My CMS The View from a New City

My current understanding is that AI is not thinking and never can think. During training, AI is creating a very long list of possible responses from which it chooses when something appears in the prompt. The fact that the response is coded in an intelligent sounding sentence gives the impression that the response is reasoned rather than just selected. The fact that a response is sometimes composed from several selected items adds to the illusion of thought. Choosing from a list is nothing new to computer programming.

Today I had an inspiration while reading about the almost universal rejection of imperialism in society. So I now prophesy though I may not live to see its fulfillment.

Over the last few years I have fretted about the rise of Donald J. Trump and everything he stands for: racism, sexism, immorality, corruption, pathological dishonesty, vulgarity, shamelessness, hypocrisy, etc. I now see that my anxiety was misplaced. The world is waking up to the stench of Trump-ism and will reject it everywhere and forcefully. Vice and arrogance will still exist, but the Trumpian manifestation of it will be almost universally abhorred.

At a reception yesterday, Dr. (call him Doe) told us how he told God to intervene in his daughter’s life and that God responded something like, “Hold on there! She is my daughter too and I know what I am doing.”

The Book of Mormon uses the phrase “dwindle in unbelief” to characterize the decline and disintegration of both the Nephites and the Lamanites. As the angel prophesied in 1 Nephi 12:22,23 And the angel said unto me: Behold these shall dwindle in unbelief. And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.

An 18th century writer named Giambattista Vico, perhaps the first anthropologist, summarized the trajectory of civilizations as follows:

“Vico saw mankind–nations, civilizations, cultures–as going through progressive stages from bestiality to high civilization and then sinking back into barbarism [the later worse than the first]…The original barbarians possess rude virtues; the later have none left…Crowded city life produces men who are unbelievers, who regard money as the measure of all things, and who lack moral qualities, particularly modesty, duty to the family, and virile courage. Emancipated from ethics generally,they live by mutual spying and deceit.”

Jacques Barzun; From Dawn to Decadence; page 315

In August, I will be 82 years old. Things that happen to people of my age, or older, are seldom called tragic. They are usually called normal, age related events. As my neighbor said, “what don’t hurt, don’t work.” None-the-less, every day is a gift.