My CMS The View from a New City

August 30, 2026

Steampunk

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 8:35 am

Here is a little video that I find wonderfully attractive. There are others much like it. They are created by AI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cViibwlHLE

I think this illustrates an issue with AI. It is great at creating text and video that are appealing to humans. That is because AI is trained using data created by humans and is great at selecting the text (token) that is most likely from a subset of data already preferred by humans.

The issue illustrated by the video is that it is creating a world that never was and never will be. Things that human beings do, say and prefer are not necessarily and sometimes not even remotely true.

August 21, 2026

Thomas Carlyle

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 8:00 am
The coming depression may turn out to be a blessing: The air may be cleaner from lack of traffic and people’s focus may shift. Consider the following quote from Thomas Carlyle:
Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irreligious: “Doubt had darkened into Unbelief,” says he; “shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black.” To such readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on man’s life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in our Friend’s words, “that, for man’s well-being, Faith is properly the one thing needful; how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, Worldlings puke up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury”: to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of everything.

August 19, 2026

Impossible

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 6:22 pm

Take a look at this as to why AI cannot reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_hzF960GE

August 16, 2026

Job

Filed under: daily — Lawrence Peterson @ 2:33 pm

Today in church we discussed the Book of Job. It was agreed that even though the Book of Job is fiction, it discusses in a powerful way the circumstance in which many people find themselves and the question of whether righteousness certifies prosperity.

Although righteousness does not certify prosperity, it does tend to foster it and gives comfort and peace when prosperity evaporates.

consider :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-oiqGtGI90

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