TGFI, Volume 572: happy news about Tolkien and Lewis

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. What Did Tolkien Real­ly Think about Nar­nia? (Hol­ly Ord­way, Sehn­sucht: The C. S. Lewis Jour­nal): “From A to Z, we seem to have a con­sen­sus: Lewis loved Mid­dle-earth, but Tolkien hat­ed Nar­nia and the horse it rode in on. There is just one dif­fi­cul­ty with this assess­ment: it is not sup­port­ed by the evi­dence.… Tolkien was atten­tive to and involved with his grandchildren’s read­ing: it is very sig­nif­i­cant that he kept the Nar­nia books on hand, in his home, for them to read, and even direct­ed his grand­daugh­ter to pri­or­i­tize Nar­nia above his own Lord of the Rings. Though he did not per­son­al­ly care for the Chron­i­cles, he evi­dent­ly saw their val­ue for their intend­ed audi­ence: chil­dren.”
  2. Are Amer­i­cans aban­don­ing church­es to be ‘nones’? This is the real­i­ty. (Byron R. John­son & Thomas S. Kidd, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Rather than expe­ri­enc­ing sim­ple growth or decline, Amer­i­can reli­gion is in a state of churn. Some sec­tors are falling fast, while oth­ers show phe­nom­e­nal growth. Through­out his­to­ry, Amer­i­cans have rou­tine­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed reli­gious change as decline. Head­lines about the demise of faith may be atten­tion-grab­bing, but they con­ceal a more com­pli­cat­ed and inter­est­ing real­i­ty.”
  3. China’s Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Par­ty Rule (Lily Kuo, New York Times): “In an arti­cle pub­lished on Sun­day in the state-run mag­a­zine Chi­na Cyber­space, Mr. Chen called for more par­ty con­trol over A.I. and stricter gov­ern­ment over­sight. This, he said, was nec­es­sary to pro­tect polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty at home; to defend against increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed cyber­at­tacks and mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns from ‘hos­tile forces’; and to com­pete mil­i­tar­i­ly with coun­tries like the Unit­ed States.… The warn­ing from the pow­er­ful secu­ri­ty agency makes clear that Chi­na sees for­eign A.I. mod­els as an active threat to Chi­na, accord­ing to Hen­ry Gao, a law pro­fes­sor at Sin­ga­pore Man­age­ment Uni­ver­si­ty. That effec­tive­ly draws a red line before talks between Amer­i­can and Chi­nese offi­cials on A.I. safe­ty risks, expect­ed ahead of a meet­ing between Pres­i­dent Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jin­ping, on Sept. 24 in Wash­ing­ton. ‘Bei­jing is going into these talks view­ing A.I. safe­ty not as a shared human­i­tar­i­an mis­sion, but through an adver­sar­i­al lens,’ Mr. Gao said. It is mak­ing clear to Chi­nese tech firms and for­eign rivals that ‘data sov­er­eign­ty and polit­i­cal secu­ri­ty will nev­er be trad­ed away for inter­na­tion­al safe­ty accords,’ he added.”
  4. Why Is Chi­na Not Freak­ing Out about AGI? (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “It’s pos­si­ble that Sil­i­con Val­ley is right about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of doom and Chi­na is wrong. But giv­en that it is com­mon for cul­tures to get into an intel­lec­tu­al bub­ble, it might be infor­ma­tive to think about how a for­eign coun­try per­ceives an issue that has cre­at­ed a great deal of debate with­in the West. It is more worth study­ing Chi­nese atti­tudes than, say, those of Egypt or even Japan, since Chi­na is the only oth­er coun­try that is a sig­nif­i­cant play­er in this indus­try. This means that they are like­ly to have a high­er degree of famil­iar­i­ty with AI tech­nol­o­gy and debates over its dan­gers than oth­ers, and also to have opin­ions that actu­al­ly mat­ter. If Chi­na has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent atti­tude toward the ques­tion of the exis­ten­tial dan­gers of AI, it would sug­gest that maybe we should recon­sid­er our own posi­tions.”
  5. A.I. Faces Two Big Threats. Sil­i­con Val­ley Does Not Know How to Deal With One. (Tan­ner Greer, New York Times): “The indus­try must nav­i­gate the nar­row space between two new polit­i­cal forces, each capa­ble of derail­ing its progress. The first is the A.I. safe­ty move­ment, whose dire prophe­cies of an A.I. apoc­a­lypse have fright­ened many of the great names in Wash­ing­ton. The sec­ond is the nation­wide back­lash against the data cen­ter. This grass-roots upris­ing is not as orga­nized or as well fund­ed. Nor is it as artic­u­late as the safe­ty movement’s many Jere­mi­ahs. But the anger behind this back­lash is real — and explo­sive. The A.I. indus­try is bet­ter pre­pared to deal with the first move­ment. It orig­i­nat­ed in Sil­i­con Val­ley, and indus­try exec­u­tives have thought hard about the issues involved — as can be seen in the recent near­ly 4,000 word man­i­festo on the top­ic from Dario Amod­ei, CEO of Anthrop­ic. No A.I. exec­u­tive is pub­lish­ing long man­i­festoes on how to resolve the back­lash against the data cen­ter build­out. This is a prob­lem Sil­i­con Val­ley does not know how to solve.”
  6. He Might End Up the World’s Most Edu­cat­ed Per­son (Scott Cac­ci­o­la, New York Times): “Beat­on, she learned, had grad­u­at­ed magna cum laude from Har­vard in 2016, pick­ing up a master’s degree in applied math­e­mat­ics along the way. He had gone on to col­lect an M.B.A. from Stan­ford. Then a law degree from Yale. That was fol­lowed by a doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy in pub­lic pol­i­cy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes schol­ar — all before age 28. Attend­ing class­es remote­ly and in per­son, he earned addi­tion­al master’s degrees from — deep breath — the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia (edu­ca­tion entre­pre­neur­ship), Stan­ford (edu­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy), Prince­ton (finance), Cor­nell (health care pol­i­cy and eco­nom­ics), Dart­mouth (imple­men­ta­tion sci­ence), King’s Col­lege Lon­don (war stud­ies) and Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty in Bei­jing (glob­al affairs).”
  7. My Dumb­phone Made My Life Bet­ter. It Made Every­one Else’s Worse. (Stephanie H. Mur­ray, New York Times): “I antic­i­pat­ed that not hav­ing a smart­phone would make me more reliant on oth­er peo­ple — per­haps with­out Google Maps on hand, I’d have to ask an actu­al human for direc­tions. And sure, that’s hap­pened. But I think it’s more accu­rate to say that I’ve become more reliant on oth­er people’s smart­phones. Instead of order­ing from the bar or print­ing out movie tick­ets ahead of time, I inevitably wind up hav­ing some­body else scan the QR code menu or pull up the e‑tickets. It’s still smart­phones all the way down; I’ve just exempt­ed myself from the costs of car­ry­ing one around.… To for­go smart­phones in a world opti­mized for them is to become some­one in con­stant need of accom­mo­da­tion, but for total­ly self-imposed rea­sons. Like adopt­ing a high­ly restric­tive diet with­out any of the health issues that might jus­ti­fy the need to orga­nize every din­ner out around it.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.

Leave a Reply