Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 197

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Mag­i­cal Think­ing (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Build­ing a com­put­er is pre­cise­ly anal­o­gous to putting togeth­er a bit of mag­i­cal sleight of hand. It is a clever exer­cise in sim­u­la­tion, noth­ing more. And the con­vinc­ing­ness of the sim­u­la­tion is as com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant in the one case as it is in the oth­er. Say­ing ‘Gee, AI pro­grams can do such amaz­ing things. Maybe it real­ly is intel­li­gence!’ is like say­ing ‘Gee, Penn and Teller do such amaz­ing things. Maybe it real­ly is mag­ic!’” Fes­er is one of my favorite philoso­phers.
2. Reveal­ing reli­gion: Under­stand­ing faith at Stan­ford (Meli­na Walling, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “It’s my first day at Stan­ford: a whirl­wind of unpacked suit­cas­es, reshuf­fled note­books and crum­pled bed­ding. My room­mate and I meet each oth­er for the first time and choose our beds. Our par­ents all shake hands. Then, in the blink of an eye, we’re alone for the first time. I take a deep breath and ask my room­mate the ques­tion I’ve been wait­ing to ask: Are you com­fort­able if I pray?” Two Chi Alphans are inter­viewed in this arti­cle, and I am very pleased with how they han­dled them­selves. Good job, Con­nor & Nao­mi!
   • While we’re talk­ing about Stan­ford: How Stan­ford’s Desire for a Booze-Free Town Gave Birth to Palo Alto (Ryan Levi, KQED): “This was dur­ing the heart of the Tem­per­ance Move­ment, and the Stan­fords knew that asso­ci­at­ing their school with an alco­hol-free town would be entic­ing to many of the par­ents of prospec­tive stu­dents.”
3. They Had It Com­ing (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “Sweet Christ, vin­di­ca­tion! How long has it been? Years? No, decades. If hope is the thing with feath­ers, I was a plucked bird. Long ago, I sur­ren­dered myself to the fact that the hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble pri­vate-school par­ents of Los Ange­les would get away with their nas­ti­ness for­ev­er. But even before the molt­ing, nev­er in my wildest imag­in­ings had I dared to dream that the arc of the moral uni­verse could describe a 90-degree angle and smite down mine ene­mies with such a ham­mer fist of fire and fury that even I have had a moment of think­ing, Could this be a bit too much?” This is a wild ride of a read about the col­lege admis­sions scan­dal.
4. Deny­ing the Neu­ro­science of Sex Dif­fer­ences (Lar­ry Cahill, Quil­lette): “No one seems to have a prob­lem accept­ing that, on aver­age, male and female bod­ies dif­fer in many, many ways. Why is it sur­pris­ing or unac­cept­able that this is true for the part of our body that we call ‘brain’?” Cahill is a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at UC Irvine.
5. The Great Awok­en­ing (Matt Ygle­sias, Vox): “In the past five years, white lib­er­als have moved so far to the left on ques­tions of race and racism that they are now, on these issues, to the left of even the typ­i­cal black vot­er. This change amounts to a ‘Great Awok­en­ing’ — com­pa­ra­ble in some ways to the enor­mous reli­gious foment in the white North in the years before the Amer­i­can Civ­il War.”
   • Relat­ed: The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Is Rad­i­cal­iz­ing (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “Pro­gres­sivism is wreck­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty even as crude pop­ulism and eth­nic nation­al­ism have (for now) wrecked the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Both are sal­vage­able and both are worth sav­ing, but that will require indi­vid­u­als who have iden­ti­fied with each par­ty to fight to reclaim them; to show wis­dom, decen­cy, and courage in an age of extrem­ism and intem­per­ance.”
   • The author of the first piece, Ygle­sias, is a pro­gres­sive. The author of the sec­ond arti­cle, Wehn­er, is a con­ser­v­a­tive. The two arti­cles read togeth­er give an inter­est­ing take on the cur­rent state of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty.
6. Harold Bloom: Anti-Inkling? (Michael Wine­grad, Jew­ish Review of Books): “Accord­ing to Bloom’s famous the­o­ry of the ‘anx­i­ety of influ­ence,’ we don’t get to choose our influ­ences. More­over, a writer’s explic­it des­ig­na­tion of a major influ­ence is usu­al­ly a ruse, intend­ed to hide (most­ly from him­self) the real influ­ence at work.…. it starts to look as if it was actu­al­ly the Inklings, and espe­cial­ly Lewis, who got under Bloom’s skin.”
7. The Rap­ture and the Real World: Mike Pom­peo Blends Beliefs and Pol­i­cy (Edward Wong, New York Times): “…no sec­re­tary of state in recent decades has been as open and fer­vent as Mr. Pom­peo about dis­cussing Chris­tian­i­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy in the same breath. That has increas­ing­ly raised ques­tions about the extent to which evan­gel­i­cal beliefs are influ­enc­ing Amer­i­can diplo­ma­cy.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• A Talk­ing Snake (SMBC) — the the­ol­o­gy is not great but it is amus­ing
• What Tru­ly Brings Chris­tians Togeth­er (Gavin Ortlund, Twit­ter)
• New Evi­dence Sug­gests King David Actu­al­ly Saw Bathshe­ba Wear­ing Leg­gings As Pants (Baby­lon Bee): shared with me by a friend who cor­rect­ly thought I would find it amus­ing.
  • Relat­ed: an actu­al, non-humor opin­ion piece In Chris­t­ian Cir­cles, the Debate Over Leg­gings and Female Butts Has Been Rag­ing With Spe­cial Urgency (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “Here’s a fact about leg­gings in 2019: The only thing peo­ple like more than wear­ing leg­gings is get­ting mad about leg­gings. In the sphere of pub­lic debate, leg­gings have become the sym­bol of slip­ping stan­dards, immod­esty, and The Prob­lem With Young Peo­ple Today.”
• ‘Great­est Shoot­er in NBA His­to­ry’ Played With Blur­ry Vision (News­er): this is a real news sto­ry, not satire. Steph Cur­ry has bad eye­sight and only just recent­ly got con­tacts. That’s amaz­ing.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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.

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