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Theology, philosophy, math, science, and random other things
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

The immigration policy of New Jerusalem

[...] Instead of aiming up, we just get jostled left and right in our hatred, while our aim slowly drifts downwards. I seek to resist this pattern. I do so by explicitly aiming up, in at least one policy mired in controversy - that of immigration. You see, there is actually such a thing as the perfect immigration policy. It is the immigration policy of New Jerusalem - the holy city, the bride of the Lamb.

The levels of reinforcement against those on the road to perdition

Guilt, shame, and law each have their role in opposing us when we sin. They help us recognize and navigate the structure of Reality: that good is rewarded and evil is punished. While these three mechanisms may be bypassed or corrupted, Reality itself will not be mocked. All who oppose it will perish.

How the two parties should now each move forward

I generally do not like politics. Although I don't consider myself uninformed, I am not a partisan. I take pride in being independent and convincible, and have in fact voted for Republican, Democratic, and neither candidates in recent election cycles. In other words, I am the quintessential swing voter. If either of the two parties […]

Lies, damned lies, and deeper levels of this hellish pit

I don't like politics. I've said before that if I ever get involved in it it'll mean that things have gone seriously wrong. Well, things are pretty bad now in the United States, and one of our problems is the rampant lying in our politics. There are, of course, other problems, but this is one […]

The unstated job requirements of being a data scientist

This is the Triforce. In the Legend of Zelda franchise, these three triangular artifacts represent the virtues of courage, wisdom, and power. They are the ultimate force in their in-game universe, as they represent the essence of the creator goddesses and can grant any wish to those who wield it. This is the threefold office: […]

How do you help those kinds of people?

Today is Christmas. I once tried to help a homeless person, in a pretty major way. It was hard, and It didn't go well. Let's just say that it might have been better if I didn't try at all. Which leads me to wonder: how do you help these kinds of people? Homelessness has been […]

Impressions from my trip to Ukraine during the war

(All the pictures in this post can be seen at their full resolution here, and my post about the whole trip in a larger context, including Norway and Moldova, can be found here.) So, how did I end up going to Ukraine during the war? I assure you this was initially not my own idea, […]

What do we want? Reflections on AI and morality

Essentially, these AIs solve all kinds of "how" problems for us. We now know how to play a good game of chess or go, how to reply to any text prompt, and how to create an image from just a text description. This leaves us with the "what" problem. What do we want? What do we value? This is a hard question. Can an AI answer it for us? No, I don't think so. At least not any of the AIs as we have them today. Remember, the fundamental function of all the AIs we've discussed is to take in data, and give us what we said we wanted. So it seems that there's some kind of bootstrapping step missing, in that we have to give the AI "what we want" as an input, but expect "what we REALLY want" as an output.

The justice of the reprobates' eternal punishment in hell

Hell does not necessarily impose an infinite punishment, and the sins of the reprobate are not necessarily finite. Biblical Christianity is perfectly flexible on both of these points. Either one of them, in isolation, is enough to fully answer the objection of "infinitely disproportionate punishment", and we have both. So we can say with confidence that the reprobate in hell will get exactly what they deserve - the exact right level of punishment commensurate with their sins.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

...is my favorite Christmas carol. It has been so since I heard Jewel's rendition of it on a random road trip, and I somehow understood all the lyrics in all the verses, through the music and the poetry to their meaning. The second and third verses hit me particularly hard in their novelty, as I hadn't heard them before. Here are the lyrics:
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