R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 89
February 2, 2014
Singularity
Benjamin Franklin was an intelligent, well-read individual, with an open and inquisitive mind. He was fascinated by science and contributed immensely to our understanding of electricity. More importantly, he was a major player in the creation of the United States.
I’ve occasionally wondered what a man like Benjamin Franklin would make of the United States today. How would he react it if he were somehow able to visit us?
The old television series Bewitched popped into the 1960s thanks to a bumbling Aunt Clara. He marveled over televisions and automobiles in the few hours he was there, but seemed to adapt readily enough.
Would the reality—if such could become real—match that fiction?
Probably not.
In the middle of the twentieth century, John von Neumann and Stanislav Ulam first described what is called “the technological singularity” or simply “the singularity.” They, along with later authors such as Verne Vinge and Ray Kruzweil argued that once artificially intelligent machines are created, their intelligence will grow exponentially, wildly surpass human capabilities, and usher in massive technological changes. The use of the term “singularity” to describe that future moment (predicted by Kurzweil and others to occur sometime between 2030 and 2045) is derived from physics and astronomy. A black hole is a post-supernova that has collapsed to a microscopic point of infinite mass called a singularity, from which nothing, not even light, can escape. It is a place where the laws of physics break down. It is radical break from the normal universe and incomprehensible to us.
Likewise, the advent of artificial intelligence is considered to be such a radical break from what has gone before that it will be incomprehensible to us.
Alvin Toffler wrote a best seller back in 1970 called “Future Shock.” He paralleled it with the concept of “culture shock”: the experience an individual has visiting a foreign country, where the familiar cues have shifted in unexpected ways. One summer while I was in college, I traveled oversees with a group of students. One of my fellow travelers couldn’t understand why the Swiss refused to take his money. He became angry that they insisted he exchange his dollars for Swiss Franks. Alvin Toffler argued that all of us were like my companion: but instead of visiting a foreign land, we were traveling into the future, a strange place from which we could never return, where everything we had grown accustomed was going to change—and the rate of change would only accelerate.
The singularity is not just in our future, however. We’re living in it now, for someone like Benjamin Franklin. Little of his world or experiences still exists.
He came from a place where people traveled on foot or horseback. Crossing an ocean was a perilous voyage on a wooden ship driven by wind. Nights were dark, with the gloom mollified barely by candles and oil lamps. The world was quiet, lacking the hums, droning televisions, and mechanical noises we hardly notice. Africans were slaves and women were second-class citizens with limited rights. Although he opposed slavery and found it morally reprehensible, he’d be startled that in the modern United States African Americans have the same rights as white men. To discover that the President of the United States was black and that there were several female senators would be mind-boggling.
The obvious technological changes would confuse and puzzle him. He’d be overwhelmed by everything from televisions to radios, electric lights to automobiles. Airplanes, rockets, satellites, people in orbit and robotic rovers on Mars would be the stuff of wild fantasy. Just the concept of robots, let alone that they were rolling about on another planet would shock him. The advances in our understanding of physics, astronomy, biology, medical science: it would all tax his comprehension. Perhaps one of the greatest wonders, from his perspective, would be to hear that not only had we conquered small pox—a dangerous and widespread illness in his day—we had eradicated it and it simply no longer existed.
He would not know how to cook a meal in a modern kitchen; freezers and refrigerators would be puzzling. Indoor toilets, hot and cold running water, central heating and air conditioning: beyond wonderful. The ease of daily bathing, deodorants, toothpaste, comfortable clothing and shoes—all new. Just the sort of clothes women wear on a warm summer day would shock and delight him.
Communication technology, the internet, online shopping, shopping centers, grocery stores: all beyond anything he could have ever imagined or believed possible. The sheer wealth of even the poorest of our citizens would amaze him.
That the United States had not only endured but prospered and retained its freedoms would startle him. The place of the United States in the world would be mind boggling: both its economic power—and the simple fact that all the armies, navies and air forces in all the world combined are smaller than ours and lack the capability of invading, let alone conquering us.
Franklin would be amazed, too, at just how peaceful our world is: crime in our cities is far lower than what he would have been familiar with (the crime rate in Los Angeles declined again last year—for the eleventh year in a row). War is rare. In fact, we live at the most peaceful time in world history, ever. Sixty-one percent of the world’s nations are relatively free, electoral democracies (118 out of 195 nations—up from only 69 in 1989 and maybe two in Franklin’s day). We also live in the most prosperous, best educated, most well-fed time in history, ever.
Benjamin Franklin would see the modern United States as a bountiful paradise. He would perhaps be most shocked that so many just don’t realize it.
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February 1, 2014
January 31, 2014
Fear Not
“The one also who had received the one talent came up and said, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’
“But his master answered and said to him, ‘You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest. Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’
“For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away. Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 25:24-30)
Jesus didn’t ask us to play it safe. He wants us to risk it all. The poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a famous poem called If in which he described what it meant to be an adult. One part of being an adult was the willingness to take risks and accept failure. In concluding the parable of the servants that were given talents, Jesus ends with the one who, given the least (of a still enormous sum of money) chose to do nothing with it. Instead, he claimed fear as his excuse: fear of losing what he’d been given
The master doesn’t accept fear as the real reason for the servant’s behavior. Unlike the servant in the parable in Luke, the servant in Matthew’s story not only has the single talent taken away, but he is cast into “outer darkness.” The weeping and gnashing of teeth is indicative of the regret the lazy servant suffered—his too late recognition of his bad behavior.
Jesus’ parable describes the kingdom of God. The wealth is distributed unevenly and the results are uneven. You can multiply only if you have something to multiply with. You can’t multiply by zero and get anything. An unproductive servant is no servant at all. Like a broken light switch, you might as well toss it out. Jesus wants us to risk everything for him.
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January 30, 2014
January 29, 2014
No Excuse
When one of those who sat at the table with Jesus heard these things, he said to Him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’ ” (Luke 14:15-24)
What’s your excuse? Jesus had just told his host that when he invited people to a meal, he should not invite people based on whether he’d get a reciprocal invite. Instead, he should think about how he’d get repaid come the resurrection. Then one of the dinner guests proclaimed how happy those would be who shared in the banquet in God’s kingdom.
So Jesus taught about who would be invited to share in the banquet in God’s kingdom. Jesus perhaps adapted an ancient Jewish tale about an ambitious tax collector who tried to gain social standing with the aristocrats by inviting them to dinner. But they rebuffed his offer. In order that the dinner not go to waste, the tax collector invited all the poor instead. Jesus wanted his audience to understand that God offered everyone a seat at his great banquet. God doesn’t care who comes, only that they come. Those who miss out have no one but themselves to blame.
Jesus wants us to understand how easy it is to get into God’s banquet and how hard he’s working to get us there. We have no good excuse for not showing up.
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January 28, 2014
Happiness is…
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his castle, his property is safe. But when one stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his plunder. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”
While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Luke 11:21-28)
It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. While Jesus was talking about the behavior of demons, a woman in the crowd made a statement that seems very odd and out of place, almost as if she wasn’t even listening to him. Her words don’t seem to fit the context of Jesus’ discussion.
She offered a blessing on Jesus’ mother. What did she mean by that? Apparently, she thought that Jesus was wonderful because he was a teacher and because he had power over demons. So she wished that she could have a son just like him so she could be just as happy as Jesus’ mother must be.
Jesus responded by telling her that the real happiness was not in having power over demons. It was not in having a son like Jesus. Instead, Jesus said that real happiness came from having a relationship with God, listening to what he said, and then doing what he asked. What does God want of us? He wants us to love him and the people around us. He wants us to help make the lives of those we know better. Too easily do we become distracted by what we want in life, that we forget to focus on what God wants. The woman in the crowd thought happiness came from having a perfect son—rather than from having a perfect relationship with God thanks to His Son.
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January 27, 2014
What You Need
“Suppose one of you goes to a friend in the middle of the night and says, “Let me borrow three loaves of bread. A friend of mine has dropped in, and I don’t have a thing for him to eat.” And suppose your friend answers, “Don’t bother me! The door is bolted, and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up to give you something.”
He may not get up and give you the bread, just because you are his friend. But he will get up and give you as much as you need, simply because you are not ashamed to keep on asking.
So I tell you to ask and you will receive, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you. Everyone who asks will receive, everyone who searches will find, and the door will be opened for everyone who knocks. Which one of you fathers would give your hungry child a snake if the child asked for a fish? Which one of you would give your child a scorpion if the child asked for an egg? As bad as you are, you still know how to give good gifts to your children. But your heavenly Father is even more ready to give the Holy Spirit to anyone who asks.” (Luke 11:5-13)
My children don’t need a pony. I don’t need a Cadillac. But God always gives us what we need. Our trouble comes in not always being able to distinguish clearly between our needs and our wants. In the time of Jesus, people usually slept together in one room in one bed. They did this, not because they liked the togetherness, but because their houses were small and cramped, often with only one room.
Therefore, it took a lot of effort for a man to rise in the middle of the night, crawl over his entire family, and find his way to his front door in the dark. On top of that, three loaves of bread for someone else’s guest in the middle of the night wasn’t even a reasonable request! But even so silly an appeal could get results if one were persistent enough. It was hard to sleep with someone pounding on the door.
Sometimes we give in to our children just because we get tired of listening to them whine. But God is never in bed, he’s never broke, he’s never had a bad day at work. He’s happy to give, because he loves us. Since even grumpy neighbors and tired parents will respond to our requests, how much more then will our Father in heaven take care of giving us what we really need!
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