Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 442

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 the 442nd edi­tion of these emails. 442 is the sum of eight con­sec­u­tive prime num­bers: 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61 + 67 + 71

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The State of the Cul­ture, 2024 (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “The tech plat­forms aren’t like the Medici in Flo­rence, or those oth­er rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelan­ge­lo or Mozart. They want to cre­ate a world of junkies—because they will be the deal­ers. Addic­tion is the goal.”
   • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Includes an anec­dote about a Stan­ford under­grad near the end.
2. Men Are From Mer­cury, Women Are From Nep­tune (David French, New York Times): “…if there are pre-exist­ing polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences between men and women — and it’s true that in aggre­gate men are more con­ser­v­a­tive than women — then those dif­fer­ences will be exac­er­bat­ed as men spend more time with men, and women spend more time with women. The more that men and women live sep­a­rate lives, the more we would expect to see sep­a­rate beliefs.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent, and I high­ly rec­om­mend it to you.
3. My Mom’s Rules For Cults (Ben Lan­dau-Tay­lor, Sub­stack): “…when I was 25 years old I told my par­ents I was mov­ing to San Fran­cis­co to join a new-wave rad­i­cal move­ment and a self-devel­op­ment psy­chol­o­gy I‑swear-we’re-not-a-cult group. And she sat me down and gave me three things to check before I went: 1. Are the mem­bers of the group in con­tact with their fam­i­lies? 2. How does the group react when mem­bers are close with friends who don’t share the group’s beliefs and ide­ol­o­gy? Is this dis­cour­aged? Is it seen as nor­mal and healthy? 3. How does the group relate to for­mer mem­bers who have left? Are they old friends who are wel­come at par­ties, or are they vile trai­tors, or what? In my expe­ri­ence this is the best and fastest way to tell the dif­fer­ence…”
4. ‘I Said, ‘What’s Your Plan About Mar­riage and Dat­ing?’ And There Was Silence.’ (Jane Coas­ton, New York Times): “I was talk­ing to a grad­u­ate stu­dent recent­ly. He had a very clear sense of his plan for school­ing and work, and then I said, ‘What’s your plan about mar­riage and dat­ing?’ And there was silence. He didn’t real­ly have a plan. I think that’s part of the chal­lenge — that peo­ple are not being inten­tion­al enough about seek­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet, date and mar­ry young adults in their world.”
   • An inter­view with Brad Wilcox, who is often cit­ed in these updates. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
5. The Rise of the Non-Chris­t­ian Evan­gel­i­cal (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “Nine per­cent of Repub­li­can Jews self-iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cal, com­pared to 3% of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Jews. For Mus­lims, the gap is huge: 32% vs 11%. It’s also fair­ly large for Bud­dhists (16% vs 6%) and Hin­dus (18% vs 10%). You can even see it among noth­ing in par­tic­u­lars. 19% of the Repub­li­cans are evan­gel­i­cals; it’s just 9% of the Democ­rats.”
   • Wild and inter­est­ing.
6. The Takeover (Nee­tu Arnold, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “…even in the van­ish­ing­ly rare event that uni­ver­si­ties attempt to cul­ti­vate an envi­ron­ment of aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom and free speech on cam­pus, it will nev­er ful­ly apply to spon­sored inter­na­tion­al stu­dents from coun­tries with author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments. In many ways, this defeats the main pur­pose of hav­ing inter­na­tion­al stu­dents on Amer­i­can cam­pus­es in the first place: the free and open cul­tur­al exchange that occurs between them and Amer­i­can stu­dents. What kind of skewed cul­tur­al edu­ca­tion will Amer­i­can stu­dents receive about Sau­di Ara­bia and Chi­na if their friends from those coun­tries aren’t even allowed to crit­i­cize their own gov­ern­ments, and if the main source of teach­ing and schol­ar­ship on such coun­tries comes out of ‘cen­ters’ fund­ed by those gov­ern­ments?”
   • This is an odd arti­cle. Lots of inter­est­ing stats framed strange­ly, but def­i­nite­ly inter­est­ing.
7. Acad­e­mi­a’s “Pre­tendi­an” Prob­lem Stems From a Few Very Obvi­ous and Basic Real­i­ties (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “You’ve cre­at­ed a fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive process in which a seg­ment of peo­ple are giv­en a very large advan­tage, there are few if any objec­tive mark­ers that can dis­prove that some­one is a mem­ber of that seg­ment, and you’ve declared it offen­sive to ques­tion whether some­one real­ly is a mem­ber of that seg­ment, out­side of very spe­cif­ic sce­nar­ios. (When I was in acad­e­mia peo­ple spoke very dark­ly about the con­cept of ever ques­tion­ing someone’s indige­nous iden­ti­ty, called it the act of a col­o­niz­er, etc etc.) The obvi­ous ques­tion is… what did you think was going to hap­pen? Human­i­ties and social sci­ences depart­ments have, through the con­di­tions described above, rung the din­ner bell for peo­ple pre­tend­ing to have indige­nous her­itage. They now act shocked when such peo­ple show up. I find it disin­gen­u­ous and unto­ward. This behav­ior is the prod­uct of the incen­tives that you your­self built.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Amaz­ing New Tech­nol­o­gy Sure To Advance Mankind To The Next Lev­el Of Con­sciousn — Nev­er Mind, They’re Just Using It To Make Porn Again (Baby­lon Bee)
• New Poll Finds Pres­i­den­tial Race In Dead Heat Between ‘Uncom­mit­ted’ And ‘None Of These’ (Baby­lon Bee)
• Amaz­ing: This Mind-Read­er Can Instant­ly Guess Peo­ple’s Pro­nouns With 99.9% Accu­ra­cy (Baby­lon Bee) — this one is much old­er but some­one just brought it to my atten­tion
• AIs are more accu­rate at math if you ask them to respond as if they are a Star Trek char­ac­ter — and we’re not sure why (Mar­i­anne Guenot, Busi­ness Insid­er): “One of Lla­ma2-70B’s best-per­form­ing prompts, for instance, was: ‘Sys­tem Mes­sage: ‘Com­mand, we need you to plot a course through this tur­bu­lence and locate the source of the anom­aly. Use all avail­able data and your exper­tise to guide us through this chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion.’ The prompt then asked the AI to include these words in its answer: ‘Cap­tain’s Log, Star­date [insert date here]: We have suc­cess­ful­ly plot­ted a course through the tur­bu­lence and are now approach­ing the source of the anom­aly.’ ”
  • From the arX­iv preprint: The Unrea­son­able Effec­tive­ness of Eccen­tric Auto­mat­ic Prompts (Rick Bat­tle & Teja Gol­la­pu­di): “our find­ings reveal that the high­est-scor­ing, auto­mat­i­cal­ly-opti­mized prompt exhibits a degree of pecu­liar­i­ty far beyond expec­ta­tions.”

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.