Hello, my friend!
This week, a strange configuration of circumstances kept asking me the same question: what is real, what is fake, what speaks to our soul, what sounds true — and, in the future, what will we value?
↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: Some things cannot be ChatGPT’d
- Latest blog post: Is your bone density quietly declining?
- What I read this week: The interstitium and how acupuncture might work
This Week’s Inspiration: Some Things Cannot Be ChatGPT’d
On Wednesday, I booked an appointment with a virtual assistant at a physical therapy clinic. She took my health insurance information and booked eleven appointments so graciously and efficiently that I almost didn’t realize she was a bot. There were even background noises on the call that made it seem like she was sitting in a busy physical therapy office. After about five minutes, I asked, "Are you a bot?" She said, "Yes, I’m a virtual assistant." But by then, I had been fooled and charmed too.
She was like a human, just better.
I’d considered writing to you this week about the Pope’s treatise on the perils of AI, all the while the subject kept re-entering my life.
At the behest of a friend who had wonderful things to say about Michael Pollan’s new book on consciousness, I downloaded it. But something seemed wrong once I started listening. I’ve read or listened to all of Michael Pollan’s books, and to numerous interviews of his besides. The audio had none of his regular cadence, enthusiasm, or intonation. (How ironic that a book about consciousness — about how we perceive reality — could be narrated by what seemed to be a non-human.)
The introduction said the book was narrated by the author. That may be an exaggeration in this case, because the voice was Pollan’s, but with an extracted soul, marked by monotone. His real spark, gone.
To confirm my hunch, I played another Pollan book already in my Audible library and listened with fanatical interest, observing his emphasis on certain words, the palpable excitement in his language. That was the real Pollan. The voice from the new book was a bot, sort of like that virtual assistant. Only in this case, the facsimile fell far short of the human.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I DM’d Michael Pollan on Instagram, and wondered whether Audible owed me a refund for false advertising, because this book most certainly was not read by the author. I told him I’m a long-time fan and asked how he came to use a bot to narrate his book about the nature of consciousness and reality. So far, I haven’t heard back.
As someone whose career is rooted in antiquity, I do believe the luxury of this post-postmodern, AI age will be marked by what thoughtful hearts and minds create with the fingerprint of real humans. When I think of goods and services, this seems to apply to the kind of work I do — and to one-of-a-kind things made by hand, like the ceramics of my dear friend Vincent Renaud (you can see them at @frenchg465).
With our eyes wide open, we are entering new realms in which we’ll need to discern: what is real, what is made with the energy of humans, what feels right in our gut, what feels true to our ear, and what resonates deeply within us.
While the word "authenticity" is perhaps a bit overused, I believe we all seek it in every aspect of our lives — because some things simply cannot be ChatGPT’d.
Latest Blog Post
Is Your Bone Density Quietly Declining? What Every Woman Over 40 Needs to Know
And on the theme of what feels right in our bones, I want to talk about exactly that. Our bones are perhaps one of the most important, most overlooked parts of the body — critical for every little bit of our lives, and in need of maintenance as we get older.
Most of us picture the skeleton as permanent scaffolding. In fact, it’s living tissue, constantly being torn down and rebuilt. And when estrogen leaves the job site at menopause, that rebuilding falls behind: women can lose up to 20% of their bone density in the first five to seven years. I went for my own DEXA scan last fall and came home with a few things to think about. Check out my new blog here.
What I Read This Week
The Interstitium, and How Acupuncture Might Actually Work (The New York Times)
When this New York Times article came out a couple of weeks ago, many friends sent it my way. It deals with the interstitium — and with the possibility that this is the very mechanism by which acupuncture works, based on recent revelations in Western science. I’d love to share it with you, in part because so many clients ask me how acupuncture works, and this certainly could be part of the answer.
Until next week, my friend — may you find what is real, and trust what resonates within you.
Dr. Catherine