Humanity Isn't a Problem to Solve: Technology Needs a Telos

From Breakpoint.org (Sept. 21, 2023):

Pixar’s Wall-E has proven to be among the most profound and prophetic films of the last 20 years. After hopelessly polluting the Earth and leaving an army of robots to clean up the planet, humans now live aboard a giant ship built by a company that promises to take care of all its passengers’ needs. Thus, humans are left with nothing to do but amuse themselves and eat a lot.

Many Christians wrote off the Pixar classic because of its hyper-environmentalist message. However, the film’s commentary on human exceptionalism and vocation, specifically the inability of our machines to do our most important work for us, was spot-on. In the world of Wall-E, human beings have a purpose, or a telos that cannot be reduced to maximizing comfort, safety, and convenience.

In the biblical account of reality, humans exist to glorify and love God, and to serve as His special representatives and co-rulers in creation. Human inventions should help towards achieving those ends, extending our abilities, and mitigating the effects of the Fall. Wanting to replace ourselves with our devices assumes that humanity is the central problem of the world that needs to be solved.

Recently in First Things, Matthew Crawford argued that an anti-human worldview like the one parodied in Wall-E now dominates our tech and governing classes. Those who are behind everything from smartphone apps to pandemic policy share a basic belief that human beings are inferior to machines. We are, as he puts it, “stupid,” “obsolete,” “fragile,” and “hateful.”

Crawford opens his essay with an example of a driverless car created by Google that froze at a four-way stop. Apparently, the drivers around the car didn’t behave as it had been programmed to expect. However, rather than admit the limits of the car’s “artificial intelligence,” one Google engineer remarked that what he’d learned from the incident is that humans need to be “less idiotic.” The premise is that humans are not the crown of creation but problems to be solved.

Of course, it is quite possible that, once they’ve worked out all the bugs, driverless cars will lead to less accidents and road deaths. However, one of the bugs to be worked out are the programmers who hate humans, which makes the point of this essay ring true. So much of our high-tech culture, from the social media algorithms that tell us what we want to the transhumanist fantasies about uploading our consciousness to computers, assumes that humanity is an obstacle to be overcome.

Much of our public life also assumes the basic idiocy and inadequacy of humans: take health officials more concerned with controlling people than limiting the spread of a virus or legislation quashing parental rights in order to “affirm” gender-confused minors.

C.S. Lewis saw this impulse decades ago and recognized how it would grant growing power to certain people over and above others. In his masterpiece The Abolition of Man, Lewis warned of those he called “conditioners,” who considered themselves above such common human frailties. Of course, as Lewis pointed out, the conditioners are also human, but in denial that they too are vulnerable to the same frailties as everyone else. Their danger lies in the fact that they are oblivious about their frailties, especially their moral frailties.

It is good that humans have bodies that limit us to one location and the need for food, sleep, and friendship. These limits are part of our design. Because we are designed, we must be guided by values and not merely algorithms. It is good that we take time to learn, to appreciate beauty, to feel wonder, and to have burning questions about what is behind all that we see. God made us this way, so that, eventually, our seeking would lead back to Him. Though He intends to redeem us from the ravages of sin, He never intends to optimize us into efficient machines. Apparently, He considers being human as something “good,” even “very good.” So much so, in fact, He took on flesh Himself.

Wall-E got it (mostly) right. Technology is good but needs a telos—a purpose for existing. That purpose cannot be to replace, transcend, or circumvent God’s good design for human beings.

In short, technology and public policy should be human-shaped, not the other way around. [source]

Amen.

Excerpts from the “Intelligence Trap” book

The first step [to evaluating a claim] is to learn to ask the right questions:

• Who is making the claim? What are their credentials? And what might be their motives to make me think this?
• What are the premises of the claim? And how might they be flawed?
• What are my own initial assumptions? And how might they be flawed?
• What are the alternative explanations for their claim?
• What is the evidence? And how does it compare to the alternative explanation?
• What further information do you need before you can make a judgment?

……….

Refining these findings to a set of core characteristics, Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe have shown that high-reliability organizations all demonstrate:

• Preoccupation with failure: The organization does not become complacent with success, and workers assume “each day will be a bad day.” The organization rewards employees for self-reporting errors.
• Reluctance to simplify interpretations: Employees are rewarded for questioning assumptions and for being skeptical of received wisdom. At Deepwater Horizon, for instance, more engineers and managers may have raised concerns about the poor quality of the cement and asked for further tests.
• Sensitivity to operations: Team members continue to communicate and interact, to update their understanding of the situation at hand and search for the root causes of anomalies. On Deepwater Horizon, the rig staff should have been more curious about the anomalous pressure tests, rather than accepting the first explanation.
• Commitment to resilience: Building the necessary knowledge and resources to bounce back after error occurs, including regular “pre-mortems” and regular discussions of near misses. Long before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP might have examined the underlying organizational factors leading to previous, less serious accidents, and ensured all team members were adequately prepared to deal with a blowout.
• Deference to expertise: This relates to the importance of communication between ranks of the hierarchy, and the intellectual humility of those at the top. Executives need to trust the people on the ground. Toyota and NASA, for instance, both failed to heed the concerns of engineers; similarly, after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the media reported that workers at BP had been scared of raising concerns in case they would be fired.

……….

Nine “master virtues” that the IVA [Intellectual Virtues Academy] considers to be crucial for good thinking and learning, with accompanying slogans. They are divided into three categories:

Getting started

• Curiosity: a disposition to wonder, ponder, and ask why. A thirst for understanding and a desire to explore.
• Intellectual humility: a willingness to own up to one’s intellectual limitations and mistakes, unconcerned with intellectual status or prestige.
• Intellectual autonomy: a capacity for active, self-directed thinking. An ability to think and reason for oneself.

Executing well

• Attentiveness: a readiness to be “personally present” in the learning process. Keeps distractions at bay. Strives to be mindful and engaged.
• Intellectual carefulness: a disposition to notice and avoid intellectual pitfalls and mistakes. Strives for accuracy.
• Intellectual thoroughness: a disposition to seek and provide explanations. Unsatisfied with mere appearances or easy answers. Probes for deeper meaning and understanding.

Handling challenges

• Open-mindedness: an ability to think outside the box. Gives a fair and honest hearing to competing perspectives.
• Intellectual courage: a readiness to persist in thinking or communicating in the face of fear, including fear of embarrassment or failure.
• Intellectual tenacity: a willingness to embrace intellectual challenge and struggle. Keeps its “eyes on the prize” and doesn’t give up.

Source: The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Stupid Mistakes (2021) by David Robson.

Scientists discover new organ in the throat

From Live Science.com (Oct. 20, 2020):

Scientists have discovered a new organ: a set of salivary glands set deep in the upper part of the throat.

This nasopharynx region — behind the nose — was not thought to host anything but microscopic, diffuse, salivary glands; but the newly discovered set are about 1.5 inches (3.9 centimeters) in length on average. Because of their location over a piece of cartilage called the torus tubarius, the discoverers of these new glands have dubbed them the tubarial salivary glands. The glands probably lubricate and moisten the upper throat behind the nose and mouth, the researchers wrote online Sept. 23 in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology.

The discovery was accidental. Researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute were using a combination of CT scans and positron emission tomography (PET) scans called PSMA PET-CT to study prostate cancer. In PSMA PET-CT scanning, doctors inject a radioactive "tracer" into the patient. This tracer binds well to the protein PSMA, which is elevated in prostate cancer cells. Clinical trials have found that PSMA PET-CT scanning is better than conventional imaging at detecting metastasized prostate cancer.

PSMA PET-CT scanning also happens to be very good at detecting salivary gland tissue, which is also high in PSMA. Until now, there were three known large salivary glands in humans: one under the tongue, one under the jaw and one at the back of the jaw, behind the cheek. Beyond those, perhaps a thousand microscopic salivary glands are scattered throughout the mucosal tissue of the throat and mouth, study co-author and Netherlands Cancer Institute radiation oncologist Wouter Vogel said in a statement.

"So, imagine our surprise when we found these," Vogel said.

To confirm the discovery, Vogel and his colleagues imaged 100 patients (99 of them men due to the focus on prostate cancer) and found that all of them had the newly discovered glands. They also dissected that nasopharynx region from two cadavers from a human body donation program and found that the newfound region consisted of mucosal gland tissue and ducts draining into the nasopharynx. [read more]

I guess the biological text books have to be updated now.

Climate change fueled witch hunts… Then and now

From CO2 Coalition.org (Oct. 29, 2021):

European witch hunts of the 15th to 17th centuries targeted witches that were thought to be responsible for epidemics and crop failures related to  declining temperatures of the Little Ice Age. A belief that evil humans  were negatively affecting the climate and weather patterns was the  “consensus” opinion of that time. How eerily similar is that notion to  the the current oft-repeated mantra that Man’s actions are controlling  the climate and leading to catastrophic consequences?

The first extensive European witch hunts coincided with plunging temperatures as the continent transitioned away from the beneficial warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1250 AD). Increasing cold that began in the 13th century ushered in nearly five centuries of advancing mountain glaciers and prolonged periods of rainy or cool weather. This time of naturally-driven climate change was accompanied by crop failure, hunger, rising prices, epidemics and mass depopulation.

Large systematic witch hunts began in the 1430s and were advanced later in the century by an Alsatian Dominican friar and papal Inquisitor named Heinrich Kramer. At Kramer’s urging, Pope Innocence VIII issued an encyclical enshrining the persecution and eradication of weather-changing witches through this papal edict. The worst of the Inquisition’s abuses and later systemic witch hunts were, in part, empowered by this decree.

This initial period of cooler temperatures and failing crops continued through the first couple of decades of the 16th century, when a slight warming was accompanied by improvements in harvests. Clearly, the pogrom against the weather-changing witches had been successful!

Unfortunately for the people of the Late Middle Ages, the forty years or so of slight warming gave ground to a more severe bout of cooling. The summer of 1560 brought a return of coldness and wetness that led to severe decline in harvest, crop failure and increases in infant mortality and epidemics. Bear in mind that this was an agrarian subsistence culture, nearly totally dependent on the yearly harvest to survive. One bad harvest could be tolerated, but back-to-back failures would cause horrific consequences, and indeed they did. [read more]

Interesting. I wonder if Bill O'Reilly knows about this history? I don't know, because I haven't read his Killing the Witches book yet.

USPS Sets Mail-In Ballot Rules Ahead of Midterms

From Newsmax.com (Aug. 22):

The U.S. Postal Service announced new mail-in ballot eligibility rules Friday that closely follow President Donald Trump’s March executive order restricting voting by mail, despite a federal judge blocking enforcement of the directive nationwide.

Under the policy, states would generally provide USPS with information on mail-ballot recipients at least 30 days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Postmaster General David Steiner told senators in June the policy is intended to ensure ''the right ballots are going to the right people.''

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Tuesday blocked nationwide enforcement of Trump’s order, warning that changing election rules so close to the midterms could cause ''confusion'' and ''chaos.''

''That it is now less than 90 days before the November 3, 2026, midterm elections underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants from changing election rules on the eve of the election,'' Talwani wrote.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to intervene and allow the restrictions to take effect.

The Justice Department argues the legal challenges are premature because federal agencies have not yet taken concrete actions affecting the plaintiffs.

The White House has defended Trump’s push to restrict widespread mail voting while preserving exceptions in certain circumstances.

''As President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel, but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it's highly susceptible to fraud,'' White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said.

Trump himself reportedly voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary this month, despite his longstanding criticism of the practice.

''As everyone knows, the president is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.,'' Wales said.

Trump has repeatedly pushed for tighter voting restrictions and has made consistent claims that mail voting facilitates widespread fraud.

Nearly a third of ballots cast in the 2024 general election, 30.3%, were submitted by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. [source]

Good. 

Another article on the matter:

Trump Appeals New Court Block on Mail Voting Order as Midterms Near

7 Ways DSA Plans To Turn America Into A Third-World Communist Country

From The Federalist.com (July 17):

The group that dictates the tenor of the Democrat Party has radical plans for America, which include getting rid of the presidency and the Supreme Court. The Democratic Socialists of America is a far-left organization that appeals to the struggle of the working class while pushing far-left candidates. The organization has recently unveiled a new platform that would destroy the American system and radically remake it.

DSA candidates are currently surging in America, winning major elections across the country. Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier — both DSA members — won their Democrat primaries in New York City, making them almost certain to win seats in Congress. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is also a DSA member, and he has pushed far-left policies since taking office in January.

Abolish the Presidency and Supreme Court

According to the DSA’s platform, “we need a new political system.” This new political system involves remaking the American government and electoral system.

“Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” the platform states. This change would help these socialists secure their objective of “creating a real democracy.”

This is part of an effort to give more power to Congress, thereby creating a more “democratic” system. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., showed her disdain for America’s system of government when she introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Accusing Thomas and Alito of failing to disclose their financial information and declining to recuse themselves from cases they purportedly had a personal interest in, Ocasio-Cortez called on Congress to impeach them from the court. Her justification was that “Congress has a legal, moral, and democratic obligation to impeach,” according to a press release.

Replace the Constitution

In its introduction to the platform, the DSA quietly slipped in one of its most radical proposals: creating a new United States Constitution.

“We are workers fighting to transform society: to win the battle for democracy, draft a new constitution, and create a democratic socialist republic,” the platform’s introduction states. This is not the first time the DSA has attacked the Constitution, either. An earlier statement published on the DSA website reads: “The Constitution establishes a political order explicitly designed to enshrine rule by elites.”

In a recent attempt to recruit members, a DSA caucus called the Marxist Unity Group attacked the Constitution because “it was made by rich landowners who owned slaves, and it was designed to protect their power, not give ordinary people a real vote. Back then, the Founding Fathers were kind of like the billionaires of today.” [read more]

DSA stands for Destructive Socialists of America. ☹️ Just steps to concentrating and growing power. When they say they want to abolish the Senate, they are just wanting a parliamentary system of gov’t like Israel and the European countries have.

Along the same lines:

• The Problem With DSA Democrats Isn’t Socialism, It’s Third-Worldism
• Democratic socialism could cost the US a staggering $200 trillion, report reveals: ‘Closer to Soviet-style communism’
• There Is No Such Thing As A Moderate Democrat Anymore
  
• America Flirts with Democratic Socialism

Would the Discovery of Alien Life Disprove Christianity?

From Breakpoint.org (Jan. 18, 2024):

Among the unexpected stories of 2023 was a renewed interest in all things extraterrestrial: from images of alien corpses; to retired high-ranking military officials claiming secret government programs launched to capture UFOs; to a strange encounter with Las Vegas police officers. The public interest in whether there’s anything out there is as high as ever. But what would the existence of alien life mean for Christianity?

That’s the question tackled in a brand new video, part of the What Would You Say? series, called “What Does the Bible Say About Aliens?”

Many people assume that if any evidence were to be discovered for extraterrestrial life, it would be devastating to the Christian worldview. However, according to my colleague, Shane Morris, that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, according to Shane, “There’s nothing in the Christian view of the world that excludes the possibility that God created life on other planets.” In this video, Shane offers three things to keep in mind. First, that “despite the hype of science fiction and decades of searching, there is currently no evidence for life on other planets.”

[A]fter decades of looking and listening and exploring the heavens for that life, we’ve come up empty-handed. So much so, in fact, that physicists and astronomers have named the emptiness the Fermi Paradox, which refers to “the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence.” In other words, if life happens easily, “Where is everybody?”

[Peter] Ward and his co-author, Donald Brownlee, argue in Rare Earth that life doesn’t happen that easily, and assuming that it does is the real mistake. At least a dozen special conditions found on our planet are probably necessary for the existence of intelligent life, including a precise orbital distance from our star, heavy elements, liquid water, a moon, a magnetic field, not too much gravity, a nearby gas giant, and having a star like our Sun, which, as it turns out, is anything but “ordinary.”

Shane’s second point is that “even if intelligent life were found elsewhere in the universe, it wouldn’t necessarily present a problem for Christianity.”

Before Star Trek or Star Wars existed, C.S. Lewis wrote his Space Trilogy. In it, he famously imagined alien races that never fell into sin. And in a few essays, Lewis wrestled with whether the existence of real-life extraterrestrials would threaten Christianity. According to Lewis, the Bible never says God created the vast cosmos only for humans. …

For Lewis, intelligent aliens created and loved by God posed no problem, nor would they contradict the Bible. In the same essay, he cautioned that the Bible was not intended to satisfy our curiosity about such things but as an instruction manual for salvation. But he also warned that humans are in no position to tell God what He can and cannot do with His vast universe.

And finally, Shane states that “the Bible teaches that there are other beings in the universe, but they’re not what materialists expect, and they do not always come in peace.”

Some biblical scholars, like the late Dr. Michael Heiser, have suggested that some alleged alien encounters may be the result of demonic activity and possession. After all, in 2 Corinthians 11:14 Paul warned that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

This means that Christians need not believe every story of alien abductions or close encounters, but we need not immediately dismiss them as jokes or conspiracy theories. Christianity teaches that we are not alone in the universe, that it is full of intelligent entities, both good and evil, and that all were created by and remain under the power of God.

The existence of extraterrestrial life is still speculation, but the Christian worldview has more room for mysteries than our secular, materialist age does. It offers a bigger, more thorough, and more satisfying explanation for the universe.

That was Shane Morris answering the question, “What Does the Bible Say About Aliens?”

To see the whole video and to share it with others, go to whatwouldyousay.org. Or, you can look up the What Would You Say? channel on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe to be notified each time a new video is released. [source]

Food for thought. Alien life is always a possibility.