Jochen's Mirror (Huginn & Muninn)
On human sensemaking.
Jochen Schmiedbauer left this comment on my Stump Jerry's Brain launch post, and I keep rereading it.
He invoked Odin's two ravens, Muninn (memory) and Huginn (thought), which I'd never heard of before. The AI industry, he wrote, built an entire ecosystem around Muninn: retrieval, context windows, RAG, data pipelines. My Brain, he said, is Huginn: the raven that returns with understanding, not just information.
I find this beautiful. I'm not sure I fully believe it. I have no delusions that AI can't think this way or make curatorial judgments. But what struck me is the distinction he's pointing at, even if I'd frame it differently.
The difference isn't capability. It's commitment.
Every link I made in Jerry's Brain over 28 years was a public act. A small declaration: these things belong together, and here's why. Repeated 1.2 million times*. With my name on it. In a living artifact anyone can visit.
That's not something an LLM hasn't done because it can't. It's something an LLM hasn't done because it hasn't shown up every day for 28 years and put its judgment on the line.
Jochen called this "live sensemaking." He said it can't be automated — it has to be practiced.
I think he's entirely right about that part. Practice requires presence. Presence requires a person.
That's what Stump Jerry's Brains is: 28 years of practice, performed live. Like Huginn would, if he could manage a keyboard and trackpad.
* My Brain has 625,000 Thoughts, connected by 1.2mm links, all put in by hand, by me.
This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.