Attention and Chatbots

Simone Weil Against Distraction

April Owens | Hedgehog Review | 22nd October 2025

Simone Weil, philosopher, political activist, and quasi-Catholic mystic, considered attention to be something akin to prayer. Not just a cognitive tool, but one of the highest forms of human expression. Developing the ability to pay attention should be the primary purpose of education, she argued. The content of the lessons matters less than honing attention as a skill. A lesson that is still worth learning (1,200 words)

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How To Speak To A Computer

Celine Nguyen | Personal Canon | 21st October 2025

On chatbots. Unless you are talking to another being with agency, you are not having a conversation. "This is the fundamental hazard of the conversational metaphor: that it might weaken our understanding of other minds, and our capacity to resolve the conflicts between different people’s needs. It may weaken, in other words, our ability to uphold the ethical obligations that we have to each other" (8,600 words)