C.J.S. Hayward

Eastern Orthodox author interested in the effects of technology on society. Luddite. Magnum opus is "Hidden Price Tags," - please read it!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I told my abbot that I had seen on Twitter a suicide and then another person being shot to death.

He gave me the blessing I requested to withdraw from Twitter.

Thank you for those of you who have followed me here; you can still follow me on Facebook or my website, https://t.co/6fj1o5BnXO.

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I invite you to visit or revisit my main site at https://t.co/yt1ogmwrmf. I've added a list of other sites I've made, which you can see scrolled down at https://t.co/0I4Go9YQTB. Please RT!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗼𝗻𝘀

In some sense the question of whether current AI is intelligent is something like the question of whether a librarian has all of the knowledge of the books in a library. The simple answer is, “No,” but that “No” matters less than you might think. AI is not conscious and is not intelligent, but it can put together a human-like answer to most questions.

In C.S. Lewis, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘯’𝘴 𝘕𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘸, appears one of two mentions of plastic in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘕𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘢. When the first Queen of Narnia was summoned, a mention was made about how if she had to choose how she would appear, it would be with a hat with plastic cherries, but as it was she had just been dressed for washing dishes, and she looked lovelier. (The other mention, in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘉𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦, is that Queen Susan the Gentle was no longer a friend of Narnia, because she was all obsessed with “lipstick, [𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤] nylons, and invitations,” but I am not concerned with that here.)

The phenomenon of finding something to use a cool new commodity and using plastic as an ornament on a pre-plastic-style hat is characteristic of a technology’s entrance. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮. It’s a bit like a book I gave my father, from before it was mainstream to open a computer, and there were various contrived solutions (one was a way to use a computer to play an electronic version of a board game).

Today, plastic is anything but a solution in need of a problem. It is a mature technology integrated with every aspect of our lives. It is a mainstream material so that living without using plastic is not really an option, even if life without disposable plastic is a Holy Grail to some in the green movement. Furthermore, although Lewis seems unsympathetic to whether plastic cherries on a hat really enhance a woman’s beauty, we have problems Lewis would not have imagined. We have plastic wrapping most new items we acquire, plastic is something permanent that will never biodegrade, and I’ve heard we consume a credit card’s worth of microplastics in our food each week. None of these problems was an issue when someone had the creative idea of putting little plastic berries onto a traditional hat as an exotic ornament.

In my study of AI, at least an ostensibly attractive girl demonstrated results for how she gave some of the more photorealistic Disney princesses her face, and then explained in excruciating detail just how to do that. BOOM!...

--"Opening a Can of Dragons," https://t.co/DUtvq61Ffb

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲: 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲
𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲: ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ ✯ (7 out of 5 possible!)

𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝘆: 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 / 𝗣𝘂𝘇𝘇𝗹𝗲 / 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲

𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲: /meet'spays/, n.
The physical world, where the meat lives — as opposed to cyberspace. Hackers are actually more willing to use this term than 'cyberspace', because it's not speculative — we already have a running meatspace implementation (the universe). Compare RL.
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘏𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘳'𝘴 𝘋𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘺, "meatspace"

I am faced with the daunting task of reviewing Meatspace. The temptation is to say, "This is stunning! It makes [insert name of classic] look like a bad Pong clone! I want to play it again and again!" It's a temptation, not because the game doesn't live up to that praise, but because discerning readers read reviews like that and their defenses go up against a reviewer who is, to put it delicately, getting slightly carried away.

So I'll let go of the obvious temptation, and talk about how Meatspace handles physics. There's another game we all know where player slang for a smoke grenade is "lag bomb", because the physics of the smoke is so taxing that it slows the other player's computer to a crawl: a smoke grenade, aka lag bomb, is a cheap way to half-paralyze other players. Maybe that's an extreme example, but haven't we all dealt with games where things get choppy (maybe just a little) when there's a lot going on?

That doesn't happen in Meatspace. End of discussion. Period. For one example...

--"Game Review: Meatspace," https://t.co/Lwqh4FlPry

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

My own A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind has, perhaps, one more dimension than the books treated above. Like them, it analyzes a problem. Unlike them, it deals with strategies and solutions. Furthermore, these strategies and solutions are grounded in the live mystical theology and ascesis of the Orthodox Church.

When I was at Fordham, I switched from historical theology to systematic theology ("the kind of theology we don't have," one priest said; a fellow student said I had "gone over to the dark side"), because between the orientation of historians and the problem-solving orientation of systematic theologians, I wanted a historically grounded problem-solving interest. Though neither historical nor systematic theology subdisciplines conceived of that as a goal, under Fordham's division of labor that interest fell under systematic theology. I did not then, and do not now, wish to endow the Orthodox Church with its first systematic theology, and there is fundamental confusion in asking for such. Nonetheless, I intended a systematic theology degree until Fordham happened, and my intended thesis is what is informally written up in "Religion and Science" is not Just Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. The basic interest in historically grounded problem-solving is still my intent, and it motivates my writing in A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind and other titles.

There is little explicit history in A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind and other titles, but the problem-solving is grounded in a mystical theology that has been historically sensitized and does not suffer the syndrome of citing as authorities only sources which had been written in the past perhaps thirty years or less, such as I have been taught at other schools. One of my works, Plato: The Allegory of the… Flickering Screen?, is an example of how I occasionally take a given text, and then by modifying a word here and maybe a sentence there, orient the text towards a different reading. It has been called the deepest of "my" choice works, but that I believe is quite directly due to the fact that I was standing on a giant's shoulders. The two (or three) dimensions in my texts are normally:

1: Critiques of technology.

2: Strategies and solutions for how to live a vibrant human life in troubled technological times (or to say the same thing in other words, historically grounded problem solving), and perhaps,

3: A tacit dimension in a willingness to learn from history and freely draw on old books as well as oral tradition in the Orthodox Church....

--"My Signature Contribution to the Conversation," https://t.co/AlEue6nXfC

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸
One kind of gem in the formulation of ethics is a simple criterion that sheds light on a wide variety of situations. The golden rule, “Treat others the way you’d want to treat you,” is one such classic example, but there are others. This article suggests taking guidance from the surprisingly Luddite decisions that Silicon Valley technology executives make for their own children.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲
I have stated, in The Luddite's Guide to Technology, a lot of theory and analysis, and I would like now to give some of what I practice myself.

𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴...

"The Silicon Rule," https://t.co/rSzbl4Y9GM

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I grew up on technologies but became more and more suspicious of inattentive use of technologies as marketed to us. Enough so that my reaction to having my cell phone disappear was almost, "I have a GPS. Beyond that, I might be experiencing an early start on one of the privileges of monasticism already," a reaction that would not surprise a reader of The Luddite's Guide to Technology.

I am also a former gamer, and I have long wanted to put down on paper why one might unplug from games as I have unplugged from TV as far as I reasonably can. "Everything is permitted, but not everything is beneficial," and this applies to games and iPhones apps alike.

Let me start by looking at the archtypal Game.

The Game
In the movie The Game, there is a game which the player is dumped into that has a profound element of transcendence. Nothing that is portrayed as happening is presented as intrinsically supernatural; the creators, so far as I know, are materialists, and so far as I can recall the audience is never taxed with a request for even a willing suspension of disbelief: the viewer is in the movie and in the end never asked to entertain that there could have been even one faintest magical blessing from the tiniest fairy.

Nonetheless, there is something that is transcendent in the movie, and though Hollywood normally capitalizes movie titles, capitalization convention is not the real reason I believe that this is not a movie about a "game," with a lowercase G, but the Game, with a very uppercase G. Some very bizarre things happen at the beginning of The Game that are ordinarily what Christians would associate with the bizarre operations of demons, and there is a long plot with questions about what is real and shifting sands until everything is unveiled at the end as impressive, but believable on terms of materialism. On the recommendation of my brother I also watched The Spanish Prisoner and The Usual Suspects, but I was disappointed in because they did not drop you into an obvious maze of a Game specifically. In retrospect, I was disappointed after my brother recommended to me some astonishingly similar movies to one which with I was enthralled. Nonetheless the other movies' essentially isomorphic plots unfold with much shifting sand and bewilderment about what is real, until in the last minute everything is clear and the stage magician explains, on materialist terms, how all the big illusions were pulled off.

My sister-in-law's mother, an independent bookstore employee, has talked about how people have a right to know what they're getting in a book, and (without divulging explicit details for the rest of us to struggle to un-see mental images) talks about speaking with patrons about The Hunger Games to let them know that they contain XYZ. However, everything I've known about the books is that they are books dealing with an epic Game, capital G: again, shifting sand, a hidden rules game, and the question of whether the strangeness of the details are literally supernatural really seems to matter less than one might think at first. Apparently another capital 'G' Game.

If I may pick a title that has not to my knowledge been Hollywoodified, the milder An Invitation to the Game has characters trapped in an unfortunate ersatz leisure class in a ruined world; someone gives children golden tickets to go to play a game, and they get temporarily knocked out of the game when they make a mistake that would kill them; and when they say in the game, "I wish So-and-So were here," and the other person, who had been much better off, suddenly gets kicked down into the leisure class. Eventually, the game becomes real, and a pod of eight kids are sent among others to begin a new life on a beautiful new world such as they had virtually visited in the Game. Now in this instance the roller coaster activity is rated PG instead of being rated R, but we are still talking about something transcendent: the Game, with a capital G please.

Switching our attention from the Game to (g)ames
The English language, and some religious communities, have a distinction between God, with a capital G, and 'gods', with a lowercase G. The pagan gods of the Israelites' neighboring nations, or the Greeks, have been described as little more than humans with super powers and endless life, and sometimes much less. The Christian God is something different, enough so that it represents confusion to place another god alongside him or speak of another God, and Orthodox Christianity goes through this looking-glass to say that its children are made gods, because the Deity has a Oneness so thorough that to let humans share in the divine Life and become themselves gods cannot threaten the One God, but fulfill his oneness. And at this point I would like to comment that games, with a lowercase 'g', are in the shadow of the Game that appears in literature, and in a dilute and less sharpened peak offer a participation of the characteristic of the transcendent Game.

Materialist Magic
...

--"The Anti-Game", https://t.co/5M0vQP8plQ

Please RT!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

One company of people has been described by the letters LBGTQ+ (at least) for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgendered, Queer, and more.

But maybe there is another alphabet to be had in SERP+, for Straight, Ex-gay, Re-transgendered, Penitent...

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

"𝗻𝗲𝗼-𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰" 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 "𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰" 𝘢𝘴 "𝗻𝗲𝗼-𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝗼𝘅" 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 "𝗢𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝗼𝘅".

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I have posted "A Mechanism" at https://t.co/1MP3RCgbTV. It discusses a classic maxim or two: "Save yourself and ten thousand around you will be saved" and "Make peace with yourself and Heaven and Earth will make peace with you." Please read and RT! #Orthodox #Christian #mystical

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I have posted, "A Cycle Unfolds," at https://t.co/mWYar40pbZ. Please RT! #Eastern #Orthodox #Christian #Church #mystical #theology #TechnologyNews #technology #tech

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

"A Pack of Cigarettes for the Mind: Selections from the Hidden Price Tags: An Eastern Orthodox Look at the Dark Side of Technologies and Its Best Use Series" is now a Pulitzer prize nominee. You can get it from https://t.co/6pbn67XmCu.

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I posted "Woke-on Poetry" at https://t.co/SSCOv7Rqqo. @TheIllegit, I think you might like this one. Please RT!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I've posted an updated book reviews section at https://t.co/nGsTg4pCUO.

I invite you to check it out! Please RT!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I've just posted "Orthodox Africa is Totally Legit" at https://t.co/UwFTiW5m3D. The Executive Director, Fr. Silouan (Brown), is a monk from my monastery. Please read and RT!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I have posted “What Does a Saint Look Like Today? A Commentary on 55 New Maxims” at https://t.co/ou8KJos6Dt. Please RT! #Eastern #Orthodox #Christian #Church #mystical #theology #technology #tech #HumaneTech #Luddite #religion #spirituality #faith

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I have released "Papers and Paychecks" at https://t.co/JqIr3MilQs. It is about a role playing game for people who live in the world of D&D. Please RT!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

Amazon hasn’t yet approved my review of C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. I kept the quoted text of That Hideous Impotence at https://t.co/7sIBZpG1jS, but tried to change the subject to “Even Gollem may have a part to play. Bummer…

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I just posted an epilogue to my master's thesis, "AI as an Arena of Magical Thinking Among Skeptics" at https://t.co/ixbf19GInr. The new epilogue, about ChatGPT, is at https://t.co/STFU2W8bch. I invite you to read it and RT!

[C.J.S. Hayward @CJSHayward]

I’ve posted, “Using an Apple Watch as a Better Slow Watch” at https://t.co/ZJE3Ks9N4S. It offers a few tips for people who wished their smartwatches were a little less sticky. Please RT! #tech #AppleWatch #Apple #HumaneTech