TGFI, Volume 549: AI academia and Christian judges

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. AI and research papers (Arnold Kling, Sub­stack): “PubMed and Google Schol­ar are index­es of doc­u­ments. What we actu­al­ly want is an indexed, queryable map of _claims_ with their evi­dence and con­fi­dence lev­els. The paper is the prove­nance trail; the claim is the search­able unit. AI is already rea­son­ably good at extract­ing claims from papers; in 3–4 years it should be good enough to main­tain these data­bas­es reli­ably. A researcher ask­ing ‘what do we know about X’ should get a struc­tured con­fi­dence-weight­ed answer, not a list of PDFs to read.”
    • The bit I excerpt­ed is from Claude answer­ing a ques­tion from the author.
  2. How Reverse Game The­o­ry Could Solve The Hous­ing Short­age (Hen­nyGe Wich­ers, Noe­ma): “Tra­di­tion­al game the­o­ry assumes that the rules are fixed — the chess­board is set, the laws cod­i­fied — and asks how ratio­nal peo­ple will behave with­in them. It pre­dicts out­comes based on exist­ing incen­tives. Mech­a­nism design turns that ques­tion around: It asks, for exam­ple, what rules should we write to get a dif­fer­ent out­come — say, preser­va­tion and hous­ing?”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a read­er.
  3. What Does it Mean to Be a Chris­t­ian on the Bench? (Matthew J. Kac­s­maryk and James C. Ho, Jour­nal of Law and Civ­il Gov­er­nance at Texas A&M): “Many judges shy away from talk­ing open­ly about their faith— and even think such dis­cus­sions vio­late the judi­cial canons. That’s why I thought this dis­cus­sion was so valu­able. What’s your answer to the ques­tion: What does it mean to be a Chris­t­ian and a judge?”
    • A fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. Link is to a PDF.
  4. The Women Who Believe Women Should Lose the Right to Vote (Vivian Yee, New York Times): “On social media, the pas­tor has attract­ed a fol­low­ing by post­ing incen­di­ary com­men­tary: rail­ing against fem­i­nists, Catholics and gay peo­ple, describ­ing immi­gra­tion as ‘nation­al sui­cide,’ and label­ing Islam and Hin­duism ‘demon­ic.’ He also calls for eras­ing women’s suf­frage, which he lists as one rea­son ‘the world is falling apart.’ The 1920 pas­sage of the 19th Amend­ment, the land­mark leg­isla­tive achieve­ment of the move­ment to make women equal cit­i­zens, made it pos­si­ble for women across Amer­i­ca to vote. But for Mr. Par­tridge and a grow­ing num­ber of like-mind­ed Chris­tians, it drove Amer­i­ca into nation­al decline. Instead, they sup­port ‘house­hold vot­ing.’ One house­hold, one vote — the husband’s.”
  5. It’s Cool to Keep Calm (Rob K. Hen­der­son, Wall Street Jour­nal): “How you react dur­ing a con­flict doesn’t only change how oth­ers see _you_. Your reac­tion also changes how observers see the per­son with whom you’re argu­ing. Mak­ing some­one cry makes you look cold or insen­si­tive. So tears can dam­age the oth­er side’s rep­u­ta­tion. There’s a catch, though. The per­son who cries is also seen as less com­pe­tent, less pro­fes­sion­al and less desir­able as a friend or col­league. This cre­ates a trade-off. Cry­ing can hurt your opponent’s rep­u­ta­tion, but it hurts yours as well. Behav­ioral stoicism—maintaining a calm out­ward demeanor dur­ing a conflict—does the oppo­site. It pro­tects your own rep­u­ta­tion, but does lit­tle to dimin­ish the oth­er per­son.” — Remem­ber you have free access through Stan­ford.
  6. In a rare event, the moon got a mas­sive new crater (Lisa Gross­man, Sci­ence News): “The crater is 225 meters wide and formed in April or May 2024, Robin­son said. Accord­ing to pre­dic­tions based on oth­er lunar land­marks, a crater that big should form only once in 139 years. The dis­cov­ery can help high­light the risks impacts pose to future astro­nauts.”
  7. 9 things you (prob­a­bly) didn’t know were invent­ed at Stan­ford (Rebec­ca Bey­er, Stan­ford Report): “Long before the start-up era took hold, Stan­ford fac­ul­ty and stu­dents were dream­ing up inven­tions that trans­formed (and in some cas­es estab­lished) domains as far-rang­ing as genet­ic engi­neer­ing, nan­otech­nol­o­gy, organ trans­plan­ta­tion – even the inter­net itself.” — Heart trans­plants, the one-hand­ed bas­ket­ball shot, the com­put­er mouse, and recom­bi­nant DNA stood out to me.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • I Was Not Ready for the DMV (Greg War­ren, YouTube): eight and a half min­utes. Paula and I were so tick­led by this that we searched up one of his spe­cials and were equal­ly pleased.

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.

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