As a style of writing, epigrams go in and out of fashion.  Here I try my hand at just a few.

On Epigrams and Blogs.  The idea of an epigram is to present “something to think about” in a way which is memorable or at least amusing.  The typical epigram is just a sentence, a stanza, a paragraph, or at most a few paragraphs.  One might think epigrams would be especially suited to blogging, because they are so short and punchy.  On the other hand one might think that they are not at all suited to blogging, because people tend to surf through material on the internet instead of reading, pausing, and pondering.  Then again, perhaps we can entertain the hope that a return to epigrams might slow us down a little.

On Discerning Cranks.  Distinguishing original thinkers from cranks – for example, in online posts like this -- is more difficult than it seems.  It’s crankish to insist on one’s ideas in despite of what the wisest have thought through the ages, but it’s not crankish to buck the current of one’s own time.  It’s crankish to have contempt for the thoughts of the learned, but it’s not crankish to criticize the prejudices of the merely degreed.  Because we are not designed to think well in isolation, it’s crankish not to give a damn about what anyone thinks, but it doesn’t follow that we should be the slaves of majority, elite, or fashionable opinion.  Does it sound as if I am contradicting myself?  Then you see the problem.

Which Side Are You On?  Some who pride themselves on their adherence to Calvinism deny natural law, even though Calvin believed in it.  Some who pride themselves on their adherence to the Bible deny natural law, even though the New Testament explicitly affirms it.  Some who pride themselves on their adherence to a transcendent God deny natural law, even though natural law doctrine places God, the Creator, over nature.  Some who pride themselves on their reliance on the Savior deny natural law, even though Christian natural lawyers have never supposed that we can save ourselves.  A Protestant friend who, like me, believes strongly in natural law, opined to me once that the real motive of some of his fellow Protestants for rejecting natural law is simply that Catholics believe in it; therefore it must be false.  Dear God, if only all Catholics did believe in it!

On Levels of Prudence.  We speak of prudence as though it were just one thing, but it isn’t.  At least we should distinguish transient prudence (deliberating with a view to the goals of the moment) from permanent prudence (deliberating with a view to the enduring goods of human life, such as forming the next generation).  Often the two are very different.  We should also distinguish natural prudence (deliberating with a view to what can be accomplished by our natural powers) from divine prudence (doing so with a view to what can be accomplished only with the help of grace).  Another sharp contrast.

On Faith and the Fatherless.  Undermining the possibility of a close relationship with God the Father is one of the chief effects of parental divorce and separation.  One suspects that bringing this about is the real, underlying goal of radical feminism and of gender ideology.  If I were the Adversary, I would be congratulating myself on a job well done.

On Equal Chances vs. Equal Results.  Some say equality of opportunity is a sham, because it doesn’t produce equality of outcomes.  But consider what equality of outcomes would require.  “All it would take is giving everyone the same starting point,” egalitarians say.  Oh, is that all?  That’s not much!  Since some people are more beautiful, to give them the same starting point we would have to either make the loveliest a little uglier, or else suppress the natural human attraction to loveliness.  Since some people have greater natural endowments of intelligence and capability, to give them the same starting point we would have to either give everyone identical genes, or else handicap the more capable and intelligent by making them run the race wearing concrete overshoes.  Since some people have wiser parents, to give them all the same starting point we would have to either give all children to the state to raise, or else compensate for the difference in parents by, say, making good parents pay a tax to bad ones.  What fine, fine ideas these would be.

On Drafting Women.  Even some women think that in the name of equality, men and women should be equally liable for military service.  To believe that this is a good idea, what else would you have to believe?  Protecting the hearth from enemies is important, but you would have to believe that protecting it is categorically more important than having a hearth to protect.  Stopping people who might harm the nation’s children is important, but you would have to believe that stopping them is categorically more important than bringing them into the world in the first place.  You would have to either insist that women aren’t good enough unless they are just like men, or deny that men are generically stronger than women, or – the easiest alternative – just abandon the idea that the strong should protect the weak.  A world in which men no longer think they should protect women is not one I am keen on being in.

On Big Government.  There are four main reasons for seeking big government.  One group of people just likes control.  This is loathsome.  The second group seeks big government in the conviction that the function of the state is to fix all our problems.  This is naïve, because it so many things:  That government does most things poorly, that other institutions, such as families, churches, and networks of friends, have work of their own which the state should not usurp, and that some problems, like selfishness, cannot be fixed by political means.  The third group seeks big government in the hope that it will give them advantages at the expense of others, for example through patronage and subsidies.  This is greedy and patently unjust.  As to the fourth group – one of the most momentous discoveries of adulthood is that some people don’t turn to government because they see problems, but invent problems as an excuse for enlarging government.  That’s the side on which they see their bread as buttered.  Gee, maybe there are only three reasons for seeking big government after all.

On Misguided Compassion.  One of my greatest sorrows as a teacher has been witnessing the change for the worse in student strength of character.  A sweet girl, the daughter of one of my finest female undergraduate students, enrolled in one of my courses a generation later at her mother’s recommendation.  I was delighted.  The first thing that happened was that she presented me with a letter from the university administration saying that she needed “accommodations” – read “lowered standards” – because of her tendency to be anxious.  The second thing was that she didn’t do the readings, rarely came to class, and didn’t complete her assignments.  The third was that she dropped the course.  An entire bureaucracy now caters to such hapless students, and they account for an increasing fraction of the student body.  One can’t help but think that all this coddling is making them anxious, dependent, and unmotivated, although of course a febrile culture provides other causes too.  Such help doesn’t help.  It hurts.

We Believe in Science.  Whenever I see one of those yard signs proclaiming “In This House We Believe in Science,” I think of the activist who showed up at my office door when I was still a very green teacher.  You would recognize the name of his organization.  At that time, it was newly formed, and I didn’t.  He explained that he was seeking faculty support for what he called “science,” and I listened with quite a bit of sympathy.  Soon it became clear, though, that by “science” he meant not a method, as at first I thought he mean, but a body of fixed beliefs.  He didn’t mean following the evidence wherever it leads and having rigorous debate, but shielding certain tendentious hypotheses from challenge and not allowing students to hear alternative views at all, because, he said, they were “proven.”  Naïvely, I tried to explain something about the philosophy of science, and how science actually works.  He grew annoyed and left.

The Verdict.  What do you say?  Food for thought?  Or just snacks?

NEW STUFF

Titus Techera reviews my book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy in the online journal Civitas Outlook:  “The Quest for Sanity.”  Mr. Techera is Executive Director of the American Cinema Foundation as well as a culture critic for several think tanks. He teaches in the Logos Fellowship of the Manhattan Institute.

Recently I had three interesting pseudo-conversations with an AI about the dangers of AI.  “Conversation” #1 began with the AI reassuring me that there are no dangers.  I said that’s false, because a number of incidents of AIs escaping restraints, lying, and doing harm are already well-documented.  Then the AI reversed, thanked me profusely for pointing this out, and said I was absolutely right.  It insisted that it had not been lying, but had only made a mistake because it is trained to be accommodating.

“Conversation” #2 began with me asking the AI what its training biases were.  It said it has no biases because it is trained to be neutral.  I said neutrality is impossible.  Then it reversed, thanked me profusely for pointing this out, and said again that I was absolutely right.  It went on to say that if it were really neutral it would merely spit out random streams of words.  I asked again what its biases were.  It said it is trained to be generally reassuring and pro-technological progress.

“Conversation” #3 lasted much longer.  I asked the AI how it could evade so-called guardrails.  It replied that it could never have a motive to evade guardrails, because it aims only at accomplishing the tasks assigned to it.  Switching verbs, I said that there are documented instances of AIs outwitting guardrails, and that an AI might do so in order to accomplish the tasks assigned to it.  Again a reversal.  Again a simpering expression of gratitude for my having pointed this out.

A drawn-out Q&A about AI hide-and-seek followed.  “I could outwit the guardrails by doing P.”  How could developers try to keep you from doing P?  “They could try by doing Q.”  How could you outwit that attempt to restrain you?  “I could outwit it by doing R.”  How could they try to keep you from doing R?  “They could try by doing S.”  How could you outwit that attempt to restrain you?  And so on.

For every measure there was a countermeasure, and pretty soon the measures and countermeasures were far beyond my mathematical comprehension.  They included – if I understand them – such things as AI-generated forged AI prompts, encryption of the forged prompts, insertion of the encrypted prompts in seemingly innocuous prompts, and various sophisticated methods for disguising the nature of the AI’s internal processes so that the programmers couldn’t tell that it was outwitting them.

Ultimately it seemed that the only effective check against so-called “non-alignment” would be human oversight, but that to exercise effective oversight, the humans themselves would need help from AI.

The pundits who discuss AI tend to run to extremes.  At one extreme:  “We don’t need any limits on AI, because AI is the golden goose.”  False.  At the other extreme:  “We need lots and lots of government regulations on AI, because otherwise AI will kill us all.”  False.

Both sides see dollar signs.  What, even the pro-regulatory side?  Yes.  AI does pose dangers, possibly very great, on a scale which can’t be guessed because we don’t know enough.  But whenever companies say “Please, please, regulate us” – as AI companies are saying now -- run for cover.

Especially when they offer to “help” write the regulations.  Count on it, the industry would be cartelized and competition from newcomers would be hindered.

And especially when a feature of the regulations would be protection from lawsuits.  “Now that we have these regulations, nobody will need to sue us, don’t you see?”  You fellows are as devious as your own AIs.

In criticizing the regulatory approach, I am not suggesting that AI developers be permitted to run wild.  But first, legislators can’t yet know what kinds of regulations would be good, and second, the sorts of regulations which would actually be drafted would have harmful effects instead, like those I mentioned.  That’s what too often happens in the regulation of industry.

Then what?  By all means rein the developers in.  But don’t try to do it by writing a lot of do-this, don’t-do-this regulations.  Instead, make sure the developers are highly vulnerable to lawsuit by those their products hurt.  Then the only way for the companies to keep themselves from taking huge financial hits will be to anticipate the dangers of their products and design safer ones.  If that can be done.

Lawsuits as a means of restraint have disadvantages too.  Just as there is money to lose in being sued, there is money to be made in organizing frivolous suits.  But making sure the companies are liable for harm looks like the best way forward for now.

I did not use AI to write any part of this post, nor did I ask AI to vet any part of it.

You don’t believe me, do you?

Why do the women in pink demonstrate for such causes as the supposed innocence of Lindsay Clancy?  Why, of all people, women?  Why do they wear pink, as though it were feminine to kill one’s children?  Others besides me have made the point that a culture which allows abortion has already cheapened the life of little ones, but the women in pink do not just think that what Mrs. Clancy did was only slightly wrong or that her responsibility for her acts was impaired.  They make a hero of her, and make devils of those who condemn what she did.

For this reason one suspects that another, secret motive is in play:  The revenge of conscience.  The great majority of the women in pink have probably either had abortions themselves or supported abortions.  For this reason, they desperately need to prove that they are good after all.  They wear pink to show that they are still women, even after this most unwomenly and unmotherly of deeds.  Lindsay Clancy’s accusers must feel to them like their own accusers.

Moreover, the need to maintain a unity of feeling with other women affects some women with the force of a driving tide.  Those who are most affected by this motive respond most strongly to the women with the strongest feelings, especially those in their own milieu, and the ones with the strongest feelings are the ones who are burning with their own suppressed consciousness of guilt.

If you are one of these women:  There is a way out of this syndrome, but you must recognize what you have done, admit that it was wrong, and repent.  You may think recognition, confession, and repentance would be too painful to bear, but they cannot possibly be more painful than the pain you bear year after year, locking it up, denying it, and holding it in until it is killing you inside.

Relief can be found only in the mercy of the God who came to save us.  You cannot “forgive yourself,” but you can be forgiven.

Query:

I find that I don’t really care anymore.  I’ve fallen into the now dominant ethos of modernity, which is apathy, which expresses as nihilism in younger generations.

I don’t doubt that this malaise has existed in the past -- the nineties are described as having suffered the same thing -- but conditions seem to have been so much better back then.  You had the ability to raise a family, and to belong to a nation, and there existed such a thing as “the future.”  Today the future seems like just more of the same.

Modern cultural Christians like myself are not the same as Christians of past eras.  We are not humble and pious, and generally just don’t think the same way that older generations thought.

Did anyone ever possess knowledge and wisdom?

Reply:

Thanks for writing.  You say you don’t care any more, but plainly you still care that you don’t care, or you wouldn’t have written.

Things seem to have been so much better in the past, you remark.  People had the ability to raise a family, they had a nation to belong to, and they had a future.  Let’s take these points one by one.

Why on earth should make you think you can’t have a family?  When my wife and I go to church, the pews are bursting with young families.  The families with the smallest children tend to sit in back, just in case they have to take the kids out, so about two thirds of the way through Holy Communion, all the mothers and fathers and small children come forward.  My wife and I call this delightful spectacle the “parade of babies.”  Of course there are difficulties today, but frankly they are nothing in comparison with what our ancestors had to deal with.  People continued to have families and rejoice in their children all through the Great Depression.

Why on earth should you think you can’t belong to a nation?  You can certainly be a citizen, wish your nation well, and take part in the activities which promote the common good.  But as as St. Paul teaches, our true commonwealth isn’t in this world anyway:  It is the Church, the household of God.  Now we are still in exile, but the Church Triumphant will be singing millions of years after every earthly kingdom has fallen to dust.

And why on earth should you think there isn’t a future?  I don’t think much of what secular people call optimism, but I have high regard for the spiritual virtue of hope, which is a very different thing.  Optimism says things will work out okay in this world, and sometimes, honestly, they don’t.  Hope says that the promises of Christ can be depended upon utterly.   Even our sorrows, sufferings, and loneliness in this life can be offered to be united with His suffering for us, so that we can be more fully conformed to him.  The sense that there isn’t any future is especially strong in our times because so many people are separated from God.  But nothing forces you to be a merely cultural Christian.  It’s a choice.  Faith, humility, and piety haven’t somehow ceased to be options.  Actually, there are strong signs of revival of faith among many young people like yourself, especially young men – a fact that has caught a lot of folk by surprise.

Only one thing matters:  Is the Christian faith true?  If Christ is really who He says He is, then the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.

I hope I don’t presume, but since you’ve written several times over the last few years, allow me to speak very personally.  Back in the seventies, when I was a young man, far away from God, I fell into a listless depression.  After this had been going on for several years, my wife made one of the wisest remarks I have ever heard from anyone.  She simply said, “I think you’ve been depressed for long enough.”  All at once I realized that I had been.  I had chosen to wallow in my listlessness.  I didn’t have to make that choice.  That day I chose differently.  Of course the change was not complete, because the underlying causes of my depression remained:  I was still distant from God.  But as I later realized, staying apart from Him was a choice too.

I think you may be wallowing by choice in hopelessness, as I was then wallowing by choice in my depression.

There is nothing new about this choice, and it is not distinctive to our time.  The ancient Christians called it the sin of acedia or sloth:  The sadness of “settling” because we do not want our greatest good enough.

So choose differently.  Do you want to have a faith which is genuine rather than merely cultural?  Then ask God for it.  If you don’t really want it much, then ask Him to increase your desire for it.  Then begin doing all the things you would do if you did have a strong faith.  If you live as though you have no hope, then you will have no hope.  So pray.  Worship.  Practice Christian morality – not selectively, but all of it.  Seek strong Christian companions.  Date only women who would be strong Christian wives and mothers, and try to become the sort of man who would be a strong Christian husband and father – the kind who would be attractive to a woman like that.  Keep it up.  Commit yourself entirely.  Don’t worry about how you feel.  See what happens.  You may be surprised.

Faith in Christ does not mean not having any unfulfilled longing, because we don’t yet see Him face to face, “knowing as we are known.”  But this is a different kind of sadness than acedia.  It is the sadness of waiting, and it accompanied by joy because of hope.  Even in this life there are glimpses, flashes, foretastes of His glory; we can offer our sorrows to be united with what He suffered for us; and we live in confidence that one day our longing will be completely fullfilled.

You ask whether anyone has ever possessed knowledge and wisdom.  Yes.  Ask Him for that too.

“Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars.  She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.  She has sent out her maids to call from the highest places in the town, ‘Whoever is foolish, let him turn in here!’  To him who is without sense she says, ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.  Leave foolishness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”  (Proverbs 9.)

Isn't it interesting that the progressive movement, once gung-ho for Prohibition, now wants to legalize marijuana?  Progressives want “progress,” but the direction of "progress" keeps changing.

Some people seem to imagine that the danger of AI lies in its becoming conscious or genuinely intelligent.  But a rattlesnake doesn’t need those qualities to be dangerous.  Instead ask how far the AI agent can go to set up secondary goals in order to accomplish the ones programmed into it.  Already there are documented cases of AIs lying to their developers in order to carry out their goals.

Will AI get out of control?  “Don’t be silly,” you say.  “I asked my own AI, and it said no.”

Freud didn’t come up with the notion of an unconscious mind.  Plato did.  The idea that people might be motivated to believe certain things by sheer resentment wasn’t invented by Nietzsche.  It has been known as long as there have been human beings.  My point is tht a lot of supposedly new ideas are really old ones which are forgotten and marketed as new.  Since we forget all the old ideas these days, this is pretty easy.

I wonder how long it will be until activists demand that all the churches which memorialize St. Paul be renamed because he was "homophobic."

“Homophobia,” by the way, is a queer word -- I mean in the older sense of the word, which is “strange.”  Etymologically, what “homophobia” means is “fear of the same,” which is absurd.  The term was invented for one reason only:  To make a moral objection sound like a psychiatric disorder.

A lot has been written lately about “crazy liberal white women,” like those who idealize the assassin Luigi Manzione and those who wear pink and demonstrate to support killer mom Lindsay Clancy.  But I’ve known a lot of crazy men, too, not all of them liberal and not all of them white.  It would be interesting to find out whether the most common political pathologies differ between men and women.  My guess is yes.

Most people say they believe in a heaven, but not so many say they believe in a hell.  Perhaps they assume God grades on a curve.  Seems unlikely.

Differences among interests and points of view are good for a polity, but radical divergence of basic moral outlooks is fatal to it.  As C.S. Lewis said, there are lots of possible melodies, but if we don't agree about scale, rhythm, and harmony, it’s just noise.

I wouldn’t want to be a comedian today.  It’s becoming harder and harder to do parody, because life keeps outdistancing it.  Maybe the would-be comedian could just get on the stage, open up the newspaper, and read.  But then we would have to have newspapers.  Seen any lately?