My CMS The View from a New City

“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.

At the store this morning, I saw a young father and his four children Christmas shopping. The children appeared to be from ten to one in age. They looked liked they were enjoying themselves. My heart went out to them.

This scene is so different from anything portrayed in modern media about what the good life is. I contend that this young father is more successful than any striving executive. I hope his wife is happy with the presents they bought her.

Today I read a description of Postmodernism: It is the belief that everything about human culture is a fiction created by humans. And it is true that much of culture is a game, created by human beings. Not only sports but business, politics, national identity, and even much that goes under the heading of religion.

My investigation of the facts of existence has convinced me that human life and the world we are allowed to live in were created by God for the experience and benefit of human beings and that God will reveal its significance and purpose to those who seek him with sincerity and faith.

The prophet Nephi truthfully described the world view that would prevail in the modern world more than two thousand years ago:

4 And they shall contend one with another; and their priests shall contend one with another, and they shall teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance.

5 And they deny the power of God, the Holy One of Israel; and they say unto the people: Hearken unto us, and hear ye our precept; for behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his power unto men;

6 Behold, hearken ye unto my precept; if they shall say there is a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord, believe it not; for this day he is not a God of miracles; he hath done his work.

2 Nephi 28

On this Thanksgiving Day my wife and I are thankful to be alive.

take a look at this:

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