In Praise of the Beautiful Game, and some early thoughts about AI
Hello, Friends!
While much of my newsletter attention these past six months has been spent keeping Rhythms of Habit reasonably updated throughout the Liturgical Year, I wanted to send a quick update on a couple of things I have been thinking through and writing about lately.
Excerpts and links are below.
In Praise of the Beautiful Game
This essay was easily one of my favorite to write in recent memory. After Holy Week and lots of writing about Church and classical education in the past couple of months, writing about one of my other loves was a real treat.
At the beginning of his excellent book about soccer, The Language of the Game, Laurent Dubois dedicates it “to all those who love soccer, and to those who don’t but love someone who does.”
That dedication works well for this short essay about the beautiful game, too, with one addition: I also write in hopes that some of you might become numbered among “those who love soccer.”
I write in this hope because I am convinced that learning to enjoy — or at least tolerate — the beautiful game is good for your soul.
Read more: https://covenant.livingchurch.org/2023/04/26/in-praise-of-the-beautiful-game/
ChatGPT
After writing the essay below about ChatGPT, I was invited on TryTank’s podcast to talk through Artificial Intelligence and the Church. Though I remain far less excited than the host about the potential for AI to replace important human interactions, it was certainly a fruitful conversation.
An excerpt from the Essay:
In the world of technology, there is nothing new under the sun. That is not to say there is no innovation in technology, but rather that when a new technology emerges, the same old cycle occurs.
The Next Big Thing is announced, and is greeted with heightened expectations from all sides. Whether the reaction is This changes everything or We are all doomed, expectations of the new technology’s significance are almost universally overstated.
This leads to part two of the cycle: the letdown. It turns out this new technology doesn’t change everything, and it has not destroyed us all. The general population moves on. Either the technology becomes so ubiquitous that its presence is hardly noticed, or it becomes so obsolete that nobody cares.
But there is one final step to the cycle. It is perhaps the most dangerous step, in large part because most people have moved on. Part three of the cycle is the arrival of unintended consequences. The Next Big Thing, designed to improve our lives harms more than it helps. Nuclear technology led to the rise of both nuclear weapons and microwavable bacon. Put mildly, both are detrimental to human flourishing.
ChatGPT is, in this sense, the Next Big Thing. We are in the middle of the first cycle, though some among us have already moved on to the second.
Headlines about this new iteration of artificial intelligence have ranged from “Goodbye, Homework” and “ChatGPT Will End High School English” to “Will ChatGPT Make Lawyers Obsolete? (Hint: Be Afraid).” The more nuanced among us are either ignoring the phenomenon entirely, or pointing out that it does some things surprisingly well. Whether it does what it tries to do is one question; whether we should try to use it, and for what, are the more important questions.
I serve as a priest in a sacramental church and headmaster of a school in the classical tradition. Both of these roles mean my interest is piqued when our culture is attracted to virtual replacements for otherwise human activity.
Essay: https://covenant.livingchurch.org/2023/01/27/artificial-intelligence-is-no-substitute-for-wisdom/
Podcast: https://share.transistor.fm/s/cfef10b9
Home Project: The Playhouse
After abandoning a deck project for our side yard, I started working on a playhouse for the kids last fall. I was finally able to wrap it up last week, other than paint.
Viv and Zoë led the design efforts, and I got to learn a lot about framing walls, rounded entryways, and not losing fingers to circular saws along the way.
