.

Yes, I’d agree with this. I’d almost say it’s the exception that proves the rule - it’s such an exceptional project in the modern sense that its presence highlights the absence of others.

I suppose things like the Svalbard seed vault are similar secular efforts, as is the Long Now’s clock, although that feels somewhat more self-indulgent than these others. I’m interested in others, if you can think of them.

You indeed do, and I support that. I wonder, though - setting aside the catholic notion of God and the associated church embedded in this project, how do you think of future generations? How do you think about things beyond yourself? How do you consider the impacts of your actions on the future?

I’m not being facetious with these questions, nor am I making an accusation - I think it’s a genuinely interesting question for the modern world, and it’s what I’m circling around here more than the notion of glorying god: the cathedral was a gift to the humans of future generations, one whose sacrifice indicated the value its makers placed on the wellbeing of its recipients. How do you think of your actions in that light? Do you?

A great deal of monastic pursuit was in the interest of slowing down, focusing, applying one’s entire self to something, and recognizing the greatness of god and creation, so yes, anything that encouraged focus and contemplation would have been privileged on those merits.

Like I said, I’m not mad at the monks for this, and I’ll never be mad at someone for creating more powerful means of expressing beauty.

If the monks in the year 1k had CNC machines, they’d have built bigger and more elaborate cathedrals. The act was the message. The gothic cathedral was impossible by medieval standards, and that was part of the act of building it.

And, to your point, yes, if the monks followed the construction with a hundred years of prayer and sacrifice to consecrate the building, indeed the building would carry a more powerful emotional resonance than it does now. The sacrifice is the point, the effort is the point. It’s an act of devotion, not just one of construction.