Thanks for the thoughts. I have great concern about AI, but am thankful it will never truly be in control, God always will be in control of the future. I have to continually remind myself of this.
I love AI for being able to sort through government verboseness and tell me concisely what is meant. I don’t believe it is a place of creativity.
History shows that the first use of any new technology is always war against other humans. We are seeing it again in our time.
The problem is not the technology but man’s prideful and greedy heart which has not changed since the fall in the garden.
I am writing about these issues at greater length, but will reflect my experience briefly here. My father was a chemical engineer, a very high achiever academically, and on the design team for the first atomic energy plant in Canada during WW II when the National Research Council became Canada's war machine. He advised the government on atomic energy. He was dismayed when what was to have been a deterrent was turned on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first atomic bombings in human history. He also was dismayed when I moved towards pacifism as preteen and when I joined the RC Church at 32. I gradually learned that he was not mentally normal although my mother, a high-achiever in her own right, was the stable personality. When I made extraordinary discoveries about the role of hearing in states of consciousness, I simultaneously learned that a mastoid infection in his right ear in his late teens undoubtedly was the cause of his bipolar disorder and ill health. However, I came to see that some occupations attract people who are mentally ill for other reasons, most often the genetics of inherited ear problems: audio-processing deficits that, because they have been mysterious to medicine, are fascinating and attractive to the general public.
My analytical mind was formed by that man. My religious beliefs were formed by both parents and the examples of their lives. I became intellectually independent during my university education and religiously independent soon after. By the time, a few decades on, I was editing a book on writing for engineers, I had come to think that every engineering "advance," from ancient times to the present, contains the conflicts you describe here, starting with the Tower of Babel and now most visible in warfare and in AI's domestic applications. The ego-centric demand of the engineers and inventors for power they covet for themselves always is involved in the work they do. Many Christians today have become opposed to The Machine on principle. Consider that The Cross is a machine for torture and execution. When you think about speed, whether the acceleration of knowledge or of transport, ask yourself if speed is an improvement over slower methods of learning or of accomplishing movement through space. What are the consequences to the human personality? What are the consequences to the environment essential to life of all persons and animals? You can learn more about crows by watching and listening to them. You can learn more about people by talking to them and praying for them. You can understand most circumstances better by slowing down, thinking long and hard, praying your way through the available research sources, and being willing to wait.
One of my discoveries about consciousness, which you touch on in "the still, small voice" discovered by Elijah as residing not in the environment but in the human brain, is that the types of "spiritual" states of consciousness within the human brain do not usually occur (notice I did not state "never") at the highest speeds of cerebral integration we feel as high alertness but at the slower speeds approaching sleep or even during light sleep. Then, you will notice how many bits of religious practice induce those slower speeds of integration, from closing one's eyes to the reduction of light inside buildings and with windows filtering light through stained glass and with candlelight over electric light even though electric light is available. The manipulations of music, of the body's balance mechanism through posture inclining from the vertical, and the restrictions on sound all play into a "meditative" environment that promotes "spiritual" experiences. My discovery that right-ear dominance can be conditioned so that people can gain greater control over their states of consciousness and their overall health may be more important to the world's people than AI, although I shudder to think how that knowledge also could be misused. Some engineering -- headphones and access to electronic sources of music -- is involved there, too. Caution is advised and certain rules apply. The potential for healing is quite astonishing, however.
Thank you, Laurna. There is so much in this reflection.
What especially resonated with me is your question about speed. We so easily assume that faster means better, faster communication, faster travel, faster access to knowledge, faster decisions, but that does not necessarily mean deeper understanding or greater wisdom.
I also think your point about technology carrying both possibility and danger is important. The same human creativity that can heal, connect and liberate can also be used to dominate, exploit and destroy. That tension runs through so much of our history.
And perhaps that is where slowing down matters. Attention, prayer, reflection, conversation, and simply observing the world around us can all resist the pressure to treat everything as something to optimise or accelerate.
Thank you for taking the article somewhere I had not taken it myself.
Thank you for your grace. There is way too much here. And the article I have been writing also is too long. I need to start a series under my own name. Do you know the English morality play Everyman? When he at last confesses, the voice of Wisdom replies, "Everyman, God give you time and space." And discernment to know what to do with it, we might add!
Thank you, Laurna. I think a series under your own name sounds great.
Some ideas simply need more space than a comment section can give them, and it sounds as though you have reached that point.
I do know Everyman, and “God give you time and space” feels wonderfully appropriate here. Perhaps that is part of discernment too: not only knowing what to say, but when to stop, when to separate ideas, and when to let each one have its own room.
And yes, time, space, and the wisdom to know what to do with both. That is quite a prayer.
Thanks for the thoughts. I have great concern about AI, but am thankful it will never truly be in control, God always will be in control of the future. I have to continually remind myself of this.
I love AI for being able to sort through government verboseness and tell me concisely what is meant. I don’t believe it is a place of creativity.
History shows that the first use of any new technology is always war against other humans. We are seeing it again in our time.
The problem is not the technology but man’s prideful and greedy heart which has not changed since the fall in the garden.
Yes, agreed, Daryl, it's a tool, and we sadly have a bad track record when it comes to using our inventions!
I am writing about these issues at greater length, but will reflect my experience briefly here. My father was a chemical engineer, a very high achiever academically, and on the design team for the first atomic energy plant in Canada during WW II when the National Research Council became Canada's war machine. He advised the government on atomic energy. He was dismayed when what was to have been a deterrent was turned on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first atomic bombings in human history. He also was dismayed when I moved towards pacifism as preteen and when I joined the RC Church at 32. I gradually learned that he was not mentally normal although my mother, a high-achiever in her own right, was the stable personality. When I made extraordinary discoveries about the role of hearing in states of consciousness, I simultaneously learned that a mastoid infection in his right ear in his late teens undoubtedly was the cause of his bipolar disorder and ill health. However, I came to see that some occupations attract people who are mentally ill for other reasons, most often the genetics of inherited ear problems: audio-processing deficits that, because they have been mysterious to medicine, are fascinating and attractive to the general public.
My analytical mind was formed by that man. My religious beliefs were formed by both parents and the examples of their lives. I became intellectually independent during my university education and religiously independent soon after. By the time, a few decades on, I was editing a book on writing for engineers, I had come to think that every engineering "advance," from ancient times to the present, contains the conflicts you describe here, starting with the Tower of Babel and now most visible in warfare and in AI's domestic applications. The ego-centric demand of the engineers and inventors for power they covet for themselves always is involved in the work they do. Many Christians today have become opposed to The Machine on principle. Consider that The Cross is a machine for torture and execution. When you think about speed, whether the acceleration of knowledge or of transport, ask yourself if speed is an improvement over slower methods of learning or of accomplishing movement through space. What are the consequences to the human personality? What are the consequences to the environment essential to life of all persons and animals? You can learn more about crows by watching and listening to them. You can learn more about people by talking to them and praying for them. You can understand most circumstances better by slowing down, thinking long and hard, praying your way through the available research sources, and being willing to wait.
One of my discoveries about consciousness, which you touch on in "the still, small voice" discovered by Elijah as residing not in the environment but in the human brain, is that the types of "spiritual" states of consciousness within the human brain do not usually occur (notice I did not state "never") at the highest speeds of cerebral integration we feel as high alertness but at the slower speeds approaching sleep or even during light sleep. Then, you will notice how many bits of religious practice induce those slower speeds of integration, from closing one's eyes to the reduction of light inside buildings and with windows filtering light through stained glass and with candlelight over electric light even though electric light is available. The manipulations of music, of the body's balance mechanism through posture inclining from the vertical, and the restrictions on sound all play into a "meditative" environment that promotes "spiritual" experiences. My discovery that right-ear dominance can be conditioned so that people can gain greater control over their states of consciousness and their overall health may be more important to the world's people than AI, although I shudder to think how that knowledge also could be misused. Some engineering -- headphones and access to electronic sources of music -- is involved there, too. Caution is advised and certain rules apply. The potential for healing is quite astonishing, however.
Thank you, Laurna. There is so much in this reflection.
What especially resonated with me is your question about speed. We so easily assume that faster means better, faster communication, faster travel, faster access to knowledge, faster decisions, but that does not necessarily mean deeper understanding or greater wisdom.
I also think your point about technology carrying both possibility and danger is important. The same human creativity that can heal, connect and liberate can also be used to dominate, exploit and destroy. That tension runs through so much of our history.
And perhaps that is where slowing down matters. Attention, prayer, reflection, conversation, and simply observing the world around us can all resist the pressure to treat everything as something to optimise or accelerate.
Thank you for taking the article somewhere I had not taken it myself.
Thank you for your grace. There is way too much here. And the article I have been writing also is too long. I need to start a series under my own name. Do you know the English morality play Everyman? When he at last confesses, the voice of Wisdom replies, "Everyman, God give you time and space." And discernment to know what to do with it, we might add!
Thank you, Laurna. I think a series under your own name sounds great.
Some ideas simply need more space than a comment section can give them, and it sounds as though you have reached that point.
I do know Everyman, and “God give you time and space” feels wonderfully appropriate here. Perhaps that is part of discernment too: not only knowing what to say, but when to stop, when to separate ideas, and when to let each one have its own room.
And yes, time, space, and the wisdom to know what to do with both. That is quite a prayer.
Excellent!
Thank you 😊