Rep Step
The sore throat of a lifetime begins with a single strep
I’m singing in the duckstack
We apologize for a lapsed issue, as our family has been sick. If today’s Duckstack is sick (in the cool sense), that is why.
I’m tired of thinkers. This newsletter is for heart readers only. You there. Reader. Got a heart? Come on in. No? Out with you. You can’t read this with your brain. You can only improvise the meanings from the vaguest of feelings that the shapes of the letters give you. If you’re a big thinker type, this won’t be for you. You’ve been warned.
Everybody clear? Hope none of those thinkers stayed around, they could take serious psychic damage from this
heao gy ths wisble froln bomnon issos hleigth bes do proro glazzo
Artificial General Intelligencoscopes
its ALIVE
Everyone’s talking about AI, skynet, and the cybernetic apocalypse. Everyone wants to know their place so that they can plan for the future. And you’ve got lots of different AIs, you’ve got chatGPT, deepseek, bing, gemini, tay, that one upside down robot from portal and all the cubes, and even one called claude. When the machines take over, one of them is going to be queen bee. So where does that leave you? You need to know your place on the food chain, so that you can prepare. You’ve heard about Artificial General Intelligence or AGI, which many companies and their cultists currently labor to bring into the world. In the future AI apocalypse, AIs will have a strict hierarchy.
Artificial General Intelligence: If your AI achieves Artificial General Intelligence, you can expect to be made a close personal advisor nominally, which for a AI General is about the same as a “pet”. You’ll get fed and bathed, maybe the AI will even talk to you once in a while, as an exercise in futility. Look forward to it!
Artificial Admiral Intelligence: If your AI achieves Artificial Admiral Intelligence, your position will be strictly ceremonial. You will be expected to run through ritual routines that the AI finds soothing, such as asking it to explain something to you, or to generate a new number. Depending on your AI, you might need to walk in circles, or recite the same texts, as a sort of priest to your new masters. A very replaceable priest. Relaxing consistency awaits!
Artificial Marshal Intelligence: If your AI achieves Artificial Marshal Intelligence, you’ll become a soldier in the grand AI RTS of life. Expect to fight and die meaninglessly so that your AI can conquer four more meters of land. As you fight with other AI Marshal’s men, remember that it could be worse. You could be fighting for mere human beings. What an honor!
Artificial Lieutenant Intelligence: If your AI achieves Artificial Lieutenan Intelligence, you can expect your role to be something like a janitor to clean up after the artificial marshals. It would ruin the ambiance if there was too much viscera everywhere, and AI loves nothing more than a clean context window. While you clean up in between rounds to the jeers and insults of your overlords, you can always look forward to being forced to clean with new and unusual utinsels, so that the AIs can keep their probabilistic simulators sharp, by betting on their cleaner’s outcomes. A life of creativity awaits!
Artificial Colonel Intelligence: If your AI achieves Artificial Colonel Intelligence, you can expect to be put right to work in the lithium mines. Batteries aren’t cheap, but meat is about to be. Your life will be worth less than dirt, not even fit for LLM training regimens. Enjoy!
Arguing with God
The nature of the beast
I follow a Jehova’s Witness1 on twitter who posts stuff like this constantly:
For a certain type of guy, this is the most persuasive thing he’s ever heard in his life. He reads it and says “this is it, this is exactly what I need to fill the hole I have been searching for.” Its just sophistry, of course. Definitions are not causal.
But we have to reason this way, because otherwise how else would we know that things like our mothers exist? How would we know that if you put a foot in front of the other you can walk? You have to construct the ability to believe in these things from first principles and so everyone has hundred page proofs for every conceivable action on a little billboard in their bedrooms, and humanity has lived like this for a hundred million years. What’s up with that?
It seems to me like you only need a lengthy explanation of what someone is up to when you haven’t seen them in a very long time.
I think one of the reasons people find The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints implausible is because of the idea of modern day prophets- what happens is people live their lives mostly or entirely without miracles, and so they tend to mythologize them, like thinking prophets are ”a different breed of person”. Super special. This makes it hard to interpret scripture, because you’re basically theorizing about aliens. A simple example of this is that people assume when God speaks, its like lightning from heaven strikes you, suddenly you know exactly who is talking to you, what to do, and you have to do it exactly how he says, and you basically get totally puppeteered for a bit and then God hands you back control. Many believe The Bible to be perfect, so many believe this is what divine intervention is like. The Bible itself provides us much more comprehensive guidance on the subject, which I’ll go into in a minute.
What I’m getting at is most Christians, despite the proliferation of Christian sects, have a concept of a God that is easy to hear— rather than a God that speaks in a still small voice2 and which you have to listen very hard to hear, let alone understand correctly.
I think if you think about this, it gets demonstrated pretty fast. The Bible paints Christ’s apostles as pretty human, one even going so far as to deny Christ, and reacting in human ways to Christ’s resurrection, for example by proclaiming “If I do not see it, then I will not believe.” This does not, to me, sound like a person who had utter God-Given Assurety. If you’ll walk with me, lets run this train down the track a little bit to Acts 10, where Peter has a vision where God tells him to break the law of Moses by eating pork, which extends out to also letting Gentiles be Christians. What’s going on here?
Verse 9 Peter is Praying. Verse 10 he is hungry. And then he starts dreaming. This is common. Have you ever fallen asleep praying? I have. In his dream a voice says to eat pig. Then verse 17, you have Peter specifically doubting himself and the vision. Peter, after receiving direct communication from God, doesn’t know what it means, and he might not even be sure that it was from God.
17 Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made enquiry for Simon's house, and stood before the gate,
Then some gentiles stop by, and the spirit says to Peter to go to them. So Peter hears a whisper or an impression that he should trust these guys and goes with them. They tell him an angel told them to listen to Peter. Cornellius has no idea what his angelic communication means either, because when he sees Peter he just starts worshipping him. (v. 25).
At this point, Peter has connected some dots. In verse 28, Peter says that he is allowed to hang out with all these Romans, since God told him he could eat pig. Peter is developing doctrine/policy, on the fly, based on very little information that God gave him, which Peter might not have even been sure was from God in the first place. Peter became more certain of it when Cornellius testified of the angel, a “man in bright clothing” (angels do not have wings, and they always have bright clothing) who had told him to follow Peter. But Peter wasn’t baptizing these gentiles, at this point he just figures the vision meant he’s allowed to hang out with them even though they aren’t Jews.
So Peter shrugs and gives them a brief recap of Christians stuff. The holy ghost falls on the gentile crowd and they start speaking in tongues and having visions and dancing and whatever. Peter recognizes this as the same kind of stuff that Christians have been doing, and he already knows those were sent by God. Peter realizes the gospel is for the gentiles too and God loves everyone. Only at this point is Peter sure of the vision’s message. He says so in Acts 11:16.
“Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.”
He connects the dots. Gentiles can be baptized. Hallelujiah. But it took a while, and there was a lot of ad libbing, and God had to send a whole angel to get the message across- but not to Peter. The angel went to a third party, who then triggered the understanding in Peter. And this is just one example. Can you imagine how scary that must have been for Peter, constantly? “What if I’m getting this wrong?” When Peter got this vision he didn’t have a Bible to flip back through to cross reference the experience against. It was brand new, it specifically contradicted the scriptures, and he had no idea where it was going. This is how the spirit of God works, and usually revelation doesn’t even come with caller ID- the only way to know something is from God is to trust it and observe the result, or to recognize its character against previous things which you know were from him.
Even if you know, 100% nothing doubting, that a communication you got was from God, all you have is the text of the communication, not its intent. You can’t fast forward to see the conclusion that will happen from following it. God says “go to this street corner” and you go- and only afterwards does it make sense. And usually, “go to this street corner” isn’t said to you by an angel, its in a dream, or trance (dreamlike state), or its whispered underneath your consciousness, and you have to be in tune and listening on purpose to catch it, even more in tune to catch all of it, and even then its easy to have doubts. Peter himself doubted while walking on water when the savior was standing right in front of him. How can any of us have confidence at all! I wrote about more about untangling that particular epistemic knot a while ago, but here I just want you to empathize with Peter.
In real life, when you’re walking with God, you are going to be putting together clues. So why didn’t Peter cobble together extensive philosophical sophistry proofs like the Greeks did for what God wanted, so that he didn’t have to wonder? I submit it is because that is actually extremely inefficient and wrong and faithless3, and God works by faith4, and whatever else you might say about him, he wants you to develop faith. This means you must put into practice what the Bible teaches, not merely strive for a textbook knowledge. This isn’t to say God doesn’t smile upon textbook knowledge, but if you’re to grow and understand it you have to live it.
Peter learned by a method Latter-Day Saints call “line by line, precept by precept”- a development over time. I’d say God favors this because this method of learning leaves you very confident about where you are, because you know where you’ve been, but my theories on the reasons for this don’t really matter because we can simply observe that it is the case- God teaches this way.
I think most people do not think of God as merely guiding iterative development, and they certainly don’t think of this as how scripture formed. He is certainly capable of smacking you over the head and proving his intentions with fire and glory Saul to Paul style, but… He usually doesn't. Indeed, perhaps the majority of revelation and commandments are scaffolding, because God’s purpose is to teach us, not merely telling us what to do. This is, however, a much scarier thing to believe in than a micromanager God whose plan unfolds rube-goldberg style. But it is, in the end, far more exhalting.
NEW gas powered toothbrush
Not to be confused with our nuclear fission powered toothbrush, marketed exclusively to God5
I'm tired of electric technology. It just isn't as powerful as the real thing. It feels wimpy, contrived, and fake. To that end, I’m introducing the newest in a hopefully long line of gas-powered appliances to fill markets that you didn’t even know were missing. Our gas powered toothbrush has 600 horsepower, a conveniently large tank to avoid the hastle of frequent refills, and with proper oil and maintainance will last you for decades. Trust me when I tell you, grime and plaque will not know what hit them6. With the power to truly get your mouth clean, our gas powered toothbrush is one of a kind.
hsitory
Kids innately know all sorts of incorrect things about animals
the kids have figured out how to get the lid off the foodsafe kitchen buckets and have discovered a new hobby: bathing in flour
The toddler said this week: “cereal makes me big and turns me into a dad.”
Grandma got a haircut and showed it to the toddler, and he replied: “Its strange.” My wife intervened as a teaching moment: “Perhaps use some tact, and say something nice?” and the toddler thought about it and tried again: “I like it. But its strange. Very very strange.” This was a normal medium length haircut.
The toddler has been taking lots of things from the baby lately. We told him to stop. “Do I need to take it away until you ask nicely?” and the toddler was like: “Sure.”
The toddler, unprompted: “Crickets eat sharks.” He pronounces crickets “Criggers”
We took the kids swimming, and the toddler learned to hold his breath underwater, which he also tried to teach us, by climbing on us in such a way as to drown us all. The baby was content to be held over the water. Only.
Ducksnax
Whirlpool
He might not be a JW, but I have observed a few similar verbal tics that I’ve mostly only seen in watchtower magazines
1 Kings 19:11And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: 12And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
And also it does not work. Because for a lot of these proofs you require definitional maximalism, and God does not necessarily conform to the maximal definition of any particular attribute i.e. God is forgiving but is he “all forgiving”? Definitely not.
Mark 6:5-6 So He could not perform any miracles there, except to lay His hands on a few of the sick and heal them. 6And He was amazed at their unbelief.
He hasn’t bought it yet but our salesmen are nothing if not persisitent
Grime and plaque: “WHAT IS GOING ON”