The Friday Update - five nines

Happy Friday,

When life is hard, it can feel as if God is absent. When it’s easy, it can feel as if He’s affirming our path. The first is wrong and the second might be. Like pilots trained to trust instruments over instincts, we must learn to prioritize what He's put in writing over our feelings. And we must do so even when we don’t like what it says. Indeed, we must learn to do so especially when we do not like what it says.

WOTW

There was an explosion of newish tech terms this week—Claude Bot (this month’s this moment’s latest and greatest AI model), Kimi K2 thinking (AI processing enabled by a new Chinese computer), and five nines (a tech term for 99.999%). Because I heard agentic more than the rest, full honors go to it. It refers to AI that doesn’t just answer a question, but sets goals, makes plans, uses tools and keeps at it until the task is done.

ANGER

Several questioned last week’s Willard quote, "There’s nothing that can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it," noting that Christ’s anger fueled his cleansing of the temple. Yes. Sure. Anger can be both righteous and righteously channeled. But few walk that path as successfully as Jesus. At the risk of angering those who advocate anger, I’m standing by the claim that most people’s anger makes bad things worse. “There is almost nothing (five nines?) that can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it."

Layoffs

Amazon laid off 16K people last week, blaming economic jitters and AI (which now does everything except make coffee take coffee breaks). This has led one life coach to suggest “It’s time to toot your own horn so the boss won’t forget you.” Hmm. Count me as one who finds ceaseless self-promoters a bit exhausting.

Overheard

1) The first thing to say about politics, is that politics should never be the first thing.

2) “When we pray, ‘Your kingdom come,’ implicit in the petition is, ‘My kingdom go.’”

3) One of the great needs of our generation is to be capable of sorrow without anger.

4) We all like to think that if we’d lived in the 1930s we’d have hidden Anne Frank in our attic, and that if we’d lived in the 1860s, our home would be a stop on the underground railroad. But… when is the last time you acted courageously or sacrificially?

Quotes Worth Requoting

1) "God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel

2) “We don’t call people selfish. We call them individualistic, and every passing generation is more individualistic than the previous one.” — Jean Twenge

3) “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.” — C.S. Lewis.

Question

Although the gap is closing, AI still uses a 6-10X more electricity than a Google search. When is it worth it?

Without Comment

1) Between 2013 and 2023, annual male enlistments in the Army fell 35%. 

2) A recent study of US newspapers claims “public discourse is more negative now than at any time since the 1850s.”

3) 18- to 25-year-olds account for 46% of ChatGPT use.

4) Americans still believe “big government” poses the biggest threat to their future, but the 57% saying so is down from 70% in 2013.

5) Apple has sold over 3B iPhones since 2007.

6) In 2023, there were 3.6M babies born in the US, 6.3M born in all of Europe and Russia, and 7.5M born in Nigeria.

Brooks’ Good-Bye

I think David Brooks is on point in his final NYT column when he argues that: 1) this moment’s defining trend is our loss of faith in God, institutions and each other; 2) over the last 40 years, life has become objectively better but subjectively worse; and 3) our most grievous cultural wound is our loss of a shared moral order, “because without a shared conception of the sacred—sacred heroes, sacred texts, sacred ideals—anxiety, atomization, and a slow descent toward barbarism” follow. I’m also thankful that over his 22-year run we got to watch him question his assumptions, wrestle with faith and eventually decide to entrust his life to Christ.

Resources

1) AI is charging forward. There’s still time to sign up for Lakelight’s AI event with Meghan Sullivan coming up on March 2nd.

2) I will be giving a lecture on two of C.S. Lewis’ books (The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength) on Feb. 23rd at Cherry Hills Community Church in Denver, Co. Click here to register for this free event.

Closing Prayer

“Let your love dissolve my hard heart. Let your love raise me above myself. Let your love reveal to me joy beyond imagination. Let my soul exhaust itself in singing the praises of your love. Let me love you more than I love myself, and let me love myself only for your sake. And let me see your love shining in the hearts of all people, that I may love them as I love you. Amen.” (Thomas à Kempis - 1379-1471)