How nirvacana.com Explains Artificial Intelligence from Different Dimensions

nirvacana.com approaches artificial intelligence through a single essay, “Demystifying Artificial Intelligence. What is Artificial Intelligence & explaining it from different dimensions.” (published December 27, 2017), rather than through a formal definition. The site’s method is to treat AI as a concept that changes meaning depending on the lens you use, so a reader comes away with several partial views instead of one fixed answer. This explainer is best suited to non-specialists who want orientation before diving into technical material; it is not a tutorial, a taxonomy, or a current-state survey.

What the site is

nirvacana.com is a personal blog titled Recent Thoughts – Thinking in Systems. Its content is essay-style and reflective, organized around systems thinking rather than news or product coverage. The visible archive shows a small number of long-form posts, including:

• The AI Agentic Systems Ladder (January 6, 2026)
• Demystifying Artificial Intelligence. What is Artificial Intelligence & explaining it from different dimensions. (December 27, 2017)
• Becoming a Data Scientist – Curriculum via Metromap (July 8, 2013)

The AI explainer sits between a career-path guide and a later piece on agentic systems, which suggests the author’s habit is to frame a topic as a progression or a set of layers rather than a single snapshot.

How the “different dimensions” approach works

The essay’s title signals its structure: it does not ask “what is AI?” once and answer it. It asks the question and then re-asks it from multiple angles. In practice, that means a reader is invited to hold several definitions at the same time — for example, AI as a goal, as a set of techniques, as a field of study, and as a cultural idea. The value is in the contrast: where one dimension makes AI look like a product, another makes it look like a research program, and another makes it look like a metaphor borrowed from human cognition.

This is a deliberately non-technical move. The post is written for readers who have been “avalanched” — the author’s word, used in the related data science post — by definitions and want a way to organize them.

What this approach is good for

• Building orientation. If you can’t yet tell whether a given article is talking about machine learning, automation, or general intelligence, a multi-dimension framing gives you places to put each claim.
• Avoiding false precision. It resists the temptation to settle on one definition that will be wrong in a year.
• Connecting AI to adjacent topics. The same blog treats data science as a journey and agentic systems as a ladder, so the AI essay reads as one rung in a larger systems view.

What it does not give you

• No current technical detail. The essay dates from 2017. Anything about model architectures, tooling, or benchmarks has moved on.
• No step-by-step method. There is no procedure to follow, no code, and no verification step.
• No single citable definition. If you need one sentence to quote, this is the wrong source.

How to read it alongside the rest of the site

The three visible posts form a rough sequence: a career curriculum (2013), a conceptual demystification (2017), and an agentic systems ladder (2026). Read in that order, the AI essay functions as the conceptual middle — it explains the vocabulary that the later ladder assumes. If you only want the AI framing, read the 2017 post alone; if you want to see how the author applies it, continue to the 2026 piece.

One caveat worth stating plainly: the site provides no pricing, subscription, or login information in the material available, so nothing here should be read as describing a paid course or gated content. It presents as an open blog.

When to use this source

Use nirvacana.com’s AI essay if your task is to form a mental map of how AI can be described from several viewpoints, or to see one writer’s systems-oriented framing of the topic. Look elsewhere if you need current technical definitions, implementation guidance, or a literature review. The essay’s age is its main limitation; its multi-dimension structure is its main use.