- Stephen C. on Latest AI Updates: “Mormon Trail,” a Graphic Novel of Mormon/Moroni, and 3 Nephi on Gold Plates.: “You’ve hit on why I’m much less nervous about AI taking my job than I would be if I was a game designer. For video games the proof is in the pudding. If I can vibe code a game that is indistinguishable from something hand-written then any errors will get caught in the testing stage, whereas with data science you can have very subtle errors that creep in that can remain uncaught if they’re not reviewed by somebody who knows what they’re doing. So I suspect computer game coders will need to look for new work in 5 or so years once you can vibe code an advanced first-person shooter like you can vibe code pretty much any Atari game at this point, but I have a really hard time ever seeing an investment bank rely on figures that were completely vibe-coded without having their quants at least check the math and coding.” Apr 28, 08:49
- on The Book of Mormon’s Anti-colonialism: “Jack, good points. I’d also add that 3 Ne 21 stresses the converted Gentiles joining with the remnant. V. 22 “if they [the Gentiles] will repent and hearken unto my words, and harden not their hearts, I will establish my church among them, and they shall come in unto the covenant and be numbered among this the remnant of Jacob, unto whom I have given this land for their inheritance.” That is, the Book of Mormon stresses the land belongs to the remnant, but that converted Gentiles get to join with the remnant if they convert. ” Apr 28, 08:42
- on The Book of Mormon’s Anti-colonialism: “Members of the Q12 – especially Elder Bednar – have been vocal about their efforts to rid the Church of the vestiges of inter-mountain western US culture. This of course cannot be done overnight.” Apr 28, 08:01
- on Latest AI Updates: “Mormon Trail,” a Graphic Novel of Mormon/Moroni, and 3 Nephi on Gold Plates.: “A grad student recently came close to embodying one of my fears about AI: after describing a not-hard-but-not-trivial data wrangling problem, she ended not with “How can I do that?” but with “I don’t know Stata, so I got AI to write this code for me. Can you tell me if it’s right?” It wasn’t. To be fair, she may not have described the problem clearly in her prompt. Learning to code also teaches you to describe things precisely. The good news is she knew she needed to ask, and had someone she could ask. I’m more worried about all the grad students who don’t. We’re seeing a drop in registrations for the workshops we teach, and I suspect that’s because many grad students are thinking, like this one, “Now that we have AI, I don’t need to learn R/Stata/Python/whatever.” This leaves them incapable of even reading the code AI generates for them. I don’t know how these errors are going to get caught. With something like your Mormon Trail game, you can test it and see if it works, but that’s hard to do with social science research code–especially if your solution is getting AI to write testing code you also can’t read. In her case, the errors were egregious enough that someone who is familiar with the subject could probably look at her “Table 1” and say, “That doesn’t seem right,” but it’s easy to imagine errors that give plausible-looking results but the wrong answer to your research question. Peer review is not code review; a reviewer may tell you you used the wrong statistical technique, but isn’t going to catch that you tried to use the right technique but didn’t get the code right. I fear it’s going to take some high-profile, embarrassing replication failures along the lines of Reinhart and Rogoff’s “Growth in a Time of Debt” paper, which could be career-ending for a young scholar, before the message sinks in that AI can help you spend less time coding, but can’t get you out of learning how to do so. Yes, I’m banging this drum with the faculty responsible for training these grad students.” Apr 28, 07:58
- on What Was Revealed to You In Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 4/26)?: “I realize as I read this that for me, generally, I’m letting the messages of the sabbath wash over me, rather than sink into me, much. Sunday services tend to be intense and exhausting (as organist, Primary Music Leader, and choir accompanist), from prelude to choir practice I’m in near constant motion. A lot of my sabbath thoughts occur when i plan preludes and prep my Primary lesson; i’m just too busy watching and responding in the moment otherwise. What i did delight in, Sunday, was the recent convert, called upon to pray for the first time, who basically bore a testimony as his prayer, and ended with “in the name of the Father. And the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” I was happy to give him a loud Amen from my seat at the organ. I hope desperately that nobody “corrected” him unkindly, for it was beautiful. And I loved the question a 9 year old asked right at the end of Singing Time, about whether his (school, I think) teacher had broken a commandment when she took a toy away from a child in class and would not return it until the end of the school year. I knelt beside him after the closing prayer as we reasoned together on that. Kids really think about what we teach them, and it is so important to honor that!” Apr 28, 04:02
- on The Book of Mormon’s Anti-colonialism: “Too true! Back when our ward was the official magnet for the stake’s Spanish speakers and I was in charge of the Christmas program, I asked if they could sing some of Christmas music they’d grown up with. The response was a dismissive “No, it’s all too Catholic” with a clear lack of enthusiasm. They picked “Star Bright” instead. I’m glad we have the Reformation chorales we do have in our hymnbook, and I sure hope we don’t lose any.” Apr 27, 23:49
- on The Book of Mormon’s Anti-colonialism: “RLD, I know the Church surveyed members in 2018 about their favorite hymns and songs they might want to add to the hymnbook, and in some areas members do want to add songs from their culture’s musical tradition, but in other areas, they’re more interested in the traditional LDS hymns. I don’t know the survey results for any particular place, but I have noticed that members in the European country with the greatest tradition of Christian music in the world are often uninterested in singing it (“Ugh, not that Protestant stuff”), preferring the latest FSY anthem instead. My dreams of a hymnbook with a half dozen new Reformation chorales is probably not going to become a reality.” Apr 27, 19:34
- on What Was Revealed to You In Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 4/26)?: “Kent Larsen, your thoughts about burnout are insightful. Culturally it is interesting that that symbol of Utah is a beehive and not a lotus bloom. It is indeed cultural and at times not helpful.” Apr 27, 17:13
- on The Book of Mormon’s Anti-colonialism: “Stephen: “Jack, yes, there is a big list of the Gentiles’ wickedness, but 3 Ne 16, 20, and 21 also list taking the Natives’ land as one of the sins.” Only if they don’t repent–as strange as that may seem. And in chapter 21 the Savior goes through another list of evils the Gentiles need to be wary of. That said, I’m of the opinion that these prophecies are being fulfilled more through the Latinos than the Native Americans. And it behooves us (collectively) to repent and receive the fulness of the gospel and also to be willing to carry these people upon our shoulders.” Apr 27, 16:42
- on What Was Revealed to You In Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 4/26)?: “It was just my daughter and I who attended, as my wife was visiting family. I missed being with her. It helped me understand more of how singles and part-member families feel at Church. A young man spoke for the first time ever. He said it was the worst day of his life (but smiled as he said it) A woman from Mexico spoke entirely in Spanish. I used Google Translate and it worked quite well. I am grateful for these sorts of tools. We can all worship together, and generally can all understand each other. There was a good discussion in EQ about temperance. I did find the class to feel kind of long. I’m thinking that a shorter class time in September will keep things focused without so much repetition. I’m feeling optimistic about the change.” Apr 27, 14:38
