My CMS The View from a New City

Here is a quote from a book entitled Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple, which might give a hint as to how to handle the coming recession:

“At UCLA I quickly learned the knack of getting grades, a craven surrender to custom, since grades had little to do with learning. Still, that was during the depression, when people of little faith were clinging to institutions for survival, and so I went along, as timid and insecure as the rest of them.” page 12.

The Odyssey contains a great story about Ulysses and the Sirens. It is too long and complicated to tell here. You should read it. But it contains a deep truth about life.

I suspect we came to earth to get experiences we can’t get in heaven. But there are real risks in the getting. You and your crew could wind up shipwrecked and dead. There must also be a great benefit to justify taking such risks. The good, the bad and the ugly may all contain hidden value.

“5 If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea;

6 If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can’t you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb;

7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” Doctrine and Covenants 122

It is March 6, 2026. I woke up this morning and watched it snow with the happy knowledge that the snow can’t last long this time of year. Then I realized that I can’t last long this time of life. So I started thinking about what is worth doing with my remaining time on earth.

In our town there is a bill board with an advertisement from a group of plastic surgeons that says, “Life is short, buy the lips.” I consider this a classic case of non-sequitur. If life is short, why spend it trying to impress people who care about how fat your lips are?

Someone recommended that I write my memoirs. This is a valuable use of my time if someone is going to read them, which I see no evidence of now. And besides, the real reason I don’t write my memoirs is because there are too many villains. You can’t celebrate the heroes without exposing the circumstances created by the villains. Better to imitate God who “maketh the sun to shine on the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

But I will tell one experience from my life, the villains remaining anonymous. I sued a man to collect for his wife’s hospital bill since the law says spouses are liable for family expenses. The bill was for breast implants. The couple had separated but the wife who was not a party to the case was sitting in the gallery when the case was called in court. When the lawyer for the husband said to the judge that the bill was not a family expense for which he should be liable, she bolted to her feet and shouted, “That’s not true, he made me get them.” The judge told the parties to settle the case which we did.

Reading philosophy is like watching people beat a dead horse.

“I have seen the freest and best educated…in the happiest circumstances the world can afford; yet it seemed a cloud hung on their brow and they appeared serious and sad even in their pleasures [because they] never stop thinking of the good things they have not got.” Alexis de Tocqueville

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI7XknJJC5Q

This discussion ends up stating that AI can’t succeed as general intelligence util it is based on and trained with a model of the real world. The problem is that philosophy and science has been trying to mirror the real world without much success for thousands of years. I AI is trained on a model that is not the real world, how valuable are its pronouncements.

Some time ago, Stephen Hawking wrote a book called A Brief History of Time. Hawking concluded his book by saying something like this: We are on the verge of solving the last few issues in science before we complete the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Then we won’t need to speculate about a God to explain everything about the world that is.

Then science discovered dark matter and dark energy, about which, they confessed, they knew nothing and which comprised something like 95% of everything that is.

Still scientists felt confident in asserting that the whole universe began approximately 13.5 billion years ago in the big bang. Then they learned from their latest telescope, the James Web Telescope, that many things must have existed before 13.5 billion years ago. The big bang is not the answer.

In the 1980s a celebrity cosmologist named Carl Sagan asserted this proposition: Although we do not currently know how the brain works, we know that when we discover the answer, it will be electrical, chemical in nature. Perhaps the reason he could be so sure is because science only has the tools to investigate electrical, chemical phenomena, so no other “explanation” would be acceptable.

But now, even Sagan’s confident assurance turns out to be on shaky ground. See my last post about The Brain as Receiver. If you gave up looking for God because you thought science had all the answers, you too are on shaky ground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHVDucZ3RHQ

Nothing about the Super Bowl warrants the notion that its participants are superior in any meaningful way. Football rules are arbitrary, the officials fallible, the game produces no lasting effect and its outcome is capricious.

Here is a quote from Parley Pratt’s autobiography which quotes instruction given by Oliver Cowdery:

I therefore, warn you to cultivate great humility, for I know the pride of the human heart…With regard to superiority I must make a few remarks…God does not love you better or more than others…The soul of one man is a precious as the soul of another.

Looking through old year books I find I can’t help laughing at the hair styles.

I have been reading a collection of modern essays. The only unifying spirit of these essays is the view that the writer gets to dissect the subject with “insight.” In other words, the writer gets to judge the subject. The subject is usually a human being or human conduct. What gives the writer confidence in his/her judgments? The writer views the subject from above, from outside, from the benefit of hindsight, or scholarship or the prevailing consensus. It is assumed that modern wisdom and methods are superior to ancient ones.

The James Web Space Telescope has just discovered that there are galaxies older than the big bang. Those books based on the big bang theory are useless now. The modern is an unstable foundation upon which to build.