TGFI, Volume 580: AI finds tax loopholes

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. Buried tal­ents (Edan Krolewicz, Sub­stack): “The ideas that win among elites are, on the whole, ideas that excuse elites. This isn’t some grand con­spir­a­cy. The mar­ket for ideas, like every oth­er mar­ket, gives peo­ple what they want. And elites want to be told they’re fine… Elite selection—admissions, recruit­ing, promotions—filters for spe­cif­ic things: con­sci­en­tious­ness, risk aver­sion, abil­i­ty to opti­mize with­in defined para­me­ters. Peo­ple who ques­tion the game don’t sur­vive the game. The philoso­pher who asks why the hedge fund exists doesn’t get hired there. The lawyer who ques­tions the adver­sar­i­al sys­tem doesn’t make part­ner. By the time some­one reach­es elite sta­tus, decades of selec­tion have pro­duced exact­ly the traits that make them good at climb­ing and use­less at ques­tion­ing.”
2. For­mal­iz­ing the US tax code (Alan Yahya, Lex­Fi­na): “Our argu­ment is that point­ing AI and a proof check­er at a ver­sioned record of the law finds the con­tra­dic­tions and mechan­i­cal mis­takes that peo­ple miss. In par­tic­u­lar, we can catch mis­takes in the text, and see what the rules allow, includ­ing what they allow by acci­dent. To do so, we trans­lat­ed each sec­tion of the law into Lean, stay­ing close to the statute’s own words, and test­ed it against the worked exam­ples the IRS prints in its forms and instruc­tions.”
3. Why I Choose to Be Non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al (David Kunkel, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Even amid denom­i­na­tion­al shifts, it remains true that the largest denom­i­na­tion in Amer­i­can Protes­tantism is, iron­i­cal­ly, no denom­i­na­tion at all. In light of this, I’d like to make a bib­li­cal case for non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al church­es, while high­light­ing the movement’s often-over­looked strengths. Just as Paul reminds us that the church is a body and the eye needs the hand (1 Cor. 12:21), so too does the Luther­an need the non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al­ist.”
4. The Lux­u­ry of Chil­dren (Jesús Fer­nán­dez-Villaverde, For­eign Affairs): “In 1972, near­ly eight times as many chil­dren were born in Chi­na as in the Unit­ed States. In 2025, that fig­ure has dropped to 2.2 times as many. China’s total fer­til­i­ty rate in 2025 was 0.93, while the U.S. rate was 1.58. If fer­til­i­ty rates remain at those lev­els, the Unit­ed States will over­take Chi­na in annu­al births at some point in the 2080s and in total pop­u­la­tion by around 2120. That date might arrive ear­li­er if the gap between the fer­til­i­ty rates of Chi­na and the Unit­ed States con­tin­ues to widen…. Among the great pow­ers, the Unit­ed States is the least exposed to demo­graph­ic head­winds. Younger pop­u­la­tions tend to be more inno­v­a­tive and less reliant on pub­lic sup­port, a fact that bodes well for Amer­i­can prospects in the com­pe­ti­tion to come.”
   • The author is an econ prof at U Penn. Last month I shared a pod­cast episode where he dis­cuss­es sim­i­lar things.
5. ‘Ahead of his time’: AI helps unlock dis­cov­er­ies hid­den in note­books of man who trans­formed maths (Alex Bel­los, The Guardian): “After his sem­i­nal results of the 1930s, Gödel pub­lished only a few papers. His unpub­lished work, how­ev­er, runs to tens of thou­sands of pages, and is of great inter­est to his­to­ri­ans of sci­ence…. Progress in the math­e­mat­i­cal under­stand­ing of the text was painful­ly slow – about a page a week – until Sep­tem­ber, when von Pla­to enlist­ed the help of the AI mod­el Claude. With­in a cou­ple of days, Claude had pro­vid­ed a com­pre­hen­sive digest of the entire mate­r­i­al, reveal­ing Gödel had proved hun­dreds of the­o­rems that no one knew about.”
6. Can Trump For­give His Ene­mies? (Ross Douthat, 60 Min­utes) — three fas­ci­nat­ing min­utes. Douthat is an extra­or­di­nary inter­view­er and asks ques­tions that would nev­er even occur to most jour­nal­ists.
7. You Are Protest­ing the Wrong Tech­nol­o­gy, Peo­ple! (Hol­lis Rob­bins, Sub­stack): “To the fac­ul­ty who have been orga­niz­ing against AI: you are fight­ing the wrong tech­nol­o­gy. While you’re writ­ing think pieces about ‘cog­ni­tive offload­ing’ and ‘the impor­tance of writ­ing’ on social media, you’re still using Can­vas, Bright­space, and Black­board to ‘deliv­er instruc­tion’ to your stu­dents.… What is wrong with you peo­ple? Can­vas is a far more dan­ger­ous and cor­rupt­ing tech­nol­o­gy than AI.”
   • The author is an Eng­lish prof at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• How to Rage­bait Each Chris­t­ian Denom­i­na­tion (Redeemed Zoomer, YouTube) — thir­ty-three sec­onds (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
• Stu­dent debates whether ‘lik­ing’ friend’s thirst trap is okay (Mic­ah Chung, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Illu­mi­nat­ed by the dim glow of her phone’s screen, Ballinger tore chunks of her hair out before ulti­mate­ly decid­ing to post a sto­ry say­ing that she was delet­ing her Insta­gram to focus on her stud­ies. She then began doom­scrolling on her spam account.”
  • This is fun­ny, but putting on my pas­tor hat for a moment: don’t post thirst traps or like thirst traps. May they fall into the dust­bin of his­to­ry.
• Is Your Girl­friend Actu­al­ly a Chi­nese Spy? Know the Signs — (Baby­lon Bee)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

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.