TGFI, Volume 573: your brain is complicated

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. The human brain is two sep­a­rate organs, study finds (Krista Con­ger, Stan­ford News): “ ‘We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain aris­es from a total­ly dif­fer­ent prog­en­i­tor cell than the back of the brain,’ said Kyle Loh, PhD, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of devel­op­men­tal biol­o­gy.… This rev­e­la­tion explained decades of frus­tra­tion in the field — sci­en­tists had been try­ing to turn one type of prog­en­i­tor cell into anoth­er that it is fun­da­men­tal­ly inca­pable of becom­ing.”
  2. Stan­ford R&DE Uses AI to Race Swap Stu­dents for Adver­tis­ing (Gar­ret Mol­loy and Zayd Patel, Stan­ford Review): “Stan­ford Res­i­den­tial & Din­ing Enter­pris­es recent­ly used AI to change the races of the stu­dents it includ­ed in its adver­tise­ments. AI was also used to notice­ably slim down and alter stu­dents’ faces. On his jour­ney to cam­pus, Stan­ford stu­dent Bil­ly Ramirez ’27 was sent an image he recalled a Stan­ford pho­tog­ra­ph­er tak­ing. Upon clos­er exam­i­na­tion, he noticed that he had been removed from the pho­to and replaced by a AI-gen­er­at­ed black woman.”
    • This is so bizarre. If RD&E wants a spe­cif­ic racial or male/female break­down in a pho­to at Stan­ford it is not hard to have hap­pen organ­i­cal­ly. Look around the cam­pus! The demo­graph­ic per­mu­ta­tions of friend groups are wild­ly var­ied, so just take more pic­tures.
  3. Why I’m Not a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist (J. D. Greear, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Since Rev­e­la­tion tells me that the weaponiza­tion of gov­ern­ment pow­er against believ­ers isn’t only a pos­si­bil­i­ty but a prob­a­bil­i­ty, I don’t want to hand the Beast author­i­ty over my con­science or put him in a posi­tion to arbi­trate our church’s beliefs. Instead, I’m con­vinced that the best way to lim­it the dam­age evil rulers can do to faith and con­science is to deny them pow­er over faith and con­science in the first place. Fur­ther­more, quite frankly, our gospel doesn’t need the pow­er of human gov­ern­ments. Its pow­er is suf­fi­cient on its own.”
  4. The Oth­er Vic­tims of China’s Church Crack­down (Vivian Wang, New York Times): “Cherie had to do every­thing. Her hus­band, a pas­tor at one of China’s biggest under­ground church­es, was seized last Octo­ber by offi­cers who roused him from bed at 2 a.m. After­ward, Cherie, fear­ing arrest her­self, had fled with their son to Thai­land. Since then, she had been in charge of not just cook­ing, but also rent­ing a home, sort­ing out visas, find­ing schools and earn­ing an income. She’d had to fig­ure out where she could find authen­tic Chi­nese beef noo­dles, where to buy Chi­nese pic­ture books. Hav­ing just learned to dri­ve in Bei­jing, she now had to dri­ve on the oth­er side of the road.… And she prayed, con­stant­ly. There was an irony to her sit­u­a­tion: Now, when the bur­den of being a pastor’s wife was heav­ier than ever, she was final­ly doing what Yingjia had always advised her to do, just giv­ing up con­trol and trust­ing in God.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  5. What I Found Out About Organ Dona­tion Shocked Me (Greg Segal, New York Times): “Antho­ny Thomas Hoover II was 33 when he arrived at a hos­pi­tal in Ken­tucky, unre­spon­sive after a drug over­dose. Doc­tors told his fam­i­ly he was brain-dead, and the fam­i­ly agreed to remove him from life sup­port. A pro­cure­ment orga­ni­za­tion was called in to col­lect his organs. While being eval­u­at­ed for dona­tion, Mr. Hoover opened his eyes and thrashed on the bed. The case should have been stopped. Instead, Mr. Hoover was sedat­ed and giv­en a par­a­lyt­ic drug. Hours lat­er, he awoke again and moved his toes on com­mand; his fam­i­ly was told he was mere­ly exhibit­ing reflex­es. In the oper­at­ing room, Mr. Hoover pulled his knees to his chest and shook his head ‘no.’ Tears rolled down his face. The sur­geon refused to pro­ceed. Whis­tle-blow­ers say pro­cure­ment exec­u­tives called their staff mem­ber on-site at the hos­pi­tal and demand­ed she find anoth­er sur­geon to take the organs. No sur­geon would. Mr. Hoover sur­vived, though he still asks his old­er sis­ter, ‘Why did they try to kill me?’ ”
  6. AI-relat­ed
    • What AI Is Teach­ing My Youth Group Girls (Jensen Holmes, The Gospel Coali­tion): “My small group of stu­dents is con­stant­ly being told by their most trust­ed companion—AI—that they’re not that bad, that they’re [mis]understood, and that their reac­tions and respons­es are jus­ti­fied. This is keep­ing them from true repen­tance and expe­ri­enc­ing the full grace offered by Jesus (Rom. 6:23).”
    • Using AI, a pro­fes­sor wrote 200 papers this year. Researchers are alarmed. (Todd Wal­lack, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Some espe­cial­ly busy pro­fes­sors might pub­lish a dozen or more stud­ies a year. Then there’s the curi­ous case of Nicholas Pol­son. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go sta­tis­ti­cian has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers and as many as 14 books released this year, unleash­ing spec­u­la­tion on the inter­net about whether he used arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to inflate his pro­duc­tion with­out dis­clos­ing the assis­tance.”
    • A.I. Has Made Me a Bet­ter Doc­tor. It’s Made Med Stu­dents Worse. (Rachael Bedard, New York Times): “I prac­tice pri­ma­ry care, where every mal­a­dy is my busi­ness. Almost every month, I’m con­front­ed with a com­plaint or syn­drome that I don’t rec­og­nize. I’m con­fi­dent in my mas­tery over what doc­tors do — his­to­ry-tak­ing, rea­son­ing, com­mu­ni­cat­ing. I’m less con­fi­dent about my con­tin­ued mas­tery of an ever-evolv­ing uni­verse of facts. Now, the chat­bot in my pock­et reas­sures me that I will always know enough, or have access to the cloud-based intel­li­gence that gen­er­al­ly does.… For the res­i­dents I super­vise, how­ev­er, the app’s speed and antic­i­pa­to­ry help­ful­ness are a hin­drance as much as an enhance­ment. When I skim a chatbot’s response to a ques­tion about back pain, I’m intu­itive­ly test­ing its sug­ges­tions against my hard-won men­tal mod­el for how to approach back pain. Could I have devel­oped that if I’d had a robot lead­ing my think­ing all along?”
  7. 30 Life Cheat Codes I Wish I Knew At 25 (Daniel Pink, YouTube): six­teen min­utes.
    • There’s a lot of good wis­dom in this video. The pre­sen­ter is a NYT best­selling author. Don’t like videos? The “cheat codes” are also avail­able in writ­ten form at https://www.danpink.com/life-cheat-codes/ (although you need to sign up for his email list to get them).

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Hump­back Whale Spot­ted 60 Miles From Ocean (Bob Cronin, News­er): “North­ern Cal­i­for­nia received an unex­pect­ed vis­i­tor in its inland waters: a hump­back whale spot­ted rough­ly 60 miles from the Pacif­ic. The ani­mal was first seen Tues­day mov­ing through San Fran­cis­co Bay, then turned up Wednes­day in the Sacra­men­to Riv­er near the Rio Vista Bridge, wit­ness­es told local media. One fish­er­man said he ini­tial­ly mis­took the mas­sive shape for a sub­ma­rine and esti­mat­ed it was about the length of at least half a school bus, ABC News reports.”

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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