Steven Levy is one of the better tech writers in our time (full disclosure: he spent a half chapter of his book Hackers some four decades ago on me). First of all, he's a guy, so he asks the hard questions. He did the cover story for the current (Jan/Feb) issue of WIRED on Microsoft's new lead as the tech giant -- replacing Apple, which he also did an interview article for later in the same issue. Both are strong on AI, but Microsoft bought more technology to put them out in front.
Also in the same issue, the last feature article is a piece (by a female author, much lower tech quality, but strong on Feelings) on Intel trying to overcome their lost lead in chip manufacture, mostly by sucking Billions of dollars out of the USA government, hopefully to try and capitalize on making AI chips in new foundaries they are building in Ohio.
The current push in AI -- generative Large Language Model (LLM) -- despite the hopes and beliefs of the people working on it, cannot compete with human intelligence until they rise to the computational complexity of the human brain. Generative LLM code has the complexity of a Finite State Machine (FSM, the lowest of the four layers), but humans (when they are behaving intelligently) regularly solve problems at the top of the hierarchy. When I was in grad school, I offered an opinion in the Graduate Seminar (class) that I could solve some problem -- I forget which -- in a reasonable time. One of the professors put me down: "Tom, it's a theorem!" He was right of course, that's why he was the professor, and I only a student. Now, looking at how AI works, the same line applies.
I got to thinking about it, and there are some limits to what the mathematical theorems can say about what can be computed. Every computer ever made is in principle a FSM, yet they regularly do "Stack Machine" level of computations (up one layer from FSM) every time they run a compiler. The "stack" is specified to be infinite, but the computer has a vast (but finite) number of memory cells, so it can process all but the very largest of compile jobs, and the programmers need to reshuffle the code to get the very big stuff through. Or give up.
We do not know enough about the human brain to be able to say whether it is in fact a (very large) FSM or something more complex. With enough memory cells, a FSM can simulate a limited version of the higher level computational models. That's what we mean when we describe a computer as "Turing Complete" (can execute programs at the top level of the hierarchy, the "Turing Machine"). Any modern spreadsheet program is Turing Complete (for very small TM programs). Modern generative LLM code has Trillions of "parameters" (memory cells) which is why they need so many chips and so much energy to run them. Maybe they will actually succeed at emulating human reasoning without actually knowing anything... But I doubt it. Mostly they will pour a stupendous amount of hot carbon into the atmosphere (if you care) and use up a stupendous amount of tax dollars (likewise) and only get "close, but no cigar."
Until they run out of steam -- or the computer science faculty at prestigious
universities start to look at the theory behind LLM
AI and see that "the emperor has no clothes" -- nobody (not even those
who build them) knows how these AI machines do their stuff, and God alone
knows how the human brain does its stuff. So they blindly forge forward.
The biologists are beginning to get a glimmer on the complexity of the
biological computer that is programmed by DNA, and
the horizon keeps receding. Expect the same from AI. Not in my lifetime.
The guy who came on had a very thick India accent, I could not understand half of what he said, but it sounded like he was selling some kind of insurance. I'm not quick enough to tell him I don't buy insurance other than what is required by law (and fire insurance on the house when I own it), but he had some kind of scam to convert debt (I don't have any) into assets (I don't need nor want any at my age). There is no such thing as free money, but like I said, I wasn't quick enough to tell him so.
I should have asked where he's calling from. I doubt the robo-dialer (which picks a random unassigned number) told him, so I could then tell him that he's a liar (for pretending to call from the USA) and a thief (for stealing my work time), why should I believe anything else he has to say? But I wasn't quick enough. I settled for telling him "This number is on the 'Do Not Call' list, you are in violation of Federal law" which he ignored (twice) and kept talking. I hung up.
I went several years without any robo calls until this year, he was the third or fourth. It's a toothless law, who can prosecute foreign fly-by-night operators? Usually I just pick it up and set it down when I don't recognize the caller, but like I said, I was hoping for some contact from this missionary.
We live in a fallen world, the 400+year Blessing on the whole culture
for reading and obeying God's Word has evaporated, and the USA will no
longer be a super-power when Armageddon rolls around. We are already on
our way down. Liars and thieves do not create wealth, they destroy it.
Welcome to the 21st Century.
So what do they write about? Not any research that they have working -- back when I was in academia and expected to "publish or perish," my journal submission was turned down because I was only reporting my expected (not actual) results -- these women are only projecting what they hope will be the future of "AI and Big Data in marketing."
The important thing to understand here is that marketing is a zero-sum game. Corporations doing this kind of "AI and Big Data" computing are competing for a fixed consumer cash basis. They are not creating wealth, they only hope to persuade the potential customer base to buy their products instead of their competitors. Like the stock market, they win only if and to the extent that some other company loses (or the customer spends their money on something other than this particular product, which make that vendor the winner). When a company sells a product that enables the customer to earn more money (possibly by creating wealth), then that increases the available cash for the various marketing departments to divide up, but it's not marketing that did it, it's the company's product development that does it.
The second important thing to understand here is that a zero-sum game is inherently unChristian. The Second Great Commandment (aka the Golden Rule) teaches us to do for the person in front of us what we would want them to do to us. In a zero-sum game, if we are the winner, they are the loser. Do you want to be the loser? Then don't make somebody else the loser. There are win-win games, and Christians should -- everybody should, but Christians are taught to -- be working toward that kind of outcome. Jesus said so. Doing it creates wealth, so everybody is better off.
The company that sells wealth-creating products, it's OK for the marketing
department to let the customers know that it's available, because then
they will have enough money to buy your competitor's product also. There
are no losers.
Me, I'm not a Relationshipist, I get my jollies out of doing Truth, Justice, and Duty, which can be -- but in my case mostly isn't -- people-related. I still need some social contact, but not as much as Extroverts nor Relationshipists. Usually with one person, a couple hours a week (email is better, because I think too slow to keep up with real-time F2F). For some 20 years it was email with a guy in Texas, but that went south when I moved there and his church disinvited me. He subsequently also got the short end of the stick, but that's another story. Recently it alternates between a couple guys in different states.
So the current guy, his schtick is hermeneutics. I know what the word means, but it's not in my working vocabulary; my communicative focus (Bible reading, talking/emailing with other guys, blog posts) is semantics: what does this communication actually mean? So he defined hermeneutics for me: "teaching, learning, interpreting, and applying." The Greek word is limited to "interpreting." That's a matter of semantics: he speaks a different language than I do, at least as far as this word is concerned.
I noticed this week that he's not alone.
This church has abandonned adult Sunday School for what they call "Life Groups" (basically the same, but meeting at different times in the week. I got into one that meets at the Sunday School hour. I joined when they did a survey of the Bible. When that was over, the leader worked us through Psalms, about a year and a half, one or two Psalms each week, skipping more than he covered. He started out with an interpretive formula:
1. Whare the emotions expressed in this Psalm?These are good concepts, scattered throughout the whole Bible, but finding all of them in every Psalm sometimes does violence to the author's intent in that one Psalm. Early in my life I learned what they called "the inductive Bible study method," letting our understanding be instructed by what's actually there in the text. If Jesus and the Cross were not there in the Psalm I was looking at, then I didn't answer that question for it. By the time we got to the end, he was no longer asking those questions.2. What does the author assume to be true of God? What does he count on God for?
3. Where is the human condition (the Fall) seen?
4. Where is Jesus / elements of the gospel / effects of the cross?
5. What life application (for us today) can we take away?
Bye and bye that pastor retired and our group was merged with another meeting at the same time. They were already started on a study guide for the book of Romans. I went to seminary fresh out of college, mostly to learn what I believed and to learn Greek and Hebrew so I could get it unadulterated by any other person's interpretation. Over the years I learned (with some exceptions) that the English translations are very good. One of the first courses I took at seminary was a New Testament Survey. The first midterm, one of the questions asked "What commentaries did you read in preparation for this test?" I answered "None, I prefer to read the Bible over books about the Bible." He flunked me the whole midterm on that one answer. I am unrepentant to this day. So this class leader handed me a book, their study guide for Romans. They didn't ask for money and I didn't offer. I read the (Bible) text each week and answered the questions on a separate piece of paper -- mostly "Dunno" or "Not in the chapter" -- and said little or nothing during the class hour. Only once did the leader ask my opinion.
This week they finished Romans and handed out a book on Thessalonians, different author, but mostly the same teaching style. Comparing these two books today, I realized that this is essentially the same "hermeneutics" as my friend. More important, both books demonstrate my aversion to books about the Bible: The Romans book covered about a half chapter in each of 12 lessons, skipping over four whole chapters in the Bible. This isn't the whole of what Paul taught in Romans, it's what the author thought important in 12 easy lessons. The new book again does about a half chapter each lesson (or the whole chapter when they are short) and with fewer and shorter chapters, he doesn't skip any. But I see that he still summarizes each lesson in a single title point. The great apostle says many things in his letters, some important theological issues, some offhand remarks relevant for particular situations that not everybody goes through. By emphasizing one point in each lesson, this author is picking and choosing what parts of Scripture to teach and what parts to slide over. The class, in accepting his leadership, is choosing to ignore Scripture for the slid-over parts. Maybe they are in a personal situation that one of those skipped-over parts addresses, and they never get to hear God's Word on that topic. And God lets it happen. It's His world and His church, He can do that.
Both authors are preachers, but they make so much money on their books that they no longer pastor any church. Yet, like all pastors everywhere in the USA, they are the "Feeler-Judger" personality type, where the "Judger" means that they are controllers. They like to tell people what to do and have them do it. They get to pick and choose what to teach from this chapter, and what to slide over. And God's people are the worse for it. Reading (and obeying) the parts the preachers omit is what made the USA the richest country in the whole earth, but it's going away. Max Lucado and David Jeremiah are part of the problem, not the solution.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I prefer to read the Bible and not books about the Bible.
That is why the modern notion of "hermeneutics" is not in my vocabulary, and "semantics" is.
When I was a kid in Sunday School 65 and 70 years ago, I noticed that the "Quarterly" lesson book asked questions for us to fill out, but it was unnecessary to read the Bible for the answers, just read ahead a paragraph or two, and there was the answer to the question they previously asked. These are books for adults, not quite so simplistic, but close.
Sunday School is part of what I do on Sunday, so I will continue to be there, sitting in the back, and saying nothing. I could have volunteered to teach the class, but then I would be in the position of these authors, preparing and picking and choosing, what the class would hear and what to omit. When I was younger, I thought I wanted to do that, but it's not me today.
My friend the hermeneutics guy, he told me that when he preached in
church, he tried to offer something for everybody. I heard of other preachers
doing that, but it cannot be done in twelve sermons covering the whole
16 chapters of Romans. Pastor Criswell of the First Baptist Church of Dallas
for five decades, he became (locally) famous for "preaching through the
Bible" verse by verse. Maybe he succeeded, but it took him decades to go
through the whole Bible. *I* think people ought to read the Bible for themselves,
but that requires a degree of literacy no longer taught in public schools.
Full disclosure: I was home-schooled during the time I learned to read.
It is what it is. God makes the rules and we don't necessarily know what
they are. Jesus said that on Judgment Day there will be a lot of people
he tells, "Who are you?" I expect some, perhaps many, of them will be pastors
who preached what they knew to be true, even though it's not in the Bible,
certainly not in the text they were preaching from. I don't want to be
one of them.
She's a Relationshipist, so she asked How [I'm] doing. It's a form of affirmation, pretending to be interested in the other person, where the expected non-answer is "Good." I'm her brother, she really is interested. Not being a Relationshipist myself, I gave her my Short Answer: "I try not to notice," usually with a big cheesy grin (which she could not see over the phone, and which the people at church cannot see through my Covid mask). And then because nobody else uses that phrase except when they are noticing, and it's very Bad, I explain "I figure if God notices, that's good enough." Except I have been noticing, and it's very good.
I live in the richest country in the whole world and in all time (Solomon's kingdom possibly excepted), and by God's grace I contributed a tiny creative portion to that wealth, the results of which I've been living off of sincemy educator thing dried up and blew away a couple years ago. I felt talkative, and she was of a mind to listen, so I went on to tell her that the reason for that wealth is a 400+year cultural tradition of being told to "Read the Bible and obey it." Only a small minority of the people actually did that, but they were numerous enough to infect the whole culture and economy. I thank God (almost every day) that I don't need bars on my windows like 90% of the rest of the world. I can devote my energy to Making the World a Better Place (creating wealth), instead of just protecting my life and belongings. She does occasional mission trips to third-world countries, she has seen the difference, just never thought about it.
Why is reading the Bible so important? Because the preachers in church do not preach it. The preachers -- all of them -- are Relationshipists, and Relationshipism is not taught in the Bible but they all believe it is, so they preach what they believe instead of what's actually there. The senior pastor where I go preaches the text, and he's working his way through the whole Bible, including (most of) those places that teach something other than Relationshipism, but he's a rare exception: none of his associates in his own church do that. He himself also preaches Relationshipism when he strays from the text. But it's obeying the Golden Rule, not the practice of Relationshipism, that creates wealth. People who read the Bible see that, and people who only listen to the sermon, and all those who never darken the door of any church, they don't see it, they don't hear it, and they don't care. After King SCOTUS took the Statement of Moral Absolutes off the schooolroom walls 40 years ago, thereby giving all those children permission to lie, cheat, steal, rape, and murder (just don't get caught), and those kids have grown up and are now running the businesses and government of this country, the culture is inexorably moving away from the creation of wealth. I read the last chapter of The Book, the USA is not in it. When Armageddon happens, the USA is no longer a super-power.
By most standards, things are going well for me. Jesus promised us persecution, but I have not seen very much of it (I'm not volunteering). I get some, like two years ago, and three years before that, but nothing like the people in "10-40" countries (see my blog post "Forced Conversion" four years ago).
By the Christian standard nobody pays any attention to, I'm doing even better. "ALL things" God tells us, including the Bad Things that Happen to us, He "works together for [our] good." Even the Bad Stuff, they are Good for me, and I need to thank God for them. Not just in them as the Thanksgiving Day sermons all like to point out (citing 1Th.5:18), but indeed for all things (two books earlier, same chapter, Eph.5:20).
Fifteen years ago I noticed that my mother was continually angry at
something. I did not want to be always angry when I got to be her age,
so I resolved to prepare for it by (starting immediately) practicing contentment,
thanking God for everything. I have not fully arrived, but I'm a lot closer
now than when I started. So if a Relationshipist asks me today how [I'm]
doing, the true answer really is "Good." But I'm still trying not to notice
-- I still want to notice instead what God is doing -- so I still answer,
"I'm trying not to notice," with a smile they can't see.
Here comes ComputingEdge, never the cutting edge of things computational, but they must be running low on articles in other Computer Society magazines to reprint, so this one is two and a half years old, and from "Annals" (their rag on the history of computing and other things electrical), giving substance to the old line about doers and teachers. The guy has a good point, but it is muddled. Where he teaches (Naval Postgraduate School) is a teaching college run by the Navy, not even a major research institution. He's not an idiot, but the lower standards of a non-research journal like Annals probably prevented a good peer review, and thus deflected the best possible thinking on the subject.
The valid point this guy makes is that what passes for "artificial intelligence" in today's computational milieu is not intelligent the way human thinking is. But he doesn't say exactly that. Instead he gives a narrative describing the function of "logic" in both human thinking and also in computing. But he conflates the idea that computers are machines whose purpose is to mechanize and automate activities that humans can be taught to do, with the whole surrounding ecosystem of preparing those computers to do that work, some of which can be taught to humans, and a significant portion can be learned but not taught, that is,we recognize it when we see it, but we cannot explain in sequential steps ("logic" in this article) how to do it. This distinction is implied by the Goedel "Incompleteness Theorem" not mentioned in this article.
The distinction is implicitly denied in the Artificial intelligence community, and Peter Denning is at pains to deny that denial, but while not clearly distinguishing the two kinds of activity thus separated. The two categories are implicit in his careful choice of words, but it would have been better if he had openly made the distinction.
Oh well, he is a teacher, not a doer. Eventually the doers (and the big money behind them) will figure out that there really are two categories, and what they are creating as "AI" is only the activity that can be expressed in logical terms (and therefore can be taught, both to humans and to machines), while they themselves (as well as the rest of creative people everywhere) are doing the other kind. Either that, or else they will quietly dry up and blow away, "full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing."
But because these doers are operating from the flawed premise that all manner of system complexity can (and did) come about by the accumulation of random events, and because they (mistakenly) imagine that they are recreating that process inside their machines, they will burn through a very large quantity of money (and atmospheric carbon, if you care about such nonsense) before they give up.
Peter Denning said none of that. Perhaps he believes in their premises,
and therefore the possibility they they can and should succeed with only
a minor course correction. Abandonning logic is not that correction, it
is what people do when they are not thinking clearly.
The result is that modern screen writers and novelists do not understand Sherlock, and cannot write a credible version of him, and don't even know it. So this TV series I'm watching the DVDs of, the writers are collectively morphing his character into a more understandable Feeler-wannabe -- and the feminazi Watson is simultaneously morphing (ever so slightly) into a detective (see "Feminazi Sherlock Holmes" two weeks ago). I think the dissimulation is intentional, although not entirely conscious. I expect the two characters to meet up somewhere east of the middle, at which time the writers will all get bored and the show will terminate. Until then it's the eternal battle of the sexes. I may not last that long watching the transition. The second season replaced a lot of the writers, and one of them has Sherlock openly admitting to being "cruel ... and acerbic" and unlikely to change, another focuses instead on his changes so far. This schizophrenia distinguishes TV from movies, where the writer(s) at least have a consistent view of their characters. But like I said, none of them relly understand the Thinker mind, which is not so much cruel as focused on getting the job at hand done.
For the time being the episodes hover at or slightly below the median
quality of library movie DVDs (largely because donations generally exclude
the keeper flicks) which I'm up to the R's in my weekly take-home stack.
By alternating this faux-Sherlock with movies, I might can extend the remaining
duration of DVDs to take home without entirely puking. Then there's always
Archive.org,
older flicks with about the same median quality (but a much narrower standard
deviation = fewer duds and fewer sparklers). Maybe it will all run out
just about the same time my mind turns to jelly. Whatever.
Then followed the three very thoughtful essays, one fine-tuning the trend to leave church by labelling some of them "yearners" -- they want God, just not the way the Feelers have destroyed God's church, except the author didn't say all that. The second one is similar in target, but the focus is on former atheists actually embracing Christianity, or as in the case of Richard Dawkins, at least its "culture" -- well duh, the true atheist has nothing to live for and no reason to expect the people around him to be civil. God called atheists "fools" but some of them aren't quite so foolish as to miss the whole truth (just the important parts).
The third of these three was most interesting, looking at the Christian notion of "vocation" (God calling each of us to some unique kind of work) with some interesting insights on how a feeling of Calling often results in accepting less income (I know about that one). Then he turned a corner and started waffling his message, the way "Advertizer paid content" usually does. Before their make-over, CT usually ran an extended "Advertizer paid content" article at the end, just before the last-page "testimony." After reading a couple, I just skipped over them. On the last page of this one article a small sidebar notice said essentially that's what it was. But the first half was worthwhile reading.
I'm less than halfway through the issue, but 2.5 good articles is already
a pretty good haul for one issue.
Nobody understands this, nor even the culture we left behind. In evidence I offer one of the flicks I brought home for yesterday's viewing, a movie about an English butler so devoted to his duty that he never even heard nor formed an opinion about the political machinations of his employer, a British lord whose ignorant efforts helped start World War II. I guess the employer reflected the demise of that same cultural heritage which made the U.K. a world power before they ceded that role to the USA. I came away thinking, "That butler is a guy who totally reflects the nature of Biblical (divine) Calling." Of course that works well only where everybody does it, and his employer the lord was bamboozled by the German lies, which led to the Chamberlain fiasco.
Then I watched the (three) "Making Of" features, and their stated intent in making this flick was the complete opposite of my take. I never even understood their goal until they explained it. Of course the film makers had drunk the American Kool-Aid ("We hold these truths to be self-evident...."), which was not known in pre-war English nobility and their household servants, and I suppose they imagined that their entire audience did too. At least one person excepted, hence the title of today's posting.
Jesus said we should be "Wise as serpents and harmless as doves." The
lord in this flick fell down on the "wise as serpents" part, but we all
tend to assume everybody thinks exactly the same as we ourselves think,
which is nonsense. In a virtuous culture where lying is Wrong, most people
-- at least the ones who rise to positions of authority -- can reasonably
be expected to tell the truth, and Chamberlain (wrongly) assumed that of
Hitler. Christians should know better, but the British leadership was already
post-Christian at that time (living on the fumes in the tank, just as we
in the USA are today). The film makers (and the point of their flick) have
abandonned the "harmless as doves" part, which paints self-interest (selfishness)
as virtue. The modern interpretation of the American Kool-Aid holds that
equality in status (where British nobility is obsolete and/or irrelevant)
implies also equality in political understanding and therefore positive
contribution to the good management of the country. Our political leaders
-- especially including the left-leaning media gurus like film makers,
who universally support them -- none of them really believe that equality
nonsense, just look at their horror at the rise of Trump voters. In their
opinion, some people are more equal than others.
The "Making of" feature on the first disc explained that they could not deviate greatly from the Conan Doyle character, but the text did mention cocaine, so they took the liberty to have their modern Sherlock recovering from an addiction. They "always wanted" to have a female Watson, but neglected to explain the true reason: this is TV, and they want more than just men watching it -- recall 15 years ago I reported a comment (by a woman, but I didn't say so then) that Doyle had portrayed Sherlock as cruel, and then, 4 years later, after rereading the (mostly) complete collection myself, I concluded it was a Thinker/Feeler difference of values, where Thinkers (mostly men) value facts, and Feelers (mostly women) feel disaffirmed by those same facts, which somehow might be understood as making them "Wrong".
The director or writer (or whatever he was) in the feature wanted to preserve the essential Sherlock (always Right), but needed something for the women. They not only made Watson female, but also gave her power (authority) over Sherlock to please the feminazis, which I suppose the modern screen writers assume to be the entire female population of the USA. This is an explicit authority (he loses his expensive New York apartment if he fails to submit) said to last 6 weeks. I'm not there yet, it remains to be seen what they will do when that time runs out.
Like all TV shows, they rotate writers from episode to episode. Most of the writers are male (women do not understand Sherlock), but the one exception so far (one third through the season) made Watson excessively controlling and Sherlock unnaturally rude to her. This had to be a female (feminazi) writer. I went back to the opening credits -- faintly superimposed on the opening action sequence, so easily missed -- to confirm my suspicion after watching and being annoyed by the episode. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I leave chick flicks (and chick lit) on the library shelf. Searching through the credits on the other episodes to see who wrote them, I noticed that writers showed up as "co-executive producers" in the episodes they didn't write. So I expect I will see some more of her scorched-earth episodes before the season ends. sigh
At two thirds, I see whoever chose the writers from episode to episode, they agreed. That one female writer showed up in two more episodes, but only joined with a male writer to tone down some of her hostility. The hostility is infectious. Or maybe it's just the creative wasteland that pervades all TV shows -- and perhaps even the movie sequels, but it takes a while to show up -- Many TV shows start out good, but run out of gas around the end of the first season (about when the original creator's contract expires and lesser writers and managers take over). TV writers know how to do banal police procedurals, and this has already started to degenerate into one of them. sigh
A large part of the problem is that nobody understands the 400-year
cultural heritage that the USA (and a sooner forgotten case in England)
inherited from the Reformation, where everybody was told in church to "read
the Bible and obey it." Not everybody did, but everybody knew what they
ought to do, and made up with hypocrisy what they lacked in virtue, and
the whole culture was the better off for it. After England peaked, the
USA took over as the richest nation in the whole world, for that reason
alone. As of 1984 -- when they took the Ten Commandments off schoolroom
walls, thereby giving the children (who are now everybody running the show)
permission to lie, cheat, steal, rape and murder (just don't get caught)
-- that's gone now, we survive on the fumes in the gas tank. Conan Doyle
wrote in a moral (Victorian) culture that moderns do not understand, so
their Sherlock cannot be as good as his. In every way. They cannot succeed
at a historical Sherlock in modern times. That, ladies and gentlemen, is
why I also leave "historical fiction" (modern fiction written in a historical
setting more than 80 years ago) on the library shelf.
Mostly I was put off by the Bad Guy. The actor was Irish, but the director had him play an American (no Irish accent). America (and to a lesser degree, England) is unique amongworld cultures, that we have 500 years of reading the Bible in our own language and being told to obey it. Besides making us the richest country in the whole world and in all history, the values that we adopted from the Bible and from pseudo-Christianity which make that wealth, those values are other-centered, and everybody (at least all the Bad Guys) knows it. Non-Christian cultures also defend their families, but they know very well "what evil lurks in the heart of man," so they protect the weaker members (read: women and children) and do not allow them out into the wicked world. The Bible also encourages that kind of protection, but the Feminazis threw that out, leaving us with an extreme vulnerability for the Bad Guys to exploit. And they do, including in this flick. I know it's the Real World out there, but when 2/3 of the movie focuses on that one exploit, and it is so wrong from a Biblical perspective, I'd rather not waste my energy fighting it.
Like I said, this woman was really a guy in drag (in the story, not the actress), and she got over her tears and capitulation, and it came out OK.
Me, I'm (partly) in her camp, I never learned to fight as a kid -- she, as a woman, basically cannot overcome a male in a fair fight, and the Bad Guys never fight fair -- but over the years (starting in 2010 when I read Ringo's Live Free or Die, see my blog post) I have developed a policy of "Don't play the game by their rules." For starters, my family are all Christians, killing them is a benefit (quick trip to Heaven) not a loss.
Second, I do not need to feel guilt over what I'm not responsible for. This is an important part of the coercion, "if they die, it's your fault." Not at all! You (the Bad Guy) are the one doing the killing, not I. I only feel guilt for what I'm responsible for, like if I'm in control of the situation. Guess what? I'm not, and I can prove it: Give me the gun. Aha, you see, I do not control you. Besides, you failed my BS Detector, so I must assume everything you tell me is a lie, including any promise to let them go. They are already dead. End of coercion.
Third, Jesus said "Do not resist an evil person" (like the Bad Guy). Maybe I should give it to him anyway. Or not: God frowns on dereliction of duty, so if I'm responsible for somebody else -- in this flick, she was the hotel manager with responsibility over the safety of her guests -- that takes precedence. Once he let it slip that the guest she was to have moved would be killed, she had no choice but to try to save him. (No spoiler) She did that.
Finally, God is in control. No Bad Guy will ever threaten my life or my family unless God gives him permission. It's not even remotely possible in my life, but if it were, then God would give me a way out -- dead or alive, it's God's decision, no guilt on me, no matter how it comes out.
Bottom line: I do not like Bad Guys preying on the weak and vulnerable. That doesn't include me, I have God protecting me, so these flicks have nothing for me to relate to. Two thumbs down.
Oh by the way, novelists do the same thing. I guess it was the same
or previous week's stack of novels, the Bad Guys (four, not one) were attacking
the heroine (still a guy with female name and profile, gotta satisfy the
feminazi critics)... They have not yet (I'm only 1/8th into it) said what
they want (other than rape), but this author has a guy with military training
to the rescue. The Bad Guys are introduced in attack mode, but she escapes
without spending 70% of the reader's time on the details of the attack.
That could change, but this author seems to prefer presenting a super-hero
to pummeling the reader with unrelenting attack, so I'm optimistic.
They still don't have much use for "all things digital," but they brought in an editor (male) who is now exercising some leadership (male writers). The cover "feature" of the current issue gathers seven different interview articles, only one of them female (author and subject), another couple one each. Oh wait, the male editor didn't last very long, the new editor is also the author of the one feminazi article. What do you expect from a fashon magazine conglomerate? Maybe this one issue will turn out to glow in the dark (be so radioactive, that it never gets repeated). Whatever. Nobody I know wants to read it.
Anyway, the first interview was with the Secretary of State. Fascinating, but not what I pay to read in WIRED.
Second, a black stand-up comedian. I do not patronize black comedy, it has far too much focus on sexual assault and feces. Sexual assault is one of those things that are evil in this world, which God will exercise Justice in eliminating (see yesterday's post). Needless to say, this is also not a reason to read WIRED.
Third, the (female) CEO of a non-profit internet supplier, who imagines that non-profit can be a major player. The author is a guy and he asks the hard questions. He briefly touched on what I heard (second-hand) rumors about how Israel is fighting Hamas by killing leaders, not civilians -- which is a good thing -- but she seems to be against it. He didn't press the point. At least it's internet-related. By the way, her non-profit is orders of magnitude smaller than the top tier of for-profit corporations, and she has no apparent way of improving her/its position. Non-profits are for charitable organizations, but her perspective seems to be more Marxist than charitable. The subject not discussed in this article.
The next guy I never heard of that I know of, he seems to be known for being part owner of some basketball team and for involvement in some TV "reality" show (neither of which I care zip about). The big part of the interview is about some mail-order pharmaceutical company he owns, which made him a billionaire. He found a niche product that the health insurance companies will pay for. The rest of the interview is how he feels about that. You expect that from a female author.
I read about a page into the female/female piece and got bored.
The sixth I think they put it in as the token right-wing "military-industrialist" evangelical whom they probably expect that nobody believes this guy, but Steven Levy is a very good tech writer, and even if I didn't come into this with a bias, I'd like the guy. It's also the token tech guy, cofounder of an "AI weapons" builder. At least (as he explains it) the military policy is a human behind the AI weapon makes the kill decision. I don't think Levy believed him, probably with good reason. Maybe that's part of why they picked him as their villain.
Finally a movie director I never heard of. I don't think I've seen any of his flicks, but most of what I see these days is decades old. The author seemed to think a couple of his flicks were "Sci-Fi," but the director disagreed.
The one feminazi piece excepted, I thought these were all interesting
articles worth my time to read them. But the editor who set them up is
gone, maybe it was a flash in the pan. The cover billed them as "Bigwigs
and Geek Gods." I guess one or two (out of seven) is a pretty good hit
ratio for somebody as far out of the tech industry as Conde Nast (the parent
corporation, most famous for Vogue).
The current seromn series is working through Joshua. Chapter 6 is about the conquest of Jericho, and after the walls came down,
They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it -- men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys [as God commanded]. -- Josh.6:21 (oNIV)This is part of the criticism raised by people, atheists and Christians alike, that the God of the Old Testament is cruel compared to the God of the New. The people who say that have not read much of either part of the Bible, but there it is. "Kill everybody," men women and children, including the donkeys.
This guy demolished that criticism. The church has a website and a YouTube channel for their sermons, but it doesn't play on my computer; if you can find it and get it, it's worth watching (hearing): www.RiverValleyCC.org. My friend gave me a link to this sermon, but I have no way to test it.
The short version is a 7-point sermon. Three points is about all the average church member can handle; seven serves more to annihilate the criticism most church members don't care about (but they should).
1. Killing everybody is slightly hyperbolic. The actual command was to kill everybody in the cities, but most people lived on their own farms in the countryside. The cities is where evil was rampant. Farmers were poor, and it's all they could do to survive. We know it was hyperbole, because while it said Joshua and his Israelite warriors killed everybody as the LORD God commanded, later in the same book (and also later in the Bible) we see that there were unkilled Canaanites left to be a problem.It was an awesome sermon, I wish more churches and more pastors could preach it. Maybe more people would repent. God is about repentance and doing Good. The other kind, God cannot allow them into His Heaven (He said that in the New Testament) because (He didn't say this, but it's obvious) if He did, it wouldn't be Heaven for the rest of us.2. This is not genocide, like we saw Hitler doing. Genocide kills on the basis of race, but this was about giving the just reward to evil. We'll come back to that, but children? He didn't say this, but it's the children of immigrant Muslims into European cities who become jihadists and go around killing people as genocide. So yes, children.
3. The Canaanites were particularly evil, engaging in human sacrifice -- notably children -- and other abominations. God called down doom on their wickedness before there even was an Israelite nation to do it. He said to Abraham that He was giving them 400 years to repent, before Abe's descendants would inherit the land. They didn't repent. He didn't say it that I heard, but that message is still valid today: We live in a wicked and adulterous culture, and God still postpones the doom He has promised. This should be taught in every church, but it's not.
4. It isn't about Why did God kill the wicked, but Why did He wait so long (and still waits)? God is a God of mercy as well as (he said "more than") justice. He didn't say it, but we in our time can see the rampant evil in our country. We ourselves -- especially the poor and disadvantaged -- cry out for justice, but God is not into "killing the infidels," He wants everybody to repent, and He gives them time to do it. When they don't, they are "without excuse." Paul said that in the New Testament.
5. After you consider all that, we still need to remember this was not a command to us Christians. This was more than 3000 years ago, a unique command in a unique circumstance that we do not know very much about. God is Holy, that's why it's in our Bible, because we need to know that -- he didn't say that, but the senior pastor did back when he did Leviticus -- but the general command is to leave the widespread execution of Justice to the big agencies (governments and God). We individuals should focus on our own little violations of justice, there's plenty of that for us to fix.
6. Finally, the Bible is not only about individual righteousnes and justice, it is also about The Big Picture. It is about God and Us, Good and Evil. Wiping out the Canaanites is a tiny foreshadow of God wiping out everybody who continues to wage war on God and His People everywhere. Maybe this guy didn't say all that, but it's a fact.
7. Seventh and last, the God of Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New. He has not changed. Jesus preached more about punishment for evil than you will find in the Old Testament, and God's mercy was an important part of His message to the ancient Israelites -- and even to Abraham before them. Mercy and Justice are both moral absolutes, created by God for us -- for everybody, especially the Christians -- to obey.
Anyway I set it down to try one of the novels, and it turned out to
be more of a page-turner than the faux-Clancy novels my friend sent me
from Kansas
four months ago. Michael Palmer has written
a dozen or more medical procedurals, but this library only stocks up on
female authors, I think they have maybe four of these (like the Bo Tully
novels). Oh well. Just as well, the fourth in the library collection had
considerably more inner turmoil than I generally approve, so I don't feel
bad that it's the last.
What they don't say -- women writers don't ask these questions, and
the proponents of LLM AI don't encourage them -- is that the LLM training
data includes vast amounts of textual dialog from the internet, and the
online text includes all manner of human knowledge (like nuclear physics
or computer programming problems and their solutions), and almost certainly
included also discussions about Theory of Mind tests and their answers,
which the LLM engines simply memorized and regurgitated under suitable
prompts. Small wonder they performed as well as the (online) human responses,
no actual understanding of another human mind needed.
The church I chose when I moved to Ore-gone expelled me in the height of Covid. It was the most cruel and mean-spirited thing any pastor could have done to me, short of getting arrested for it, but God is Good, and when the Ban was lifted, I found a better church where the pastor preaches the whole counsel of God -- and the church is much larger, so I'm less visible. Both senior pastors preach the text, but one of them clings to a dogma that limits his view of Scripture to a few books of the New Testament; I take my direction from Scripture itself, "ALL Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for [a whole bunch of things]," so when this pastor claimed (without evidence) that I "have a different belief system than [they]," I realized he was right. I was pretty unhappy that it happened during the Ban, but getting out of there was on the whole a Good Thing.
The church I arrived at is too large for their downtown building, and (before I came) efforts to find a larger site failed, so now they have five campuses, mostly nearby towns, mostly much smaller than the home church. Downtown is walking distance for me, which I prefer -- the first church was a couple blocks closer, another (smaller) church only two blocks away didn't want me -- so here I am. The vast majority of American pastors are Feeler-Judgers, which I guess leads the senior pastors to seek out associates with less homiletic horsepower (so they are no threat to their dominance) -- at least that's what I observe. Anyway, the senior pastor here, who does most of the preaching at the home church, preaches the text; the others (who rotate through occasionally) far less so.
When you have a cluster of churches in a region sharing the same name and leadership, the senior pastor feels the need to exert his dominance over the others, often by video-linking his sermon to the other campuses, here by one annual unified service. The pastor chose his sermon topic as "unity" (which he sort of explained as all campuses sharing the same theological umbrella), and since the summer sermon series was selected Psalms, he chose a Psalm, the only Psalm that mentions the topic, a single verse in a three-verse Psalm of Ascents. That's hardly enough for a whole sermon (preaching the text), so he had opportunity to stray from Scripture. sigh.
Although the attendees at this unified service probably could have fit into the main church auditorium, the service was held outdoors at the campus with an outdoor hillside that serves as an amphitheater. We were invited to bring our own chairs, and I brought a fold-up chair I bought a couple years ago for the purpose. The ground is soft and sloping, so the first time I sat down the chair tipped over, and I rolled over down the hill. No harm, other than slight chagrin. I'm not an extrovert, I don't do well in crowds of people I don't know, so a mashup of the five campuses is not high on my personal agenda.
I could have chosen -- and I contemplated -- going to another church that day, but it seemed like too much trouble. So much for the negatives.
There are lots of positives -- nobody is firebombing churches in this city, I actually have a choice of where to go, this joint service only happens once each year, the pastor mostly preaches the text -- but I need to work harder at seeing the positives, and sooner.
Today's Psalm started off "it is fitting for the upright to praise [God]."
Better late than never.
Everybody still believes in moral absolutes (just not always applied to themselves), which came out implicitly in some of this week's library haul: "The Post" wanted the press to have the freedom to tell the truth -- when their party was out of the White House, like in 1972 when the Pentagon Papers came out, and again in 2017 when Trump was Prez. No mention of their preferred party's misdeeds.
Jackson Pollock was notorious for splattering paint on canvas laid out on the floor, and in this eponymous flick, which clearly stated that art reflects the "aims" (value system) of the artist, and he had none, so also his "art."
Pokemon Pikachu and the Postman both offered up (in their own way) a substitute Christian ethic, no mention of where they got their religion from (nobody would recognize it anyway).
A few more years and I'm outa here, plus I have no grandchildren to
worry about. But I read the last chapter of the Book, and the USA is not
in it. Already we are rapidly moving in the direction of becoming a third-world
country, but we have a long way to go before it gets as bad as the other
80% of the world nor even the first century Roman empire, which was dominant
when the Christian Manifesto was written. I mean, we had 400+ years of
being taught to read (and obey) the Bible, which made the USA the richest
country in the whole world and in all history, but that motivation went
away four decades ago. There are still enough Christians around to be "fumes
in the gas tank" but it won't power the engine to pull any kind of load.
See how it works, playing in your local theater since the turn of the millennium.
Fast forward to DVD technology, where the laser read head flies over the surface of the DVD without touching it. In principle the DVD should never wear out, but the whole recorded surface is exposed to finger grease and coffee spills and scrapes across it from whatever. Before I play it, I eyeball the surface to see if there are bits of crud that can be removed (scratches are harder). But the "Let's watch that again" scenes, they should have no effect.
Except they do. The most popular movies I check out of the library, the bad spots on the DVD come almost always on the "Let's watch that again" scenes.
Unlike VCR tapes which degraded gracefully with wear, when a DVD is damaged (for whatever reason) the digital technology just stops. The player freezes up for a minute or so -- remember, these are Unix programmers writing the player code, and Unix makes people (especially including programmers) stupid -- so it sits there retrying and retrying instead of keeping on playing with whatever it can. It still skips over the bad spot, but viewers sit there waiting for it to decide.
So where does Blu-Ray come in? I have no use for Blu-Ray, this library
does not stock them, but I inherited this player from somebody who passed
on to their eternal reward, and it proudly announces that it's Blu-Ray.
It's supposed to be compatible with ordinary DVDs, but I think the vendors
paid some behind-the-scenes money to the player makers to wear out the
discs faster (so they could sell more). Maybe the blue laser slowly destroys
the recorded surface as it plays, I don't know, but the "Let's watch that
again" scenes are where it freezes up most often, often with no visible
flaws on the disc surface.
The June issue of ComputingEdge (it's not very high in my "must read" priority) features three articles on "Green IT" = reducing the carbon footprint of computer usage. It's a lost cause, primarily because labor costs more than electricity, and all three articles promote high-labor replacements for electricity. The Western economy is driven by profit first, and ethics -- Green IT is largely understood as an ethical issue by those who care, nevermind that the logic behind that thinking is largely political -- is considered only secondarily or if the government insists. All three articles are speculative pondering by academics at universities in low-profile countries (United Arab Emirates, Norway, Holland); nobody is going to pay any attention to their ideas, certainly not the big-spending computing industry.
The first of them is not even particularly logical -- you can expect
that of Arabs -- offering multiple incompatible goals to be achieved by
Green IT. But this is ComputingEdge, not known for being the cutting
edge in anything.
Once every few years CT (like every other publication) does a make-over... I missed their regular quarter-page "Euticus and His Kin" cartoon, which they dropped several decades ago. For a long while Chuck Colson dominated (or perhaps alternated with some lesser light, I don't remember) for the coveted back page. Then they replaced it with a first-person "Unshackled" style testimony, which grew from the initial single back page to three in the last couple years. But they were running out of breathless stories.
The current issue is a major overhaul, with a wrap-around graphic image for a cover, and a new enigmatic cartoon filling the back page. It's still standard magazine size, but it feels bigger. And like everybody else, they have toned down on the news and replaced it with opinion, more (both in number and in page count) than everything else combined. I tell people "I have plenty of opinions of my own, I don't need to read other people's opinions." But if I must read opinions, CT's are better than the usual lot. One guy did a historical essay on President Nixon's faith and the feebleness of the pastors (including CT's founder, Billy Graham) who counseled him. Another talked about political violence, another about the importance of sexuality in the body of Christian theology (he's solidly Biblical, which doesn't always go without saying).
I'm only halfway through the section, but the one that grabbed me focussed on "community," specifically its absence in one woman's life. Like most women -- and almost all Evangelical Christians of whatever gender -- the author is what I call a "Relationshipist," a person who values getting and giving unearned affirmation above all else (see links to various blog posts and essays on the subject under the topic "Relationshipism" on my website home page). The majority American cultural value has taken its direction from 500 years of being taught to "read the Bible and obey it." The First Great Commandment dropped out some time in the last century, but the remaining values -- Truth, Justice, and Duty -- remain strong among the rich and the powerful (or at least they fake it). More than anything else, those values made the US of A the richest and most powerful country in the whole world and in all time (Solomon's kingdom possibly excepted). But the values are antithetical to Relationshipism.
Pre-adult American girls are given a mixed message, but the dominant side is the drive that leads to positions of power, and Sophia Lee drank the Kool-Aid with her classmates. Now she finds herself "without community." In other words, her female need for affirmation is unfilled, and she doesn't know why. The church is no help. If she read her Bible -- and really believed it -- she would understand, but she is unwilling to give up the power and perks of her journalistic career. None of this comes out in her essay. How could it? The American church is run by and exclusively for the benefit of Relationshipists, real guys need not apply.
I know this because I am not a Relationshipist. Yes, I like affirmation (preferably not unearned), but Truth, Justice, and Duty are more important. Yes, like Ms. Lee, I am "without community" at this time, but I celebrate in its place the values Jesus (actually) affirmed over the Relationshipist narrative taught in the church.
Enough for one blog posting.
Case in point: 20 years ago, after I got my (not quite as usable as God's original) bionic eye, I asked for bifocal lenses with the near focus portion covering 90% of the lens area, because that was what I spend 90% of my time looking at. The optician said "Yes, it's called Executive," and made up a pair for me. After 20 years of daily use the frame hinge broke, so I looked around for an optician who could do Executive bifocals, and most of them said "Not available." One said "Yes, we can do that," but it was a lie.
I wear glasses, and I always bought a clip-on polarized sunglasses to reduce the glare outdoors. The cheap versiion is plastic, and it doesn't attach securely. The best kind is a one-piece spring frame (no moving parts to break), but that has been replaced by a flimsy 3-piece frame with a tiny little spring holding the two other parts together. The high-quality version is just gone.
Five years ago I needed to replace the Low Grade Korean flip phone with something that works with modern cell towers. Nobody makes anything as smart as the expired Korean model (see "Progress"), but I kept it as my alarm clock. Six months ago they turned off the last 3G cell tower, and the phone itself stopped keeping time. Many decades ago I could buy a pocket alarm clock (just a clock with a single alarm, no other features), but then the internet arrived and pocket timepieces no longer exist. I could buy a wrist alarm, but I don't like things on my wrist, and the straps don't seem removable, and some of them -- hard telling, the spec sheet doesn't say -- you can't change the battery, which will run down extra fast due to all these exposed buttons getting bumped in my pocket.
I think I had another example, but I forgot.
Shakespeare's art form combined a sensible story with rhyme and meter. Four centuries later, rhyme, meter, even sensibility is gone from poetry -- and now it seems, even from fiction. The first stages of this downward spiral was page after page of inner turmoil, the lead character (and others) rehashing their imagined supposition of an alternate but completely unknowable "reality" with no basis in the story line.
This week's library haul, six books hoping for one or two with a genuine plot and story, half of them spent their ink in inner turmoil. The second half could have been written by ChatGPT: there was no plot nor story at all, just endless jabbering about topics unrelated to any plot or story. At least they are still whole sentences, each with a subject and a verb, but I expect that will go away also. Anyway, the authors are paid by word count, and if they haven't got a story or plot, they can make it up with empty words and meaningless drivel. Until the readers push back.
I'm back to reading faux-Clancy, a breath of fresh air compared to this
week's library haul.
It's a four-letter word suitable for expressing extreme displeasure, where other, less educated people might threaten sexual assault or fecal contamination, or else utter a short prayer to a deity they hope is not listening.
As displeasure goes, this is pretty mild. Faux-Clancy may be a page-turner, but it's not binge material. His chapters jump around erratically between some five different sub-plot threads. Where I normally would skip ahead to read a single thread for several chapters, these are so disorganized I got lost in my skipping ahead.
So I set it aside for one of the three library books I brought home. I should have brought home a dozen. The first on the stack was one of the "British Library Crime Classics" series, which in the past I found to be quite good -- probably why this library has so few of them -- so I neglected to notice it was a female author. Yup, the first chapter was filled not only with the first-person lead character's continuous inner turmoil, but also turmoil projected on everybody else in hizzer (what do you call a guy who thinks like a woman?) view.
The second book had a very male author's picture one the inside back cover flap, but his protagonist "Jake" turned out to be female, complete with inner turmoil and adolescent bickering.
The third book had a male author and a male lead, but the inner turmoil exceeds the other two combined. The NY Times critic blurb on the cover brags "A keen storyteller who writes in a style that's boldly his own." In other words, unreadable. Any kind of praise from a critic seems to be the kiss of Judas. sigh
So I'm back to Gibbon and Clancy clone. Or blogging about my own inner turmoil instead of doing the job set before me.
Make no mistake: The coding errors I get to spend all day trying to discover and fix are nothing like the crazy stuff these novelists invent for their readers to get unhappy about. Even digging up lions in the back yard -- you know, the "dandy" variety -- a couple half-hour shifts in the cool of the morning and all I have left in the yard are volunteer California poppies (probably my favorite flower) and volunteer tall grass. When I first moved here some eight years ago, the back yard was filled with pink and blue regular poppies. The next year half of them were replaced by the yellow California kind, and subsequent years it was mostly tall grass. Zero maintenance except for maybe three mowings each summer (see prior blog postings "No Lions Are Dandy" and "Chinese Junk Considered Harmful"). In the State of Misery, and later in Taxes, I had to pay somebody to come mow.
When I was a kid old enough to notice such things, I was in South America,
and "Labor Day" (when everybody stops working) was May 31. It was also
true in France when I was there. Only the USA puts it in the Fall, and
we kept May 31 for some other holiday -- until (again, only the USA) we
moved all of our "holy days" (same word, older spelling) to serve the wishes
of the national deity (self) by making them into 3-day weekends. So now
today is just another labor (working) day. I labored out in the yard for
an hour. What I do in front of the screen is mostly fun. Sometimes I get
paid for it.
That, ladies and gentlement, is the evil of the Feminazi agenda. It cannot work, and it does not work. The movie got that right.
You need to remember, this is fiction. The flick was very careful to say so prominently. Placing vulnerable women and children at risk is morally Wrong and evil, and the writer of this story knows that, which is why he put them (both women and children) into this story where Bad Things Happen to them. He wanted the audience to feel outrage. This is Feminazi fiction, the real world -- at least the USA, at least today -- does not work that way because it is Wrong. Only cowardly jihadists hide behind women and children, because they also know it is Wrong, and they are depending on their opponents (the Good Guys) to know it also. So yes, I'm saying this writer and director is giving us fiction to believe in which is on the same level as the jihadists. Remember that, and don't do Bad Things to women and children, not in Real Life, and not in fiction intended to educate us in moral values -- which this flick is clearly intended to do.
But this is fiction. Nobody is smart enough to think of all the angles, and certainly not this writer. The super-star Good Guy defense lawyer didn't get that way by being too stupid to outwit the Gestapo prosecutor. Nobody likes the Gestapo, and no jury wants to bring harm to innocent women and children. The Government Gestapo would have lost, if for no other reason than because he was being a jerk. Juries can do that, and smart lawyers know how to make that verdict happen. That's the whole point of having a jury. This is fiction (contrary to fact). Not recommended, except as a warning: Don't do that.
Oh by the way, I finished that second library book,
and the last ten or so chapters more than made up for any prior lack in
threats of sexual abuse and fecal contanimation and prayers to a deity
they hope isn't listening. I don't need to read such sociopathic filth.
Besides, the Bad Guys won in the end. The USA is now trying hard to help
the Bad Guys to win, but I don't need to join their cheering section. Not
recommended. Faux-Clancy #2 starts out a little slow, so I haven't lost
any sleep yet 
Anyway, my friend saw that his local library was dumping some Tom Clancy novels, so he bought up a bunch for less than it cost him to send them to me book rate, or at least less than the beer would have cost him if he and I were into getting drunk. It turns out, these were written (copyright date) after the real Tom Clancy died. This guy co-authored a couple with the real Clancy, so he got the suspense pretty good, but his President and Cabinet are not "Presidential" like The Real Thing; super-star authors don't make that mistake. Maybe they don't even know what they are doing (so they can't train their successor in how to do it). I've seen senior pastors who didn't have a clue why their churches had more men than women, so their associates got no training. The pastors certainly don't get it in seminary. They could, but they're all Feelers who can't imagine any men in their churches who aren't also Feelers. So two thirds of the American men never darken the door of any church. I wouldn't want to be one of those pastors on Judgment Day.
Anyway, these Clancy clones are still page-turners, and at 600+ pages,
I don't really want to lose that much sleep for a whole week, so I went
to the library to pick up some lesser fiction to alternate, and lesser
it was. The dust jacket on one of them boasts a "charming, evocative, and
sharply plotted Victorian crime series starring a detective duo to match
Holmes and Watson." At least this author got the "crime" part right, and
I see more books on the library shelf for the "series" part, but the only
match to Holmes and Watson is the word "duo." Otherwise it is a total waste.
I should have known from the "Victorian" part -- which it is not, except
the idiot hero and his apprentice with a red "S" on her chest must ride
horse-drawn carriages instead of Teslas through the streets of London (see
my comments in "Library Woes (Again)"
last month). So far from the promised "very, very funny," it is just plain
sad.
The second book survived the first 40 pages, but it's not a page-turner
like the faux-Clancy novels I got it to compete with. At 600+ pages it
might actually last out the week until my next library trip. If not, I
still have a couple hundred more pages of Gibbon to plod through. I should
have brought home four or more. Too soon oldt, too late schmardt.
The bottom line is that when I'm trying to recharge my batteries, reading
something where the hero does heroic things in a world that recognizes
(if not 100% obeys) Golden Rule ethics has the desired effect. A Feminazi
Manifesto tract like that faux-Victorian clunker fails miserably. Any book
that fills its pages with the vocabulary of sexual assault and feces and
prayers to a God they hope is not listening is even worse. The "Thriller"
category prior to 2020 is (mostly) the rejuvenating kind of fiction I'm
looking for, but this library on the left coast has no such category, and
the library where my friend bought the castoffs he sent me is obviously
trying to get rid of theirs. Both of us live in "fly-over" states that
will not be targeted when the Nasties of the world do what the recent books
are trying to educate them to do. This is a good time to not be living
in New York or Lost Angels or the Detroit of last week's
posting
By the way, the second book turns out to be readable. The author tries
to do inner turmoil, but he hasn't quite got the knack
He tries to do potty mouth, but like the rich black dude
last week, it's fewer than the number of chapters (so far
but zero would be better). The dust jacket blurb promises "sharp, comedic
prose" and while it's not as sad as the anachronistic pseudo-Victorian...
OK, there are a couple chuckles, maybe a half-dozen so far, but nothing
to write home about. It's not as soporific as Gibbon, but certainly not
a page-turner like the faux-Clancy books -- which is a good thing: I still
get to sleep at a reasonable hour, and probably this one book will last
until next week's library run (or close) which is what I got it for
The main reason for avoiding female authors is that they fill their text with inner turmoil. I want to read about heroic characters making the world a better place -- and this guy did that -- but inner turmoil is not a virtue I want to emulate. This guy engaged in inner turmoil for a page or two, three or four times in the whole novel, which (like going to the dentist) was annoying -- and then it was over for a while. I think (like potty words) it was a check-off item the author inserted into the text to please the critics, and not because he wanted to do it. I first understood critic's praise as a Judas kiss when TIME magazine panned the then-new movie "Air Force One": with Harrison Ford in the lead it had to be good, and I was not disappointed.
The two recent novels set approvingly in "Native American" reservations (and two more I abandonned after a few pages), and my previous experience with stories set in (and written by authors from) India, China, and Japan (see "Cultural Ethics" last month and "Liars Lie" eight years ago), this author is describing a culture I, by the grace of God, mostly didn't live in. And like the Native American stories, one is enough. It could have been worse than this one. The author clearly has abandonned whatever Christian faith he knew as a child, and while his first-person lead (and his Hispanic neighbors) were either nominal or observant Catholics, the author couldn't bring himself to make his hero observant rather than merely deferential. Oh well, it was better than the open hostility in most fiction that mentions religion.
I am reminded of the research in sub-Saharan African nations, some of
which experienced Catholic missionaries during their colonial period, and
others had Protestant (see "God Is Good for
You" ten years ago). The Protestant legacy there -- like that in the
USA -- left countries far more educated and wealthier than the Catholics
did. In this novel, the super-hero's father was a Baptist, but the blacks
in this country have spent so much of their intellectual capital feeling
victimized, that there's little left over for the innovatinve thinking
that creates wealth. That's true also in this novel: our hero got his wealth
by winning a $12 million lawsuit against the city of Detroit. Lawsuits
like that are contrary to the Golden Rule (GR)
of Christian ethics, which our author has already abandonned. In the Real
World money does not make Right, but this is fiction. Not even fiction
can make a poor person into a credible super-hero, so all of the super-heros
of fiction have independent wealth. The rest of the fiction must give their
heros Luck (aka still Supernatural, but without a Just God Who insists
on GR ethics).
In case you were wondering, a super-hero has a red "S" on his chest
that only he and the reader (by implication) can see. In other words, leaps
over tall buildings in a single bound and rescues fair maidens in distress
while killing seven commando-grade attackers all at once with only a small
flesh wound to himself. And gives hundreds and thousands of dollars (less
than 1% of his stash) away to poor people who just need a job. Instead
of buying a yacht or Gulfstream and/or mansion on the hill. In the Real
World, money glows green like kryptonite, and under its influence the guy
can't even leap over his single-malt scotch. Giving teenage drug dealers
hundreds of dollars to do fixup labor might make good citizens of them,
or it (more likely) will just feed their greed and larceny. But it's a
jolly good story, and we all wish there were more super-hero types like
him, only with less drunkenness and talk of sexual assault and prayers
to a deity they hope isn't listening.
The cover blurb hints that there may be sequels, but I won't be bringing
them home. His is a culture I don't live in and don't want to, and I cannot
hope to win an (unChristian) lottery lawsuit, nor do I believe that shooting
people is a better solution than being connected with God.
So, although CE did not, we begin with ethics. There is no such thing as ethics without moral absolutes, because the essence of ethics is what constitutes acceptable behavior without reference to mitigating circumstances. In other words, moral absolutes, obligations binding on all people everywhere and through all time without exception. Without moral absolutes, there is always wiggle room, ways to explain away our own evil behavior without accepting the consequences of such antisocial activity. Make no mistake, everybody believes that the other person should be bound to moral absolutes, but most of us prefer ourselves to be exempt from them. Apart that personal conflict of interest, it is this universality the makes them moral absolute, binding on all people everywhere and through all time without exception. This is explained with examples of universally accepted instances of moral absolutes in my essay so titled.
Anyway, so here's this article trying to discuss "An Ethical Framework for Smart Cities" without any mention of moral absolutes. It cannot be done. Well, the authors got something published, but it doesn't make much sense without ethical persuasion. They try to build their "ethics" on something called "Moral Foundations Theory" (MFT), which seems to be little more than an unstable collection of what a small group of ivory-tower thinkers (and their friends) decided is ethical, explicitly basing their reasoning on the the shifting sands of the failed Darwinist hypothesis -- that all complex systems came about by the accumulation over time of random events, selected only by their contribution to survival (see my essay "Biological Evolution: Did It Happen?"). So they have this jiggly collection of values, things that people who grew up in, or were trained in, a culture based on Christian ethics have come to accept as "good" values. They are indeed good values, that's why those values -- or at least the uncorrupted versions of them -- are promoted in the Bible. But they are not at all universal. There was no right to privacy anywhere in the world until the American Supreme Court invented it less than a hundred years ago. There is no need for privacy unless you are doing things that are unlawful or socially unacceptable, or if corporations are trying to unethically bamboozle you into parting with your hard-earned wealth using targeted messages. It's a right only in post-Christian nations and cultures. Most of the MFT values are similarly easily deconstructed. People in the tech industry are largely working in a Christian-influenced value system, so they cannot see that their "moral foundation" pontifications are not universal in the sense that they can be derived apart from their Christian roots.
There is a solid basis for ethical reasoning, but it must be based on moral absolutes, in particular, the Golden Rule (GR). Unfortunately, that kind of ethics cannot be explained from a Darwinist presupposition. "Lower-order" organisms without a central nervous system cannot do ethical reasoning, so if and to the extent that people are evolved from these organisms, there must be some genetic basis that evolved, one gene at a time, over millions of years, to enable and cause it. Unless you allow the exceedingly improbable (miraculous) simultaneous evolution of all the parts of an irreducibly complex ethical system, it must have first happened in one final mutation, one person capable of GR ethics. The trouble is, GR ethics benefits only other people, so that single ethical person is not selected for survival and dies without progeny. Even in the serendipitous (and impossibly improbable) case that you get several ethically inclined people simultaneously evolved in a genetically superior mutant sub-species, each individual instance of GR ethics never contributes to that person's own survival, but only to the survival of other group members, (mostly) not yet themselves fully GR compliant, and in particular without regard to whether they express that new gene or not. So Darwinist theory denies the possibility that ethics can evolve out of non-ethics. Aren't fairy tales (contrary-to-fact made-up stories) wonderful? So these authors and their colleagues pick random values that feel good, then force-fit them into the Procrustean MFT bed, or sometimes don't even try.
The other ethics piece tries to make a case for teaching ethics as an integrated part of the engineering curriculum. It's a great idea, but if they don't know what ethical thinking is all about, how can they teach it? Maybe if they get more people involved (yes, that's one of their arguments), but that only works if the people they choose are themselves ethically inclined. The careful atheists (correctly) argue that from their atheist presuppositions, there is no such thing as "altruism" (another word for the GR, which is the essence of all good ethics), so adding those people to the team will not generate credible ethical curricula. You need Christian ethics for it to work, but Christians are not welcome in academia. Later the same article tried to define their ethics in terms of not causing "harm," but who decides what constitutes harm? People engaging in unhealthy lifestyles bring harm to the public at large by being a disproportionate burden on the public health system, and yet our modern culture has determined that outlawing such behavior brings harm to that antisocial minority. Who is right? Ask most Americans today, they only see half the story. Majority vote does not define ethical behavior, as we can easily see (from our modern American perspective) by just looking at earlier history of the south-eastern states of this country.
One last ethics question: why all this sudden concern for ethics in the first place? Could it be that we live in a culture that has been fed a diet of "Read the Bible and do it" ethics for something over 400 years, and that cultural ethics has made the USA the richest country in the whole world and in all history, but for the last 50 years King SCOTUS has removed that ethical teaching from schoolroom walls, thereby telling school children all over the country that it's OK to behave unethically, and those children have now grown up and are running businesses and government agencies and software development shops unethically (as instructed), and we don't like the results? Of course the IEEE cannot print that, so we get drivel like these articles instead.
The first of the two "Trust" articles talks all around a single conclusion:
You cannot trust the supply chain used by many -- probably most -- software
developers, so you cannot trust the resulting software products. The biggest
scorpion in the supply chain honey pot is "open source" (OS) software,
to which any programmer, whether of evil intentions, or of good intentions
and poorly thought-out processes, nobody knows, anybody can offer updates
to any OS library routine, and nobody notices what other libraries that
update imports, so anybody building on these OS libraries could be importing
(literally) thousands of untested library library routines involving millions
of lines of code, and that (possibly malevolent) library code gets encorporated
into commercial products -- some of them thought to be "secure" and "safe,"
and nobody knows. Yes, real government and large corporation software users
have been stung by this bug. Not me, I don't use OS packages in anything
I get paid for, nor for anything I use on my own computer -- except for
the vendor's operating system and browser, which crash occasionally but
mostly predate the rise of OS software. In particular, the bugs in my compiler
are my own, I don't use other people's compilers (a particularly insidious
vulnerability mentioned in this article). I can do that, I wrote my own
The focus of the second article in this pair is "Placing Trust in Automated Software Development..." which starts out describing the productivity gains from using a high-level language compiler -- he mentioned FORTRAN, but not by name -- and eventually got to libraries being updated with added vulnerabilities, the "trust" problems that kind of harm brings. He
end[s] on an upbeat note, which is that companies are making progress toward devising frameworks, tools, and other software development automation to support explainable AI.Perhaps you read my take on "explainable AI" (see "AI as Religion" six years ago, and "Can a Machine Tell a Lie?" three years later, and "Neural Net Comeuppance" the following year). The bottom line for most of the next decade or two, is that you cannot and must not trust anything "AI", and the programmers seeing what is coming out of the machine are already saying so.
Those of us instructed by "the Manufacturer's Handbook" (aka the Bible) already know that any trust in humans or their artifacts is misplaced. Trust God, not humans, not even government ("princes"). It helps if you know what it is that God is inviting you to trust, which is not necessarily what the preachers tell you. Read it for yourself, the (human) preachers can't always be trusted, and you never know until you go to the Source and look for yourself.
The remaining two articles in this compendium deal with "Cyberattacks" and "Ransomware." There is a simple (but expensive) solution to prevent all that malware: If there is at most one door (and no windows) in your castle wall, and you keep that door locked and guarded, then the thieves and robbers cannot get in to steal your stuff. These two articles did not say that, nor did they point out that every one of the computers under attack ran either Unix (Linux) or Windows (pretending to be unix) operating system. The Unix security model is broken, and anybody who can guess your least secure password, or can connive or force it out of your most timid employee, can plant any nefarious software on your computer they want to. The solution is to have no way for a remote operator to install software of any kind, best by not using operating systems that encourage that kind of vulnerability. Both Unix and Windows can be fixed to disallow remote code installation, but both systems are huge and clunky, and the programmers who know the systems well enough to pull it off, don't want to. They (the programmers) are the first line of villains that you need to defend against.
Failing that, an "air gap firewall" = no data connection at all between the internet and your mission-critical computer data is a good second-best. I sometimes need to do work on a Windows computer, but it never gets on the internet. NEVER. I have an OSX (Unix) computer for occasional internet access to bad-mannered (encrypted) websites, but it never sees mission-critical data. Yes, Bad People could get on it and try Ransomware, but I would just erase the hard drive and re-install the system. Problem solved.
Both of these hand-wringing articles are trying to find a bandaid to stop the hemorrhage, when they should be calling for a vaccine to prevent the disease. But they're not computer people. The computer people see "job security" in the malware, they don't want to help. The ethical thing to do would be to fix the problem, but ethics left the country in the SCOTUS decision some 50 years ago. You get what you pay for.
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