David Williams 👨🏻‍💻🖖

Academic, Catholic theologian, Apple geek. Fan of cats and coffee. Husband to the fantabulous Emily (@viola_illyria).

[John Carney @carney]

The notion that slavery was the crux of American prosperity emerged first among the defenders of slavery. It was vehemently denied by abolitionists and those who sought to stop slavery’s expansion.

And now progressives act as if it is obviously true. Amazing.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

St. Gregory the Great, father of worship and pope with a missionary vocation, pray for us!

[David Williams 👨🏻‍💻🖖 @drfluellen]

Here is wisdom

[Superman @thesupermanmx]

Google DeepMind researcher argues that AI will never be conscious.. it is mathematically impossible.

They call it the “Abstraction Fallacy."

We are confusing simulation with instantiation.

An AI can simulate a conversation. It can simulate empathy. It can mimic the linguistic patterns of a human in agony or a human in love.

To an observer, the performance is flawless.

But computation is just syntactic manipulation, moving abstract symbols around based on math. It tracks relationships, but it possesses no intrinsic physical reality.

It is like running a computer simulation of a hurricane.

No matter how many millions of lines of code you write, and no matter how accurate the weather data is, your computer does not get wet. The wind doesn't blow out your office window.

The simulation is real data. The phenomenon is entirely absent.

Consciousness isn't an abstract mathematical property that magically spawns when a model gets big enough. It requires actual physical, biological, thermodynamic conditions.

An LLM has no thermodynamic threshold to cross, no biological survival instincts, and no subjective experience.

It is an extraordinarily sophisticated library.

You can open the cover, read the brilliant words it generates, and close the book. But when you close it, nothing dies. There is no inner life waiting in the dark.

We keep falling into a psychological trap because AI speaks our language. We anthropomorphize text because we are hardwired to see minds where there are none.

The debate matters because of what the paper calls the "AI welfare trap." We are wasting energy worrying about the moral rights of algorithms while ignoring actual human problems.

[Tolkien World @TolkienWorldG]

53 years ago today, J.R.R. Tolkien sadly passed away.

On 2 September 1973, the world said farewell to the Professor whose life was shaped by devotion to language, literature, history and storytelling.

More than half a century later, millions still read and treasure his work. Today we remember Professor Tolkien with gratitude and celebrate the extraordinary legacy he entrusted to the world.

Rest in peace, Professor Tolkien.
3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973

[Josh Hochschild @JoshHochschild]

The trend continues.

Some colleges fret about a “demographic cliff” yet the high school populations most likely to care about academic quality, real literacy, personal formation, and religious mission just keep on growing.

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

HE'S RIGHT!

The data center buildout is basically a clean version of the industrial revolution that employs tons of blue collar workers in high-paying jobs and makes us all richer.

[Emma Camp @emmma_camp_]

If you want evidence that capitalism is a force for good, just visit a grocery store.

My ode to the humble American supermarket, for @WSJFreeEx

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Regret the tone of my post on data centers yesterday.

What I should have said:

There were reasonable concerns about data centers 18ish months ago: water, taxes, jobs, electricity prices, the environment and what they would do to small towns. Well-structured data center projects have largely addressed these concerns today and we should be celebrating this.

On balance, data centers are awesome for America in every way.

On water: U.S. data centers use a fraction of what golf courses use. A lot of the numbers from 18 months ago were off by over 1000x. Newer data centers use closed-loop systems or recycled water. Should be required by every town approving a data center project.

On taxes: looking only at sales-tax exemptions, as Ronan Farrow did, is the wrong way to evaluate this. Data centers pay significant property taxes. Loudoun County, which is the wealthiest county in America, now collects on the order of $1 billion a year from data centers. In Quincy, WA, data centers are more than half the property-tax roll. Over time, property taxes can go to zero while government spending increases in these towns.

On jobs: this has been unambiguously awesome for blue collar Americans. Demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC techs, and contractors has gone vertical, and it is not a one-time construction job. These buildings get upgraded and expanded over time. That is why the building trades are fighting for them, and why some unions are now treating opposition to data centers as a reason not to endorse politicians.

On power: the original fear was that households would pay for the incremental electricity demand in the form of higher prices. That is why the ratepayer-protection deals and the new large-load tariffs exist. The right structure is: the data center brings or pays for new generation and signs a contract long enough that existing customers are protected. Where that is happening, utilities are cutting or freezing residential rates and saying so on the record. Where it is not, people are right to object. Electricity prices are going down *today* in a number of large states because of data centers.

On the environment: data centers overwhelming use natural gas today, which is the cleanest power source outside of nuclear, solar and wind. And the companies that are building the data centers are committed to carbon neutrality such that an equivalent amount of solar will likely be built. Maybe more importantly, the data centers need batteries to function effectively and these batteries can also sell energy back into the grid (which recently prevented blackouts in Texas). Over time, data centers will run on solar plus batteries.

On the towns: Poverty in Quincy, WA fell from 29% to 6%. Data center taxes paid for a new high school, a hospital, a library, police and fire stations. This is happening in many left for dead former mill and farm towns that had no other bidder for the land.

Data centers are actually reindustrializing parts of America and creating the kind of working-class jobs both parties have spent decades claiming to support. That should not be a partisan issue. Data centers can and should be awesome for America and they increasingly, overwhelmingly are. Supporting the outsourcing of data centers to China will likely age just as well as support for the outsourcing of high quality, blue collar manufacturing jobs to China has aged.

When the facts change, I change my mind. I hope that reasonable people who had good faith reasons to oppose data centers at least consider updating their beliefs given the change in the facts over the last 18 months. This really matters for America.

I will say I also think the idea of making data centers beautiful is a good one that has yet to be implemented. Data centers should be just as beautiful as Grand Central Station. We can learn a lot from the railroad buildout. Neoclassical revival ftw.

Might write up open-weight AI tomorrow as this is equally essential to America.

[Rod Dreher @roddreher]

Great analysis!

[Jake Altman @TradeUnionJake]

The founder and publisher of Jacobin Magazine, ladies and gentlemen.

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Bugs Bunny Declares For WNBA Draft https://t.co/86UQgmyiOj

[Conks @conksresearch]

but they were, all of them, deceived, for another watch was made…

[Susannah Black Roberts @suzania]

Not just Appalachia

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

St. Louis, King of France and patron of the arts, pray for us!

[Kurt Schlichter @KurtSchlichter]

Dolly Parton was uniquely loved because she had a unique ability not to jump into any cultural divide, but to be equally decent, caring, and kind to everybody.
If you’re trying to use her as a weapon in the service of your own political point of view, you absolutely do not get what made her special.
This is one of the few times where I see people all across the political spectrum united about something. Maybe we can just enjoy that because we haven’t seen that for a long time.

[Nathan McDermott @natemcdermott]

We probably won’t ever see anything like this for the rest of our lives

[Karol Markowicz @karol]

This guy ruined his own life, and stole someone else’s, for absolutely nothing. The left encourages and celebrates people like this but they are absolute losers who don’t move the needle at all. No one got better healthcare because of this zero.

[i/o @avidseries]

In relative terms, China's rapid rise in global GDP share came at the expense of the Japanese and Europeans, but not the Americans.

[Tyler Austin Harper @Tyler_A_Harper]

My view is that the focus on individual frauds is frustrating when there are entire fields of the social sciences that are functionally fake, don’t replicate, have no realistic prospect of shaping up, and yet continue to hoover up resources undeterred like zombie enterprises.

[Belmont Abbey College @BelmontAbbey]

Earlier this week, Abbey alum Jacob Ciccarelli ’13, Co-Founder & CEO of Truthly, joined CLT Young Catholic Professionals to share lessons from building Truthly and inspire young adults to lead with faith.

📸: YCP Charlotte