Tag: artificial intelligence

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 264

sub­stan­tive pieces this week, plus reli­gious argu­ments for and against both Biden and Trump

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.

As always, just skim and open the links that seem inter­est­ing to you in new tabs.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Chal­lenge of Marx­ism (Yoram Hazony, Quil­lette): “Not very long ago, most of us liv­ing in free soci­eties knew that Marx­ism was not com­pat­i­ble with democ­ra­cy…. Indeed, the entire pur­pose of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment, with its plu­ral­i­ty of legit­i­mate par­ties, is to avoid the vio­lent recon­sti­tu­tion of soci­ety that Marx­ist polit­i­cal the­o­ry regards as the only rea­son­able aim of pol­i­tics.”
  2. The par­ti­cle col­lec­tion that fan­cied itself a physi­cist (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Democritus’s point is that if the atom­ist says both that atoms are all that exist and that col­or, sweet­ness, etc. and the oth­er qual­i­ties of con­scious expe­ri­ence are not to be found in the atoms, then we have a para­dox.” Fes­er, as I’ve men­tioned before, is one of my favorite philoso­phers.
  3. Anti-racist Argu­ments Are Tear­ing Peo­ple Apart (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “I made a series of rapid assump­tions about what I was watch­ing. I sur­mised that Broshi was a col­lege-edu­cat­ed, upper-mid­dle-class pro­gres­sive who sits on some sort of edu­ca­tion coun­cil in the pub­lic-school sys­tem and owns copies of White Fragili­ty and How to Be an Antiracist. I sur­mised that she was call­ing some­one out. And I sur­mised that her white, male tar­get was off­screen rolling his eyes. All of which turned out to be cor­rect.” This is amaz­ing.
    • Relat­ed: Why we can­not ignore Insti­tu­tion­al Racism (George Yancey, Patheos): “Pre­tend that we are going to have a mile race a year from now. I tell a third of the class about the race and hire a train­er for them. For anoth­er third of the class I tell them about the race six months lat­er but do not hire them a train­er. But I do advise them that they may want to work on their own to get ready for the race. The last third of the class I call them the morn­ing of the race and tell them that it is time to run. Assum­ing that the class is ran­dom­ly divid­ed into thirds, we know what will hap­pen in the race do we not?”
    • Relat­ed: Black and White evan­gel­i­cals once talked about ‘racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.’ Then Trump came along. (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…despite shared Chris­t­ian beliefs and com­mit­ment to reli­gious obser­vance, White evan­gel­i­cals are among the most strong­ly Repub­li­can con­stituen­cies, while Black Protes­tants tend to vote Demo­c­ra­t­ic. And that divide appears to have grown hard­er to bridge since Trump took office.”
    • Col­leges aren’t report­ing anti-Semi­tism as a crime (Aiden Pink, For­ward): “A For­ward analy­sis com­par­ing news reports of cam­pus anti­semitism between 2016 and 2018 to the fil­ings for those years found that few­er than half of the inci­dents that could have been report­ed as hate crimes actu­al­ly were. Out of a total of 158 inci­dents at 64 schools, 93 — includ­ing anti­se­mit­ic van­dal­ism at brand-name schools known for vibrant Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties like Har­vard, Prince­ton, MIT, UCLA and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land — were left out of the fed­er­al fil­ings.” Stan­ford comes off look­ing pret­ty good in this arti­cle. 
  4. The Amer­i­can Mis­un­der­stand­ing of Nat­ur­al Rights (Cameron Hilditch, Nation­al Review): “Our inher­i­tance of human rights was built to reflect the fact that we are all liv­ing images of a par­tic­u­lar cru­ci­fied crim­i­nal from Galilee, who pro­claimed that we are each and all more than what Cae­sar would make of us. If we care to enjoy the rights bequeathed to us by this tra­di­tion through­out the com­ing years, decades, and cen­turies, then we can no longer avoid pub­licly dis­cussing the inex­tri­ca­ble nature of reli­gious and polit­i­cal ideas.” 
    • Relat­ed: Is Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian Jurispru­dence a Thing? (Steven D. Smith, Law & Lib­er­ty): “Tak­en togeth­er, these assump­tions gen­er­ate an over­all atti­tude toward the project of law that resists oppos­ing extremes: on the one hand, an exces­sive or decon­struc­tive cynicism—one that would reduce the law to sim­ply a man­i­fes­ta­tion of pow­er based on class, race, or gender—and on the oth­er hand a dan­ger­ous utopi­anism that would use law to achieve per­fect jus­tice but end up destroy­ing human free­dom.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego. 
    • Relat­ed. Ish. The end of sec­u­lar­ism is nigh (Tom Hol­land, UnHerd): “That there exist­ed things called ‘reli­gions’ — ‘Hin­duism’, ‘Islam’, ‘Judaism’ ­— and that these func­tioned in a dimen­sion dis­tinct from entire spheres of human activ­i­ty — spheres called ‘sec­u­lar’ in Eng­lish — was not a con­vic­tion native to any­where except for West­ern Europe.”
  5. Chi­na’s Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance State Goes Glob­al (Ross Ander­sen, The Atlantic): “In the ear­ly aughts, the Chi­nese tele­com titan ZTE sold Ethiopia a wire­less net­work with built-in back­door access for the gov­ern­ment. In a lat­er crack­down, dis­si­dents were round­ed up for bru­tal inter­ro­ga­tions, dur­ing which they were played audio from recent phone calls they’d made. Today, Kenya, Ugan­da, and Mau­ri­tius are out­fit­ting major cities with Chi­nese-made sur­veil­lance net­works.” I think hor­ri­fy­ing might be the best word for this arti­cle. 
  6. On pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics and Chris­tian­i­ty:
    • From the right: Let­ter to an Anti-Trump Chris­t­ian Friend (Wayne Gru­dem, Town­Hall): “In every col­umn that I’ve pub­lished in sup­port of Trump, I have explic­it­ly reg­is­tered my dis­ap­proval of his char­ac­ter flaws and pre­vi­ous immoral behav­ior. I sup­port him because of the poli­cies he has enact­ed and will enact, and in spite of his char­ac­ter flaws (which I don’t think rise to a lev­el that would dis­qual­i­fy him from being pres­i­dent; more on this below).” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Phoenix Sem­i­nary.
    •  From the left: The Joe Biden that I know is a man of faith (Chris Coons, Fox News): “For Democ­rats like Joe and me, tak­ing care of the plan­et isn’t just about ris­ing sea lev­els and extreme weath­er, it’s also about pro­tect­ing and hon­or­ing God’s cre­ation. For Democ­rats like Joe and me, fight­ing for civ­il rights and equal­i­ty isn’t just about polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, it’s about lov­ing our neigh­bor and rec­og­niz­ing that all of us are cre­at­ed equal in the eyes of God.” The author is a US Sen­a­tor.
    • A crit­i­cism of the right: Why Evan­gel­i­cals Sup­port Trump—and Why They Shouldn’t (George Yancey, The Bul­wark): “Many evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians see Trump as some­one who will save them from Chris­tianopho­bia. And while I under­stand and respect the nature of these Chris­tians’ fears—in fact, I share them—I believe that Trump is not only not a solu­tion to these issues but in the long run he will make things worse.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor.
    • A crit­i­cism of the left: Devout Catholics and Sec­u­lar Pro­gres­sives (Robert George, First Things): this one is dif­fi­cult to excerpt. Very well done. The author is a pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton. 

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 God­speed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a stu­dent brought this 30 minute video to my atten­tion and said it made her think about how she should be liv­ing in her dorm (sad­ly irrel­e­vant for that pur­pose at the moment). First shared in vol­ume 181.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 229

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Should Lebanon’s Chris­tians Join Protests? Viral Ser­mons Argue Yes and No. (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “”For the past month, Lebanese evan­gel­i­cals have debat­ed Scrip­ture, shar­ing ser­mons online. One viral effort urges believ­ers to stay away from wide­spread demon­stra­tions in sub­mis­sion to author­i­ty. Anoth­er licens­es par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pop­u­lar push for jus­tice.”
    • I like this arti­cle because it helps us look at a con­tentious Bib­li­cal issue in a set­ting where most of us don’t have a strong bias one way or the oth­er. Decide whose argu­ments you find most com­pelling, and then think about how they apply in your own set­ting.
  2. Most peo­ple are bad at argu­ing. These 2 tech­niques will make you bet­ter. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “1) If the argu­ment you find con­vinc­ing doesn’t res­onate with some­one else, find out what does…. 2) Lis­ten. Your ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents want to feel like they’ve been heard.”
  3. See­ing Like A Finite State Machine (Hen­ry Far­rell, Crooked Tim­ber): “In short, there is a very plau­si­ble set of mech­a­nisms under which machine learn­ing and relat­ed tech­niques may turn out to be a dis­as­ter for author­i­tar­i­an­ism, rein­forc­ing its weak­ness­es rather than its strengths, by increas­ing its ten­den­cy to bad deci­sion mak­ing, and reduc­ing fur­ther the pos­si­bil­i­ty of neg­a­tive feed­back that could help cor­rect against errors.” The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  4. LGBT Rights-Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Bill Pro­posed in Con­gress (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Con­gress­man Chris Stew­art doesn’t expect his bill to pass. But he is propos­ing the Fair­ness for All Act any­way. It’s a step of faith for Stew­art, a Repub­li­can who rep­re­sents Utah’s sec­ond dis­trict, and a mark­er on the bet that it’s pos­si­ble to find a com­pro­mise that pro­tects both reli­gious lib­er­ty and LGBT rights.”
  5. How the Trump Cabinet’s Bible Teacher Became a Shad­ow Diplo­mat (Mat­tathias Schwartz, New York Times): “Sev­en years ago, Drollinger pub­lished a short book called ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca: The Bib­li­cal Blue­print,’ which lays out his ambi­tion to ‘to reach all the cap­i­tals of the world for Christ.’ Drollinger, like many evan­gel­i­cals, refers to this God-giv­en glob­al remit as the Great Com­mis­sion, a phrase pop­u­lar­ized by the 19th-cen­tu­ry mis­sion­ary James Hud­son Tay­lor; Drollinger traces its man­date to Jesus’ charge, as relat­ed by Matthew, to ‘make dis­ci­ples of all the nations.’ A chart in ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’ dia­grams the ‘influ­ence path’ of a pub­lic ser­vant as a base­ball dia­mond, run­ning through local gov­ern­ment (first base), state gov­ern­ment (sec­ond base) and nation­al gov­ern­ment (third base) and cul­mi­nat­ing in ‘inter­na­tion­al influ­ence’ (home plate).” I shared anoth­er arti­cle about Drollinger back in vol­ume 147.
  6. China’s Sov­er­eign­ty Trip­wire in Hong Kong (David P. Gold­man, First Things): “Chi­na is a poly­glot, mul­ti­eth­nic empire, not a nation-state. Infringe­ment of its con­trol over any part of its ter­ri­to­ry threat­ens the whole. For­eign inter­ven­tion and region­al divi­sions is the stuff of China’s his­tor­i­cal night­mares. Any loss of sov­er­eign­ty, in China’s expe­ri­ence, begins a slip­pery slope toward impe­r­i­al crack­up. For­eign inva­sion is still a liv­ing mem­o­ry in Chi­na, and Bei­jing reads the worst into Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion over Hong Kong.”
  7. The Sal­va­tion Army’s Actions Speak Loud­er Than Its The­ol­o­gy (Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg): “Vol­un­teers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than non-vol­un­teers to be reli­gious; and the reli­gious are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than the non-reli­gious to vol­un­teer. As reli­gion declines, so does vol­un­teer­ing. If we put the reli­gious vol­un­teers out of busi­ness, a lot of peo­ple will sud­den­ly be unhelped. We need all the vol­un­teers we can get. And we can­not rea­son­ably expect to replace them with paid labor. Accord­ing to the Urban Insti­tute, the 8.7 bil­lion hours vol­un­teered in the U.S. in 2016 were worth about $187.4 bil­lion.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.

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 Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 210

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.

It’s good to be back after last week’s hia­tus.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. AI Trained on Old Sci­en­tif­ic Papers Makes Dis­cov­er­ies Humans Missed (Madeleine Gre­go­ry, Moth­er­board): “In a study pub­lished in Nature on July 3, researchers from the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry used an algo­rithm called Word2Vec sift through sci­en­tif­ic papers for con­nec­tions humans had missed. Their algo­rithm then spit out pre­dic­tions for pos­si­ble ther­mo­elec­tric mate­ri­als, which con­vert heat to ener­gy and are used in many heat­ing and cool­ing appli­ca­tions.”
  2. Can Chris­t­ian Com­pas­sion Influ­ence How We Treat Migrants? (Alan Cross, The Bul­wark): “Com­pas­sion is not inher­it­ed, either in indi­vid­u­als nor in nations. It must be cul­ti­vat­ed and that cul­ti­va­tion often hap­pens in tri­al when we are test­ed. Amer­i­ca is being test­ed right now. How will we respond to the migrants com­ing to us des­per­ate for help and refuge? How will we respond to the sight of Oscar and Vale­ria drown­ing and being found face down on the banks of Rio Grande in each other’s arms?”
    • Relat­ed: In the ‘bat­tle at the bor­der,’ evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers jos­tle for Trump-era media rel­e­van­cy (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “Unless you’ve been under a rock recent­ly, you know much of the coun­try is fix­at­ed on the mess at our bor­der. What’s not as vis­i­ble is how evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are fight­ing among them­selves over all of this.”
    • And yet: Repub­li­cans turn more neg­a­tive toward refugees as num­ber admit­ted to U.S. plum­mets (Han­nah Har­tig, Pew Research): “By more than two-to-one (68% to 25%), white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants say the U.S. does not have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to accept refugees. Oth­er reli­gious groups are more like­ly to say the U.S. does have this respon­si­bil­i­ty. And opin­ions among reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed adults are near­ly the reverse of those of white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants: 65% say the U.S. has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to accept refugees into the coun­try, while just 31% say it does not.”
  3. Man­ly wed­ding rings for tough guys who are dudes (Dan Brooks, The Out­line): “I don’t hunt, but I briefly con­sid­ered buy­ing a cam­ou­flage ring, part­ly to sig­nal my deep com­mit­ment to irony and part­ly to get bet­ter ser­vice at the auto parts store.” I real­ly enjoyed this essay, and I hope that many of you have need of wed­ding bands in the not-too-dis­tant future.
  4. Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians Face A Deep­en­ing Cri­sis (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “Cop­pock men­tioned to me the pow­er­ful exam­ple of St. Ambrose, the bish­op of Milan, who was will­ing to rebuke the Roman Emper­or Theo­do­sius for the latter’s role in mas­sacring civil­ians as pun­ish­ment for the mur­der of one of his gen­er­als. Ambrose refused to allow the Church to become a polit­i­cal prop, despite con­cerns that doing so might endan­ger him. Ambrose spoke truth to pow­er. (Theo­do­sius end­ed up seek­ing penance, and Ambrose went on to teach, con­vert, and bap­tize St. Augus­tine.) Prox­im­i­ty to pow­er is fine for Chris­tians, Cop­pock told me, but only so long as it does not cor­rupt their moral sense, only so long as they don’t allow their faith to become polit­i­cal­ly weaponized. Yet that is pre­cise­ly what’s hap­pen­ing today.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I wish that the Amer­i­can church was more vis­i­bly dis­mayed at some of Trump’s obvi­ous sins. I remind peo­ple of all polit­i­cal incli­na­tions that you can sup­port someone’s over­all agen­da and still rebuke them for acts of wicked­ness. In fact, being will­ing to do so makes your sup­port more mean­ing­ful. So vote for who­ev­er you want, and hold the lead­ers you sup­port to a high stan­dard.
  5. Taiwan’s Sta­tus is a Geopo­lit­i­cal Absur­di­ty (Chris Hor­ton, The Atlantic): “’Taiwan’s gov­ern­ment is demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elected—we have a pres­i­dent, we have a par­lia­ment,’ For­eign Min­is­ter Joseph Wu said plain­tive­ly at a brief­ing for for­eign media ear­li­er this year. At the time, his gov­ern­ment was try­ing to be includ­ed in the World Health Assem­bly. (It was ulti­mate­ly blocked by Chi­na.) ‘We issue visas, we issue pass­ports,’ he said, prac­ti­cal­ly plead­ing. ‘We have a mil­i­tary and a cur­ren­cy … Tai­wan exists by itself; Tai­wan is not a part of any oth­er coun­try.’”
  6. Robespierre’s Amer­i­ca (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The data con­firm what one hears and expe­ri­ences anec­do­tal­ly all the time: In the prover­bial land of the free, peo­ple live in mor­tal fear of a moral faux pas. Opin­ions that were con­sid­ered rea­son­able and nor­mal a few years ago are increas­ing­ly deliv­ered in whis­pers. Pro­fes­sors fear their stu­dents. Pub­lish­ers drop books at the slight­est whiff of social-media con­tro­ver­sy.”
  7. Gay Rites Are Civ­il Rites (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “‘Civ­il reli­gion’ is a sur­pris­ing place for social jus­tice to end up. Gay pride start­ed at Stonewall as a giant ****-you to civ­il soci­ety. Home­less peo­ple, addicts, and sex work­ers told the police where they could shove their respectable val­ues. But there was anoth­er major world reli­gion that start­ed with beg­gars, lep­ers, and pros­ti­tutes, wasn’t there? One that told the Phar­isees where to shove their respectable val­ues.”

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 a com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.” First shared in vol­ume 156.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 199

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

If you’ve been fol­low­ing the news, arti­cles about the Mueller report are con­spic­u­ous by their absence in this week’s email. Apolo­gies if you were hop­ing for some­thing on that, but I find it dif­fi­cult to over­state how unin­ter­est­ed I am in this news cycle.

Also, next week will be vol­ume 200. Should I do any­thing spe­cial? Sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Is Reli­gious Decline Inevitable in the Unit­ed States? (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The results are unam­bigu­ous: those with the least amount of edu­ca­tion are con­sis­tent­ly the most like­ly to iden­ti­fy as reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed. The far right bar in the graph, indi­cat­ing those with a grad­u­ate lev­el edu­ca­tion are almost always the group that is the most like­ly to be reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed.”
  2. The new reli­gion: why try­ing to be per­fect is doomed to fail (Oliv­er Burke­man, The Guardian): “It’s one thing to seek sal­va­tion in God, or to stop seek­ing sal­va­tion; but the attempt to engi­neer your own sal­va­tion is doomed to fail. We’re flawed and finite, so we lack the capac­i­ty to work, par­ent or romance our way to per­fec­tion. Try to do so and you’ll only end up strug­gling to exert ever more con­trol over your life – where­as deep rela­tion­ships, and oth­er mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences, require giv­ing up con­trol.”
  3. Now We’re Talk­ing: The Excep­tion­al Life of Paul Coates (Wil S. Hyl­ton, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “There weren’t white cats in hoods, burn­ing cross­es and beat­ing up on black peo­ple, but if you walked through town, the moment you got to the black side, the side­walks would dis­ap­pear, the streets would dis­ap­pear, and now you’re walk­ing in dirt. So the racism was subtle—but as your con­scious­ness expands, the sub­tle­ty melts away and the racism becomes more ran­cid to the eyes and nose.” This is a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ father.
  4. Mis­sion­ar­ies are sup­posed to suf­fer … So am I allowed to buy an air con­di­tion­er? (Amy Med­i­na, A Life Over­seas): “If God has called you to work among the upper-class in India, then you’ll need to live like them, in a lux­u­ry apart­ment. If God has called you to work among the coastal tribes of Tan­za­nia, then you’ll need to live like them, in a sim­ple cin­der-block house with a pit toi­let. Each life has its set of chal­lenges. Each life has its set of bless­ings.”
  5. Broke Mil­len­ni­als Are Flock­ing to Finan­cial Guru Dave Ram­sey. Is His Advice Any Good? (Kris­ten Bahler, Mon­ey): “[Young adults are] an audi­ence that mar­keters stake their entire bud­gets on, and he’s speak­ing to them in all the wrong ways. He quotes scrip­ture and Ronald Rea­gan. He calls young peo­ple ‘snowflakes.’ He has absolute­ly no chill, what­so­ev­er. But for a grow­ing swath of millennials—a gen­er­a­tion we’re told is too frag­ile, too god­less, too polit­i­cal­ly correct—his word is gospel.”
  6. Lis­ten­ing at the Great Awok­en­ing (Areo, Darel E. Paul): “…this spring the Great Awok­en­ing final­ly came to my home insti­tu­tion, Williams Col­lege. Admin­is­tra­tors and oth­er cam­pus lead­ers have encour­aged white mem­bers of the col­lege com­mu­ni­ty like myself to lis­ten. Over the past two months, I have striv­en to do exact­ly that…. Lis­ten­ing to these views from mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es helped me real­ize that what seems to be a local dis­course respond­ing to local issues is actu­al­ly a local man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inter­na­tion­al social, polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Williams Col­lege.
    • Relat­ed: The End of Empa­thy (Han­na Rosin, NPR): “…new research has scram­bled notions of how empa­thy works as a force in the world. For exam­ple, we often think of ter­ror­ists as shock­ing­ly blind to the suf­fer­ing of inno­cents. But Bre­i­thaupt and oth­er researchers think of them as clas­sic exam­ples of peo­ple afflict­ed with an ‘excess of empa­thy. They feel the suf­fer­ing of their peo­ple.’”
  7. The Gospel of AI: Evan­gel­i­cals Want Tech to Remain Good News (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[The doc­u­ment], com­posed by experts in busi­ness, pub­lic pol­i­cy, tech, ethics, and bib­li­cal the­ol­o­gy, con­sists of 12 arti­cles, each offer­ing bib­li­cal affir­ma­tions and denials about human nature and var­i­ous impli­ca­tions for the future of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The doc­u­ment empha­sizes God’s pow­er as the author of life and humans’ spe­cial role as image-bear­ers. It most­ly focus­es on con­cep­tu­al and the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works for using AI but also explic­it­ly decries the use of AI for sex­u­al plea­sure as well as ‘manip­u­la­tive and coer­cive’ data col­lec­tion.”
    • See the full doc­u­ment: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: An Evan­gel­i­cal State­ment of Prin­ci­ples: “In light of exis­ten­tial ques­tions posed anew by the emer­gent tech­nol­o­gy of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), we affirm that God has giv­en us wis­dom to approach these issues in light of Scrip­ture and the gospel mes­sage. Chris­tians must not fear the future or any tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment because we know that God is, above all, sov­er­eign over his­to­ry, and that noth­ing will ever sup­plant the image of God in which human beings are cre­at­ed. We rec­og­nize that AI will allow us to achieve unprece­dent­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties, while acknowl­edg­ing the poten­tial risks posed by AI if used with­out wis­dom and care.”

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 The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” First shared in vol­ume 150.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 131

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The West­ern Elite from a Chi­nese Per­spec­tive (Puzhong Yao, Amer­i­can Affairs): “Cer­tain beliefs are as ubiq­ui­tous among the peo­ple I went to school with as smog was in Shi­ji­azhuang. The doc­trines that shape the world­views and cul­tur­al assump­tions at elite West­ern insti­tu­tions like Cam­bridge, Stan­ford, and Gold­man Sachs have become almost reli­gious. Nev­er­the­less, I hope that the per­spec­tive of a can­did Chi­nese athe­ist can be of some instruc­tion to them.” This is quite fun­ny in places, espe­cial­ly his expe­ri­ences at the Stan­ford GSB.
  2. Uni­ver­si­ty evicts Chris­t­ian club over lead­er­ship faith require­ment (Caleb Parke, Fox News): “‘The [Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa] knows that what it is doing to BLinC is unfair, ille­gal, and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,’ the com­plaint pre­pared by the firm says, adding that, while BLinC only requires adher­ence to their beliefs for their lead­ers and not their mem­bers, uni­ver­si­ty pol­i­cy is that cam­pus orga­ni­za­tions can require mem­bers to believe a cer­tain way.’” Read the actu­al legal com­plaint — it’s straight fire. I was espe­cial­ly tick­led by para­graph 76.
  3. How Cul­ture Affects Depres­sion (Mar­i­an­na Pogosyan, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “How­ev­er, teach­ing peo­ple that this very com­plex social, cul­tur­al, and bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non is entire­ly bio­log­i­cal can back­fire. It encour­ages peo­ple to ignore envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, and instead, essen­tial­ize depres­sion as a char­ac­ter­is­tic of them­selves and their biol­o­gy.” An inter­view with a George­town psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor.
  4. The War­lock Hunt (Claire Berlin­s­ki, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Giv­en the events of recent weeks, we can be cer­tain of this: From now on, men with any instinct for self-preser­va­tion will cease to speak of any­thing per­son­al, any­thing sex­u­al, in our pres­ence. They will make no bawdy jokes when we are lis­ten­ing. They will adopt in our pres­ence great def­er­ence to our exquis­ite sen­si­tiv­i­ty and frailty. Many women seem pos­i­tive­ly joy­ful at this prospect. The Rev­o­lu­tion has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isn’t this the world we escaped?”
  5. Evan­gel­i­cals and Domes­tic Vio­lence: Are Chris­t­ian Men More Abu­sive? (Brad Wilcox, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “…church­go­ing evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant hus­bands were the least like­ly to be engaged in abu­sive behav­ior…. Although the empir­i­cal sto­ry of reli­gion and domes­tic vio­lence looks good for prac­tic­ing believ­ers, it’s much less rosy for oth­ers. My research sug­gests that the most vio­lent hus­bands in Amer­i­ca are nom­i­nal evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants who attend church infre­quent­ly or not at all.” Brings to mind Rev 3:15–16 — be hot or cold, not luke­warm. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  6. I read many arti­cles about the Alaba­ma elec­tion — these stood out.
    • Roy Moore and the Invis­i­ble Reli­gious Right  (Ben­jamin Wal­lace-Wells, The New York­er): “…what was most notable about the pas­tors on Moore’s list was their obscu­ri­ty. I found a list of the pas­tors of the thir­ty-six largest church­es in Alaba­ma, assem­bled this sum­mer by the Web site of the Birm­ing­ham News; no pas­tor on that list appeared on Moore’s. I called lead­ers with­in the deeply con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern Bap­tist Church—the largest denom­i­na­tion in Alaba­ma and, for decades, the core of the reli­gious right—and was told that not a sin­gle affil­i­at­ed South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor in the state was open­ly allied with Moore.”
    • Roy Moore Had Low­est White Evan­gel­i­cal Sup­port Of Any Alaba­ma Repub­li­can In The 21st Cen­tu­ry (Lyman Stone, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Exit polls from the Alaba­ma Sen­ate spe­cial elec­tion on Tues­day show that Roy Moore got 80 per­cent of the white evan­gel­i­cal vote, but nonethe­less went down to defeat. This is shock­ing, because white evan­gel­i­cals are a big share of Alabama’s pop­u­la­tion…. So if it’s a big vot­ing bloc and they’re 80 per­cent for a can­di­date, shouldn’t that can­di­date win?”
    • For a crit­i­cal take on the above claim: Is it pos­si­ble that white evan­gel­i­cals swung the Alaba­ma elec­tion against Roy Moore? (Scott Clement, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Moore’s sup­port among white evan­gel­i­cals is his­tor­i­cal­ly low for a Repub­li­can. At the same time, the drop-off in Moore’s sup­port among oth­er white groups from pre­vi­ous elec­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly non-evan­gel­i­cals, white women and whites with col­lege degrees) is far larg­er, indi­cat­ing that evan­gel­i­cals were far less like­ly than oth­er typ­i­cal Repub­li­can vot­ers to alter their par­ty sup­port with Moore as a can­di­date.”
    • And more gen­er­al­ly: Pro-life Vot­ers and Pro-Choice Politi­cians (Michael Wear, per­son­al blog): “The way some invoke con­science in pol­i­tics reflects an odd moral­i­ty that puts one’s con­science at risk for sup­port­ing a can­di­date who oppos­es Roe v. Wade, but ratio­nal­izes away moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for a can­di­date who inten­tion­al­ly seeks to dis­en­fran­chise African-Amer­i­cans or restrict the right of wor­ship for Mus­lims or wan­ton­ly breaks up fam­i­lies through depor­ta­tion or mass incar­cer­a­tion. Per­haps abor­tion as a polit­i­cal issue car­ries greater moral weight than these oth­er issues—an idea some pro-lif­ers seem a bit too eager to accept, I have to say—but is there no con­flu­ence of evil that can affect the vot­ing cal­cu­la­tion of the pro-life per­son who believes their con­science requires them to vote for who­ev­er the pro-life can­di­date hap­pens to be?” Wear, an evan­gel­i­cal, was an Oba­ma White House staffer.
    • Also more gen­er­al­ly: Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evan­gel­i­cal Repub­li­can (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “the events of the past few years — and the past few weeks — have shown us that the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment (or large parts of them, at least), have become what I once would have thought of as lib­er­al car­i­ca­tures. Assume you were a per­son of the left and an athe­ist, and you decid­ed to cre­ate a cou­ple of peo­ple in a lab­o­ra­to­ry to dis­cred­it the Repub­li­can Par­ty and white evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. You could hard­ly choose two more per­fect men than Don­ald Trump and Roy Moore.” (this one came rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  7. Is Alp­haZe­ro real­ly a sci­en­tif­ic break­through in AI? (Jose Cama­cho Col­la­dos, Medi­um):  “I am a researcher in the broad field of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI), spe­cial­ized in Nat­ur­al Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing. I am also a chess Inter­na­tion­al Mas­ter, cur­rent­ly the top play­er in South Korea although prac­ti­cal­ly inac­tive for the last few years due to my full-time research posi­tion…. How­ev­er, there are rea­son­able doubts about the valid­i­ty of the over­ar­ch­ing claims that arise from a care­ful read­ing of AlphaZero’s paper.”  I was recent­ly hyp­ing this to some­one and clear­ly did not know as much about it as I thought. Inter­est­ing push­back.
  8. And last but not least : Want to raise employ­ee morale? Treat every day as an exper­i­ment (Chris­tos Makridis, Medi­um): our very own Chris­tos con­tin­ues to put his work out into the pub­lic square. Go, Chris­tos!

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read: In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.