Romans 7 and zombies

A few years back I puzzled a bit about the popularity of zombie stories, and puzzled again.. I was thinking then in terms of fear of dissolution of social bonds and expectations, but ...

The zombie is a live body but dead mind and spirit. It looks alive, but isn't really.

Suppose one has a live body and live mind but dead spirit?

What could kill the spirit, though? Christians will probably see where I'm going with this; think of yourself in a world of living dead, with the fear that you are one of them yourself -- or can be one. Or were one.

"Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works." — Robert Farrar Capon

Spiritual Disciplines

"You fight the way you train"

What spiritual challenges and temptations do you expect to face? Not the easy ones, the weaknesses you don't like to think about.

How do you want to respond to them?

How can you train for that response?

I'm not thinking about plotting out dialog. Jesus deprecated that. Explaining the hope that is in you isn't what I'm talking about either.

When I remember some of the things I have faced and try to come up with exercises to train my reactions to try to do better next time, two things come quickly to mind. Some of those old stories about what saints did don't sound quite so outlandish, and "Lead us not into temptation". I can only do so much.

Fast Breaking News

often reminds me of Twain's story of The Admiral in Roughing It.

Strangely dim

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of Earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace."

The Beatific Vision -- seeing God as we've never seen Him before -- is almost by definition greater than anything we see in the world.

And yet I think the wording of the hymn isn't quite right. I think the better we see God, the better we see Him in everything else as well. "Strangely dim" -- but only relatively so.

Privateers

Grim's sense is that privateers could work better than the more bureaucratic armed forces. He has far more experience with the bureaucratic armed forces than I, but I worry about a few details.

To whom do the privateers owe primary allegiance? Their organization or the country for whom they are fighting? With just a smidgeon of corruption and media connivance (you tell me if that exists in this country) it wouldn't be hard for a cartel to get approval and funding to attack their rivals.

Even with an organization with less disreputable initial aims than a cartel, mission creep can turn it into a public menace.

Going further, what would privateering look like in an era of drones? Drones can be carried and controlled in a truck as easily as in a boat--probably more so. Inconvenient prosecutors or judges might have to hide. Organizations do go rogue sometimes.

And as the cited Sal Mercogliano video notes, it isn't as though the US has a small navy anymore: 2nd largest in the world (Sal says 1st, but that's the Chinese). Recent events show that bureaucracies don't have to slow it down that much.

The law might have one useful side effect--it could force Congress to decide what sort of relationship we have with hostile non-state armed organizations. Is it a war, or something else--and when do we know we've won?

Cold

Below about 5F is biting cold. Up near freezing, with the air loaded with moisture, is hammering cold.

AI and religion

First Things has an article suggesting that AI may increase people's interest in religion, as they find themselves more purposeless.

“If automation hollows out jobs, what will people do all day that feels meaningful?”

Simple, he responded: They will do what humans have done since time immemorial, which is look to faith for answers and a sense of purpose.

I'm not persuaded that AI will be as disruptive as advertised. Much of the potential danger assumes that people will decide to rely on it and put it in control of things. But people have agency, and sometimes they even learn from mistakes.

But for the moment assume that it will be seriously disruptive. It's plausible that people, in turmoil and loss, will look to religion.

But which religion? Last century saw the rise of horrifyingly destructive cults--two of which demanded bloody world war to put down, and a third which demanded human sacrifices on a scale never seen before and is still active.

Not the optometrist's waiting room

Hold your breath

Divisions

I wasn't familiar with how the Sri Lanka Tamil vs Sinhal rivalry developed. The author blames a few politicians, and points to parallels ancient (Nike riots) and modern.

Apart from the law

We were discussing Romans 7 this morning, and ran across "I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead."

I would have written the last as "apart from the Law sin is paralyzed," but it turns out God didn't invite me to write a letter to the Romans, so take my preferences for what they're worth.

Anyhow, Paul uses death in several different ways here, requiring careful reading, hence some of the discussion.

One image that covers some of the description for me is that of a little child, too young to understand the rules, but not too young not to want to break them once found. Parents will know what I'm talking about.

Scott Adams will be missed

By some.

I regret not taking the time to explore an observation I made years ago at UW, and tried to measure where Dilbert cartoons could be found and what fraction they were of displayed cartoons on doors and bullitin boards.

From time to time I had reason to stroll through some of the engineering buildings, or chemistry or match, and now and then the business school. Fifteen/twenty years ago Dilbert was all over the place in physics (I had some) and computing and engineering, but not at the business school. Other cartoons appeared there, so it wasn't a department dictum on decorum.

I wish I'd checked on life sciences and arts and language too.

Since Dilbert so often skewered pointy-haired bosses and HR, it's no surprise that the strip wouldn't pop up on grad student doors so much in those regions. (Not that HR has many grad students – the relative number of grad students would skew total counts to the hard science departments.)

From the speed with which the strip was dropped I suspect there was great relief in the relevant management and HR corporate quarters at the excuse for revenge.

I read in one of his books, as an aside, his explanation for a positive thinking approach – that good luck came to those who claimed it would come. It seemed a kind of magical thinking for someone who professed to be quite rational.

He announced that he was taking Pascal's Wager when he no longer had anything to lose. That doesn't seem quite cricket, but I suspect God will take him anyway – perhaps to his surprise.

And perhaps he'll learn what might have been.

Lewis has Aslan tell Lucy that nobody is ever told what might have happened. In one sense that's true. We're linear people, and absorbing the branching tree of life's possibilities is more than we were made to understand. But I wonder if being confronted with who we could have been is part of Judgment Day.

Measuring happiness

AVI posted on a new series from the Free Press about happiness by a researcher of the field.

What does a happiness score mean? We wonders, aye, we wonders.

As a boy many years ago, when looking for excuses not to go to church, I noticed that I could pretty much give myself a stomach-ache by concentrating on sensations inside my body. Try it yourself. Do you have a shoulder that does not ache? Concentrate on the sensations from the other one (e.g. my left). Some of the sensations are neutral, few are downright pleasurable, and every now and then there's something slightly unpleasant. Study your shoulder long enough, and those unpleasant-to-painful sensations will start to dominate your attention. Presto!

I suspect that happiness is similar; excessive introspection can skew what we find.

Of course real indigestion made the self-invoked variety look silly, but one of the graces in life is that memory of agony isn't as intense as the agony itself. I've had kidney stones, which recalibrated my pain scale. Sort of. I remember how I acted with the pain, but the pain itself is long gone.

On a smaller scale, I spent most of yesterday in bed (when I actually did want to go to church) and still feel bad today, but since I don't still feel yesterday's pain I can only tell I'm doing better by noticing what I can do.

So I don't have a scale, or have only a sliding scale, to measure pain or pleasure, and since usually pain weighs higher, that pushes me in the "unhappy" direction.

In another way of thinking about it, imagine driving to meet to the family. The road is clean, traffic is smooth, the kids are happily playing roadside bingo, the car sounds fine; am I happy? Maybe not as much as when we reach the grandparents'. Nevertheless, why would I not be in the meantime? And when we reach the goal, I'll be eight or nine hours tired and not feeling 100% too--that won't make the arrival "not count" for happiness, I hope.

Some cultures deprecate complaining or standing out--part of your identity is your community. That seems to have several implications on happiness, and complications on how you measure it. If I've a tootheache but my family's celebration is going wonderfully, how do I rank that? If I'm encouraged not to talk about what's bothering me, will I tell your survey things that I don't think about?

Do you try to take an average of people in a specific situation in two different cultures, and then try to rescale the distribution of one to match the other, and then apply that re-scaling to other situations? If that makes the distributions in other cases match too, then you may have some way of measuring happiness using self-surveys, but it seems fraught with methodological and statistical mines.

I've long had a fairly melancholic disposition. In any situation I think of the problems. When I travel I try to figure a way to get back home if things go sideways. As Ogden Nash wrote of his wife I think of mine: "In your absences I glimpse fire and floods and trolls and imps." And I'm very aware of my own failings. But I don't think of myself as unhappy.

After typing those words, I noticed that the new pain in my foot is quite a bit higher than earlier this evening, now well into "sleep-interrupter" level. I wasn't expecting to do a practical test so soon. So far I still think of myself overall as pretty happy, though a bit grumpy at the moment.

Hot potato

"Notwithstanding the above restriction, -REDACTED- may not purchase physical commodities or sell physical commondities unless acquired as a result of ownership of securities or other instruments. This restriction does not prevent the Fund from engaging in transactions involving futures contracts and options thereon or investing in securities that are secured by physical commodities."

Just so they don't hold onto those futures contracts too long, I guess.

Locality

AVI posted a link to a Steve Hsu podcast (sadly without the slides) about using AI as a kind of "idea generator" linking concepts in physics together -- untrustworthy, but sometimes says something worthwhile. He wasted time on some of the ideas, and found another useful -- and published a paper on the result.

By using AI, he means using several different AI systems, and then cross checking them. If they converge, there might be something useful there. Or not.

Anyhow, the useful idea was based on one of his own papers which showed that a non-linear version of Schrodinger's Equation was going to be "non-local" too: namely that regions that are distant from each other would be correlated/entangled instantaneously -- before light could travel between them. (To be clear, he works with the field equations, since that's simpler for his plan.)

That sounded curious. Quantum mechanics does seem to be linear--at energies below those where general relativistic effects would matter. We don't know what happens when GR and QM have to play together, but non-linearities seem likely to me (admittedly not an expert in that particular field).

The paper discusses non-linear models that involve powers of the wave function. Recalling that the wave functions are going to be linear in the sense that if A is a solution and so is B, A+B is too. If the wave function enters the equation as, for example a linear term plus a square, that square term will couple near and far components automatically. E.g. if "n" represents the near part and "f" the far-away part, (n+f)^2 will have terms like n*f and f*n, connecting near and far from the get-go.

That's the simplest way to put a non-linearity in, but it doesn't seem the most likely, if only because it will automatically ruin locality. Physically, you'd expect something more like a "back-reaction" non-linearity, where the energy of the wave pushes on the vacuum, which "pushes back." For example, an electric charge in space results in an electric field in which there's a non-zero probability of pair-producing (temporarily/virtually) an electron and a positron, which briefly interact with the original charge. Hawking showed that this can be non-trivial for gravity and black holes.

That would give a non-linearity restricted to the effects local to the history of the wavefunction. If one electron has been sitting here and another on Alpha Centauri, if they haven't been there long enough for light to reach from one to the other, the local volume that light can have reached and returned would represent, in my naive model, the volume of the wave function that could contribute a non-linear effect to the electron "here." The Alpha Centauri's contribution is nil until enough time has passed. (And of course, at such a distance the effect is utterly trivial, but it's the principle of the thing.

Now you will ask if I will "put my money where my mouth is" and write an equation for an example. Let me get back to you on that. You'd think in the simplest case one could add in a term like $\alpha \int_{t_0}^0 \int dA \psi(\vec{x}, t-t_0)$ where $A$ is the shell about the given point at radius $c(t-t_0)$, $\alpha$ is some small constant, and $t_0$ is the creation time of the wave function. But I can see that's likely to be bit messy, especially with inserting a "creation time" boundary condition.

I'll play around with it a bit and see what happens.

UPDATE. That integral should include a $f(t-t_0)$ inside that I left off (brain freeze), representing the falloff (e.g. something like $1/r^2$) of effect with distance. $\alpha \int_{t_0}^0 \int dA f (t-t0) \psi(\vec{x}, t-t_0)$

Knit together

"For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another."

Eph 5:23-27 says that the church will be presented to Christ holy and blameless. And how is this constituted? "hearts knit together in love".

That language might sound familiar: "you knit me together in my mother's womb"

When something breaks (infection, cancer) in my body it doesn't feel like I'm so wonderfully made; I notice the problems. But I am. And we don't always notice that the church is "fearfully and wonderfully made", but it is. We've a role in trying to keep it so.

Comparing

"because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse."

From Motse's "Will of Heaven":

Moreover I know Heaven loves men dearly not without reason. Heaven ordered the sun, the moon, and the stars to enlighten and guide them. Heaven ordained the four seasons, Spring, Autumn, Winter, and Summer, to regulate them. Heaven sent down snow, frost, rain, and dew to grow the five grains and flax and silk that so the people could use and enjoy them. Heaven established the hills and rivers, ravines and valleys, and arranged many things to minister to man's good or bring him evil. He appointed the dukes and lords to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked, and to gather metal and wood, birds and beasts, and to engage in cultivating the five grains and flax and silk to provide for the people's food and clothing. This has been taking from antiquity to the present. Suppose there is a man who is deeply fond of his son and has used his energy to the limit to work for his benefit. But when the son grows up he returns no love to the father. The gentlemen of the world will all call him unmagnanimous and miserable. Now Heaven loves the whole world universally. Everything is prepared for the good of man. The work of Heaven extends to even the smallest things that are enjoyed by man. Such benefits may indeed be said to be substantial, yet there is no service in return. And they do not even know this to be unmagnanimous. This is why I say the gentlemen of the world understand only trifles but not things of importance.

More Motse

Following up on the earlier post

An easier-to-read site

From section I, a call for the rule of universal love:

Suppose everybody in the world loves universally, loving others as one's self. Will there yet be any unfilial individual? When every one regards his father, elder brother, and emperor as himself, whereto can he direct any unfilial feeling? Will there still be any unaffectionate individual? When every one regards his younger brother, son, and minister as himself, whereto can he direct any disaffection? Therefore there will not be any unfilial feeling or disaffection. Will there then be any thieves and robbers? When every one regards other families as his own family, who will steal? When every one regards other persons as his own person, who will rob? Therefore there will not be any thieves or robbers. Will there be mutual disturbance among the houses of the ministers and invasion among the states of the feudal lords? When every one regards the houses of others as one's own, who will be disturbing? When every one regards the states of others as one's own, who will invade? Therefore there will be neither disturbances among the houses of the ministers nor invasion among the states of the feudal lords.

And from section III, a claim that the sage-kings expressed universal love:

Nevertheless. the gentlemen in the empire think that, though it would be an excellent thing if love can be universalized, it is something quite impracticable. It is like carrying Mt. Tai and leaping over the Ji River. Mozi said: The illustration is a faulty one. Of course to be able to carry Mt. Tai and leap over the Ji River would be an extreme feat of strength. Such has never been performed from antiquity to the present time. But universal love and mutual aid are quite different from this. And the ancient sage-kings did practise it. How do we know they did?

When Yu was working to bring the Deluge under control, he dug the West River and the Youdou River in the west in order to let off the water from the Qu, Sun, and Huang Rivers. In the north he built a dam across the Yuan and Gu Rivers in order to fill the Houzhidi (a basin) and the Huzhi River. Mt. Dizhu was made use of as a water divide, and a tunnel was dug through Mt. Lungmen. All these were done to benefit the peoples west of the (Yellow) River and various barbarian tribes, Yan, Dai, Hu, Ho, of the north. In the east he drained the great Plain and built dykes along the Mengzhu River. The watercourse was divided into nine canals in order to regulate the water in the east and in order to benefit the people of the District of Ji. In the south he completed the Yangtze, Han, Huai, and Ru Rivers. These ran eastward and emptied themselves into the Five Lakes. This was done in order to benefit the peoples of Jing, Qi, Gan, Yue, and the barbarians of the south. All these are the deeds of Yu. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

When King Wen was ruling the Western land, he shone forth like the sun and the moon all over the four quarters as well as in the Western land. He did not allow the big state to oppress the small state, he did not allow the multitude to oppress the singlehanded, he did not allow the influential and strong to take away the grain and live stock from the farmers. Heaven visited him with blessing. And, therefore, the old and childless had the wherewithal to spend their old age, the solitary and brotherless had the opportunity to join in the social life of men, and the orphans had the support for their growth. This was what King Wen had accomplished. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

When King Wu was about to do service to Mt. Tai it was recorded thus: "Blessed is Mt. Tai. Duke of Zhou by a long descent is about to perform his duty. As I have obtained the approval of Heaven, the magnanimous arise to save the people of Shang Xia as well as the barbarians (from the tyranny of Emperor Zhou). Though (Emperor Zhou) has many near relatives, they cannot compare with the magnanimous. If there is sin anywhere, I am solely responsible." This relates the deeds of King Wu. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

And again from section III, examples of things that are nominally harder to do. One may harbor doubts about the wisdom of these kings...

Is it because it is hard and impracticable? There are instances of even much harder tasks done. Formerly, Lord Ling of the state of Jing liked slender waists. In his time people in the state of Jing ate not more than once a day. They could not stand up without support, and could not walk without leaning against the wall. Now, limited diet is quite hard to endure, and yet it was endured. While Lord Ling encouraged it, his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Lord Goujian of the state of Yue admired courage and taught it to his ministers and soldiers three years. Fearing that their knowledge had not yet made them efficient he let a fire be set on the boat, and beat the drum to signal advance. The soldiers at the head of the rank were even pushed down. Those who perished in the flames and in water were numberless. Even then they would not retreat without signal. The soldiers of Yue would be quite terrified (ordinarily). To be burnt alive is a hard task, and yet it was accomplished. When the Lord of Yue encouraged it, his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Lord Wen of the state of Jin liked coarse clothing. And so in his time the people of Jin wore suits of plain cloth, jackets of sheep skin, hats of spun silk, and big rough shoes. Thus attired, they would go in and see the Lord and come out and walk in the court. To dress up in coarse clothing is hard to do, yet it has been done. When Lord Wen encouraged it his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Now to endure limited diet, to be burnt alive, and to wear coarse clothing are the hardest things in the world, yet when the superiors encouraged them the people could be changed within a generation. Why was this so? It was due to the desire to conform to the superior.

Now, as to universal love and mutual aid, they are beneficial and easy beyond a doubt. It seems to me that the only trouble is that there is no superior who encourages it. If there is a superior who encourages it, promoting it with rewards and commendations, threatening its reverse with punishments, I feel people will tend toward universal love and mutual aid like fire tending upward and water downwards - it will be unpreventable in the world.

So a realm of universal love is achieved from the top down, by conforming the inferiors by "Identification with the Superior."

About fifty years ago I decided to read Mencius, who was one of the great influences in Chinese thought. I wearied of the book well before finishing, but got through the section in which he excoriates Mozi's "universal love" ideas. He complained about propriety (insuffiicent filial piety) and hierarchy (You have to have hierarchy!). I don't remember a complaint that this just wouldn't work.

I think the 20'th century shows us that top-down proclaiming everybody to be comrades doesn't work very well.

Forging on: This sounds fairly timely. Economy of Expenditures

When a sage rules a state the benefits of the state will be increased twice. When he governs the empire, those of the empire will be doubled. This increase is not by appropriating land from without. But by cutting out the useless expenditures it is accomplished. In issuing an order, taking up an enterprise, or employing the people and expending wealth, the sage never does anything without some useful purpose.

…

What, then, is difficult to increase? To increase the population is difficult. In ancient times, the sage-kings said: "No man of twenty should dare to be without a family; no girl of fifteen should dare to be without a master." Such were the laws of the sage-kings. Now that the sage-kings have passed away, the people have become loose.

…

In those ancient days, at the beginning of the race, when there were no palaces or houses, people lived in caves dug at the side of hills and mounds. The sage-kings felt quite concerned, thinking that the caves might keep off the wind and cold in winter, but that in summer it would be wet below and steaming above which might hurt the health of the people. So palaces and houses were built and found useful. Now, what is the standard in building palaces and houses? Mozi said: Just so that on the side it can keep off the wind and the cold, on top it can keep off the snow, frost, rain, and dew, within it is clean enough for sacrificial purposes, and that the partition in the palace is high enough to separate the men from the women. What causes extra expenditure but does not add any benefit to the people, the sage-kings will not undertake.

I'm not sure how popular some of these ideas would be today.

How about the supernatural?

Mozi said: The way to find out whether anything exists or not is to depend on the testimony of the ears and eyes of the multitude. If some have heard it or some have seen it then we have to say it exists. If no one has heard it and no one has seen it then we have to say it does not exist. So, then, why not go to some village or some district and inquire? If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voice, how can we say that they do not exist?

…

Not only does the record in this book prove it to be so. Formerly the Lord Zhuang of Qi (794-731 B.C.) had two ministers, Wang Liguo and Zhong Lijiao, who were engaged in a lawsuit. For three years no judgment could be reached. The Lord of Qi thought of putting both of them to death, but was afraid to slay the innocent; he thought of acquitting both of them but was afraid to let loose the guilty. So he let them provide a lamb and take oath on the altar of Qi. The two men agreed to take the oath of blood. The throat of the lamb was cut and its blood sprinkled on the altar. The case of Wang Liguo was read all through. But before half of the case of Zhong Lijiao was read, the lamb arose and butted at him, broke his leg and prostrated him on it. At the time those people who were present all saw it and those far away heard of it. It was recorded in the Spring and Autumn of Qi. The feudal lords circulated the news around and remarked: "So speedy and severe is the punishment from spirits and ghosts to him that takes an oath in insincerity!" Judging from the record in this book, how can we doubt that spirits and ghosts exist?

Therefore Mozi said: One may not act disrespectfully even in woods, valleys, or solitary caves where there is no man. Spirits and ghosts are watching everywhere.

…

Those who deny the existence of spirits, saying "Ghosts and spirits just do not exist", are opposing the interest of the sage-kings. Opposing the interest of the sage-kings is not the way of the superior man.