But I would like to talk about something specific that I am learning about monasticism, even as in its antechamber. (And if something in this sounds attractive to married Orthodox or Orthodox who have not yet chosen between marriage and monasticism, discuss it with your father confessor to find what in it might be appropriate for you.)

Monasticism as the supreme privilege to be sought in the Orthodox Church

Monasticism represents the position of supreme privilege that is to be sought within the Orthodox Church. I would modify now some of what I said in A Comparison Between the Mere Monk and the Highest Bishop, in that the worthy bishop wears a higher crown in Heaven than the worthy monk. However, the right thing for future bishops as well as other monastics is to seek to be a monk. If you should be a bishop, you will not need to work your way into becoming a bishop: the office of a bishop will find you, whether you like it or not.

There are three well-known monastic vows one takes in being tonsured into the little or great schema: poverty, obedience, and chastity. (There is a fourth vow of stability meaning being rooted in one place, but I will not discuss that.) None of these vows is a downside of being a monastic; these are the conditions of supreme privilege.

I am chiefly interested here in the first vow, poverty or affliction or non-acquisition. It may be said of affliction that I have found that when I have been facing secular afflictions, I tend to mostly pray for and seek things that are genuinely good for me; when I have been facing secular ease, I tend much more to seek things that are not genuinely good for me. However, I am interested in this vow as non-acquisition.

I have, on a meagre income, spent much of my time at the monastery engaging on what might be called throttled acquisition, or going from want to want. I have acquired wants, if more slowly, and if I had more money, I would just have been doing the same thing with larger price tags. Now I do spend money on myself, for food, medication and supplies for instance, and I have the use, if perhaps not the ownership, of a full monastery library. (The equivalent in the world would probably be to purchase a steady diet of books.) My handling of money is with a focus of being grateful for what I already have and repenting of covetousness (crossing myself and saying "Lord, have mercy," as I was told in some of my earliest pastoral advice after entering the Orthodox Church), and I am finding that non-acquisition is not a downside of monastic living; it is a treasure and a condition of privilege. I have gone more from always wanting the next thing I did not have, and feeling incomplete and not OK with what I had, to experiencing the riches of contentment ("Who is rich? He who is content.").

Furthermore, I am experiencing, or seem to be beginning to experience the beginning of, something like when I went to taking in less spiritual noise, and staying mostly in one place. Temptations can make the treasure temporarily not seem a treasure, but there has been something unfolding.

In years past I have talked about sacramental shopping, an ersatz sacrament where you try to improve yourself by buying things you think you need and that leave you feeling hollow and incomplete, perhaps as stimulated by the economic pornography of advertisements. It is hollow and a spiritual consolation prize at best, and I remember one instance in particular. I was shopping for the computer that would see me through Cambridge and Fordham, and after careful searching I found the excellent workhorse that I believed and still believed would serve me best: an IBM ThinkPad (an excellent brand which has been since taken over by Lenovo, a company with a justified reputation for acquiring excellent brands and keeping up the quality while offering it at a cheap price), with a large display and a gigabyte of RAM. And when I was about to buy it, my conscience pulled me back and said, "No." I entered a spiritual struggle, and the minute I completely surrendered and let go, my conscience gave me the green light. I purchased a workhorse that would serve me well for years, and what my repentance bought me was having the computer without committing sacramental shopping. I believe that that benefit and blessing was part of why it gave me pleasure for years. Sacramental shopping delivers a quick thrill and then quietly leaves you with a lonely emptiness.

Non-acquisition is a further step back from sacramental shopping and its always leaving you lonely and empty. I have found that repenting of purchasing additional wants has left me satisfied and happier. And there is more.

Acquisition is not something that goes away. Sexuality is not something that goes away; while a monastic's real deprivation is in surrendering his will rather than surrendering carnality, sexuality does not disappear but is subtilized. Furthermore, when acquisition on the level of material possessions is repented of, it is subtilized into something higher. One can be acquisitive of virtue, for instance, or the Holy Spirit, which St. Seraphim of Sarov famously highlighted in his famous dialogue with a pilgrim. Acquisition can reach a higher plane and be an acquisition of things which humbly make you genuinely happier over time, as opposed to things which give immediate glitz and quietly leave you with long-term loneliness.

So I am discovering, at a basic level, one of the four vows of a monastic, and looking forward to the day, God willing, when I will make those vows in accepting tonsure. I regard all four vows as the conditions of supreme privilege, having earlier regarded non-acquisition as one of the downsides of being a monastic. And I am grateful that God who cares for the birds of the air is giving me enough.

There is a famous dialogue in which a disciple asked an Abba among ancient Egypt's Desert Fathers, "What do we do?" The Abba answered, "The half of what our fathers did." The disciple asked, "What will those who come after us do?" The Abba answered, "The half of what we do." The disciple then asked, "What will those in the last days do?" The Abba answered, "They will not be able to do much of any great exploits, but those who keep the faith will be honored above our fathers who raised the dead."

Monasticism exists in a very attenuated form today. In antiquity, a novice or monk was not supposed to look at or even see a woman's face, and one of the other Desert Fathers stories tells of a monk who saw some nuns walking and gave them a wide berth, and one of the nuns said, "If you were a true monk, you would not have looked and seen that we were women." A novice or monk today interacts more with women than most married men in antiquity. And as regards poverty, I am well aware that I have the use of multiple computers and a nice Swiss Army Knife where ancient monks were supposed to have "not even a needle." I have luxuries that were not available to emperors in antiquity, and I expect that the right course will be for me to maintain many valuables for so long as the Lord allows it. We have much to be humble about today.

So, monasticism (and, for that matter, marriage) are greatly attenuated today, but those who die having kept the faith will be honored above those who raised the dead. And non-acquisition is a spiritual treasure and one of the conditions of the supreme privilege that is to be sought in the Orthodox Church.

Let us, married or monastic, take what treasures we can.

AI as an Arena for Magical Thinking Among Skeptics

AI: Particle or Wave?

The Arena

Ask for the Ancient Ways

Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts

Beyond the Unbearable Burden of Non-being

Branding is the New Root of All Evil

The Consolation of Theology

Could We Aim for Zero Hours Unnecessary Screen Time?

The Damned Backswing

Eight-Year-Old Boy Diagnosed With Machiavellian Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP)

Exotic Golden Ages and Restoring Harmony with Nature: Anatomy of a Passion

Getting my Bearings on AI

Happiness in an Age of Crisis

A Heart-to-Heart About Technology, Big Brother, and COVID

That Hideous Impotence

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis: A Lens for Our Day

How Can I Take my Life Back from my Phone?

How Shall We Live This Instant?

How to Survive Hard Times

How to Think About Psychology: An Orthodox Look at a Secular Religion

I Deleted my ChatGPT App

The Luddite's Guide to Technology: Fasting from Technologies

The Magic Stone

Of "Melanesian" and "Martian"

Mindfulness and Manners

Plato: The Allegory of the... Flickering Screen?

"Porn?" is a Question of Cosmological Significance

"Physics"

"Religion and Science" Is Not Just Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

Revelation and Our Singularity

My Signature Contribution to the Conversation

Silence: Organic Food for the Soul

The Silicon Rule

Singularity

"Social Antibodies" Needed: A Request of Orthodox Clergy

Some Tentative Guidelines for Using AI

Technology is Part of our Poverty

Technonomicon: Technology, Nature, Ascesis

Veni, Vidi, Vomui: A Look at "Do You Want to Date My Avatar?"

Why I Don't Want a Personal Genie

Why I'm Glad I'm Living Now, at this Place, at this Time, in this World

Yonder

You Can Choose to be Happy in the Here and Now

But if that is the case, what is to be made of a Zeitgeist where the sins of men are integrated into the sins of devils? Fornication is only a sin of man, while rebellion and pride are the sins of devils.

These people need our prayers.

I noticed, especially in the beginning critiques, that the positions MacIntyre critiqued seemed to be always treated as paper-thin concepts, and/or often paper-thin wrappings around emotivism (the doctrine that moral assertions are just statements of our emotions instead of claims about what is right or moral). Meanwhile, his work on his preferred concepts such as a "character" and a "practice" are thick concepts.

Second, I noticed at least one instance of critiquing the concept of the unity of the virtues by positing someone who had the fullness of a virtue and the fullness of a vice. This is begging the question. Elsewhere, in regards to bridging from "is" to "ought," he brings an unacknowledged enthymeme in going from "He is a sea-captain," to "He ought to do the things a sea-captain out to do." The unacknowledged premise is that there are things which a sea-captain ought to do, and MacIntyre on this point fails to provide a legitimate exception to C.S. Lewis's assertion in The Abolition of Man of, "Either the premises concealed an imperative, or the conclusion remains in the indicative." (Aristotelianism does not reach "ought" from "is." Aristotelianism starts with "ought" and builds bridges from some "oughts" to other "oughts." This may be acceptable and in fact I also do so, but what it is not is a bridge from "is" to "ought.") I think that if I had read the text more slowly, I would have detected more fallacies.

I will also mention, not as a critique, that The Benedict Option seems to pick up where After Virtue leaves off, and may be a more interesting followup than MacIntyre's next work, although I am partly guessing because I know only what is implied by his 2nd edition postscripts.

Having briefly mentioned those, I would like to respond to something closer to the substance of the book. MacIntyre works hard to show the failure of all post-medieval Western attempts to build a philosophically justified morality on standard philosophical terms of justification, and I would be inclined to agree with him at least in substance, that for the Western academic conversation, post-medieval Western moral philosophy has failed. No obvious rebuttal to his claims occurs to me now, and his critique, especially for today, only enjoys a sharper edge today for Ian McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary, where the left-hemispheral monism today cuts off reaching virtue or any truly grounded morality.

But with regard to the rest of the substance of the book I ask, "Why Aristotelianism?" Possibly most or all attempts to produce a grounded morality in the post-medieval West have failed, but why treat Aristotle as the only alternative? Stoicism excluded, he does not give reason why Aristotle is to be preferred over all other ancient and medieval options or options outside of the Western philosophical tradition. Among the Greek Fathers, legitimately calling you an Aristotelian was a strike against you.

I have heard postmodern heterodox make brief formulaic mention of the Church Fathers using "the best available philosophical resources of the day," combined with a complete failure to acknowledge that neo-Platonism was at once the air the Fathers breathed and something they were actively fighting against; an anachronous, if analogous, description might be that the Church Fathers were attempting a critical reception of neo-Platonism. I have never seen this play out in people who use today's slogan attempting to work out of the most fashionable resources of our day. There may be differences in which decisions one makes within a fairly completely assumed postmodern whole, but never a critical reception open to openly rejecting major segments of postmodernism the way Church Fathers repeatedly chastise Plato for mandating that virgins strip for exercise.

G.K. Chesterton said, "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. But he is usually wrong about what is right." Neo-Platonism, which incidentally includes elements of Aristotelianism, is still brought up as a resource for today even in settings not particularly related to Orthodoxy. I would suggest that MacIntyre is right about the failure of all post-Aristotelian Western philosophical attempts he investigates to arrive at a philosophically justified morality, but wrong in basing himself primarily on Aristotelianism from among available premodern philosophical resources. (Although my main interest is not, loosely speaking, critically received neo-Platonism from among the Church Fathers, but patristic Orthodoxy which came before, and survives, the failures in the West that MacIntyre studies.)

Eastern Orthodoxy attracts real men. Part of the picture may be that Evangelicalism gives men a concept of spiritual growth as a close personal relationship with another man, while Orthodoxy gives a concept of spiritual growth as deification. Orthodoxy lets men be men and women be women; also, Orthodoxy does not make women feel wrong if despite years of the best feminist indoctrination, they just want to have kids.

I am not suggesting a feigned or nominal interest in Orthodoxy just to land a husband. I am suggesting, however, that it would be worth exploring Orthodoxy, and in particular to visit Orthodox services. They may seem strange and unfamiliar at first, but there is something good about that.

Protestants are discovering Orthodoxy now that the gender rainbow has people searching for a real Church now more than ever.

So, I invite you to start attending Orthodox services, and play things by ear from there. My local tradition's parish locator is here (it says it's not working, but it worked for me to find parishes near where we are).

I invite you to at least try out visiting Orthodox parishes. You may end up with much more than a Master of Relational Studies degree!

Surgeon General's Warning

Roman Catholic readers are asked to seriously consider hitting the "Back" button and not reading further than this warning.

This piece is online for the benefit of Orthodox readers.

Rome's position is that Rome and Orthodoxy agree on all essentials needed for appropriate reunion. Orthodoxy's position is that there are unresolved essential differences which need to be addressed before appropriate reunion. This piece is intended to articulate several (not all) of unresolved essential differences in response to Roman communication that acknowledged no genuine Orthodox objection to Roman ecumenism. It remains posted because it may be helpful for Orthodox who are searching for why Orthodoxy disagrees with Rome and Roman ecumenism. Its closest predecessor has been flamed by Romans, interpreted as unprovoked hostility, and interpreted as clueless terms of cooperation with Roman ecumenism. Orthodox are edified by it; Romans aren't.

You have been warned.

I will briefly make some assertions without backing up crucial assertions, for the simple reason that I do not want to increase the guilt of Romans who read this article and reject it.

I would compare the assertion that Rome may on Pascha 2024 anathematize the Filioque clause and restore communion with the Orthodox Church. I might compare this to Anglicans announcing that they will restore communion with Rome, when what that means is that they will restore communion with Catholics for a Free Choice, or for that matter that they have already restored communion with Old Catholics.

What Rome may be restoring communion with is a non-canonical group that is out of communion with the Orthodox Church. It has swept some apostate bishops and their flocks, but this is like the dragon sweeping a third of the stars down from Heaven.

The Filioque clause is not the only barrier to doctrinally appropriate restoration of communion with Rome. Rome has developed other doctrinal heresies after separating itself from the Orthodox Church, and these are believed to survive Pascha 2024. Some related issues include:

1. The Roman placement of Thomas Aquinas among the most central Doctors of the Church is problematic because Thomas Aquinas is problematic (and also because systematic theology is problematic). In some sense asking Orthodox to accept Thomas's Scholasticism is something like asking Rome to remain Roman but accept intercommunion with people who place Radical Reformers like Zwingli as a central Doctor of the Church.

2. The doctrine of papal infallibility, even when clarified to mean that Rome will never put its fullest weight behind an error, is problematic to Orthodox.

3. The place of the Pope, whom Orthodox regard as being offered primacy but having demanded supremacy, is problematic to Orthodox.

4. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is anathema to Orthodox.

5. Modern Catholic social teaching is stranger next to Orthodox theology than Thomist Scholasticism.

6. Rome is willing to be in communion with liberal Catholic dissent that Orthodoxy is not comfortable being in communion with, and Rome is comfortable asking Orthodoxy to accept being in communion with Rome's Left Coast.

7. Regarding the question of whether Grace is created or uncreated, the Orthodox doctrine is that grace is uncreated, period. I am not completely sure whether Rome allows people a choice between believing Grace is created or uncreated, or requires people to believe Grace is created, but either of those options undermines a doctrine associated with one of our most beloved saints, St. Gregory Palamas.

This list is not exhaustive. Rome has developed several points of doctrine that are incompatible with Orthodoxy, and my experience has been that when a Roman tells me, "We've been a bit daft, but now Rome is getting our act together," the English translation is, "Rome is in the process of severing one more continuity with Orthodoxy."

I have read in various Roman publications something like this:

1. Orthodox believe Rome has valid orders.

2. Orthodox believe Rome has valid sacraments.

3. Orthodox don't care about reunion.

I have only seen Orthodox raise the question once every several years about whether Rome has valid orders and valid sacraments. It is not ordinarily a "top of mind" question to Orthodox in evaluating Rome, and among people who have raised the question, some vehemently deny that Rome has valid orders or valid sacraments.

What I have never once seen in Romans seeking reunion, outside one hotheaded flame that bitterly attacked Orthodoxy at all, is the bare acknowledgment of Orthodox concerns about doctrinal reconciliation before restoring communion. That is to say, I have seen Romans, including Roman priests, offer a very warm smile and express a desire for reunion; I have not heard, even once, "We understand that Orthodox are concerned about doctrinal differences that have developed in the last half of the life of the Church, and here is what we are doing to address your concerns about legitimate doctrinal reconciliation."

In dealing with Protestant converts, Romans have repeatedly brought up a quote, from the 19th century as best I recall, where Protestants tried to approach Orthodox and the Orthodox figure said that they should approach him through their own Patriarch, meaning the Pope. One at least of them followed up and became Catholic, and Catholics believe that Protestants belong under their jurisdiction.

What I have to say is this. I have never heard any Orthodox of any stripe bring up or repeating that quote. Its presence as quoted by Romans is something that I would compare to G.K. Chesterton's "new white post" quote as quoted by liberal Roman dissidents:

If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.

From the number of times I have heard these words quoted, one might get the impression that Chesterton said these words and nothing else. In fact G.K. Chesterton was a prolific and eminently quotable author, and I have read about as much of him as I could get my hands on. I do not see a responsible way to deny that the above is a verbatim quotation from one of Chesterton's most famous works, but I do plainly deny its adequacy as a simple summary of Chesterton's vast corpus. I deny entirely that it is adequate to treat that quote as what G.K. Chesterton's prodigious literary output might as well have begun and ended with. That those words are quoted by liberal Roman dissidents is a feature of liberal Roman dissidents and not a particularly interesting feature of Chesterton. In the same way, I cannot deny that some Orthodox figure at some point in the past regarded Protestants as belonging to Roman jurisdiction and not Orthodox, but I flatly deny that I have met anything like it in the living spirit of Orthodoxy such as I have encountered in the past two decades.

Orthodox believe that there are major legitimate points of unresolved doctrinal difference with Rome, and do not find the doctrinal differences to be undone by Rome renouncing the first mistake on the list. There have been a thousand years of separate development, and Rome has claimed with its fullest weight claims that are anathema to Orthodoxy.

My advice to Romans in all this is: You are probably as incapable as I am in preventing Black Bart from restoring communion with your own problematic Pope on Pascha of 2024, and I do not ask you to try and stop it. However, please do not confuse any such intercommunion with a healing step to help restore Catholic-Orthodox relations. The reconciliation between two groups severed from the Orthodox Church, if it occurs, will make Roman-Orthodox relations more problematic, not less, a bit like it would be more and not less problematic in Roman-Protestant relations for Rome to take up the Protestant invitation to simply take communion together without bothering about doctrinal reconciliation. Furthermore, the place of Black Bart in relation to the Orthodox Church will become even more problematic.

It is no more helpful than it would be for the Orthodox Church to restore communion with some of the bickering out-of-communion Traditionalist splinter groups that have apostasized from Rome, and it is no more of a rapprochement between Rome and the Orthodox Church.

Meanwhile, if you are willing to repent of the various heresies and oddities Rome has developed over the past thousand years, the real, canonical Orthodox Church will welcome you into full communion with open arms, and I will welcome you with open arms. That would include the unpleasant step of entering full communion as a reconciled heretic, which may raise Roman hackles, but it is one that I have taken, and one I have not regretted for a minute in the past two decades of membership.

Would you come home to Orthodoxy?

Cordially,
Br. Christos Hayward

Back in 2009 a Roman monk approached me with what he claimed to be an ecumenical advance on Orthodoxy that was sensitive to Orthodox concerns. I was quite mystified about what on earth that would be, and after I read it, I wrote, An Open Letter to Catholics on Orthodox and Ecumenism.

He responded with one of the biggest flames against Orthodoxy I've seen.

It's been just shy of fifteen years that that post has been live, and I've seen Roman readers respond in anger, or take it as unprovoked hostility when Rome has been appropriate in its advances to Orthodoxy, or making a completely clueless asking price in clumsily attempting to cooperate with Roman ecumenism on essentially Roman terms.

What I have not yet gotten in response from a Roman who has not been moving towards Orthodoxy, even once, is, "Ok, now I think I understand why Orthodox claim that there are unresolved doctrinal differences between Orthodoxy and Rome." Nor have I received a response of "I recognize that you are trying to explain why Orthodox cooperation with Roman ecumenism does not make sense to Orthodoxy."

I do not discount the possibility that my writing in fact has communicated with some of its intended audience; normally very few readers (proportionately speaking) will write an author, and a Roman in a white heat of fury upon reading An Open Letter to Catholics on Orthodoxy and Ecumenism may be much more eager to contact the author than a Roman who gulps and thinks, "Ok, I think I see some of why Orthodox assert that there are unresolved doctrinal differences between Rome and Orthodoxy." I mention and acknowledge this as a possibility, but as far as the feedback I have received goes, the letter has represented a total communication failure to 100% of Romans who have written me back about it at all. It was meant to dislodge assumptions of Roman ecumenism as speaking for Orthodoxy, and I have yet to be contacted by a Roman not moving to Orthodoxy who shows any discernible evidence of these assumptions having been brought into question or in any sense challenged.

To those asking what may be a painfully obvious question of why I haven't taken it down in fifteen years of its not communicating, I wish to acknowledge the objection and answer it. I have not received much of any advice that it communicates to its originally intended Roman audience, but it communicates powerfully and clearly to Orthodox about something Romans deny, that there are unreconciled doctrinal differences between Rome and Orthodoxy, above and beyond the unauthorized Roman addition to the Creed. I do not attempt breadth in particular in that the work is not intended to address all unresolved doctrinal differences or even all major unresolved doctrinal differences; I attempt to give depth in treating two main differences. Furthermore, while I have not seen evidence of my edifying Romans in the work, I have seen really quite strong evidence of it being helpful to Orthodox.

It should probably be acknowledged that I was attempting something difficult: not just contradicting beliefs that Romans know they have, but contradicting beliefs that Romans mostly do not know that they have, among which is that Roman ecumenism is the way to approach Catholic-Orthodox unity; the articulated belief that Rome and Orthodoxy share a common faith, a common heritage, and a common doctrinal basis fully sufficient for full communion; and in particular that if Romans try to show some love for Orthodoxy and make ecumenical overtures to Orthodox, the decent thing for Orthodox to do would naturally be to reciprocate in the same spirit. Other things might also be acknowledged; however, I am chiefly bringing this up as a well-written, noetically driven, and meticulously argued presuppositionalist apologetic argument that has completely failed in its originally intended purpose for its originally intended audience. Furthermore, it fails in an area where such things naturally do fail. I pick one of my own works to demonstrate such failure, but there is really no shortage of arguments of this sort that just drive the intended audience away.

...drive the intended audience away...

Which brings me to a crucial point. The Sermon on the Mount says, "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." In our prayers before communion at each Divine Liturgy we say, "For I will not speak of the mystery to Thine enemies."

The core principle is a principle of Orthodox mystagogy, which is in most non-monastic settings observed minimally today, but at the very least means this: if you know the truth and you know that another person will reject the truth if you tell him, you must hold your tongue. It will be better for that person at the Last Judgment to not be guilty for rejecting the truth you held your tongue about, and it will be better for you too at the Last Judgment because you did not place your neighbor in a position where you knew he would reject the truth.

Part of the Western philosophical tradition is to try to compel the other person by argument, and arguments can persuade. Online arguments can persuade bystanders even if they fail to persuade an opponent in an online forum. However, "A man convinced against his will, retains the same opinion, still." And presenting a position is only persuasive up to a point: present a position too far beyond a person's horizon and it will just repel. Traditional Orthodoxy wants, and God wants, to show a love for queers as whole people that will give them blessings people in LGBTQ+ lifestyles cannot even dream of in their present state. But it does not and should not follow that one is making progress by arguing against LGBTQ+ agendas in non-Orthodox online forums. Try to argue down a queer in a random Facebook encounter and you will just drive him further away from openness to the truth. It is a disservice to him, and it is a disservice to you.

I would further point out that few people who join the Orthodox Church were cornered by arguments into accepting Orthodoxy. That is not the force that drew me in, and it is not the force that draws most people in. To the best of my knowledge I know one person who is dear to me who in fact was more or less cornered, by a close acquaintance in discussions over time, and I fully welcome him and accept him as a dear brother in Christ. And where there is patience, a relationship, and much discussion, arguments can persuade. But we have a wrong idea in the West that the ideal persuasion is a storm of persuasion where someone comes in, makes a powerfully persuasive moment, and then leaves the other person convinced. That, perhaps, might be how someone who browses my site and reads at length might find An Open Letter to Catholics on Orthodoxy and Ecumenism persuasive. (Again, Roman response such as I have received for that piece reflects a total failure on my part to dislodge the beliefs and presuppositions that work was meant to challenge, and to my knowledge only Orthodox have benefited from reading it.) What is much more live an option to persuasion is a personal connection and a relationship over time, with arguments woven into a personal caring. To the best of my knowledge, Orthodox who feel a great need to corner others into Orthodoxy were not cornered into Orthodoxy themselves; and they do not seem to express a need to exercise an influence that worked for them in their lives.

If you are a former Protestant, I would encourage you to read The Protestant Phenotype. I have only met a Protestant obsession on cornering me in arguments and imposing their way in former Protestants who have room to go in their conversion. And I would on this point quote Fr. Andrew Damick whom I have reservations about on other scores, in suggesting that people who have been Orthodox for less than three years should not teach, and clergy should teach only the people their bishop has blessed them to teach. (My own abbot has not asked to see each individual thing I post, but I work as directed by his guidance, and he supports my writing as a whole, including my backing off on certain things in light of our conversation.) If you have been Orthodox for less than three years, I would at least suggest checking with your father confessor about trying to corner people in online cyber-doxy and force people to accept the truth; and if you are a former Protestant I would point that most Orthodox, clergy even, do not primarily engage online arguments. Some do; Fr. John Whiteford does, and I am far from the only person to respect him. But he is an exception to the general rule.

In A Mechanism I wrote,

Bowled over by humility

There was a time when I was visiting Holy Cross Monastery, and I talked to another person about someone who worked in the kitchen (name withheld), who had "bowled me over by humility." The other person knew immediately whom I was talking about and what I meant.

There was something incredibly compelling in those interactions with him, and before long my unspoken reaction was, "I want the mint!", i.e. I don't want some of the money he has, but what he has that he was minting spiritual money with. Now he offered me undiluted kindness in every interaction, but my "I want the mint!" was something that extended well beyond appreciating the kindness he treated me with. I did not want, exactly, for him to treat me so kindly, but I did want to observe and see if there was some way I could learn where he was spiritually minting money from. Dealing with him was riveting.

I think also of another time I encountered someone very humble, and I saw something great, and was again closely trying to observe him and wanting what he had, but I kept my mouth shut.

Bruising someone's humility

There was one other time I'd mention, on a not so theatrical scale, when I told my abbot, "I'm not telling [Name] in order not to bruise his humility, but you don't know what an incredible blessing it is to answer to someone who is humble." And that was appreciated.

Pride wants compliments; humility helps uproot that desire, and so it's not best, when dealing with humble people, to offer comments that will bruise their humility. Pride wants human honor; humility is extremely wary of receiving honor, partly because humility includes an accurate assessment of how empty human honor really is. The suggestion I'd give for dealing with someone who has an awe-inspiring humility is to sit on your hands as far as compliments go; interact with the person, love and appreciate him, and try to get what you can of the mint, but respect that a humble person will regard human praise as fool's gold that is inseparable from hostilities that follow it, and he wants things much greater. I would add to this that such people have their sights set on a much higher target, and you do nothing to hinder them in their quest by sitting and enjoying their humility.

There was one time at a gathering where I was listening with rapt attention to musicians playing, and in a personal conversation after the performance, the performers spoke appreciatively of my listening. I do not remember what language they used but I would use a term like "listening loudly," or listening loud and clear. Someone who is listening in a prickly or hostile way makes it harder to perform; someone who is listening sympathetically makes it easier to perform, and I give every blessing to "listen loudly," when encountering someone humble.

How not to impart humility, and what is better

There is something compelling in this listening, and something I have never met in meeting the Seraphinians I encountered that led up to writing, and continues after writing, The Seraphinians: "Blessed Seraphim Rose" and His Axe-Wielding Western Converts. They were, without exception, very big on my need for humility and fully willing to harass and bluntly criticize me to pound me into being humble. And none of my own humility, such as I have, came from there. If anything, like a bad heresiologist I fell into the trap of picking up some of my opponents' approach in communicating, and however much I may have attempted to argue in a compelling fashion, I do not believe many readers have been drawn to it as by humility.

There is someone else I met who has a deep and contagious calm, enough so that people are drawn to him in the hope that some of his calm rubs off on them. Calm and humility are not exactly the same thing, and the deep calm may or may not have been accompanied by humility. However, there was something of the same kind of draw. People have wanted to be near him in the hope some of his calm will rub off.

In the Roman empire before Constantine, there was a saying, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith." Roman citizens seeing public martyrdoms of Christians saw at least one thing that even transcends that wild beasts were let loose to devour martyrs and came and licked the martyrs' feet. They saw families that were summoned to the contest, and who were exuberantly happy, as if they had been summoned to a great feast, and there was something very compelling about this. Although martyrs had been sometimes healed in the course of their contest, they saw that a pagan Empire could kill Christians but not defeat them. Now it is to be mentioned in some cases that there were apologetics at play, and Great-Martyr Katherine, for instance, converted the fifty philosophers who were asked to out-argue her. However, there was something in the many martyrs beyond some of them being effective apologists. Rome could kill Christians but not defeat them, and in the final run killing Christians under those conditions was an act of impotence.

The story is told of one teacher who took over a religion class whose terrible behavior had driven out her predecessor, and whose unruly students found to their astonishment that all their verbal missiles simply passed through her without causing harm or leaving a trace. Their hostility gave way to an incredible curiosity about who she was and why she was not harmed by their missiles.

I was not argued into entering Orthodoxy, and I only reasoned my way into it to a limited extent. I wanted what the Orthodox Church has.

The "fruit of the Spirit" option

The Benedict Option argues forcefully that Christianity has lost the point of sexual morality in the public sphere, and really lost what is to be had in the public sphere of argument. But Galatians 5:22 reads, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Christianity may have lost all legal status above that of bigotry in face of anti-Christian opposition, but the option is as much now as ever open to leave people in the misery heralded by the gender rainbow to see their misery and the "I want what he has!" to our joy in the Spirit.

Years before entering Orthodoxy, I was part of an "Anglican opposition" parish, with a healing ministry for homosexuals, and one of the priests talked about how as gay he had a vision of a face he did not recognize. But the face he did not recognize was his own, radiant as the ex-gay priest he would become. And he really was unrecognizably transformed in his penitence.

It hurts to kick against the goads, and it still hurts if you have the entirety of the law, public discourse, and political correctness defending the full legitimacy of kicking against the goads. Now that traditional teaching on sexuality is legally no more privileged than bigotry, Christians have lost incredibly much in the public square, but Orthodox and Christians are free now as much as ever to have something that queers want.

This is the proper and primary Orthodox channel of influence. It is not cyber-dox followers of "Blessed Seraphim Rose" assuming the position of a superior over any non-Seraphinian, as a superior directing a subordinate, and making humility the first thing to teach.

And by the way, I invite you to read my book The Seraphinians: "Blessed Seraphim Rose" and His Axe-Wielding Western Converts for a pristine example of how to fail at persuading opponents. I picked up my opponents' bad habits and was just as forcefully and abrasively committed to cornering people into agreeing with me as my opponents were.

Earlier in A Mechanism, I wrote,

Quotes that have rumbled down the ages

Perhaps the most famous quote in Orthodoxy, a John 3:16, is "God and the Son of God became Man and the Son of Man that men and the sons of men might become gods and the sons of God." Or that's at least one variant.

Another quote or two that have rumbled down the ages, if not quite so spectacularly, is:

• Save yourself and ten thousands around you will be saved.

• Make peace with yourself and Heaven and earth will make peace with you.

I would like to suggest a mechanism by which such things make effect, or at least a physical shadow of an explanation. The deepest sense in which such things happen is God's grace, in a relationship where God is totally free and we are totally free, and I do not want to detract from that. However, there is a physical mechanism, a physical dimension, that I'd like to explore, before saying, "The truth is greater than all this."

Taking a cue from the Left

I have written elsewhere about The Saint and the Activist, and I believe there is something in Orthodoxy that is profoundly oriented towards the saint's life of Heaven on earth and not towards the activist who wants to change the world. However, Gandhi offered what would become heavily quoted words, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

If liberals and radicals who, naturally, measure their life's achievement by how much they change the world, are willing to be the change they want to see in the world, we who are Orthodox should be beating them to the punch! Orthodox should be the humility we want to see in the world. Orthodox should be the repentance we want to see in the world. Orthodox should be the sanctified presence we want to see in the world. Orthodox should be the welcome to a hurting world we want to see in the world. Orthodox should be the peacefulness we so much want to share with the world.

This is the power of saints, and it is the primary persuasive power Orthodox should trade in.

Conclusion

The Western and Protestant heritage is to feel an obligation to corner people in arguments and make them accept the truth. As stated in A Mechanism, and for several reasons, I do not agree with current psychobabble that we are a thin veneer of logic on top of a structure of emotion. However, the primary power Orthodox trade in is a different power. It is a more subtle power, and the only real reason I do not say a more Taoist power is that the partisans of Fr. Seraphim of Platina who assign Christ the Eternal Tao for others to read, demonstrate the virtues of the Tao and Taoism least among self-identified Orthodox I have ever met. One of the titles I considered giving to this work was "The Tao of Orthodoxy," and I don't think that is a terribly bad title.

But while acknowledging that argument has a place, I would express serious reservations about "If you have a truth you really want other people to agree to, you should corner them in arguments." A much better plan is to live the truth in such a way that they will want to have it too, and if you don't have a relationship with another person to be able to live the truth contagiously, maybe that might indicate you shouldn't be trying to straighten that person out.

You can only use the power of words and argument most effectively when you already live the power of silence and Orthodox influence first.

In C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, appears one of two mentions of plastic in The Chronicles of Narnia. When the first Queen of Narnia was summoned, a mention was made about how if she had to choose how she would appear, it would be with a hat with plastic cherries, but as it was she had just been dressed for washing dishes, and she looked lovelier. (The other mention, in The Last Battle, is that Queen Susan the Gentle was no longer a friend of Narnia, because she was all obsessed with "lipstick, [plastic] nylons, and invitations," but I am not concerned with that here.)

The phenomenon of finding something to use a cool new commodity and using plastic as an ornament on a pre-plastic-style hat is characteristic of a technology's entrance. The new technology is a solution in need of a problem. It's a bit like a book I gave my father, from before it was mainstream to open a computer, and there were various contrived solutions (one was a way to use a computer to play an electronic version of a board game).

Today, plastic is anything but a solution in need of a problem. It is a mature technology integrated with every aspect of our lives. It is a mainstream material so that living without using plastic is not really an option, even if life without disposable plastic is a Holy Grail to some in the green movement. Furthermore, although Lewis seems unsympathetic to whether plastic cherries on a hat really enhance a woman's beauty, we have problems Lewis would not have imagined. We have plastic wrapping most new items we acquire, plastic is something permanent that will never biodegrade, and I've heard we consume a credit card's worth of microplastics in our food each week. None of these problems was an issue when someone had the creative idea of putting little plastic berries onto a traditional hat as an exotic ornament.

In my study of AI, at least an ostensibly attractive girl demonstrated results for how she gave some of the more photorealistic Disney princesses her face, and then explained in excruciating detail just how to do that. BOOM! Detailed, step-by-step instructions for how to use AI to make revenge porn!

For my Christmas gifts, I sent my nephews a custom book that has the life stories of saints whose names they share, and an AI-generated fantasy short story that makes them the heroes. And that is perhaps an equivalent to ornamenting a hat with plastic cherries. AI will go much further when it has shed all traces of being a solution in need of a problem. (Not that ChatGPT is in any sense a solution in need of a problem, but it is a marketing stunt when the damned backswing of AI will go beyond present issues of multiple governments, megacorporations, and organized crime peeping on every step we take anywhere on the Internet. The problems with AI exceed when Big Brothers and organized crime use AI in every way against you that they can.)

An urban legend that has roots in genuine truth

Most of us have seen St. Nilus's alleged prophecies, and most of us have heard that it is an urban legend. The Orthodox Wiki has the page assessing the "prophecy" as having problems such as dating, with a specimen of:

The Prophecy of Saint Nilus

The Plight of the World and the Church during the 20th Century

By SAINT NILUS (d. circa AD 430)

After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of that time will become unrecognizable. When the time for the Advent of the Antichrist approaches, people's minds will grow cloudy from carnal passions, and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger. Then the world will become unrecognizable.

People's appearances will change, and it will be impossible to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style of hair. These people will be cruel and will be like wild animals because of the temptations of the Antichrist. There will be no respect for parents and elders, love will disappear, and Christian pastors, bishops, and priests will become vain men, completely failing to distinguish the right-hand way from the left.

At that time the morals and traditions of Christians and of the Church will change. People will abandon modesty, and dissipation will reign. Falsehood and greed will attain great proportions, and woe to those who pile up treasures. Lust, adultery, homosexuality, secret deeds and murder will rule in society.

At that future time, due to the power of such great crimes and licentiousness, people will be deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which they received in Holy Baptism and equally of remorse. The Churches of God will be deprived of God-fearing and pious pastors, and woe to the Christians remaining in the world at that time; they will completely lose their faith because they will lack the opportunity of seeing the light of knowledge from anyone at all. Then they will separate themselves out of the world in holy refuges in search of lightening their spiritual sufferings, but everywhere they will meet obstacles and constraints.

And all this will result from the fact that the Antichrist wants to be Lord over everything and become the ruler of the whole universe, and he will produce miracles and fantastic signs. He will also give depraved wisdom to an unhappy man so that he will discover a way by which one man can carry on a conversation with another from one end of the earth to the other.

At that time men will also fly through the air like birds and descend to the bottom of the sea like fish. And when they have achieved all this, these unhappy people will spend their lives in comfort without knowing, poor souls, that it is deceit of the Antichrist.

And, the impious one!—he will so complete science with vanity that it will go off the right path and lead people to lose faith in the existence of God in three hypostases. Then the All-good God will see the downfall of the human race and will shorten the days for the sake of those few who are being saved, because the enemy wants to lead even the chosen into temptation, if that is possible... then the sword of chastisement will suddenly appear and kill the perverter and his servants.

But I'd like to repeat here something I wrote earlier:

It has been said, "Nothing is as dated as the future." And the text, should future scholars wish to date it, could date this text fairly closely by what technology it sees and what it has no hint of.

There is a counterbalance to "Nothing is as dated as the future." Things fade in. Prophecy collapses time without sharply distinguishing similar events that occur at different period, and when oca.org/saints, before the prophecies of St. Nilus, the party that posted St. Nilus's story wrote:

Saint Nilus has left a remarkably accurate prophecy concerning the state of the Church in the mid-twentieth century, and a description of the people of that time. Among the inventions he predicted are the telephone, airplane, and submarine. He also warned that people's minds would be clouded by carnal passions, "and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger." Men would not be distinguishable from women because of their "shamelessness of dress and style of hair." Saint Nilus lamented that Christian pastors, bishops and priests, would become vain men, and that the morals and traditions of the Church would change. Few pious and God-fearing pastors would remain, and many people would stray from the right path because no one would instruct them.

The person who assessed the text as referring to the mid-twentieth century was in fact not quoting a timeline given by St. Nilus but giving a gloss by the presumably mid-twentieth century author of his life, and St. Nilus did not in fact give any timeline or date that my historical sensitivities could recognize. I have read his prophecies, the real ones that tell what the wording of the Mark of the Beast will be, a point I have never seen on the urban legend channel. But things are fading in. The prophecy I recall seeing it said that "wisdom" would be given or acquired so that a man could speak and be heard on the other side of the world. The original life posted referred to the "radio," not the "telephone." Today a much further complement of Internet'-based technologies allow various means of voice and/or video conversation, meetings, presentations, etc, so many so that it's a considerable challenge to even count them accurately.

As far as men being indistinguishable from women, we have far eclipsed the summary of the prophecy above, which has no concept of widespread gender reassignment surgeries. As far as passions go, we now have a sewer's worth of Internet porn. The prophecy could apply as much to scuba diving even better than submarines, but the oca.org/saints wording has not been changed. The prophecies stated that wisdom would be found that would let men speak in one place and be heard across the world, a prediction which has faded in in the radio, then also the telephone, then also the Zoom chat. What next? Who knows if haptics might make a "remote touch" that offers some ghastly and obscene parody of a mother touching her baby, remotely and from a phone? As far as the morals and tradition of the Church, contraception has transformed into being broadly seen as a legitimate option to Orthodox. Examples could easily be multiplied, but I think it would be better to recognize the singularity we live in, a singularity that is unfolding on many dimensions (the gender rainbow, the river of blood from black-on-black murders ever since "Black Lives Matter" took to the forefront (could we please reverse course and go for "All Black Lives Matter?"), a singularity following a century that with artists like Picasso radically transforming artistic conventions that a historian should regard as being like an eyeblink. Now changes are continuing to roll out, at an accelerating pace in a singularity. In a matter of weeks, models who were not half-starved began to be rolled out. Politically correct pictures of people usually did not show white people alone; they included a person of color. Now a further installment has been made: some pictures have a woman wearing Muslim hajibs, and increasingly common are wheelchairs to include people with disabilities (please note that most disabilities, including mine, do not have people using a wheelchair). And dominoes are falling: not only BLM, which seems to always and only be in reference to blacks needlessly killed by white police and by white police alone, but Islam's surge (with atheislam in which the West accepts under an iron yoke what it spurned under a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light), the cyber-quarantine, vaccines that will be socially mandated, transgender being in truth a prominent and well-integrated addition to what was once really just mostly "LBG", with schoolchildren being told "There's no right or wrong age to fall in love" (one archpriest called a spade a spade and said, "Putting the P in LGBTQP+"), and so on.

Update on St. Nilus, from April 16 2022:

I have encountered a claimed quotation of St. Nilus's text that is consistent with my recollection in a book whose title I have removed after learning it was written by a schismatic. pp. 219-220. I quote:

St. Nilus the Myrrhgusher says: "When Antichrist places his seal on people their hearts will become as if dead. At the time of the prophesied calamity, Antichrist will begin to seal people with his imprint, as though by this seal to save them from misfortune, for those having this seal, according to Revelation, will be able to buy bread. Many will be dying on the roads. People will become like predatory birds attacking carrion, and will devour dead bodies. But which people will devour the dead? Those who are marked with the seal of Antichrist. Since Christians will not have the seal they will not be able to receive or buy bread and will not devour the dead; but those who are sealed, though they can buy bread, will devour the dead. For, when a man is imprinted with the seal, his heart will become insensitive; not being able to bear hunger, people will carry off corpses, and sitting at the side of any road devour them.

"Finally, the one sealed by the Antichrist will himself be put to death; and on the seal the following will be written: 'I am yours.' - 'Yes, you are mine.' - 'I go of my own free will, not by coercion.' - 'And I receive you by your own will, not by coercion.' These four sayings or inscription will be shown in the center of that accursed seal."

The footnote reads, "St. Nilus, in Archimandrite Pantaleimon, op. cit., pp. 80-81.", with "op.cit." referring to Archimandrite Pantaleimon, A Ray of Light, Jordanville, 1996.

I do note, not happily, that one of the quotes on the first pages of the work is the alleged "Old English" prophecy that was alleged to come from the "Mother Shipton" hoax in which a made-up psychic was given after-the-fact retrodictions of past events under the guise of old before-the-fact predictions. However, the author seems to have a source for St. Nilus saying something an urban legend would never drop.

The worm, the serpent, the dragon

In the Bible there isn't really a strong dividing line between a worm and a serpent, or between a serpent and a dragon. The same word has been translated "serpent" and "dragon" in the (full) Book of Esther, and the Book of Revelation is content to refer to the devil as a serpent in one part and a dragon in the other.

The Internet as a can of worms

Back when the Internet was going mainstream, there was one particular point that was repeated ad infinitum on TV news. Going under the cover of laments about "Porn, our addiction," TV news announced loud and clear and long that you can get porn by using the Internet. As I wrote in 55 New Maxims for the Cyber-Quarantine, "Recognize that from the devil's perspective, the Internet is for porn—and he may have helped inspire, guide, and shape its development."

Now there are many good and legitimate uses for the Internet, and there are legitimate reasons for us to use it. However, I would draw attention to a translation / interpretation issue concerning Ephesians 5:4, "Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks." Is St. Paul talking about all humor, or just humor that is off-color?

I would answer that if you look through the archives of the newsgroup rec.humor.funny, the contingent of humor that is off-color is the majority party. The joke that has its own Wikipedia entry, the quintessential joke, is the one that is obscene. The joke that is good enough for the present company is just along for the ride.

The Internet's primary purpose from before porn sites existed was to deliver porn. Other uses exist, and I am glad to have this Substack and at least one major website, but edifying use of the Internet is just along for the ride.

Mobile Anti-Social Media as a can of serpents

I was bullied on the Internet enough that I decided on suicide at one point; that I did not continue is pure unmerited grace on God's part.

Anti-Social media are the next step up after general Internet use, and now we have a creepy Facebook available at our hip at all hours of the day or night.

When anti-social media were pioneered, they held the promise of exposure for small and medium-sized businesses to reach the public. But now small and medium-sized businesses almost can't make themselves known apart from anti-social media. The apparent boon has a backswing.

I make about one post a day on Facebook and Twitter, and that one post has on the order of a hundred people coming to my page per day. (My abbot has allowed me to appear on social media but sharply limited how much time I should be spending on it.)

AI as a can of dragons

We do not know and have not seen the fruits of mature AI, although there are plenty of concerns raised in "The AI Dilemma" (first video, updated version, latest update as of this writing). When I told one friend I was getting to try to know AI, she compared AI to an Ouiji board, and modestly warned, "Be careful." And I do not doubt that occult use of AI is close at hand and easy to ask for, but I made repeated requests for a C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia novel that was never written, and what it produced was mediocre fantasy with a heavy name-dropping dusting of C.S. Lewis / Narnian details. I've heard that AI writes well, but I've found it mediocre, tersely offering a synopsis of fiction rather than proper fiction, slightly less stingy with words when I requested dialogue and details, and I do not know if it would have been better if I had made an explicit reminder to "Show, don't tell."

But my own study of AI has been mostly centered on reading academic papers and trying to glean at least some value from medium.com articles that indulge in journalist sensationalism. And I have at least temporarily restricted my computer's access to one major AI image generator; I have generated one keeper with it but it is an image generator for which every indication is that it will generate porn if requested to do so. So I've tried to push it away.

"The AI Dilemma" (first video, updated version, latest update as of this writing) talked about a first contact with AI in anti-social media's race to the bottom of the brain stem, with all being about what will get the most transfixed attention, while our current second contact is about intimacy in producing what people most closely bind to. I've seen disappointing results in fiction writing, although asking for additional Calvin and Hobbes cartoons was closer to the mark. Asking ChatGPT to imitate a classic writer triggers over-the-top name-dropping but not writing that is anywhere near classic in character, or that easily observes basic rules of good writing. So far the output I have seen from ChatGPT has also never tempted me to plagiarize. However, I believe I represent a minority report for ChatGPT's users.

Conclusion:

And not irrelevant is that OpenAI fired their CEO after its own researchers were terrified about what they were creating, hired and fired another CEO in about a day, and on the third day resurrected their CEO as an executive in charge of how much OpenAI is willing to do and how far down the race it will go.

I'm not sure how much I will directly seek further interaction with AI. Probably I will return to image generation once I have an actual purpose to do so, but idle hands are the devil's workshop, and though I have been clean of relapses for years from Internet pornography, somehow it seemed that my defenses did not come into play. "Be careful" is a modest warning, and one that may legitimately read as a polite and gentle way of saying, really, "Don't."

The passage about St. Nilus above was taken from a draft of Revelation and Our Singularity, and as I wrote in Papers and Paychecks,

These people live at a great cusp, for to mankind as it had hitherto existed a great Orcish battering ram is battering the world's doors:

• BOOM! Internet porn!

• BOOM! Anti-social media!

• BOOM! Islamic ascendency!

• BOOM! Smartphones!

• BOOM! Gay marriage!

• BOOM! COVID!

• BOOM! Vaccines!

• BOOM! Transgender!

• BOOM! ChatGPT and Gollem AI!

And sooner or sooner the door will break to shivers and enter the Balrog.

The list of battering ram blows is not exclusively technological, in a work that was not intended to focus on technology, but it speaks of an accelerating singularity, one that makes The Medieval Experience: Foundations of Western Cultural Singularity such a disappointing read. (If I may drop a name that may make me less popular Philip Sherrard's The Rape of Man and Nature is a more enlightening read, as long as we keep in mind that Sherrard is a caricature artist but people are more readily recognized from a good caricature than the photorealistic.) We are experiencing more changes in a year that historically recent times saw in a decade or further-back history saw in a lifetime, and the pace is accelerating further. I mentioned plastics as an example of a mature technology that is anything but a novelty to adorn women's hats and perhaps make them less attractive.

When I told one friend about what I was researching, he commented that many Orthodox believe that anti-social media "is the Devil," and even more that AI "is the Devil." Much the same I believe is true of America now, and I do not digress.

I'm not sure how to better end than quote my friend's "Be careful," as I have clarified it. We've opened a can of worms, and we've opened a can of snakes next, and now we are opening a can of dragons that will affect both those who use AI directly and those who will abstain from it.

But God incomparably excels a can of dragons.

Blessed are those who repent of the pride that blinds them to the beauty of others, for you will honor them with the humility that opens men's eyes to the beauty of others.

Blessed are those who repent of covetousness of what is not theirs, because to them will open the satisfaction of contentment.

Blessed are alcoholics who repent and regain sobriety, for they have turned their backs on a suffering they would not wish on their worst enemies, and they shall have as their reward nothing less than sobriety itself. (Their actual reward may be more than sobriety alone, but certainly not less.)

Blessed are those who repent of nursing a grudge, for they shall experience firsthand that forgiveness satisfies more than revenge.

Blessed are those who repent of ingratitude, for they shall discover the true joy of a life of gratitude.

Blessed are those who repent of a lust that drains Heaven and Earth of wonder, for you shall open their eyes to the beauty and wonder in Heaven and Earth that lust has blinded their eyes to see.

Blessed are those who repent of the very hope of escape from this world with its here and now, for you shall open their eyes to see a world you have created as good, and they shall receive the here and now as an icon of Paradise.

Blessed are those who repent of trying to manipulate you with their prayer and ascesis, for you shall reward them with a relation with utter freedom on both sides, in which you seek out men's interests better than men know to seek for themselves.

Blessed are those who repent and expect to be destroyed, for you will blindside them with a reward that is just and merciful, beyond justice and beyond mercy, at one stroke.

Virtue is its own reward. But, without any contradiction, virtue is also the reward for repentance, and what a reward it is!

Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thine ear;
And forget thine own people, and thy father's house;
And the king shall greatly desire thy beauty:
For He Himself is thy Lord; and thou shalt worship Him...
In the stead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee;
Thou shalt make princes over all the earth.

Psalm 44:9-10,15, The Psalter According to the Seventy

"Do not weep," Christ said to a woman whose only son was dead. She was not just deprived of the company of her closest living relative. She was deprived by the same stroke of her livelihood. And Christ forbids her to weep!

"Do not weep," Christ said, and raised her son from the dead.

Then said Martha unto Jesus, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee."

Jesus saith unto her, "Thy brother shall rise again."

Martha saith unto him, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

Jesus said unto her, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?"

—John 11:21-26, KJV

For a long time, I found certain aspects of the Resurrection strange, perhaps strangest of all the dialogue on the road to Emmaus:

And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

And he said unto them, "What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?"

And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, "Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?"

And he said unto them, "What things?" And they said unto him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not."

Then he said unto them, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.

And they said one to another, "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?"

—Luke 24:13-32, KJV

This passage perplexed me when I was younger, but now I find it wondrous. Christ seems to say nothing to console those who were perplexed at his death. Earlier at the grave one of the myrrh-bearers, perhaps crying buckets too much to see clearly and perhaps even more unable to imagine something much more astonishing, we read:

Jesus saith unto her, "Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?"

She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away."

—John 20:15, KJV

The gardener. In my culture, gardening is emblematic of privilege and status. In the myrrh-bearers' culture, a gardener was a low man on the totem pole. And she supposed the risen Christ to be a gardener, but he was above taking offense.

Jesus saith unto her, "Mary." She turned herself, and saith unto him, "Rabboni;" which is to say, "Master."

Jesus saith unto her, "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

—John 20:16-17, KJV

"Touch me not." As regards translation, this is a continuous verb tense; in other words the meaning is a little further from "Do not touch me once" than "Do not try to keep clinging to me here where I am," because Christ has more to give her than more of his physical, bodily presence even as resurrected. Mary Magdalene is overjoyed to recognize him resurrected and alive, and he raises her sights further. Christ is preparing to raise his following's sights, from his physical presence during his ministry, to his invisible presence, before ascending into Heaven.

The disciples don't get it. They don't get it when he is with them. They don't get it when he rises from the dead. They don't get it when he ascends to Heaven, and two men in white say, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."

The mystical theology of the Orthodox Church is that Adam and Eve were intended to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. However, they were intended to take it only when directed by the Lord, who would give it to him once they had grown mature enough to rightly benefit. The ban was only temporary.

"Adam, trying to be god, failed to be god. Christ became man, to make Adam god," as an old hymn says.

Pentecost comes, and the disciples get it. At Pentecost the disciples have eaten maturely of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thine ear;
And forget thine own people, and thy father's house;
And the king shall greatly desire thy beauty:
For He Himself is thy Lord; and thou shalt worship Him...
In the stead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee;
Thou shalt make princes over all the earth.

Psalm 44:9-10,15, The Psalter According to the Seventy

There are multiple layers and facets to all of Scripture, and it would be silly to fail to acknowledge the Psalm which I have now quoted twice as referring to the Mother of God. But the Mother of God is the Saint greater than the Saints, pre-eminent among all who follow our Lord. And the Psalm refers not only to her, but those of us who remain forever in her holy shadow.

I opened my last confession, "I alone and without any other created a situation in which my parents could veto my happiness." My Abbot, who wants his children to obtain his blessing for reading texts, whom I had simply asked for "a reading [assignment] from the library," and whom I had previously brought to confession that I had failed to cultivate internalized monastic discipline by failing to ask for blessings to read a nourishing stream of books, gave me the whole library to read from!

After that meeting, I had one of the best conversations I've had at the monastery, welcoming a young man who was inquiring about Orthodoxy and was very attentive to the invitations I gave him. I did not receive pity, but the consolation and privilege of rolling out the red carpet to a new inquirer.

The next day, I visited the other parish connected to my monastery, specifically to see a catechumen family, whom I had spoken with very briefly on a prior visit, and in return I received an invitation to a meal at their house. I have asked a blessing for that.

I had also confessed, bitterly, "seeking in things a happiness not to be found in things." God did not respond by making more pleasure from my possessions, but gave me happiness in things I should be seeking happiness in. Such as other people.

Pity us, O Lord, early every month: for we are not brought to an end, because his compassions are not exhausted. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I wait for him.

—Lamentations 3:22-24, Sir Lancelot Brenton's translation

After the Resurrection, Christ did not appear to his enemies to settle a score.

The only score I remember him really settling was with St. Peter, who had apostasized by denying him three times. He was warming himself by a particular kind of charcoal fire, and Christ made the same kind of fire, with the same scent. He asked Peter three times, "Do you love me?" overcoming the three times he had been denied, Christ not acting out of sadism, but to help give a crushed and permanent humility to a man who would do very great works indeed, and to reinstate him as first among equals among the apostles.

"Forget thine own people, and thy father's house… sons are born of thee." For me this includes not only conflicts with my parents, but also my desire for a doctorate that I had still not repented of. My Ph.D. may have been cruelly confiscated, but it is as if Christ is saying, "Do not cling to a doctorate," because he has something better.

Someone had said, after an addiction had wounded a friendship, "Can things get back to where they were," and the answer was a decisive, "No." Things could absolutely not be restored to what they were in the past. In fact, things could become one hundred times better, but recreating the friendship before the betrayal of addiction was not an option. The only available good option would be to let things keep becoming better in reconciliation.

The Orthodox Church talks often about "hope in repentance," and I suggest more specifically that there are legitimate rewards for repentance, and it is not mercenary to want them. I discuss this some in Repentance, Heaven's Best-Kept Secret. The reward for repenting of seeking happiness in the wrong places is that you are freed to seek happiness in the right places, and find it! And there are all kinds of rewards, from a recovering alcoholic's regained sobriety being rewarded by having abandoned a suffering you would not wish on your worst enemy, regained sobriety being the reward of regained sobriety, to repentance of seeking escape from a miserable world being rewarded by realizing you are in a beautiful world that is a delight to be in, and what was intolerable was relating to the world through escapism. Virtue is its own reward, and I point out that without contradiction, virtue is also the legitimate and non-mercenary reward for repentance. The regained virtue fits the repentance, and sometimes God the Spiritual Father's infinite Providence gives other blessings as well.

God's kindness to those who repent is beyond Justice and beyond Mercy.

God's kindness to those who forget their father's house and consent to have princes born to them is beyond Justice and beyond Mercy.

Blessed are you who repent and seek virtue; for your reward, you shall have the virtue you seek, and it shall be a Resurrection.

The Feast of Feasts and Holy Day of Holy Days is Pascha, the holiday of the Resurrection, and every Sunday, every day, is Pascha, and St. Seraphim of Sarov was possibly being emphatic but never false by always greeting people, "Christ is risen, my joy!"

Joy has the shape of the Resurrection.

Truly happy living has the shape of the Resurrection.

Repentance has the shape of the Resurrection: Orthodox have recognized that beyond even being unconditional surrender, repentance is awakening, and not to put too fine a point on it, but awakening is the Resurrection.

Christ is risen, my joy!

I met her when she posted, on an "Introduce yourself" thread on an online forum, that she was a triplet and that she was "totally blind from birth, please ask any question you have." I pounced, and asked her for an accessibility critique of my website, hoping to populate my to-do list for how to make my website more graceful for blind visitors. I was caught completely off guard when, a few weeks later when I had forgotten that I requested an accessibility critique, I received an email saying that my website was already accessible, and she had gotten drawn into the writing ("You write verbal icons!") enough that she had forgotten that she had been asked to visit the site to give an accessibility critique. And she said that The Powered Access Bible was "the most JAWS-friendly online Bible I've seen," another remark that caught me off-guard. ("JAWS" was at that time the primary web browser used by blind people.)

In a later, separate conversation, she talked about how she noticed a mother with young children telling her children not to ask questions, and she came over to them, and introduced herself and explicitly invited the children to ask any questions they had.

I don't want to make her speak for all blind or all disabled people, but I believe she was buying something very specific by her conscious and deliberate choice to bring people's questions about blindness out into the open.

More specifically, I believe that whether or not she would put it in these terms, political correctness creates an elephant in the room. It bids people not ask a blind person questions, and in general creates an uneasiness that one may act in a way that shows prejudice or insensitivity and will hurt her. And so the polite, politically correct person will be uncomfortable and worried about hurting her and let her disability be an elephant in the room.

I don't know how she would react to a malicious question, but I do know how she responds to ignorant questions, because I asked her several and I never became afraid of asking an ignorant question. She never seemed to become upset at my ignorant questions, just answering them with unruffled feathers and treating the question as one treats an ordinary social question. And I may mention that while I was interested in the web and interested in web accessibility (and knew a thing or two about what assistive technologies were available for the web), I was completely ignorant of the fact that a blind person with assistive technologies can use a "reader" to handle a paper book or a printed paper letter. And one time I asked, "Do you have any questions about sightedness [being able to see] that I can field?" and after a pause, she answered, "No…" followed by, "But no one's ever asked me that before. Thank you for asking!"

What her decision to invite questions, and bring them out in the open, brought was that it completely took away from her disability the status of an elephant in the room, and with getting rid of the elephant in the room she also completely got rid of the other person's perceived need to walk on eggshells in fear of hurting her. I do not say that she cannot be hurt at all, but it takes something fundamentally worse than a merely ignorant question to get her feathers ruffled. She did not, so far as I remember, speak in terms of "There are no stupid questions," or as one fellow IT friend commented, "There are no stupid questions except the one you've asked five times and gotten the same answer to each time," but what her decision produced was a sense of being socially comfortable around her and an ease in enjoying her conversation and enjoying her as a person.

So I salute her as someone whose social graces got rid of one of the effects of political correctness that, like the new racism, leaves people uncomfortably walking on eggshells for fear of showing prejudice against her specific minority.

Cheers to a good friend!

At a friend's hospitality I visited a Mars Society conference, and amidst little details (I got to handle lunar rocks!), I noticed one thing that was overarching and overpowering.

What was going on was something more than an enthusiastic effort to do what it takes to put a man on Mars. The question of whether we as humans are "a spacefaring race" was fundamentally a question of salvation, and with it the Mars Society acted as a magnet to people who were alienated with life on earth. It was not terribly far in that I was thinking, "This is not a job for science and engineering. This is a job for counseling!" Furthermore, the John 3:16 of that movement is, "Earth is the cradle of humankind, but one does not remain in a cradle forever."

What was going on was not a question about the technical feasibility of colonizing Mars, or even landing a person on it. Nor of whether the massive fuel expenditure and ecological to launch ships in space is an appropriate way to act on the realization that the earth's resources are finite. Regarding technical feasibility, one friend who has an interest in astronomy said a ship to reach Mars would have to be "assembled in space." Another author said, "Colonize the Gobi desert. Colonize the North Atlantic in winter. Then get back to me about colonizing Mars." But this does not really touch what was going on. I still remember the betrayed look on a woman's face when she thought of people who did not click with her conviction that if the human race gets it, because if we do not infest other planets we are immature and in an arrested development.

The overarching narrative, motivated by a profound alienation to normal human life as we have known it, is that we have spent a spiritual childhood doing things that were perhaps excusable at the time, but this is not a mature condition, and now we have, or at very least seem to have, a way to approach true spiritual maturity by stepping up to a profound technological transformation that would jettison normal human life as we know it.

The academic slur "Melanesian," which I do not recall reading in our more politically correct times, refers most literally to an ethnicity or grouping of hunter-gatherers who do what human beings had done time out of mind: acquire food, live in face-to-face community, raise children, make music, tell stories, interact with nature, do physical work, live out of their community's religion, and so on and so forth. A quick web search for "Melanesian" turns up various interesting results. And the term "Melanesian" refers, in this overarching narrative, to the spiritual infancy that is still being lived, even in much or all of the West. The narrative is really the same as with transhumanism. Before we were capable of AI, we were at least excusably spiritually immature children, but now we have an opportunity to technologically transcend our spiritual childhood. And it is morally incumbent on us, if we are mature people who get it, to do so.

The Mars Society and transhumanism may differ in important details in what exactly it means to put Melanesian things behind us and grow up to technologically transcend our present Melanesian state, and kick it away like a ladder we climbed and have no further use for. In one it is a science fiction's making spaceships and spreading out colonies to other planets, and in the other it is a science fiction's being able to do things like upload our consciousness to a computer and live in artificial intelligence and not in mere bodies of human flesh living on the earth. Nonetheless, these are two implementations of the same kind of overarching narrative.

Virtue is "Melanesian"

A Utopia of spoiled children

One French philosophy professor talked about what at least some Utopians were seeking, such as turning the ocean to lemonade, and called their Utopia "a Utopia of spoiled children." Transhumanism's marketing proposition, with such things as letting us have superhuman bodies if we still need bodies at all, having any pleasure you want without the consequences of drugs, being able to download your consciousness into a computer, and so on, are "a Utopia of spoiled children."

Although the reasons are less obvious, "space, the final frontier," is also a Utopia of spoiled children. Mary Midgley, I believe, in Science as Salvation: A Modern Myth and Its Meaning, talked about the frontier mentality where if you wanted space you could always invade the next nation over, as a concept of freedom. Star Wars and Firefly, like much space opera and science fiction, see space as a place of freedom. However, real astronauts really in space talk about feeling like they're "Spam in a can," and are micro-nano-managed down to every bite of food and every defecation. Even apart from the dangers of becoming solipsistic, real space travel is further, not closer, to what "Martians" (as members of that society or movement call themselves) want. We do not live in a perfect frontier and we do not enjoy perfect freedom, but we have a whole lot more space and freedom than astronauts in space. The average prisoner probably has more space to move about in a day than astronauts in a space station. This is not to say that there is nothing desirable about space travel; but it is to say that Martians will get less, not more, of what they unconsciously want in the here and now than if they can go to Mars. (Even apart from lessons in the enjoying of the here and now with such as the mindfulness we seek from the East because we have rejected it in the West.) My suspicion, based on observation and my own sin and struggle, is that proper repentance, Heaven's best-kept secret, will give further, faster, and better results than colonizing Mars.

Lifting a man up to God

One Orthodox elder said that it was a truly great achievement that with the expenditure of untold sums of money, cutting-edge engineering, and a national effort, the U.S. had succeeded in lifting a man up to the moon. But, he said, the Orthodox Church has known for aeons how to use a little bread and a little water to lift a man up to God.

One time I invited a co-worker and friend, along with his family, to a coffeeshop that had dozens of flavors of Italian sodas available. I particularly liked that as it gave an opportunity for everyone to have a classy drink with the children having the same selection of Italian sodas that the adults had. At one point, one of the children's drinks was running low, and I was just about to order another drink when the parents preempted me and used the limited amount of drinks ordered to teach them a lesson about virtue. I believe that I intended to give the child something good, but the parents chose to use the occasion to give the child something better.

Virtue philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre's Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues talks about dependency as fundamentally constitutive of human nature, and holds human dependency to be a gateway to truly great treasures. Virtues are truly awesome things to have, or rather to become, and they hinge in part on our finite, embodied, limited condition. I have referred to space-conquering technologies as "body-conquering technologies," which either defeat or make irrelevant the finite embodied conditions we are meant to be. Earlier space-conquering technologies like cars and airplanes could make the human body move farther and faster; later space-conquering technologies like the Internet for communication obviate much of the need to move the human body. Both unravel, at least in part, the occasion for growing virtue.

Virtues are treasures. Virtues are their own rewards; when an alcoholic starts to recover and regains sobriety, the main reward is not that people get off his case about his drinking; the primary reward is that he has abandoned a source of suffering he would not wish on his worst enemy, or to put it more concisely, the reward for regained sobriety is regained sobriety itself. And the same goes for all kinds of virtue.

Virtues are pretty stinkin' awesome things to have. No amount of money compares to them, and they are available to poor as much as rich people, and possibly the poor more than rich people. And the natural garden for virtues to grow is "Melanesian," how people have lived time out of mind.

We live in a state of rebellion against how God chose to make us. Transhumanism is one symptom. Transgenderism is another. But growing up spiritually does not draw us away from all things "Melanesian." It draws us further in, where there are all kinds of treasure.

The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet and Paleo movement hinge on the realization that we are built on a hunter-gatherer chassis, and we ignore that at our peril. Wolf does not advocate a literal return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, or moving away from civilization. He does, however, advise living under today's conditions in a way that is gentle to our hunter-gatherer nature. So far as I recall he never warns about rebelling and trying to technologically "grow up" by kicking away "Melanesian" pursuits as a ladder we no longer need now that we have ascended to its height. However, he seems far from using a designation of a hunter-gatherer people as a caricature term for how humans lived from before history to historically recent centuries at least. He does, however, criticize e.g. the marketing proposition of growing your own grain instead of wandering and eating a normative human diet as being like the marketing proposition of a scam. He does not really talk about virtue so far as I recall. However, eating Paleo is not nearly so interesting of a step into goodness as living out Paleo, "Melanesian" virtues.

Deep Learning is Hitting a Wall

Reasoning or Reciting? Exploring the Capabilities and Limitations of Language Models Through Counterfactual Tasks

FANTOM: A Benchmark for Stress-testing Machine Theory of Mind in Interactions

The Medium digest before the one that pointed me to Is ChatGPT Intelligent? and Deep Learning is Hitting a Wall (the former links to the last two of the linked articles above) was one that set my teeth on edge. Two articles talked about Ouija boards, one comparing ?ChatGPT 5? to an Ouija board, and the other alleging it talked about the [legitimate] science besides Ouija boards, and the image of that accursed tool displayed on my computer screen. I thought about discussing disengaging from the channel with my abbot, as I asked for and received a blessing to disengage from Twitter after watching a suicide and then someone else getting shot to death. And I may do so. I already read it despite a miserable signal to noise ratio, and my main mental efforts in reading through the digests is finding legitimately useful information amidst a 90% of sheer sensationalist drivel. But the last two articles, and in particular Is ChatGPT Intelligent?, left me wondering if I was actually right in substance about AI in my 2004 thesis at Cambridge, AI as an Arena for Magical Thinking Among Skeptics.

In AIlice in Wonderland, the last section was entitled "Alcasan's Head," a reference to C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, where a guillotined prisoner's head has been artificially kept alive and overclocked with stimulants, but is in fact acting as a demonic gateway for commerce with evil spirits. And I repeat a warning from a friend that asking wondrous things of ChatGPT can be like approaching a Ouija board.

Years ago, in my bachelor's or previous master's program (before 1998), before I wrote AI as an Arena for Magical Thinking Among Skeptics, someone commented about how artificial intelligence can learn how to move through a room, but if you "put a cup in the center of the room," it has to learn all over. Deep Learning is Hitting a Wall said,

Not long ago, for example, a Tesla in so-called "Full Self Driving Mode" encountered a person holding up a stop sign in the middle of a road. The car failed to recognize the person (partly obscured by the stop sign) and the stop sign (out of its usual context on the side of a road); the human driver had to take over. The scene was far enough outside of the training database that the system had no idea what to do.

And humans do not need to be specifically trained to avoid driving over a sign-turner at a construction site, even if their driver's education has never mentioned sign-turners. Elsewhere, Is ChatGPT Intelligent? reads:

In chess, GPT was asked to evaluate whether a sequence of moves was legal or not. For a normal chess game, it accurately predicted the legality of a move 88% of the time. But when the starting positions of the bishops and knights were swapped, its guesses on the legality of moves became completely random, while even a novice human player should be able to adapt to these changes easily.

The first comment shown on that article, as of this writing reads:

While reading the article, I tried the reversal curse method on ChatGPT. I gave it a prompt "Martin is my brother" followed by "Who is Martin?" and I got a wrong answer. The possibility of getting to AGI is subject to our understanding of our own mind and cognition. And I don't think we are even close to where AGI starts. It was a good read.

I realize in retrospect that my original quest in evaluating ChatGPT was asking for some hidden wonder when I essentially asked for the never-written eighth book from The Chronicles of Narnia where, after the prequel The Magician's Nephew but before any of the other books, a King of Narnia delivered the Lone Islands from a dragon and in gratitude was granted the title Emperor of the Lone Islands. However, persistent efforts met with disappointment; a repeatedly tweaked prompt of "You are C.S. Lewis writing in the style of the Chronicles of Narnia" did not secure much above mediocre fiction, a stinginess with words, and a failure to observe guidelines observed in writing even mediocre fiction, such as "Show, don't tell."

The AI Dilemma credits ChatGPT with acquiring abilities its implementors never imagined, and the scientists working on AI both feel that there is something transcendent and have nonetheless goosebumps about getting into creepy turf. The last video I saw credits AI with an above-average-adult-level Theory of Minds, but the FANToM article raises serious doubts about whether that alleged Theory of Minds is real or just smoke and mirrors yielding false positive results, and there are bits and pieces like "Since machines lack emotions or intentions (Gros et al., 2022)..." that suggest my thesis was right about the limitations of AI, even if AI makes those limitations much less significant than one might imagine.

However, concerning the different strands of debate, I might appeal to the debate that raged in physics about whether light was a particle or a wave. The resolution came that it was both: light acts as a particle when treated like a particle, and acts like a wave when treated like a wave.

I might make a similar suggestion that whether ChatGPT is something that can pull an accurate guess about what comes next in territory close to the training data it has processed, and being a can of dragons and a gateway to the demonic, is something like this particle / wave paradox. Generative AI can guess what's next in a conversation along similar lines to what I conceived of during my first master's, and this can simultaneously both be something that falls far short of genuine human intelligence with its generalizability, and something spooky where demons can fill in. This BOTH-AND quality recalls the Pascal quote that opens Everyday Saints:

Openly appearing to those who look for Him with all their heart, while hiding from those who run from Him with all their heart, God governs the knowledge of His presence. He gives signs that are visible to those who search for them, and yet invisible to those who are indifferent to Him. To those who wish to see, God gives sufficient light; to those who do not wish to see, He gives sufficient darkness.

All that I can recall reading either sees AI as fundamentally less than regular human minds, or something spookily beyond regular human minds. I propose a BOTH-AND, in the same vein of light as both a particle and a wave, or a God who gives both sufficient light and sufficient darkness.

I think the comments about AI in Within the Steel Orb might well be valid:

Oinos said, "Let me show you." He led Art into a long corridor with smooth walls and a round arch at top. A faint blue glow followed them, vanishing at the edges. Art said, "Do you think it will be long before our world has full artificial intelligence?"

Oinos said, "Hmm... Programming artificial intelligence on a computer is not that much more complex than getting a stone to lay an egg."

Art said, "But our scientists are making progress. Your advanced world has artificial intelligence, right?"

Oinos said, "Why on earth would we be able to do that? Why would that even be a goal?"

"You have computers, right?"

"Yes, indeed; the table that I used to call up a scientific calculator works on the same principle as your world's computers. I could almost say that inventing a new kind of computer is a rite of passage among serious inventors, or at least that's the closest term your world would have."

"And your computer science is pretty advanced, right? Much more advanced than ours?"

"We know things that the trajectory of computer science in your world will never reach because it is not pointed in the right direction." Oinos tapped the wall and arcs of pale blue light spun out.

"Then you should be well beyond the point of making artificial intelligence."

"Why on a million, million worlds should we ever be able to do that? Or even think that is something we could accomplish?"

"Well, if I can be obvious, the brain is a computer, and the mind is its software."

"Is it?"

"What else could the mind be?"

"What else could the mind be? What about an altar at which to worship? A workshop? A bridge between Heaven and earth, a meeting place where eternity meets time? A treasury in which to gather riches? A spark of divine fire? A line in a strong grid? A river, ever flowing, ever full? A tree reaching to Heaven while its roots grasp the earth? A mountain made immovable for the greatest storm? A home in which to live and a ship by which to sail? A constellation of stars? A temple that sanctifies the earth? A force to draw things in? A captain directing a starship or a voyager who can travel without? A diamond forged over aeons from of old? A perpetual motion machine that is simply impossible but functions anyway? A faithful manuscript by which an ancient book passes on? A showcase of holy icons? A mirror, clear or clouded? A wind which can never be pinned down? A haunting moment? A home with which to welcome others, and a mouth with which to kiss? A strand of a web? An acrobat balancing for his whole life long on a slender crystalline prism between two chasms? A protecting veil and a concealing mist? An eye to glimpse the uncreated Light as the world moves on its way? A rift yawning into the depths of the earth? A kairometer, both primeval and young? A—"

"All right, all right! I get the idea, and that's some pretty lovely poetry. (What's a kairometer?) These are all very beautiful metaphors for the mind, but I am interested in what the mind is literally."

"Then it might interest you to hear that your world's computer is also a metaphor for the mind. A good and poetic metaphor, perhaps, but a metaphor, and one that is better to balance with other complementary metaphors. It is the habit of some in your world to understand the human mind through the metaphor of the latest technology for you to be infatuated with. Today, the mind is a computer, or something like that. Before you had the computer, 'You're just wired that way' because the brain or the mind or whatever is a wired-up telephone exchange, the telephone exchange being your previous object of technological infatuation, before the computer. Admittedly, 'the mind is a computer' is an attractive metaphor. But there is some fundamental confusion in taking that metaphor literally and assuming that, since the mind is a computer, all you have to do is make some more progress with technology and research and you can give a computer an intelligent mind."

And at the same time, I believe that AI may be a gateway to contact with dark forces. I propose a BOTH-AND. And I suggest that the both-and be held onto both in revisiting a classic saying from Tristan from Humane Tech:

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.

Ask AI to fish, and it will learn oceanography, climatology, evolutionary biology… and fish all the fish in the ocean to extinction.

What do you think?

My biggest thought for Orthodox engaging AI is a thought of nipsis, or inner watchfulness that is at the heart of Orthodox spirituality and the main ascetical topic of the Philokalia of the Niptic Fathers, held by some to be second only to the Gospel in authority. I omit an Amazon affiliate link because if you should be reading it, you won't need my help getting it. I read it before coming to St. Demetrios Monastery and to date His Beatitude, my abbot, has only given me a blessing to read one work, a work of hagiography. There is an Orthodox saying, "As always, ask your priest," and your priest is the living contact you will have in how to practice nipsis.

The central need and desire that generative AI will bind to is intimacy, and the most powerful tool I see is a meticulously devout attention to your inner state, beinv very alert about what is going on inside, combined with a willingness to flee from the computer if that is what it takes to get away from a temptation, and stay away if needed. If you are tempted to generate NSFW images, just back off and flee the temptation. If you are tempted to use AI like a Ouiji board, guided in response to your prompts and questions, just back off and flee the temptation. His Beatitude has a saying, "Never react. Never resent. Keep inner peace," and legitimate use of AI will have a calm and unperturbed inner peace.

Thus I offer an intimate prescription for how to use intimate AI, and your focus in using AI, as a monk's focus in life, should be an inner state with unperturbed inner peace.

Combine with this a willingness to put a tourniquet as far up as is needed to stop a hemorrage. When dealing with addiction to alcohol, or porn, there has been a common if apocryphal story which claims that a Greek philosopher was standing in a river, and a man came to him. The philosopher said, "What do you want?" The visitor answered, "Truth." The philosopher pushed him under the surface for a bit, and then asked, "What do you want?" The man, as before, said, "Truth." Then the philosopher pushed the man under the water and held him until he was struggling, and kept holding him down until he was getting close to passing out, then lifted him up and asked again, "What do you want?" The man, gasping and panting, said, "AIR!!!" The philosopher said, "When you want Truth the way you want air, then you will find it."

In reference to addiction to porn, there is something very valuable about coming to a place where you are willing to go slash and burn and cut away anything that entangles you with porn: to ask someone else to keep your smartphone and buy a flipphone from Sunbeam Wireless, which has many of the cool gadgets a smartphone has but no app store, no email, and no web browser. In previous days the recommendation has been that if you are having trouble with your laptop, get rid of it, or at least give it to someone else for safe-keeping, and only check email from libraries and public places as a gladly paid price for freedom from porn.

(I don't have an analogy to give for Sexaholics Anonymous, because I am not aware of any such organization for self-harmful misuse of AI, beyond the obvious example of the Orthodox Church as Sinners Anonymous.)

I wanted to get to know AI a little better by using it so as to offer some intelligent comment, and I realized that it was not good for me to have access to one image generator which may have represented a gold standard among AI image generation, but threatened to produce just one exact type of image I did not need to see. And my imagination was starting to get captivated. I then tweaked my computer at least temporarily (I haven't reversed my action) so that it would not pull up that image generator until I reversed the tweak (I haven't seen any reason to reverse it yet), and would have asked for access to that site to be blocked on my local network if that was not enough. Not long after that, I decided I'd had enough temptation for now and at least temporarily stopped using AI. (I am willing to restart, but so far have found no reason to do so.)

In response to the question, "How can I appropriately use AI?" I would offer a first counterquestion of "Do you really need to?" I did, or at least I thought I did, and acted in good faith. However, speaking reasonably, I do not see much of any need to use AI now. I can continue to read AI articles on Arxiv, and I can continue to scan headlines on Medium to try to find the occasional posting that is not pure journalistic sensationalism. I still believe that with my signature contribution to the conversation, I would be failing to love my neighbor if I did not at least try to offer helpful comment about AI. But my general practice and recommendation has been to use some technologies in moderation and abstain from others, and my conscience has been to abstain from SecondWife, er, SecondLife. What has appeared in my conscience is not primarily that it offers a means for sexual sin, as that it offers a created, constructed world that offers an alternative to living in God's reality. Arguably I am already doing that by writing this from a warm room inside a house where at this instant I do not directly see anything not artificial except for my hands, but this is taken to an entirely new level in SecondWife.

I have said before that I believe critiques of technologies age well, and with that I suspect that lessons learned from precursor technologies are good candidate for lessons that apply to using AI. From "Social Antibodies" Needed, I pull various things that have almost all been said before, in contexts other than AI, that are still good ideas. These include:

1. Set a time boundary around your use of AI. Use it then and nothing else.

2. Use AI when you have a specific purpose, and don't dally. (Idle hands are the devil's workshop.)

3. Get on the same page as your pastor in using AI.

4. Don't use AI for intimacy.

5. Share what you are doing with your priest, spouse, or a trusted friend.

6. Don't use AI as some kind of magic treasure from another world.

7. Don't let AI be something that is "always on," in the background when it is not in the foreground.

8. Don't use AI to do your thinking for you. At very least use a search engine to research something instead of relying on (other) AI.

9. Don't plagiarize AI. If you cannot do something yourself, learn how to do it instead of having an AI do it for you.

10. Don't trust AI. "Hallucinations" are enough of an issue that at least one major chatbot puts a warning at the bottom of the screen saying to double check its facts. I have read pro-AI sources, but I have never read someone contest that "hallucinations" are an issue.

If this seems restrictive, they are scarcely more restrictive than the discipline I observe around my phone and which I share with others in How Can I Take my Life Back from my Phone?, and allow me, for instance, not to check my phone compulsively.

I hesitate to say AI can produce nothing good, and after finishing all of this draft but the introduction and questions, I want to read next an Arxiv article about using AI to prevent suicides where social media sees possible advance warnings that a person is in danger of suicide. That is nothing to sneeze at.

However, I would encourage you, like me, to be skeptical, to be careful, and question whether you need to directly engage AI at all. We will have enough engagement with AI whether we want it or not.

And enjoy life. Real, organic life with real, organic intelligence.

But you are still welcome to say that my reading about using AI to prevent suicide is part of the Big Brother that starts off by barking up the wrong fire hydrant.

G.K. Chesterton said, "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. But he is usually wrong about what is right," and in response to one newsletter's essay contest, to write about what was wrong with the world, answered, "Sir, I am." It was the shortest letter to the editor in the newspaper's history.

Three Orthodox sayings

"Save yourself, and ten thousands around you will be saved."

"Make peace with yourself, and Heaven and earth will make peace with you."

"Paradise is wherever the saints are."

I wanted originally to title this essay "Ynes Avalach," from Steven Lawhead's Merlin, which I read initially on a friend's recommendation, in response to a request I made for other books besides Madeleine l'Engle's A Wind in the Door that treat gifted children adeptly. I read the book with an unspoken wish that I could be a member of Merlin's college and found that he was in fact a member of mine. But that is peripheral to why bring up Lawhead's novel.

In an unsettled world, Ynes Avalach or the Isle of Avalon, which in the end of Mallory a mortally wounded Arthur is brought to be healed of his wounds, stands as an island of peace and stability in a sea of instability and change. And my repentance, my monastery is that to me. I have never been asked my personal pronouns when I have been here, although some people have voiced appreciation for the first line of my email signature: "​Unworthy Br. Christos Hayward (really, thou / thee / thy / thine), novice at St. Demetrios Orthodox Monastery."

This monastery is not the first time I have found my surroundings to be Paradise, but His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH is the abbot, and people who come and go find it to be a place where thoughts become quiet. We are near to Washington, D.C., and rainbow-colored living is easy enough to be found. And miracles have taken place here; I have seen holy myrrh oil stream from the Hawaiian Iveron Icon, with a few drops on my abbot's wonderworking copy of the Kazan icon. I have my struggles, but they are lifegiving. Furthermore, the miracles have never been as interesting as the encounters with humble people.

In a book I would recommend more strongly than either Merlin or A Wind in the Door, Fr. Arseny: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father is set in a Soviet gulag prison camp. The kind that Hitler looked at for inspiration for his concentration camps. Nonetheless, where Fr. Arseny is, there is simply paradise. This monastery has other people who are holy (as I am not), and in particular a good abbot. If it is a live option to you, I encourage you to visiting our monastery in Virginia (website at virginiamonks.org; visitor's page here), at least for a day trip. Our abbot loves to meet people and visit with them in his office.

When I was trying to find a monastery, I told one person I know, "I really believe that the greatest gift that I can give you is to repent of my sins for the rest of my life." His immediate reply was to point out an Orthodox commonplace: "If everybody did that, Heaven would come to earth!"

Now I am at a place where I am supported in my repentance, including corrections; this is not a place free from temptations, but another Orthodox commonplace is that without temptations it is impossible for the faithful to be saved. The priests are excellent, and the brotherhood has been patient when I am thoughtless or careless.

Save yourself and ten thousand people around you will be saved: if I enter repentance and repent well for the best of my life, I will change the world more than any amount of political activism I am capable of.

Make peace with yourself, and Heaven and earth will make peace with you: There was one story in the front matter to Elder Thaddeus, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives, which has a vision where the figure was accused of being unable to get along with anyone else, and someone else says, "No! That is not true! He only cannot get along with himself," and this monastery and our abbot have real help to offer if you find your surroundings intolerable (something I have been well enough to do in any standard of luxury I've been in, and from which I have found a significant freedom). And I have taken from that book what I call "the Little Law of Attraction." It doesn't mean that if you think about money, money, money, a windfall will fall across your lap. It does, however, mean that if you think thoughts of peace, you will have more and bigger thoughts of peace, and if you think thoughts of anger, you will have more and bigger thoughts of anger with conflicts as well. This Little Law of Attraction has profound significance.

I have also found here that standard Orthodox pastoral advice of "When you are tempted, cross yourself and say 'Lord, have mercy,'" apply to painful memories and thoughts of anger as well as various other kinds of temptations.

Paradise is wherever the saints are. The Metropolitan's holiness and grace permeates this monastery and people can sense it. I do not know if he will ever be canonized, and some people may be disappointed that he does not even claim to be near clairvoyance, but he is a perfect abbot for me. I recognize in him a spiritual father with whom I hope to work out my salvation, and he seems to recognize the same possibility with me, and this is the basis for repenting together. This is not the first time I have found my surroundings to be Paradise, but this is Paradise even on days like today where I have been thoughtless and have been correspondingly corrected.

Obediences and my signature contribution to the conversation

Monks and novices are advised to stay busy, and novices in particular are introduced to the privilege of manual labor. I have my abbot's support in my writing and he wants me to grow both in manual labor and in my writing. And so I have written the books on my bookshelf, with a signature contribution about how we can live a properly human life in such a technological world. My substack is driven by that contribution as well, and I'm trying to provide treasures old and new, as articulated in a cartoon drawn by one of my brother novices at the monastery, to flesh out an idea I had:

I have catch-up to do with regards to artificial intelligence; I wrote AI as an Arena for Magical Thinking Among Skeptics as a second master's thesis in 2004, and the terrain has changed even as people continue to find my thesis to have salience. But I'm playing catch-up, and may be playing catch-up with AI in the rest of my life.

Conclusion

Marriage and monasticism are treasures that belong to all Orthodox, and part of the good estate of monasteries is to receive pilgrims as guests. My monastery is not just there for its members; it's there for people to visit, and I invite you to consider a visit.

But more broadly, I believe that trying to repent of your sins first and foremost is not just better than trying to make the world a better place: it is the best and possibly the only way to make the world a better place.

Back to your regularly scheduled reading.

I have been reading ArXiv AI articles, with particular attention to philosophy and ethics, and one philosophy article helped me understand what, exactly, I have to offer the conversations after I get my bearings on AI (a process which may never be complete). To give a couple of quotes:

All of the above five foundations can also be found in one passage of the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas in his very brief discussion of the foundations of naturalistic ethics. In this section he lays out a system built upon Aristotle' notion of there being three layers to the human body and mind: a vegetative soul, the type of which we share with all living things; a sensing soul, the type of which we share with all animals; and a rational soul, the type of which we share only with other rational beings [30]. Aquinas updates Aristotle to explain more carefully what would be entailed for sustainable survival of the human species [2]. While we would now consider both Aristotle and Aquinas to be out-of-date on many issues, at least on this one topic–the core aspects of human nature–Aquinas seems to have struck something significant.

Aristotle and Aquinas are both old, and an Orthodox might critique them, but not on grounds of being mostly out-of-date. The concerns I raised in An Open Letter to Catholics on Orthodoxy and Ecumenism, which might be among my top fighting words to Rome, may be critical enough of Thomas Aquinas, but the critiques never include his seniority among philosophers. They are critiques Orthodox might have made assessing that he was wrong when the ink was still wet on his pages or he stopped being wrong when he declared his works to be straw.

Interestingly, the text, co-authored by a Betty Li Hu, repeatedly quotes Confucius but does not raise the question of whether Confucius is out-of-date. Confucius is a source, not only on how things might have been lived in China before Christ, but how we can live now, which should be the condition Aristotle and Aquinas are evaluated for. Orthodox critiques of Aristotle and Aquinas never seem to complain that those figures are out of date.

It also echoes various other studies stating being unbiased as a criterion of desirable AI:

It is important that in these situations of well-intended AI use, we do not inadvertently create new problems from AI itself–unfair and biased systems [44], overreliance and resulting deskilling [27], various unintended consequences [1], etc.

On this point I would recall a classic hacker AI koan:

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe" Sussman replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

And I would recall a point from C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, about the authors of "the Green Book," a book that should be offering professional grammar when it instead offers amateur philosophy:

In actual fact Gaius and Titius will be found to hold, with complete uncritical dogmatism, the whole system of values which happened to be in vogue among moderately educated young men of the professional classes during the period between the two wars.' Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values; about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough. And this phenomenon is very usual. A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional or (as they would say) 'sentimental' values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process. [emphasis added]

The article opens one quote by Confucius as "'men (sic.)…" which is telling enough of what biases they assume in calling for unbiased systems. In my own time studying at Fordham, a nasty enough place for Orthodox, texts lauded by the theology important would place an editorial "[sic]" after citations referencing a generic "man" or "he," which is the original naturally inclusive language. And this is a couple of years after a Toastmasters winning competition speech had a woman speak, without vitriol and in a voice that invited sympathy, about another character in her story as "my fellow man." and a TED talk repeats, without critique or any implied criticism, classic audio clips referring to mankind as "man." or the English Standard Version translates adelphoi, a standard Greek term for all Christians, as "brothers" with a footnote saying "Or 'brothers and sisters.'" I would say that this alone, even apart from other cues, refers to a concept of "unbiased" that includes a "whole system of values which happen[s] to be in vogue." Or may be falling out of vogue but is still stuck in some of the more backwards schools and departments.

The method question at Fordham

In the Fordham theology department's doctoral comprehensive exams, one of the questions is the "method question," in which you would be asked a question, and then out of study of six assigned texts and four that you supply yourself, analyze your answer to that question. The question was known in advance and for that year was, "Does the earth matter for theology?" and my flaming liberal radical professor was horrified when she learned about Man and the Environment: A Study of St. Symeon the New Theologian and recognized that I could answer that question in its entirety out of the Orthodox Tradition, and she defined competency as taking 10 or 20 points for each of the sources (the six assigned texts simply assumed that taking the earth seriously could only be a liberal concern); I was at freedom in choosing which 10 or 20 points to take, but she excluded, after her horrified recognition, any answer to the method question which would be confessionally Orthodox at all.

But my interest brought to the department is one that is specific and neglected in the discussion I have read about AI. One distinction made in e.g. philosophy departments is that between problem-solving philosophy and philosophically informed history of ideas, and my area of interest (or rather a broad swath that would include my areas of interest) was theology that would be both historically grounded and represent a problem-solving interest. This was in distinction to, or perhaps in synthesis of, a basic historical theology interest that investigates the theology of previous eras from a historian's interests, or systematic theology that solves problems on the resources of today's systematic theology. I started in the historical theology program and switched to systematic upon clarification of methods deemed appropriate in history and reaching a conclusion that, under at least that department's division of labor, my interest fell under systematic theology. But at least my professor couldn't conceive, or at least very much did not want to conceive, of a problem-solving interest that drew on mostly older texts as opposed to only drawing on recent texts that way. (I didn't even begin to try to address the point with her of all Orthodox theology being mystical theology…)

What I have to add to the AI conversation

I'm still getting my bearings on AI. I wrote a thesis on it almost twenty years ago and haven't kept up, and I am in the process of catching up. However, my general approach and interest is a basis for writing much more than a post about AIlice in Wonderland, which talks about AI as a historically situated technology and looks at recent technological history.

And seeing the article mentioned above helped me realize that my basic perspective is not just one that was scarce to be found at Fordham; it is one that is scarce to be found at ArXiv's collection. When I get up to speed (or perhaps if I ever get up to speed on rapidly changing turf), this will likely make an imprint on what connections I have to offer. Which reminds me, I want to get around to reading Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization, written in 1934 and still salient, summarized in the Wikipedia as arguing, "It is the moral, economic, and political choices we make, not the machines we use, Mumford argues, that have produced a capitalist industrialized machine-oriented economy, whose imperfect fruits serve the majority so imperfectly."

I shouldn't strictly say that I haven't been catching up. I have been, and I've gleaned significant insights, and possibly even my realization that there's a whole lot more I don't know than I do is a sign of maturing understanding, or at least slowly maturing understanding. But while I am still wary of claiming I understand AI, I believe I have identified an area where my contribution can be significant.

Keep reading.

In eight grade, I programmed a four dimensional maze, ranked 7th nationally in the MathCounts competition, and taught myself calculus.

St. Silouan's biography talks about how a monastic elder told the young St. Silouan, "If this is where you are as a child, what will you be like when you are older?" which the text says he should not have said, and the elder embroiled the young monastic in a struggle with pride that would plague him for years.

I regard my early distinctions in math as good and not good. Apart from hindrances to my developing humility, some people have complained about profoundly gifted people being steered towards mathematics as an easy-ish way to let out steam. I spoke in complete sentences before my birthday; mathematicians, like Einstein, normally start speaking late. The knowledge of where I had attained early distinction seemed a signal from God about where I was to apply my abilities, and it let me start out in a place far from Orthodoxy.

First master's, 1996-1998

My first master's was from the University of Urbana-Champaign, a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics, with a Computational Science and Engineering Option (and I happened to be the first to graduate with the department's newly available thesis option). My first master's thesis arose from my work in the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and it touched on, for the purposes of this combination, ways you could classify things with something like a distance in one branch of topology's point-set metric spaces. In The Data Mine, a search engine with a powerful and empowering user interface with a flagship website of Orthodox Church Fathers, I experimented with a "more like this" feature based on a similarity score between documents' histograms of word occurrences; later my brother mentioned Python's Natural Language Tool-Kit and I experimented, unsuccessfully, with two separate histograms between word stems for pairs of one word and the word immediately following, and one word and the word two words after it (server source). To put this in non-geek terms, I worked on a simple idea that would potentially provide an approach to tell how close or far two documents were based on how similar or dissimilar their patterns of words are.

There were other things that I did then, like an idea for a geometric computer, but my main point of interest then was that I figured out what I thought was a way to cheat on the Turing Test. If you had a stored databank of conversations, which I did not imagine existed at that time, you could see which conversations were similar to a given conversation at that point, and match the conversation to pull a reply from. It would not be intelligent, and it would not teach us much about intelligence, but it could potentially pull of a convincing fake conversation without teaching us about intelligence. Some readers may recognize this as the seed of Generative AI.

I had a frustrating conversation I remember with an AI professor when I tried to explain what I thought this could do, and when I kept on bringing up ways it could be interesting, he kept on resorting to one of two replies: either "That has already been done," or "There is no way I believe you could accomplish that." (The Wagon, the Blackbird, and the Saab effects?) I later incorporated a fictionalized version of cheating on the Turing Test in my 2001 third novel, Firestorm 2034, which a literature major friend said was unconvincing as literature. (Possibly it was not, but this was deliberate nonfiction delivered under the guise of fiction, which may be a case of not playing by literature's rules to be convincing.)

I still believe that my concept of comparing document distance by some refinement of making a similarity score for compared histograms, and the broader concept of a closeness space as defined in my thesis, offers an interesting alternative to the standard of using vectors for generative intelligence, which in part mirrors a conversation I had with my boss at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications where a client had documents compared for similarity along a grid, and I raised the question why it had to be a two-dimensional grid (his answer was essentially that it didn't, but people didn't conceive of being able to estimate distances without something embeddable in a line / plane / space / n-dimensional space). For non-geeks, I still believe that my ideas for how to cheat on the Turing Test have relevance to AI today, and I am somewhat grateful that they didn't go anywhere at least then.

Second master's, 2003-2004

I earned a second Master of Philosophy in Theology and Religious Studies, and after the university decided my interest in the holy kiss did not fit my assigned Philosophy of Religion seminar, I wrote a thesis critiquing AI, which concluded that the idea of AI rested on an error of cosmological significance. That may seem a dubious credential for me to be offering, especially as someone who thought he knew a way to convincingly cheat on the Turing Test, but one friend reading my compete works singled that work out in the past few months as most significant. I believe it was very revealing for the state of AI then, and may be revealing now. Part of my perspectives, again under the guise of fiction, were incorporated into Within the Steel Orb, and in my main website's 404 page (pull up https://cjshayward.com/ and then add a few junk characters at the end to see it).

Today, 2023

As I wrote in AIlice in Wonderland, I have been critical of some technologies (see my introductory title A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind), and I am skeptical about how much today's fledgling forms of generative AI will really improve the picture. But I believe I would be committing a serious sin of omission to fail to understand AI at least somewhat, and continue to paint a picture that simply said nothing beyond "I don't know" about today's hot new technology. So I made a couple of initial forays.

The first thing I asked ChatGPT 3.5 was for the dialogue to a new Calvin and Hobbes strip, and it produced a reasonably convincing dialogue. I asked for another and another, and it continued to produce at least passable dialogues. I noticed, however, that the strips all seemed to be dialogues between Calvin and Hobbes, and my conscience forbade me to ask for the dialogue to a Sunday trip in which Calvin asks, and his mother explains, why his father is a real patent attorney who does not understand how household appliances work.

The second was more interesting.

In one of the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis parenthetically says that if he finds out why the Lone Islands have the King of Narnia as their Emperor, he will write a book, and when he is closing out the world in The Last Battle, he spends a few sentences explaining that a King of Narnia had delivered the Lone Islands from a dragon, and in gratitude they declared him their emperor. So I went on a quest to try and get ChatGPT to write this eighth Chronicle of Narnia in which the King of Narnia delivers the Lone Islands from a dragon.

There were a couple of obstacles, including that ChatGPT prefers terseness and I can only think of one way to get a novel's length of fiction out of it (set up a prompt requesting the beginning of a story, with dialogue and details, and then keep typing "continue" after that). I found one way to cheat, of a sort, by asking for it to produce an outline of a novel featuring twelve to twenty chapters and four or five scenes per chapter (it always produced less), and then ask it to write the first chapter, specifically asking for dialogues and details when requesting the chapter, and request subsequent chapters. (I have not yet found a way to get it to write only one scene of the first chapter instead of the first chapter; among my failed efforts was along the lines of "Write the first scene of the first chapter and not any other scene of the first chapter or any other chapter.") ChatGPT strongly prefers brevity, and while there may be economic factors that would make ChatGPT loath to write novels on free web chat, my moving to a prompt delivered by API did not induce ChatGPT to write a long response that I paid for with API prices.

This is an annoying characteristic, but it is not really a limit on what generative AI can accomplish; however, the semantic aspect is more problematic in a way that raises questions about whether ChatGPT can address a question like I asked. For reference purposes, here is the first part of the last revision of my prompt to ChatGPT:

You are C.S. Lewis, writing an additional book in the Chronicles of Narnia, in the style of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Write a chapter outline with four or five scenes per chapter and fourteen chapters, for the missing eighth novel of the Chronicles of Narnia, about how a King of Narnia before any of the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe came and defeated a dragon that was troubling the Lone Islands, and the Lone Islands in gratitude decided to make the King of Narnia be the Emperor of the Lone Islands. None of the characters should be the same as in the Chronicles of Narnia except for the Lion, Aslan. Aslan should be important enough but should rarely be in the picture and should rarely be mentioned; the central characters are the kings. The Chronicles of Narnia should not be mentioned by name, and Narnia and Aslan should rarely be mentioned. There should be no character who is a sorceror. The evil dragon should not be killed until four fifths of the story has taken place; most of the book should be built up to and be about the struggle between the kings and the dragon in which the dragon is finally killed by advice provided by Aslan. The building up will cover Narnian territory. The characterization should be more archetypal than individualistic, and they should show character development.

First, there is a continuity issue related to the names of kings. With the exception of "Caspian III", all king's names were taken from the Chronicles of Narnia (and none of them were as per The Magician's Nephew). Logistically, the first book in the series was the prequel The Magician's Nephew, in which no Lone Islands are connected to Narnia, and in the next book in Lewis's preferred order (and the first book), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the King of Narnia is already the Emperor of the Lone Islands. This means that the King of Narnia should be different from any King in Lewis's seven books.

However, that subtle error was overshadowed by more blatant errors. The outlines that were produced dealt in chapters and scenes, and the AI talked in the main text about chapters and scenes until I told it not to. It also referenced the Chronicles of Narnia and other characters until I told it not to. When I asked it in other conversations to make a homily in the style of St. John Chrysostom about internet porn and gave it a couple of pointers, it would sometimes talk about "St. John Chrysostom said…" My reference to the dragon being evil in the prompt above were designed to cut out stories in which the dragon was portrayed as a more sympathetic figure, or comments about no one caring about what the dragon's thoughts in the matter might be. Also, I had to explicitly ask for "dialogues and details" in the writing of the story; the default way of writing "chapters" was to write synopsis without any dialogue or detail.

More broadly, although those could be squelched by a prompt intentionally asking it not to make certain moronic mistakes, the stories produced (and I produced at least half a dozen) never particularly sounded like Lewis apart from a dusting of name-dropping. They read like mediocre fantasy. If you work based on the above partial prompt, you may see various aspects of fantasy stories generated; but none of them sounded like Lewis above name-dropping.

And this, admittedly without seeing ChatGPT 4 or other options, seems a lot like the fingerprints to my approach to cheating on the Turing Test, although my approach to cheating on the Turing Test admittedly does not provide obvious ways to generalize to images or other features than chat fiction writing.

I believe that my AI thesis is still largely valid for the portion of Generative AI that ChatGPT represents. Material appeared to be copy-pasted from different sources; there was no specific Lewisian tone to the writing. The AI was clearly aware of the Chronicles of Narnia, and upon request a ChatGPT 4-based app produced a good paragraph summary of The Magician's Nephew; even ChatGPT 3.5 when asked for a short story about Reepicheep coming to America produced a paragraph synopsis that recognized Reepicheep as representing chivalric glory. (I resisted the later temptation to actually try to get a short story by following the same steps in asking for a novel.)

My efforts to request Calvin and Hobbes strips met with some success, if a one-dimensional slice of the diversity within Calvin and Hobbes; my request for a C.S. Lewis-style novel met with considerable disappointment. Some of the errors were simply bone-headed, like talking in chapters and scenes in a fantasy novel. But the overall quality of responses I read read like generic fantasy, at times mediocre and at times better, without Lewis interpreted as a single, specific, profoundly gifted author.

One person writing about writing prompts warned that if you ask ChatGPT to imitate a specific author (by prepending to a prompt, "You are [insert name of author here]"), you'll get an over-the-top parody of that author. I believe in the stories I saw read like "cheating on the Turing Test" approaches to stitch together composite stories from fantasy literature in general, and not a deep learning about what C.S. Lewis represents. The ways Aslan were presented were often interesting, but part of that may stem from my having created a disproportionate presence by requesting that no other Narnian characters be included except Aslan.

Stepping a little further back

One friend said that we had not seen the worst of things; he raised the question of what happens when AI has invaded every area of our lives. And I believe that the ubiquity of AI will be nastier than what phones have turned out to be, and I would remind you of the mascot picture for this Substack:

A friend warned me, and appropriately enough, that going to AI can be like going to an Ouiji board. And I am wary of that, but the specific responses I got seemed to be just encounters with cheating on the Turing Test, not the encounters with a hostile and real intelligence that Gollem AI threatens to be. Nicholas Carr in The Glass Cage talks about how artificial intelligence can look through a bank of human responses and find one that looks closest to a given situation or prompt; he mentioned one question where AI not only falters but fails: "A very large ball fell on a table and it cracked because it was made of styrofoam. Does 'it' in the preceding sentence refer to the ball or the table?" Humans can answer that because of general knowledge of the properties of styrofoam and only find one believable answer, that a styrofoam table cracked because a significant weight fell on it, not that a styrofoam ball cracked because it fell on a non-styrofoam table. AI cannot find a closest enough "cheating on the Turing Test" answer that is too far from its database.

Articles I have read on Arxiv at least sometimes do not see Generative AI as representing intelligence; one article suggested a fragility to its Theory of Minds performance in that it could successfully answer some questions that hinge on Theory of Minds competency, but when the questions were perturbed slightly, the degradation in the AI's performance was remarkable.

Perhaps the most disturbing article about emergent properties that had not been designed intentionally talked about Meta's AI "CICERO" having become an expert liar without including assertion that the AI had beliefs; the one included "bald-faced lie" however struck me as possibly just imitating something from the training dataset, namely going unresponsive for 10 minutes and then saying that it was on a call with its girlfriend. That quibble notwithstanding, AI had learned rather Machiavellian deception, and that article may raise deeper concerns than my discussion of cheating on the Turing Test would recognize. However, even articles like that recognize something like what my AI thesis and Within the Steel Orb portray: AI's emit what seems like intelligent behavior without having the intelligence a human would need to produce such behavior.

Recent events including the firing and quick re-hiring of OpenAI's CEO raise questions about whether people will slow the refinement of a technology OpenAI's own scientists believe threatens the very existence of the human race. And AI may be scary.

The most damning critique I can see someone saying about my AI thesis is not that it is wrong as such, but it is true in a way that is irrelevant to the success of GLLMM AI, and that a sufficiently sophistaced dataset of a wide variety of human inputs will make my points simply irrelevant.

AI represents an open can of meta-worms now, and its real risks and dangers make the possibility of autogenerating fantasy with some Narnian trappings simply a distraction from its main concerns. It already has delivered on risks of people's work being taken away. One risk I have already noticed: I read the Bible devotionally, and today's passages read to me like a hodgepodge of sentences pasted together from different sources, a sort of cognitive hallucination from exposure to odd texts.

AI, with carefully enough crafted prompts (and there are guides enough on mastering prompt writing), can replace mediocre fantasy writers, and the approach I have mentioned above should be enough to get a book's worth of short stories. However, C.S. Lewis's place is not threatened, and I believe, based on my own experience and that of the person who asserted that asking ChatGPT to imitate a specific author will generate an over-the-top parody, that ChatGPT cannot imitate all specific authors at a deep level. Even the Calvin and Hobbes dialogues were cookie cutter, and probably something mined out by a large number of previous queries much more than an obscure request regarding C.S. Lewis hinging on an observation that only experts and devoted fans are likely to know.

ChatGPT 4 may be better, and I believe there will be at least more mature ways established of cheating on the Turing Test. However, at the moment, I believe that what ChatGPT 3.5 does now looks an awful lot like the approach to cheating on the Turing Test that I outlined in my first master's.

UseNet newsgroups were once Wonderland, too, and one post which was on netfunny.com and since appears to have been taken down, perhaps due to its offensive nature, said:

An explorer from Spain, in the jungles of South America, found a woman powerful in magic, and said, "I want to be ferocious. Make me a tiger." So she made him a tiger, but a fox tricked him. So he came back and said, "I want to be cunning. Make me a fox." So he became a fox, but a snake betrayed him. So he came back and said, "I want to be treacherous. Make me a snake." So she made him a snake, but a wasp stung him. So he came back and said, "I want to sting. Make me a wasp." So he became a wasp and stung, but was smashed in retaliation. As happens when you are killed in another form, you appear in ghostly form, so he came back as a ghost and told her, "I want you to turn me into something more ferocious than a tiger, more cunning than a fox, more treacherous than a snake, and more stinging than a wasp." So she turned him back into a Spaniard.

There was a moderator's note at the bottom, in brackets, saying that he didn't like the joke, but it was back from the days when posting to UseNet was the new technological wonderland. And I would comment that, besides the joke being politically incorrect, UseNet and mailing lists have become "Kids, go ask your parents," territory.

In 1993 AT&T ran commercials trying to create want for what then sounded like a futuristic wonderland:

But I would recall a point from Zen and the Art of Destroying Asian Philosophy, er, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, that technologies such as (in this case) automobiles were exciting to a few rural people who didn't need them, while they had become part of the "it all" in "trying to get away from it all." We can send something tantamount to a fax from a beach, but these things advertised in the video are in no way exotic to those of us to which these things have become everyday. The man paying an electronic toll may be shown as experiencing an almost sexual thrill, but in fact none of us find even more painless electronic toll collection to be exciting.

A change of policy without change in principle

A draft I was intending to post later reads,

One note on (non-)coverage of AI, or what may be an elephant in the room

People reading this text may note that I do not cover the obvious topic of optimal profoundly gifted use of AI. Let me explain about that.

I was involved in the web almost from the beginning, with a web presence and the first incarnation of my primary website which represents my life's work (

https://cjshayward.com

), before 1994.

With that, among other risks, came porn delivery for decades, something that only stopped after a father confessor told me that not only was porn "anonymous sex," but that "masturbation, the masturbatory act" was the ultimate exploitation of the model's performance. That helped me not want to bring pornography and masturbation to confession again. I regard that shackle as a significant amount of lost time, and a liability at least comparable to the benefit of making a website and a whole lot of being in the right place at the right time that I cannot take credit for.

I also became involved on social media, found one group that by its title sounded like a place of kindred spirits… and was home to trolls who gave me the most toxic harassment of my entire life, to the point that suicide was a live question.

I now coexist both with Internet and with social media (I stopped posting links on Twitter after I was told it would cost me $86 to get verified; I'm still active on Facebook), and am getting some traffic, I believe, from daily Facebook posts with part of a work and a link to that work. However, I regard whatever benefit I have gained from really anti-social media to be trivial compared to the risk represented by Facebook trolling alone.

M y signature contribution to the conversation relates to how I have learned to coexist with technologies, including mobile Internet; you can read it in the seven volume Hidden Price Tags: An Eastern Orthodox Look at the Dark Side of Technology and Its Best Use series, redirected to Amazon from https://cjshayward.com/hpt (please note that a search for "hidden price tags" or the like will get oodles of paid ads for various kinds of physical price tags before turning up my work, even if you add "cjs hayward" to the search). However, I believe that my learning to live with my iPhone has little to commend it above a non-smartphone handset from https://sunbeamwireless.com, or not owning anything like a smartphone at all. In Bridge to Teribinthia, it is Leslie's family not owning a TV that the author used to mark her as Privileged with a capital 'P' even more than her family being one where "money is not the issue." If the book were written today, Leslie might not own a cellphone, and might not have an account with ChatGPT.

I believe that Nicholas Carr was right in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, and The Glass Cage: How Our Computers are Changing Us. Not in just individual assertions, but in the overall withering critique in continuity with past critiques of television, I believe the assessments are largely on-target. In the latter, the most withering direct critique is how automation is changing medicine, but the book also treats how ever more powerful Integrated Development Environments are castrating programmer competency. To quote I Deleted my ChatGPT App:

"The most devastating critique in the book is what Electronic Medical Records have done, and are doing, to the medical profession, and I will leave you to read The Glass Cage for that. However, a related find was what Integrated Development Environments do to people's programming skills. Before that, I had assumed that when programmers wrote, 'I'd crawl over a mile of Integrated this and Visual that to get to Emacs and a good copy of gcc,' which I had simply assumed was a chauvinism for known and familiar tools. Another person much more crassly and much more scathingly denounced IDE-induced skill atrophy by saying, 'Most programmers today couldn't find their d*cks if you took away their Visual M*st*rb*t**n Kit ++.' The older command line tools (I use vim instead of Emacs) required the programmer to know what he was programming and keep it in his head. Emacs is a complex and capable system, but in a way that encourages development of expert skills ('…and with 'evil' mode, the operating system includes an editor.'). A distinction has been made between 'novice-friendly' and 'expert-friendly' systems, and Unix and Linux are both expert-friendly systems. (In Linux Mint, a novice-friendly desktop metaphor is built on top of an expert-friendly chassis). It has been said, perhaps insultingly, 'Unix is a very friendly operating system; it's just very selective about who it is friendly with.' I do not ask you to like the last statement or for that matter any of these statements, but Unix is a classic example of an expert-friendly system that fosters the development and refinement of expert skill."

Do I think there can be a beneficial and non-obvious use of AI? I'd pretty much say "Yes and amen" there. However I think a fair assessment of liabilities is appropriate. When I first saw Golem AI advertised as being a great spark to creativity, I thought that it might offer that if used correctly, but the more obvious consequence would be that people use it to do their thinking for them. This was before I heard of YouTube videos, possibly published prior to my "prediction," about boyfriends copying and pasting between texting and ChatGPT because they did not know how to console their girlfriends. Other obvious consequences include a kind of "friendship porn" which destroys the ability to enjoy real friends (this is an un-highlighted aspect of what the Humane Tech "The AI Dilemma" videos on YouTube (first video, updated version, latest update), talk about in terms of intimacy being the real content of ChatGPT.

With social media, also known as "AI First Contact," the live danger to me included possible suicide. With Golem AI, also known as "AI Second Contact," the live danger is something done with the good intentions that pave the road to Hell causing harm far eclipsing my own interests. I believe there is most likely a legitimate use for Golem AI, but I do not consider it necessarily obvious, and I do not see why, as with cellphones, it might be the position of true privilege not to have one, and to have one's brain conditioned with the discipline of a profoundly gifted mind educated and self-tutored by classically profoundly gifted means.

There is a book I gave my father, a computer scientist, that I half-wish I had kept for myself. It was written in the 1980's and gave various contrived uses for computers as a solution in need of a problem. It is interesting, but they were incredibly peripheral ways of using computers compared to the niche they have carved out for themselves in the real world (and I do not recall mention of email, word processing, or spreadsheets among the proposed games). One of the proposed uses was as a board game, and I might comment that my own "computer as a board game or un-game" at https://jonathanhayward.com/furball.cgi never really caught on. The low-hanging fruit that Golem AI offers now has most likely little to do with the niche it is in the process of carving out for itself, and while it may recall an aunt's remark that Facebook seemed like "walking on water" when Facebook was hot and new, I do not think that Golem AI will seem to only offer plusses when it gets to work. That much is to be said even without considering the privacy implications.

So I will not be advising you on how to take advantage of AI to work better. It might offer a cognitive advantage to people with woke educations who have not been taught the three R's; profoundly gifted intelligence may function best when it is the master of its own competencies. At least The Glass Cage has chilling implications for outsourcing our intelligence to computers, and Golem AI offers the threats I have mentioned and probably other, less obvious dangers. An old joke runs, "What did the lumberjack kid say after using a chainsaw?"—"Look, Mom, no fingers!" In profound giftedness already in history, if there is an historical event with a body count that exceeds one million, a profoundly gifted person acting on the good intentions that pave the road to Hell probably played a crucial part. That propensity will likely only be magnified with Golem AI tools.

I may sometime take on the task of learning Golem AI and finding future volumes to my past volumes about non-obvious ways of using e.g. the smartphone without being given over to it. However, for now, the obvious position of privilege seems to be that of abstinence, and at least by historical analogy, watching TV for several hours a day is not an order of magnitude or two more productive than watching the Weather Channel for five minutes a day. I am intentionally not giving this collection an overhaul to give key insights to how to use Golem AI constructively. My use of the web for my life's work at

https://cjshayward.com

is in my opinion genuine added value; even if I use social media now I believe the risks outweigh the benefits, and I do not believe that Golem AI will in its overall use merit anything above the withering critiques outlined in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business and Technopology, Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Marie Winn's The Plug-in Drug, and Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains and The Glass Cage: How Our Computers are Changing Us. The first are critiques of TV, a technology hailed as bearing great educational potential, but these critiques of technology age well and I believe Carr was right, ten years after The Shallows, to leave the main text unchanged and just give one chapter's worth of updates for something he did not originally treat: the mobile Internet that delivered anti-social media at much more convenience than was to be had glued to laptops and desktops as things were when he originally wrote his book; the same goes for Winn and her chapter about computers and Internet.

I remain convinced that my life would be simpler if I simply minimize my interaction with AI, which when I checked in with my abbot, he said he'd be interested in use of AI for Orthodox theology. And I rather suspect that I could cajole ChatGPT 3 or 4 into a decent homily in the style and voice of St. John Chrysostom on Internet porn. But my concern is more with risks, and I believe that the magic wonderland we are in now will not remain a magic wonderland anymore than the phones we are chained to.

However, for someone whose signature contribution to the conversation is what use of technology is and is not good for us as mankind, and as someone who wrote a master's thesis critiquing AI (that I have still received strong praise for recently), I do not believe I would be fully loving my neighbor to coast on what contact I have already had with technologies and not use AI the way some privileged people do not own a television (I don't) or don't own a smartphone (I have tamed and curtailed my smartphone use as I discuss in How Can I Take my Life Back from my Phone?). And that might be the easier and individually safest route for me personally, but now I feel morally compelled to seek expert understanding of AI.

So how am I going about it? I've reinstalled ChatGPT on my phone and am engaging the incredibly complex ecosystem of AI tools, but only using AI directly on weekend days. I feel compelled to get to know AI but want to reserve playing with it to leisure time. And I am taking time to read all sorts of AI articles on Arxiv.

I have a suspicion about what I'll find based on past experience with technology, and that suspicion is mostly quoted in the draft above. And I am being wary as I study and acquire knowledge. So far ChatGPT has seemed flat to me and its humanities content generation seems dumbed down; for instance, I asked for a short story on Reepicheep from The Chronicles of Narnia traveling to America and I received a one paragraph summary that did not contain a single detail or word of dialogue. My suspicion is that at least some of this is that I have not developed the skill of carefully crafting prompts; one brilliant friend I have made sophisticated requests concerning a chapter of his meta-autobiography, and got impressively sophisticated results. I asked for a new Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from an image generator, and got something vaguely Calvin and Hobbes-like in appearance with garbled fake characters in one paragraph of dialogue, and two half-tiger half-boy things traveling in a wagon. But ChatGPT 3 makes much more convincing Calvin and Hobbes dialogues. I have an eye sharply peeled for risks, but I don't know what a mature proficiency on my part would give beyond expecting that I can produce results that are more interesting to me if I can genuinely develop skill.

One risk I would particularly warn about is using the AI to do our thinking for us, and I'll mention one specific use that reflects what I would consider a wiser use of AI, even if my abbot said to just look up Greek word endings in a book. I thought of, as I study Greek, reading an intralinear text and when I see an unfamiliar word ending, ask ChatGPT to parse it, and "peg" it (with classical memory technique) so it sticks in my memory. That is a use of AI that builds my own proficiency and power.

In the context of relationships, one psychologist talked about how it is not desirable for people to split competencies for basic living skills; the recommended path is for the more proficient person to build proficiency in the less proficient person, so that if one of them dies or the relationship ends, you have not lost half your basic life skills. Even if one person does most of the work for one competency.

Alcasan's head

In C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, "A modern fairy-tale for grown-ups," a scientist who had murdered his wife was guillotined, had his head carefully preserved, and "Once they'd got it kept alive, the first thing that would occur to boys like them would be to increase its brain. They'd try all sorts of stimulants. And then, maybe, they'd ease open the skull-cal and just—well, just let it boil over, as you might say…. A cerebral hypertrophy artificially induced to support a superhuman power of ideation." Filostrato until almost the very end believed his science had powered the head's motion, but the head had become an orifice to commerce with demons.

I'm not sure it is popular for me to suggest that the demonic might have something to do with a force that is already known to acquire major additional abilities that the developers have no idea how it got there. However, this is not the first point in the story where Orthodox would raise the question of the demonic. The primary content of the Internet is porn, and really, from the perspective that reigns in Hell, the Internet is for porn. The Orthodox picture of the demonic is not something that enters the picture when something obviously supernatural appears, but that the demons are constantly trying to pour venom into our ears. When I went to a diocesan conference as a parish delegate, there was a section read which began by belabored acknowledgement and gratitude for the many good things brought by the Internet, but said without hesitation that most of the content on the net is demonic. Orthodox would see demonic fingerprints in the production, distribution, and consumption of porn, even though the processes on the material level are almost all the same as a materialist would see in them. The demonic is a layer over all kinds of aspects of life and not a foreign intrusion that can only work by violating the laws of nature. To the Orthodox, there are carefully hidden demonic fingerprints to be found all over Internet porn—and the fingerprints may be less hidden in currently unfolding developments in AI.

C.S. Lewis, besides calling That Hideous Strength "a modern fairy-tale for grown-ups," said that there were three times to read fairy tales: once as a child, once as a young man, and once at a mature age. In some senses the fairy tales are like what I was doing on exams in teaching programming. The exam is an artificial exercise that cannot be directly cut from the same cloth as the challenges at work (which are all open book), but it is better to bring together and assess core competencies in an artificial miniature context than not make the attempt at all. And C.S. Lewis who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia to be outgrown even as they are looked back on in reminiscence has written the best fairy tale I know for our setting.

The people at Humane Tech who delivered "The AI dilemma" (the links, again, are first video, updated version, and latest update) portray AI as a horrid and scary-looking alien, as nasty looking as any H.P. Lovecraft malevolent deity, only a monster which happens to be clumsily manipulating a human mask. Behind the picture are unseen and nasty consequences, and while I do not consider it intrinsically occult sin to engage with AI in an AIlice in Wonderland setting, the original Internet represents treacherous waters (when it was starting to become mainstream one fellow high school student openly said he had access to "terabytes of porn" in a day hard disks were measured in kilobytes or megabytes), anti-social media ("AI first contact") represent more treacherous waters, and current AI ("AI second contact") represents still more deeply treacherous waters, and this treacherous character is still known in advance. Before things had emerged nearly this far, there were still a lot of things known as covered in the videos. In that sense my engagement with AI is partly as someone who has been bitten by predecessors but does not think he can properly love his neighbor, having such a foundation as hinted at in his AI-critiquing master's thesis and his subsequent works, without trying to understand AI and offer such guidance as he tried to give to our phone-saturated technological world in works like the purposefully short collection A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind and the Hidden Price Tags: An Eastern Orthodox Look at the Dark Side of Technology and Its Best Use series.

Follow the links I have posted, and please subscribe to my Substack.

Questions for discussion

1. Is AI not a first contact with Alice in Wonderland? Explain your answer.

2. Is AI offering a different and more accelerated AIlice in Wonderland?

3. What is new and different?

4. What is the best thing you think AI has put in our reach?

5. What do you think are the worst consequences AI has put in our reach?

6. What can you do to crawl over a mile of "Integrated this and Visual that" to guard and keep your human intelligence?

7. What human abilities do you want to retain if and when AI is confiscated from us the same way that Google made books available so we no longer needed books, and then confiscated our access to text of books on Google Books?

8. What can you do to steer an even course on the path of being human without being blown off-course by winds?

9. What relevance do you see in works like the Philokalia that are in another age about keeping an even course on the path of being human without being blown off-course by winds?

Yours Truly,
Br. C.J.S. Hayward