Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 394

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.

This is vol­ume 394, which is a Schröder Num­ber (some­thing which I did not pre­vi­ous­ly know exist­ed).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stan­ford-relat­ed
    • Employ­ee charged with lying about Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty rapes that shook cam­pus (Robert Salon­ga and Jakob Rodgers, San Jose Mer­cury News): “A Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty employ­ee who author­i­ties say twice report­ed last year that she was vicious­ly dragged out of sight on cam­pus and raped — touch­ing off pan­ic about a ser­i­al preda­tor — is now accused of fab­ri­cat­ing the claims as part of a revenge plot against a co-work­er.”
      • This whole thing is so nuts on so many lev­els. This was by far the most shock­ing thing I read this week.
    • Law School activists protest Judge Kyle Duncan’s vis­it to cam­pus (Gre­ta Reich, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “In his open­ing remarks, Dun­can addressed these posters and chants. ‘I’m not blind — I can see this out­pour­ing of con­tempt,’ Dun­can said. With audi­ence inter­rup­tions con­tin­u­ing through­out the speech, he lat­er said ‘In this school, the inmates have got­ten con­trol of the asy­lum.’ ”
    • Pres­i­dent, law school dean apol­o­gize to Judge Kyle Dun­can for ‘dis­rup­tion’ to his speech (Gre­ta Reich, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Tessier-Lav­i­gne and Mar­tinez apol­o­gized for this inci­dent, writ­ing, ‘Staff mem­bers who should have enforced uni­ver­si­ty poli­cies failed to do so, and instead inter­vened in inap­pro­pri­ate ways that are not aligned with the university’s com­mit­ment to free speech.’ The let­ter ends with a promise to pre­vent sim­i­lar inci­dents from hap­pen­ing in the future.”
    • Stu­dent Activists Tar­get Stan­ford Law School Dean in Revolt Over Her Apol­o­gy (Aaron Sibar­i­um, Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con): “[The protest against the Dean] was even larg­er than the one that dis­rupt­ed Duncan’s talk, and came on the heels of state­ments from at least three stu­dent groups rebuk­ing Martinez’s apol­o­gy. The Stan­ford Nation­al Lawyers Guild said Sat­ur­day that Mar­tinez had thrown ‘capa­ble and com­pas­sion­ate admin­is­tra­tors’ under the bus. The law school’s Immi­gra­tion & Human Rights Law Asso­ci­a­tion issued a sim­i­lar dec­la­ra­tion on Sun­day, writ­ing to its mail­ing list that Stanford’s apol­o­gy to Dun­can ‘has only made this sit­u­a­tion worse.’ And Stan­ford Law School’s chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety expressed out­rage that Mar­tinez and Tessier-Lav­i­gne had framed Dun­can ‘as a vic­tim, when in fact he him­self had made civ­il dia­logue impos­si­ble.’ ”
    • Hat­ing Every­one Every­where All At Once At Stan­ford (Ken White, Sub­stack): “Stu­dents think that they should be able to dic­tate which speak­ers their peers invite, who can speak, what they can say, and who can lis­ten. They’re not sat­is­fied with the most free-speech-excep­tion­al­ist sys­tem in the world that lets them respond to speech by assem­bling, protest­ing, and revil­ing peo­ple of author­i­ty like Judge Dun­can. They demand the right not just to speak, but to con­trol the speech of oth­ers. That’s straight-up thug­gish, an aspi­ra­tion born of a fas­cist soul. These are law stu­dents. They are train­ing to express them­selves for a liv­ing. If their view is ‘we can’t respond to awful speech, we can only stop it from hap­pen­ing,’ then they’re going to be ter­ri­ble lawyers.”
    • EXCLUSIVE: US Judge Kyle Dun­can Inter­view (Rod Dreher, Sub­stack): “The attack was inti­mate­ly per­son­al and, frankly, dis­gust­ing. If I talked to a dog the way those stu­dents talked to me, I’d feel ashamed. (Actu­al­ly, there was a dog there, with paint on its fur in what is evi­dent­ly one ver­sion of a trans­gen­der flag. But I don’t blame the dog).”
  2. Black, Evan­gel­i­cal and Torn (Caleb Gayle, New York Times): “While start­ing out in the S.B.C. as a Black pas­tor may appear to be a fric­tion­less choice, for some­one like McKissic, as his expe­ri­ence sug­gests, con­tin­u­ing to remain with­in the fold as a Black pas­tor can amount to find­ing enough tech­ni­cal­i­ties to stay.”
    • I have unlocked the pay­wall on this arti­cle.
  3. AI-relat­ed
    • Can A.I. Treat Men­tal Ill­ness? (Dhruv Khullar): “I signed up for Woe­bot, and dis­cov­ered that using the app could feel cen­ter­ing…  Once, I told Woe­bot that I was feel­ing anx­ious about work. ‘Anx­i­ety can be a real mon­ster to han­dle,’ it wrote back. ‘I’m sor­ry that you’re deal­ing with it.’ Woe­bot gen­tly us inquired whether I want­ed to work  through my prob­lem togeth­er, then asked, ‘Do you think this anx­i­ety might be serv­ing you in some way?’ It point­ed out that stress has its ben­e­fits: it could moti­vate the some­one to work hard­er.… I knew that I was talk­ing to a com­put­er, but in a way I didn’t mind. The app became a vehi­cle for me to artic­u­late and exam­ine my own thoughts. I was talk­ing to myself.”
      • I high­ly rec­om­mend this arti­cle. It touch­es on men­tal health and sui­cide, dif­fer­ent styles of ther­a­py, and online chat­bots as ther­a­pists (Psy­chG­PT). Fun­ni­ly enough, the ini­tial cre­ator doesn’t even agree with A.I. as a mode of ther­a­py. The arti­cle also has some play­ful Gen X humor!
    • This Changes Every­thing (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “…‘as A.I. con­tin­ues to blow past us in bench­mark after bench­mark of high­er cog­ni­tion, we quell our anx­i­ety by insist­ing that what dis­tin­guish­es true con­scious­ness is emo­tions, per­cep­tion, the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence and feel: the qual­i­ties, in oth­er words, that we share with ani­mals.’ This is an inver­sion of cen­turies of thought, O’Gieblyn notes, in which human­i­ty jus­ti­fied its own dom­i­nance by empha­siz­ing our cog­ni­tive unique­ness. We may soon find our­selves tak­ing meta­phys­i­cal shel­ter in the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of con­scious­ness: the qual­i­ties we share with ani­mals but not, so far, with A.I.”
    • Ope­nAI co-founder on company’s past approach to open­ly shar­ing research: ‘We were wrong’ (James Vin­cent, The Verge): “When asked why Ope­nAI changed its approach to shar­ing its research, Sutskev­er replied sim­ply, ‘We were wrong. Flat out, we were wrong. If you believe, as we do, that at some point, AI — AGI — is going to be extreme­ly, unbe­liev­ably potent, then it just does not make sense to open-source. It is a bad idea… I ful­ly expect that in a few years it’s going to be com­plete­ly obvi­ous to every­one that open-sourc­ing AI is just not wise.’ ”
  4. Review: The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “He fin­ished his under­grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion at Yale in three years, then got a job with the pres­ti­gious (and well-remu­ner­a­tive) finan­cial firm Bain Cap­i­tal. But in his ear­ly 20s, Lau­dor was beset by hal­lu­ci­na­tions and para­noia, expe­ri­enc­ing some­times-vio­lent delu­sions that fright­ened his devot­ed par­ents. He was diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia and spent eight months in a psy­chi­atric facil­i­ty. Unde­terred, he emerged to attend Yale Law School, where he became a favorite of the dean and cham­pi­oned by the fac­ul­ty. He was pro­filed in a glow­ing New York Times piece that rep­re­sent­ed his resilience as a sym­bol for the men­tal­ly ill every­where.… Then he hacked his preg­nant girl­friend to death with a kitchen knife.”
    • This book review is engross­ing and full of sub­stance.
  5. Q&A: Stu­art Schmill on MIT’s deci­sion to rein­state the SAT/ACT require­ment (Kathy Wren, MIT News): “It turns out the short­est path for many stu­dents to demon­strate suf­fi­cient prepa­ra­tion — par­tic­u­lar­ly for stu­dents with less access to edu­ca­tion­al cap­i­tal — is through the SAT/ACT, because most stu­dents can study for these exams using free tools at Khan Acad­e­my, but they (usu­al­ly) can’t force their high school to offer advanced cal­cu­lus cours­es, for exam­ple. So, the SAT/ACT can actu­al­ly open the door to MIT for these stu­dents, too.”
  6. Of Course You Know What “Woke” Means (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “As I have said many times, I don’t like using the term ‘woke’ myself, not with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion or quo­ta­tion marks. It’s too much of a cul­ture war pin­ball and now deemed too pejo­ra­tive to be use­ful. I much, much pre­fer the term ‘social jus­tice pol­i­tics’ to refer to the school of pol­i­tics that is typ­i­cal­ly referred to as woke, out of a desire to be neu­tral in ter­mi­nol­o­gy. How­ev­er: there is such a school of pol­i­tics, it’s absurd that so many peo­ple pre­tend not to know what woke means, and the prob­lem could be eas­i­ly solved if peo­ple who sup­port woke pol­i­tics would adopt a name for oth­ers to use.”
  7. Evan­gel­i­cals Are the Most Beloved US Faith Group Among Evan­gel­i­cals (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In a Pew Research Cen­ter report released Wednes­day, 27 per­cent of Amer­i­cans expressed an unfa­vor­able view of evan­gel­i­cals, com­pared to 10 per­cent who have a neg­a­tive view of main­line Protes­tants or 18 per­cent who have a neg­a­tive view of Catholics. About as many have a favor­able approach to evangelicals—28 percent—but that’s most­ly due to pos­i­tive sen­ti­ment from Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals them­selves, about a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion.… (The worst rat­ings, though, went to Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, Sci­en­tol­ogy, and Satanism.)”
    • Demog­ra­ph­er Lyman Stone respond­ed to the sur­vey results on Twit­ter with “The group most hat­ed in Amer­i­ca by peo­ple who aren’t mem­bers of it is.… evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. More than Jews, athe­ists, or Mor­mons, we are hat­ed by our neigh­bors. We have legit­i­mate grounds to believe we are expe­ri­enc­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion. and nobody has more neg­a­tive and hos­tile atti­tudes towards their out­grap [sic] than athe­ists. the only peo­ple athe­ists don’t hate are Jews, and even then they’re the most luke­warm on Jews of any group. athe­ists: con­tin­u­ing a sto­ried tra­di­tion of being angry all the time at every­one”
    • His Twit­ter account is cur­rent­ly set to pri­vate because of all the blow­back he got, but he says will take it pub­lic again and this thread will be well worth read­ing — his crit­ics take some shots at him and he shoots back very effec­tive­ly.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have ‘Hand­maid’ real­i­ty: Deeply reli­gious mar­riages have more spousal equal­i­ty (Nao­mi Schae­fer Riley & Hal Boyd, New York Post): “Reli­gious, home-wor­ship­ping cou­ples also report greater rela­tion­ship qual­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty, and they are three times more like­ly than less-reli­gious peers to report a sex­u­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ship. The women don’t appear to be repressed; in fact, they’re gen­er­al­ly more like­ly to say they’re hap­py and that their life has mean­ing and pur­pose.” And yet again research con­firms Bib­li­cal pre­cepts. Allow me to take his oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer a friend­ly pas­toral reminder to mar­ry anoth­er Chris­t­ian, should you mar­ry. From vol­ume 272.

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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.

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