Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 23

What is the point of petitionary prayer? Of asking God to make things happen?

It has often been asked by mainstream/ orthodox/ canonical Christians; "What is the point of petitioning God in prayer?" - of asking God for something to happen? 

Such prayer seems redundant, or even a mistake. It seems to make no sense. 

And this for strong reasons. Because, by standard Catholic and Protestant theology, God is omniscient, so He already knows what we want and what we need; and also because God is omnipotent, such that a loving and personal God will already be doing anything which He knows to be good for us.  

To ask for divine interventions in this world therefore seems at best futile; and at worse to imply that the person praying knows-better-than-God what God ought to be doing, as if God needed "reminding" of His duty! 

But petitionary prayer (by a broad definition) is exactly what would be required and valuable by a God who desires to enlist Men as participators in the work of creation. 

This because such a God recognizes that each Man has the potential to bring something new, additional, and unique to ongoing creation.

Man's participation in creation is thus not only temporarily beneficial for the Man doing it, but also of everlasting value for divine creation.  

From such an understanding of reality; it can be seen that in prayer we may actually participate in the ongoing work of divine creation, and thereby change its content and direction. 

This may happen, not by asking-for God to grant us favours and having such wishes granted; but instead via the (albeit temporary and partial) alignment of our will with God's will.  

If such alignment is happening in a prayer, then that prayer will change reality - and change it always in harmony with the direction and methods of divine creation (because such prayer is in harmony with the divine). 

Such a perspective changes and expands the concept of prayer, so that "prayer" will include all ways by which we might align our motivations with God's motivations; and in doing so actively (and it must be active for there to be participation rather than merely contemplation). 

If we can actively join-with God in our thinking and acting; then we are thereby joining in the work of divine creating.  

...Of course, even when this happens - in this mortal world of change, death and evil, it can only happen to some incomplete degree and for a limited time. 

Nonetheless; it is a foretaste, an actual experience, of the eternal reality of resurrected life in Heaven.   

 

Globalists - all over the globe, simultaneously - proclaim "The End of Globalisation..."

That's it - really. 

Says it all. 

Just think about it, please?

Fireball XL (Take-) Five

Regular readers will know that I have a fondness for musical pieces in the 5/4 time signature - when it is done well (which is usually phrased as a syncopated 10/8 - or 3/8, 3/8, 4/8 - rather than 5/4).

Well here is another, by the great theme composer Barry Gray - from the early 60s Gerry Anderson puppet show Fireball XL5; and called Formula 5. 

It's a pleasing pastiche/homage to the famous Paul Desmond/ Dave Brubeck tune Take Five.  

LATE BONUS FEATURE:

Alfie Pugh's arrangement of the Joe 90 theme - another Barry Gray classic; great tune and this version really builds!

It evoked nostalgia for the superb and danceable arrangement of the Joe 90 theme done by Arthur 2-Stroke and the Chart Commando's which I heard live at The Cooperage (Newcastle) one memorable in 1981 - as I recall the band included Arthur on vocals, plus two trumpets, tenor sax, maybe keyboards, electric guitar and base, drums, and bongos. 

The magical basis of High Elven agriculture in Lord of the Rings

Over at the Notion Club Papers blog; I speculate on how it is that the High Elves of Rivendell, Lothlorien and the Grey Havens feed and provide for themselves.   

The soulless mediocrity of current-"AI" is a consequence of blending and averaging in its industrial -scale plagiarism

One striking aspect of the industrial-scale plagiarism that is current "AI", is that the mechanism of generation leads inevitably to soulless mediocrity in its output.

This is because it samples, selects, blends, extrapolates from multiple sources. It is based on averaging - which entails removing the extremes that characterize genuine creativity, including genius. 

Consider: how would you plagiarize poetry such as to generate a work of genius? 

The only valid method is to re-label. 

You would need already to know of, a poetic work of genius (something which depends on prior human evaluation) perhaps a particular sonnet by Shakespeare. 

...Then to re-label this sonnet with your own name as author instead of Shakespeare - and convince other people that you (not Shakespeare) had written it.  

Such is the only way to ensure the production of a work of genius, of quality equal to the original. 

If instead you were to try and create a poem by sampling and combining several or many Shakespeare sonnets, then obviously the result would not be as good.  

If you tried to create poetry by (in some way, any way) averaging multiple Elizabethan poems of multiple authors, or many poems from all eras - the result would become less and less good, the more you added. 

The more you sample, and the more you average - the worse it gets. 

What this kind of multiplying and averaging can do, is create fakes that are hard to distinguish from mediocre poems - and can pass as an instance of the type, especially among people who are lack time, or aptitude, have little interest, or are weakly motivated. 

For example, if you were to combine all of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets - you could perhaps make something that was not easily distinguishable in quality from the mediocre or poor instances of his Sonnets - especially among those who were not really able to appreciate the quality of the best of the Shakespeare originals. 

And the AI approach is what successful forgers have done in the world of fine art. They do not try to forge the best Vermeer; not least because the forger could not do it. Instead, they attempt to forge a mediocre instance Vermeer, a variation on a known theme; something "good enough" that - when provided with a fake provenance by aesthetically-incompetent evaluators - can pass as a mediocre work by a great painter. 

Such mediocre forgeries can then sometimes be passed off as "great art" on the basis that they are superficially appealing to only-mildly-interested people with mainstream modern tastes - but that does not affect their artistic mediocrity - evident to those who can evaluate quality. 

But here we have another problem of AI, which is that it is mostly being casually used by lazy and conformist people who have little interest, ability or experience in the area of implementation. 

If all you are working at some chore, and all you want is background music, then genuine creativity is irrelevant - fakes and forgeries are fine. Computer-generated or AI muzak will suffice. 

If you are an average school kid, college student, post-graduate, professor; and all you want is to complete some assignment with the minimum of effort and getting the highest evaluation possible (without activating the plagiarism detectors - mechanical or human); then the truth and validity of what you write is irrelevant. Consensus-compatibility is very important, but ultimate value is not at all. Averaged mediocrity is indeed the ideal! AI will suffice. 

If you are a professional researcher in "science" or academia, who seeks career advancement and high status; then you will do or say whatever you believe will help pursue those goals. Developing, buying, using or praising AI will be embraced insofar as it seems expedient in terms of your immediate objectives. The fact that AI-output is boring, derivative and adds nothing substantive is all-but irrelevant; because that exactly characterizes the professional environment in which you already operate and in which you hope to thrive. AI will be fine for your purposes.  

 

It is evident that the set-up of current so-called AI - to sample (i.e. plagiarize) massively, combine and blend multiples, and generate an averaged-output; is necessarily soulless and mediocre. 

AI simply cannot-help but generate the soulless and mediocre - and is therefore a tool introduced and imposed by those who desire that society should be like that. 

Furthermore, this kind of "AI" can only spread and be used is a society where most people actually prefer the soulless and the mediocre; at least, when this is convenient. 

On top of this; Western Civilization is led and inhabited by shoals of Godless materialistic people who care absolutely nothing for Truth, Beauty or Virtue; are indifferent to quality and even functionality. 

These will implement AI even when it is functionally inferior or much worse, than existing systems and persons. 

It is a measure of our civilizational and personal corruption that AI is being so rapidly and pervasively imposed upon The West - and why so many, at so many levels, have embraced it. 

Current AI is "Industrial-scale Plagiarism"

A comment from yesterday by William James Tychonievich on the subject of the "creativity" of the post 2022 iteration of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) is well worth highlighting:

Real creativity is impossible for a computer, but since “AI” is based on industrial-scale plagiarism, it’s possible in principle that it could “produce” something moving. In that case, it’s pale fire would have been snatched from the sun, the human beings from which it plagiarized.

Industrial-scale plagiarism is a useful phrase to remember. 

Current AI is Exactly That - and as with all forms of plagiarism, whenever it generates something apparently creative, that is merely a re-labelling of human-derived creativity - an unacknowledged theft more or less disguised through distortion by selection and recombination. 

It reminds me strongly of that "fake creativity" I discussed in The Genius Famine (word search for it); when humans (e.g. those working in in advertising, PR, journalism) claim other people's original ideas, but disguise the origins of their de facto plagiarism using similar strategies.  

Yet, as William goes on to say: All this is hypothetical, though. In the real world, “AI” products remain palpably and repellently soulless. 

That spiritual fact tells us much about the motivations behind AI. 

The intentional psychological and spiritual harm of current "AI" is located in the deceptive sleight of hand that pretends "intelligence" and creativity when dishonest plagiarism is done by computers. 

Because these machines are operated by mega-corporations that stand above-the-law and control the mass media and "science" in a closed-loop; they are enabled to steal brazenly, indeed with vast self-congratulation; larded with repeated assertions of their own brilliance and wisdom. 

Such behaviour would potentially lead to legal action and heavy fines if it was proved against ordinary human beings. 

But when done under the disguise of AI, this is supposed to make us stand in awe of the industrial scale plagiarizers; to induce us to acknowledge them as higher and better forms of "intelligence".

We are supposed to conclude that the Establishment justifiers, funders, and operators of AI; not only can and shall (by force majeure), but actually deserve to, take-over the running of the world from the minds and souls of (puny) individual persons. 

The idea is that post-2022 AI has successfully rendered obsolete those human beings from-whom anything that happens to be good in AI (including the existence of AI programs and engineering) has originally been stolen.   

PSYOP Thought Experiments: How would you react if you learned that a sad and beautiful poem that touched you deeply had been written by a computer?

You may think she's cute - but she's a replicant, you fool!

Thought experiments are usually pretty evil mind manipulations, as I've said before. 

The thing is that in order to respond to thought experiments, you must allow yourself to admit them as possible, as potentially real. 

I got the title of this post from an advert for an NYT "Best Selling" book of such questions - which provides a clear example of the PSYOP nature of Establishment-allowed and Mass Media-publicized thought experiments. 

"How would you react if you learned that a sad and beautiful poem that touched you deeply had been written by a computer?" compels us to admit (for the purposes of argument, in our own understanding) that the very highest realms of human creativity can - in principle - be replicated by computers. 

Of course there is no instance of any such creativity from a computer ever; for the good reason that it is impossible - impossible in principle, not in practice.

But we are supposed to take it seriously, and in doing so we take it seriously - and thus genius-level computer creativity becomes a social reality, even when a real impossibility. 

One could extend the thought experiment (and of course this has been done, is being done, on a near daily basis in the media and elsewhere); to even more subversive questions as: 

"How would you react if you learned that your deeply loved wife of twenty years was in fact a robot"? 

Or the Philip K Dick story The Electric Ant, in which the "how would you react" is to learning that you yourself were a robot*.   

Focusing on "how would you react" is a classic way of smuggling assumptions; of the "do you still beat your wife" type, or implicit character-assassinations like asking "what made X become such an murderous psychopath?". 

(Of course, PKD is the genius-originator of this line of thought-experiment; with a difference that he really lived it.)

The PSYOPS give-away is that this kind of supposedly-free-thinking-radical, subversive, confusing, delusion-inducing, doubt-generating, demotivating thought experiment is media mainstream - often mandatory in schools and colleges; and indeed currently a Major (Trillion Dollar) part of public funding, strategy and propaganda... 

Is actually located in an Establishment monitored and controlled public discourse; in which innumerable and ever-increasing everyday and obvious experiences and observations are treated as hate-facts: taboo, suppressed, slurred, dishonestly-denigrated, excluded, and increasingly punishable. 

This kind of detailed, long-term manipulation of discourse - such that the impossible must be taken seriously and the true must be regarded as a lie - is clearly intentional and strategic... Global and totalitarian PSYOPS, in other words. 

A dangerous product?...

 

I developed conjunctivitis in my right eye, and went and bought some treatment; and only after I had used it, too late, did I realize that the bottle was labelled  infected  eye drops. 
It's outrageous that such a dangerous product can be sold to the unwitting public. 
What is it about eye drops, anyway? 

Prayer addressed to Jesus is primary

For Christians; prayer addressed to Jesus is primary - because it is by-Jesus that we attain salvation. 

This world, this Primary Creation, is mortal, temporary; goodness is mixed with evil and death... Therefore eternal salvation to wholly-good Heaven without death is the most important thing - for those who want it. So, prayer to Jesus must be primary. 

Prayer to God the Primary Creator, is about our hope or intention to affect positive change in this mixed,  temporary, mortal world. 

Miracles and answered-prayers are the provenance of the God, Primary Creator: because God is creating this world, and it is by creation that miracles are effected and prayers answered.

Amelioration during this mortal life is potentially significant, especially if this leads to faith in Jesus Christ, or helps us to learn spiritual-lessons from the experiences of mortal life.

But prayer to God for present help, is secondary in importance to the eternal matter of salvation. 

 

First Creation is groupish - Second Creation is individual

The Primary Creation is groupish, because it is universal: the creation of everything that is created, for everything that is created.  

We all inhabit the First Creation - and can only "opt-out" in the sense of annihilating awareness of our self as a distinct entity. 

Second Creation is personal, individual... 

Because the Second Creation is "opt-in" - Heaven is accessed by a decision/ action of a specific person. Heaven is not universal; it is inhabited by those who have chosen it.