Glen & Paula Davis

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The American age was the human age (Noah Smith, Substack): "Much of the country has eased into a comfortable equilibrium of sclerosis; local veto power either prevents the construction of factories, housing, energy, transportation, and other infrastructure, or delays it by decades, or raises the cost to multiples of what other rich countries pay. The past has become more valuable than the future to many Americans; they cling desperately to the power to enforce stasis, preserving a facade of the country they grew up in at the expense of the very dynamism that made that country great. That sclerosis seeps into everything else. Immigration, and even migration from city to city, becomes a vicious zero-sum fight over a fixed housing supply. Cities decay into museums of themselves. The industries of the future can only be built in America if they take up nearly no land, use nearly no energy, require very little bank financing, and are able to procure skilled labor as needed from abroad. Somehow the internet industry satisfied all of those conditions for three decades, but that time is done."
2. Why Do Only Weird People Speak in Tongues? (Daniel Kunkel, Substack): "I’ve never spoken in tongues. And, in all sincerity, I’d prefer not to. They weird me out. In the few times I’ve heard someone babbling, my mind immediately runs to 'They are making it up.' And over the years, I’ve flirted with, and even defended, cessationism (Rest in Power, Johnny Mac). And yet, recently, I’ve come to terms with the fact that most of my gripes about these various gifts (tongues, prophecy, healings) have more to do with human reason and preference than scriptural conviction.... I still have never spoken in glossolalia. And if I am being sincere, I still do not want to, but I want to want to (: Thus, if I think 1 Cor 12-14 is prescriptive, and I do, then the plea for my own heart is to desire the gift."
3. You May Not Need Eight Hours of Sleep (Ryan McCormick, New York Times): "A consistent finding in sleep epidemiology studies is that there is not a magic number below which health suddenly falls off a cliff. Rather, studies that show an association between sleep duration and mortality often find that the lowest risk clusters around seven hours.... Sleep improves performance on tasks, makes driving safer and buoys our mental health. Adequate sleep leads to a stronger immune system, better metabolic and cardiovascular health, and more reliable physical energy throughout the day."
4. Some AI-adjacent thoughts:
   • "I see what Tyler Cowen is getting at. If you want info about the Bible, AI already outperforms at some margin (speed, if nothing else). But in an equally important sense he's also wrong, and there's an easy way to see this. Just ask the AI what, say, David's story means. 🧵(see the full thread on twitter)
   • We Are Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn’t Know to Ask (Anne-Laure Le Cunff, New York Times): "More than 60 percent of Google searches in the United States now end without the user clicking on a link. We type a question, read an artificial intelligence-generated summary of the results and leave with our answer.... The space between a question and an answer has value, and that value should not be engineered away. The most important discoveries are often not the ones we set out to make. If we build a world that delivers only what is asked for, we will lose the capacity to discover what we didn’t know to ask."
     • The author is a neuroscientist at King's College in London.
   • A Christian Vision for the Future of AI (Walter Kim, Wall Street Journal): "Transformational opportunities for improvement are before us, thanks to AI. But a pro-human worldview—the philosophical grounding to aim those opportunities at the moral end of human flourishing—won’t emerge spontaneously. We must shape AI before it shapes us."
     • The author is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.
5. Ministry After the Boomer Apocalypse (Derek Rishmawy, Mere Orthodoxy): "Remember, when Jesus was preaching and ministering, what did he do? As an RUF buddy of mine pointed out, he spent three years walking around with the equivalent of 12 teenage to young adult interns. And in Paul’s corpus, nearly 1/6 of his written material is directed to guiding the young pastors Timothy and Titus, whom he had trained. This has always been the way and it must be again."
   • Interesting reflections rooted in campus ministry in a different context. Maybe not for everyone, but I really liked it.
6. Decline of Ph.D. Admissions Could Imperil a ‘Generation of New Talent’ (Vimal Patel, New York Times): "The number of students admitted to Ph.D. programs this fall dropped 15 percent from the previous year, according to data from over 50 top research universities, raising fears that the nation’s capacity to produce new science could be diminished... The data showing the decrease comes from 55 universities, all of them members of the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only organization that includes 69 of the most prestigious research institutions in the United States."
7. Reported sexual assault of jogger did not occur, investigation finds (Alula Alderson, Stanford Daily): "Stanford’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) conducted a 'thorough investigation' into the assault, which allegedly took place on March 29 by the intersection of Santa Ynez Street and Mayfield Avenue. Investigators determined the report was fabricated, according to Stanford PR Director Charlene Gage."

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Group project, but make it 1776 (Google Workspace, YouTube) - (Google Workspace, YouTube): one delightful minute
• Someone used a Raspberry Pi 5 to give Claude Fable 5 a robot body, because that's not worrying or anything (Simon Batt, XDA): "Look, I thought we all had an agreement. We would allow companies to make the most powerful artificial intelligence in the history of mankind, and in exchange, we would absolutely, definitely not give them robot bodies to control."

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Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey’s agenda and we are not about the elephant’s agenda - we are about the Lamb’s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ideological Turing test and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say “I agree” or “I disagree” until I can say “I understand”) and may at times share articles that have a strong partisan bias simply because I find the article stimulating. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with everything an author says in an article I mention, much less things the author has said in other articles (although if I strongly disagree with something in the article I’ll usually mention it). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. Also, remember that I’m not reporting news - I’m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There’s a lot happening in the world that’s not making an appearance here because I haven’t found stimulating articles written about it. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.