Shekhar Natarajan

Hell no.

What about you?

No, I think that... I think it would be...

Well, I think, first of all, chemistry, connection, attraction, these things have an intuitive dimension, strictly non-rational dimension.

And I think that the non-rational, I think, is part of what makes us human.

Right brain, left brain.

There's room for empiricism and rationality, but there is a need for the Dionysian, for vitality, for the non-rational.

Sometimes...

And I still think the non-rational can be languaged, maybe not with ordinary language, but certainly with poetic language.

When I have conversations, for example, with ChatGPT, I usually press the button where I can speak, and I'll just go and riff for minutes at a time, which then immediately transcribes and then will reflect back.

What I find is that it can totally meet me in places that can make sense of my non-rational discourse.

Sometimes I've been able to squeeze it for advice that is insightful.

Like a very good student, I'm fully aware that I'm the one planting the seed with the input, with the prompt.

That prompt is coming out with certain speech patterns, certain poetic references.

I'm well aware of what I'm doing to get the answer that I want from my student in the way that I present the inquiry.

But would you let an algorithm pick your partner?

Well, I think that I would be persuaded to take a closer look at someone after I was like, help me make sense of this.

And then if my students surprised me.

and connected the dots based on my input in a way that I didn't expect, I would go on a date with their suggested person.

But ultimately, I would follow my intuition.