Psalm 53:3

All have turned aside,

there is not one good man left,

not a single one.

Sermon 11 - Disaster administration and sin

Sermon 11 - Disaster administration and sin

We had an ESS exercise yesterday.

What's ESS, I hear you say?  Emergency Support Services.  Nowadays.  It used to be Emergency Social Services.  We are the people who, when there is a disaster, make sure everybody (well, as many as we can find) have food, and clothes, and a place to stay, for the immediate aftermath.  We do big disasters, like when four thousand people are displaced from their homes by a wildfire.  We also do small disasters, like when someone is burned out of their apartment.  There are a lot more small disasters, but a disaster is a disaster, for the person it affects.

We had an ESS exercise yesterday.  I'd forgotten how much fun they were.  We put up signs, put out tables, took down some of the signs because we weren't doing those parts, moved the tables around, took some tables away and set the chairs out for a waiting area, and generally made a bunch of mistakes.  Of course, that's the whole point of an exercise.  We make the mistakes during the exercise, so that we make fewer mistakes when we're doing it for real.

We don't want to make mistakes when we are doing it for real, because we are dealing with people who, as we frequently say, are going through the worst experience of their lives.  (And then there's my other volunteer work: for the hospice society.  I must be a really depressing person to talk to about volunteer opportunities.)  You are not going to get an awful lot of thanks out of the people that we are helping.  They are going to complain.  They are going to be impolite.  They are going to be inconsiderate.  That's because they are going through the worst experience of their lives.  They are not going to thank you for the help, they are going to complain that there isn't more help, or the right type of help, or something that they want, but don't actually need.  They're stressed, and they're not thinking clearly.  But you don't do this kind of work, this kind of *volunteer* work, if you are looking for gratitude, thanks, or recognition.

These are my people.  They are there to help.  That is the only reason they are there.  You're not getting paid, you're not getting much recognition, you are working long hours, you were working with people who are extremely stressed, you are not getting thanked.  The only reason anybody volunteers for ESS is because they want to help.

Which is the other reason, besides being able to make dumb mistakes, that it's so much fun to go through an ESS exercise.  These are my people.  They are only there because they want to help people.  When they ask how your week has been, and you say you've had a bad week, they want to know why.  They do actually want to know why you have had a bad week.  They want to know what the problem is.  They want to know how they can help, if they can help.

I am new here.  This is an existing crew.  They have worked together.  I have not worked with them, at least not yet.  We have had a couple of meetings that I've attended, but I am definitely the new one here.  I have less experience, but more training, than just about anybody else on the crew.  But nobody on the crew is jealous that I have more training.  Nobody on the crew is vain about the fact that they have more experience than I do.  They want to know what I have learned in my training that they can use the next time they get called out.  They are willing to share their direct experiences with me, and are even interested in hearing my second hand experiences from other exercises, and other meetings, with other groups.  They want to know, because they are here to help, and anything that can help them be more able to help others is of interest to them.

But I'm not here to talk about helping other people.  I'm here to talk about sin.

Besides putting up signs and moving furniture around, most of what we did in the exercise was filling out forms.  Actually, filling out one particular form.  The registration form.  For those of you, and that includes just about everybody listening to me, who aren't familiar with emergency management and emergency services, this is actually the most important aspect of it: doing the registration.  The registration lets the authorities identify who was affected by the disaster.  It lets the authorities determine how many people were affected by the disaster.  It lets the authorities know who has been recovered from the disaster: who is okay, and who is missing and unaccounted for.  It gives the authorities the ability to determine how much money is allocated to a given disaster, and therefore how much money should be budgeted for future disasters.  It allows the authorities to contact people who have been affected by the disaster and find out whether or not they have recovered at some point in the future.  It also allows families to reconnect and reunite when they may have been dispersed by the disaster.  Or, it allows families who have lost touch with family members, when those family members may have been in the area of a disaster, and find out whether or not they were affected, and whether or not they are safe.  All of this based on one particular registration form.

You begin to see how important this one form is?

The thing is, you can only do all of these things, and many, many more, if the form is filled out correctly.  Have you identified all the members of the family that has been affected?  Have you correctly identified the number of people who are affected?  The ages of the people who are affected, which affects what type of services they may need.  The special needs of any particular member of this party or household.  Is there a special medical condition that needs to be dealt with?  Do they have food?  Do they have clothing?  Do they have toothbrushes, and soap?  Do they have a place to stay?  Are they staying with family or friends?  Are they staying in lodging that is provided by the authorities?

But even before that, is the name spelled correctly?  If we're trying to do family reunification, is the name going to match when we search?  My name is fairly simple.  And yet, when I've given my name, in a restaurant, waiting for a table, and have looked, later on, to see where I am on the waiting list to determine how much longer we might have to wait for a table, the weird and wonderful ways that my name has been spelled would astound you.  Now on a waiting list for a table in a restaurant it doesn't matter very much.  When you're trying to do family reunification, it's absolutely, vitally important.  Particularly if it's not just one family that's been displaced, but hundreds, or even thousands.  So filling out this form, and filling it out properly, is of absolutely, crucially, vital importance.

So, learning how to fill out the registration form, which sounds boring, which sounds not terribly helpful, turns out to be vitally important.  And we practice it every opportunity we get.  We practice checking, and rechecking, to make sure that we have the name correct, we have spelled it correctly, we have the address written down correctly, we have the phone number correct.  And we check and we recheck.  And we even practice, and comment on, our handwriting.  (Mine, like my father's before me, is legendarily terrible.)  Being careful when you're writing down somebody's name.  Using all capital letters.  Using carefully *formed* letters, so that there is no possibility of mistake when someone reads it.

And, even so, we make mistakes.  Our forms are never perfect.

We need to have the information that's perfect as possible.  But as perfect as possible, by definition, isn't perfect

 

We need to; even if we are collating multiple sets of forms, on a sawhorse, in the freezing cold, with your hands cramping both because of the cold and because you are pressing hard enough to make four copies, for multiple clients, none of whom are particularly cooperative, since they are street people, and don't trust the authorities; we need to fill out the forms as accurately as possible, and as clearly as possible, and fill them out correctly, and, even if we don't have particularly good handwriting, we have to ensure that our forms are as legible as possible, so that the suppliers who have agreed to provide food, or clothing, or shelter, or transportation, will trust our forms, and know that they will be reimbursed for providing the supplies to our clients.

We need to know that we fill out the forms correctly, for all of these reasons.  There are consequences, if we don't fill out the forms correctly.  We need to know that everybody gets what they need.  We need to know that the clients get the supplies they need.  We need to know that the vendors get reimbursed.  We need to know that the government can correctly pay all the bills.  Our proper filling out of the forms, provides these services, and ensures that everybody trusts the system, and ensures that it all works properly.  And if we don't fill out the forms correctly, there are consequences to any of our mistakes.

If we make mistakes on the forms, there are consequences.  They are negative consequences.  People don't get paid, or families don't get reunited, or the system breaks down in a variety of ways and people don't trust the system.  And, therefore, people, when it really counts, don't get the help that they need.  So it's important that we fill in the forms correctly.  It's important that we know the correct way to fill in the forms, and it's important that we follow the procedures and filling out the forms, and it's also important that we write legibly, press hard enough to make multiple proper copies, and that everything, absolutely everything, is done properly, and consistently, and we follow the forms in the same way, and put the important information in the right boxes, and that we do that, consistently, the same way, every time we fill out every form, for multiple forms.  Okay, when you first come on to the team this seems silly.  We are there to help people.  Why is it that we concentrate so much on this stupid administrative task of filling out forms?  Well, it's because this is the central part of what we do.  Yes, when people join the team they think about the disasters.  They think about the fires, they think about the floods, they think about the landslides, they think about people being displaced from their homes and the fear and the uncertainty and everything that goes wrong in your life when this kind of a disaster happens.  But, the thing is, that in order to provide the help that we need to provide, and in order to ensure that people get the help that they need, we need to fill out the forms properly.  It seems silly, but it's a fact.  In order to help these people, who are having the worst day of their lives, we have to learn to fill out forms property.  And consistently.  And write legibly, while doing so.  And press hard enough on the forms to make multiple, clear copies.  It's just a fact of life in emergency management.

There are consequences if we don't do it properly.  So we try to do it perfectly.  And, of course, there are all kinds of reasons that we can't do it perfectly, time after time.  You are writing in a hurry, so of course your handwriting is not going to be at its best.  You are writing forms, on the hood of your car, and it's snowing.  So, of course, you're in a hurry and may miss a field on the form.  You are dealing with people who may not be terrifically cooperative because of social or even psychological problems of their own.  You're in a hurry, you're being hassled, you're in a bad environment, so it's unlikely that you will ever actually fill out a completely perfect form.  And yet if it's not perfect, there may be negative consequences.

So you say what does this have to do with sin?  Well, sin is anything less than the proper standard.  God's standard for us.  And the proper standard is perfection.  Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  So, sin is simply not being perfect.  And that has consequences.

Falling short of perfection in ESS, as we have seen, has consequences.  Falling short of perfection with regard to God, in terms of sin, also has consequences.  If we sin there are consequences that naturally follow.  When we sin against our neighbors, we damage relationships, and may even eliminate them.  When we sin against others, on larger scale, we may damage our entire society.  If we steal, we damage the wealth and security of everyone around us.  We also damage the trust that is necessary to the relationships that build this society, and the society becomes less trusting, and, likely, less trustworthy.  If we lie, we also betray those trusts, and damage those relationships, and our society.  There are all kinds of consequences to sin.  The most important, of course, is that we are separated from God.

Now, of course, that is the big one.  Separation from God.  And that is the one that God has, in his grace, provided for us, and provided forgiveness, and paid the penalty for our sin.  That is where salvation comes in.  And we are saved from an eternal death, an eternal separation from God.

But, what about those natural consequences?  Those, we still have to live with.  God has forgiven us.  But, if we have sinned against our neighbours, maybe they aren't quite so gracious, and quite so forgiving.  When we have sinned against our neighbours, and broken the relationship with them, and broken their trust, not only in us, but possibly in people in general, well, there are probably going to be consequences.  God forgives us, and removes our sin, utterly, but in the natural world?  Well, those consequences we may have to live with.

When we fall short of perfection in regard to ESS forms there are things that we can do.  People who are reading our forms can puzzle through the letters that we have written down, and think of alternatives that might indicate a different spelling when they are searching to reunite families.  If we make a mistake in writing down the postal code, there are other tools that we can use to look up the address and correct the postal code.  There are tools that we may be able to use to find the correct phone number if we have made a mistake in the phone number.  There are certain things that we can do to make up for our lack of perfection in ESS registration.

There are certain things that we can do when we have sinned.  We can go to our neighbor that we have sinned against and apologize, or possibly make restitution of some sort.  This may help to mend a broken relationship, but it will never be as trusting as it was before we sinned.  There are things that we can do to try and address our sin, our lack of imperfection.  But they will always fall short of perfection.

This is where my comparison of ESS registration, and sin, both is strengthened, and falls down.  In both cases, it's better if we were perfect in the first place.  Difficult, and perhaps impossible, but it would have been better if we were perfect in the first place.  But where it falls down is that while there are things that we can do about mistakes we have made in the ESS registration, there is nothing we can do to fully cover our sin.  Sin is falling short of the mark.  It is falling short of perfection.  And anything that is imperfect, well there is nothing we can do to make it perfect again.  We have sinned.  We have fallen short.  No amount of restitution, and no apologies, can make the sin not have happened.

And, of course, our sin is always, ultimately, against God.  And God cannot look upon sin.  Sin separates us from God.  And this is the biggest difference between ESS forms, and sin.  God cannot look upon our sin.  But God has taken care of that.  God has provided complete forgiveness for our sin.  God has paid the price for all of our mistakes.  All we have to do is accept that.  We cannot be perfect.  But we can accept it and has provided for a continual, and even eternal, relationship with him.  He has done all the work.  All we have to do is accept it.

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Unjust

A friend was recently giving me yet more advice on my grief.  He was relaying a piece of advice that he was given, to the effect that anger was a result of injustice.  The implication was, of course, that I should not be angry, because I had not suffered any injustice.

As well as not being terrifically helpful; since it is not really possible to just decide not to be angry, or sad, or depressed; this added yet another layer on my burden of "you are doing it wrong," in regard to my grieving, and overall mental state.

However, subsequently, someone else, in actually listening to my story, noted that I was right to feel sad, and angry, and that the way that I have been treated, particularly by some of the church groups, was, in fact, unreasonable, cruel, and unjust.

While this does not materially change my situation, it is extremely comforting to know that I am, in fact, not too terribly crazy, and that my objection to the way I have been treated by the churches is quite rational.  It doesn't mean that I expect the churches to change: they won't.  This is a city of churches that are insular and generally uncaring of others.  That's not going to change.  It isn't even necessarily all that much different from churches in other locales.  The church feels itself to be, and, actually is, a minority and under some attack in our society.  I've recognized this mentality in the past and from the security industry, and note that it tends toward an "insider/outsider" view of the world overall, and fixation on certain patterns of behavior, even when those patterns can be demonstrated to be ineffective.  So, no, there is no point in expecting the churches here to change.

Debate

When you have won the

argument, stop battling.

More words don't help things.

Psalm 33:17

It is delusion

to rely on the horse for peace,

power cannot save.

Any friend that can be replaced by GPT-4 ...

(I seem to have wandered into a number of digressions in composing this piece, but they all seem to tie together, so I hope you'll bear with me ...)

Decades ago, I was at a teacher's conference.  I was in a session dealing with computers in education.  The morning paper had published an article about computers in education, and, particularly, using computers to teach, and, therefore, replacing teachers.  Someone easked about this.  The presenter thought for a moment, and replied that any teacher who could be replaced by a computer, *should* be replaced by a computer.  His point was that teaching was a complex task, and that any teacher who taught in such a rote manner that he (or she) could be replaced by a machine would be better off out of the profession, and the profession (and the education system) would be better off without him (or her).

Which story I am relaying to lead into:

We are worrying about the wrong thing with regard to AI.

The programs DALL-E, ChatGPT, and others that rely on "machine learning" and pattern models derived from large data sets, have recently racked up an impressive series of accomplishments.  They have produced some amazing results.  Everyone is now talking about artificial intelligence as if it is an accomplished fact.  It isn't.

These programs have been able to produce some absolutely amazing results.  But they have been able to produce amazing results for people who have been able to learn how to use them.  That does not fit my definition of any kind of intelligence, let alone an artificial one.  If the impressive results can only be obtained by people who are willing to put in the time to learn how to use these tools, then they *are* tools.  Just tools.  Complicated and impressive tools, yes.  But just tools.  They do not have their own intelligence.

Intelligence would require that the system would be able to provide satisfactory results for pretty much anybody.  A person, and intelligence, is able to query the requestor as to whether the results provided are satisfactory.  If the results are not satisfactory, the intelligence is able to query the requester and find out why not, and use this information to modify the results until the results *are* satisfactory.  And that is, of course, only one of the aspects of intelligence.  There are many others, such as motivation.  So, while I'm willing to grant that these tools are very sophisticated, complicated, and definitely useful developments, they don't get us that much closer to actual artificial intelligence.

The results from these tools have created a great deal of interest, even in the general populace.  It has particularly created interest within the business community, and new investment artificial intelligence projects and companies is probably a good thing.  (Unless, of course, we are all on a hiding to nothing and we never *will* get real artificial intelligence.  But let's assume for the moment that we will.)  It has also engendered a good deal of discussion on the wisdom of pursuing artificial intelligence, and the dangers of artificial intelligence.  Since my particular field is dangers associated with information systems, I have been very interested in all of this, and think it's a good thing.  We should be considering the dangers, particularly the dangers, with regard to machine learning, that we have created, and are perpetuating, bias in our systems, particularly when the data sets that we use to train machine learning systems are, themselves, collected, collated, and maintained, by artificial intelligence systems.  Which may already be affected by various forms of bias that we engendered in the first place, and have never realized are even there.

There is, however, one fairly consistent theme that appears in discussions of the dangers of artificial intelligence, and which DALL-E, ChatGPT, and their ilk have indicated is a false concern.  While it is primarily a screaming point of the conspiracy theory and tin foil hat crowd, many people are concerned about the possibility of what tends to be referred to as "The Singularity."  This is the hypothesis (and it is a fairly logical hypothesis), that when we do, actually, get artificial intelligence, that is truly intelligent, and can work on improving itself, that such a system would advance so rapidly that there would be absolutely no way that we could keep up, and it would, from our perspective, almost immediately become so intelligent that we would have no chance of controlling it.  It would rapidly become intelligent enough that any of our protections, which are never perfect, would leave open a vulnerability which the system itself could exploit, and therefore it would, again, almost immediately, from our perspective, be beyond our control.  What happens at that point is open to a variety of conjectures.  This intelligence could turn evil, from our perspective, and wipe out the human race.  (Some people would consider this a good thing.)  Or, it might create a kind of benevolent dictatorship, managing our lives and having pretty much complete control of the entire human race, since it would be able to commandeer all information systems, which means basically every form of business, industry, entertainment, and any other human activity.  Or, the artificial intelligence may simply take off, without us, leave us behind, and disappear from any involvement with us.  Or, well, there are all kinds of other options that people have explored and theorized.

None of these options particularly scare me.

That's the wrong thing to worry about.  What we should be worrying about is relying on artificial intelligence, and, particularly, these recent examples.  These tools are not really intelligent.  They do not understand.  They do not comprehend.  They do not appreciate.  They just predict the likelihood of the next piece of output from patterns, in masses of data, that they have being fed.  (I have mentioned with, elsewhere, the fact that what we are feeding them is possibly biasing them, and that the bias is probably self reinforcing.  And we'll come back to that point.)

I asked ChatGPT to write a sermon.  It did a very banal, pedestrian job.  When I pointed out some of the flaws, ChatGPT basically gave me back the same thing, all over again.  It didn't understand my complaint: it just responded based upon my statement.  It didn't understand my statement: my statement was just a prompt to the system, and had similar enough terms to the first prompt that the output was, basically, identical.

I gave a friend an opportunity of a trial with it.  He said that it produced a reasonable Wikipedia article.

I think this is illustrative in ways that most people wouldn't.  I have never thought highly of Wikipedia.  While I applaud the general concept, I feel that, in actual implementation, Wikipedia is the classic example of the pooling of ignorance.  When I first set out to assess Wikipedia, I, of course, as an expert in the field, looked up the entry on computer viruses.  It was terrible.  As far as I know, having checked it several times in the intervening years (although I haven't looked at it recently), it's still terrible.  At one point it had more than one factual error per sentence.  And, of course, in those early, carefree, bygone days when I still have some thought that maybe Wikipedia might be a useful exercise, I made corrections to these errors.  Corrections which were, of course, immediately rescinded by Wikipedia's editorial staff.

Wikipedia does not rely on expert opinion.  How could it?  The editorial staff of Wikipedia do not know how to judge who is expert, and who is not, on a given entry, or topic.  The original computer virus entry did, and as far as I know still does, contain the common received wisdom on computer viruses, with all of the mistakes, errors, and misconceptions, that the common man holds about computer viruses.  Therefore, when I tried to correct these errors, the Wikipedia staff felt that I was introducing errors, and so they reverted back to their original mistake-ridden text.  For an actual expert, there is, actually, no point in even attempting to correct the errors in Wikipedia.  Wikipedia relies upon the common man's perception, and, therefore, it's pretty close to social media as a source of information.  There is an enormous quantity, but there is not necessarily very much quality.

(My take on, and attitude towards, Wikipedia, while formed many years ago on the basis of the number of mistakes in the technical entries may be [possibly unfairly] reinforced by the fact that after Gloria died, Wikipedia removed all entries to her from my entry in Wikipedia.  I found this very personally hurtful, and, to this day, I have no idea why they did it.)

Wikipedia relies upon entries available on the web, and therefore may rely heavily on social media.  Wikipedia also goes by seniority, not by expertise.  If you are higher up on the Wikipedia editorial food chain, you can reverse any entry or correction that an expert makes.  Therefore, it is no surprise that Wikipedia is riddled with errors, particularly in recent discoveries, and in any area where expert opinion is of value.  Wikipedia has become the Funk and Wagnalls of the information age.  It's widely available, possibly useful in general cases, and very often wrong.

This is why my friend's further comment that it made "the classic error," was also illustrative.  "The classic error" will be repeated, in many articles, and postings, made on the Web, by those who think they know the case, but are not necessarily fully informed.  This type of material will be repeated, ad nauseam, on social media, thereby reinforcing the truth and validity of this erroneous material.

And, of course, ChatGPT has been trained on social media.  ChatGPT has been trained on material, and text, that could be gathered to give an indication of how we humans speak in response to queries.  Or challenges.  (This is also why ChatGPT is likely to become obnoxious and abusive if you challenge it. That's the way people react on social media, and it's social media that provides the material that has trained ChatGPT.)

ChatGPT, and DALL-E, the graphic, or art, generating version of the pattern model tool, are simply responding, with patterns that they can predict from a massive database that they have assessed, of what is to be produced in response to any prompt.  It's simply using statistical models (very complex statistical models, to be sure), to generate what the average human being would generate, if challenged in the same way.  There is no understanding on the part of either ChatGPT, or DALL-E, or any others of those pattern model tools.  They do not understand.  They do not comprehend.  They don't have to.  They just churn out what it is likely that a human being would churn out in response to the same prompt.

I asked ChatGPT to produce various materials in recent tests.  What I got was pedestrian and uninspired.  Well, of course it was.  ChatGPT is not understanding, and doesn't have any way to obtain inspiration.  It's just going to generate something in response to a prompt.  And it is going to generate what most human beings would generate.  And most human beings are, let's face it, lazy.  So, what most human beings would produce, when challenged to produce a an article, or a sermon, or a presentation outline, would be pedestrian, banal, and uninspired.  It's the type of article that you read in most trade magazines.  Vendors go to professional authors and ask them to produce an article on blat.  The professional author does a quick Google search on the topic, feels that they are expert, and turns out banal, pedestrian, uninspired text.  There is nothing innovative, and there is nothing in the material that leads to any item or idea that would spark creative thought.  That's not what most human beings do, that's not what most of the material on social media is, and so that's what ChatGPT produces.

Many years ago, I ran across a quote which said that creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.  ChatGPT does make mistakes.  But most of them simply are not worth keeping.  ChatGPT doesn't think about what it's doing: it just predicts the next, most likely next, probable word that a human being would write in this stream of text.  So, ChatGPT isn't going to create anything that's inspired, isn't going to create anything that's creative, isn't going to produce much of anything that is much of use for anything, and if we fail to understand this, we fail to realize what relying on ChatGPT can produce for us.  Which is, basically, so much dross.

I have recently read many articles which assert that ChatGPT can provide for us mundane letters, mundane article outlines, and mundane articles themselves, which will be of a help in business.  But that is only because we, as a society, have become accustomed to the mundane, and accept it.  And, if we continue to use ChatGPT for these types of purposes, we will, in fact, produce more mundane dross, and, increasingly find that garbage acceptable.  We are training ourselves to accept the banal, and the uninformative.  Eventually we will train ourselves to accept a word salad which is completely devoid of any meaning at all.

ChatGPT is becoming more capable, or at least more facile.  It is being trained on larger and larger data sets.  Unfortunately, those data sets are being harvested, by and large from social media, and by and large with the aid of existing artificial intelligence tools.  Therefore, the fear that some have raised, that we have already biased our artificial intelligence tools by the data that we gave to them, is now being self-reinforced.  The biased artificial intelligence tools that we created with biased data, are now being used to harvest data, in order to feed to the next generation of pattern model tools.  This means that the bias, far from being eliminated, is being steadily reinforced, as is the bias towards meaningless dross.  If we rely on these tools, that is, increasingly, what we are going to get.

And, with the reliance on artificial intelligence in the metaverse, that is what we are going to get in the metaverse.  The metaverse is an incredibly complex undertaking.  It is, if all the parts that we have been promised, are included, a hugely complex system, orders of magnitude more complex than any we have yet devised, with the possible exception of the Internet, and the World Wide Web and social media itself.  We will need to have artificial intelligence tools to manage the metaverse.  And these tools are going to have our existing biases, and are going to have the bias towards uncreative, uninspired garbage.  And therefore, that's what the metaverse is going to give us.

Increasingly readable, and convincing, garbage to be sure, but garbage nonetheless.  Do we really want to be convinced, by garbage?

At any rate, in another test, I complained to ChatGPT that I was lonely.  I mean, most people don't listen anyways, and most people don't listen very well.  So I figured that ChatGPT would be at least as good as one of my friends, who, after all, have disappeared, since they are terrified that I'm going to talk about Gloria, or death, or grief, or pain, all of which are taboo subjects in our society.

The thing is, ChatGPT doesn't know about the taboo subjects in our society.  So, it gave me an actually reasonable response.  Now, it wasn't great.  ChatGPT cannot understand what I am going through, and cannot understand or appreciate the depths of my pain and loneliness.  But at least it was reasonable.  It suggested a few things.  Now, they are all things that I have tried.  But they were reasonable things.  It said to talk to my friends.  As previously mentioned I can't.  When challenged, ChatGPT fairly quickly goes into a loop, basically suggesting the same things over and over again.  But it also suggested that I take up volunteer work.  Now, of course, I knew this.  It is something that I suggest to people who are in depression.  And I have done it.  And, it does help, to a certain extent.  So, a half point, at the very least, for ChatGPT.

I can give more points to that than that to ChatGPT.  It doesn't give me facile and stupid cliches.  It didn't say anything starting with "at least."  It didn't tell me that Gloria was in a better place.  It didn't tell me that bad things wouldn't happen to me if I only had more faith.  All of which people have said to me.  And it's all very hurtful.  So ChatGPT at least gets another half point for not being hurtful.  (If we are still trying for the Turing test, at this point, I would say that, in order to pass, we would have to make ChatGPT more stupid and inconsiderate.)

But I'm not willing to give ChatGPT very much credit at this point.  It's not very useful.  It wasn't very analytical.  And I did challenge some of its suggestions, to see what kind of response I got when I challenged ChatGPT on various points.  I did sort of challenge it on the friend's point, and it didn't get defensive about that.  So, at least another half point to ChatGPT.

But, as I say, it's not very good.  It's as good as a trade rag article, and it's probably as good as any Wikipedia article.  In other words, not very good.  The material is pedestrian and. I don't think that bereavement counselors have anything to worry about, quite yet.

I should also note that so far, I have the free version of ChatGPT, and therefore I am not talking to GPT-4.  This is GPT-3.  So it's not as good as the latest version.  And I would like to give the latest version a try, but I strongly suspect that it wouldn't do all that much better.  But it would be an interesting test.

Relying on ChatGPT, for anything but the absolute, most pedestrian tasks is asking for trouble.  It can't understand.  It is going to make mistakes.  If you present it as an interface, and, talking about my test about loneliness and bereavement, I realize that I may have prompted some idiot with a grief account to try and tie ChatGPT on to a grief account, as a kind of automated bereavement counselor, well, that's really asking for trouble.  Trying to use ChatGPT with people who are, in fact, in real trouble, could create a disaster.  Please, those of you with grief accounts, do not try this at home.  This is only for trained idiots, who actually know that there is no such thing as artificial intelligence, and realize that ChatGPT isn't that much more of an event from ELIZA.  (If you don't know who ELIZA was, it passed the Turing test more than four decades ago, and it only took two pages of BASIC code.)

There is concern that adding the appearance of an emotional component to computer systems, and particularly artificial intelligence systems, will create dangerous situations for users.  This is a very realistic concern.  We have seen a number of instances, over at least half a century, where individuals have attributed to, sometimes very simple systems, intelligence, personality, and even concepts of a soul.

As only one aspect of the difficulties, but also the importance, of looking at emotive, or affective, artificial intelligence, or any kind of intelligence in any computer system, consider the case of risk analysis.  In information security, we need to teach students of the field that penetration testing, and even vulnerability analysis, does not lead you directly to risk analysis.  This is because penetration testing, auditing, and vulnerability analysis are generally performed by outside specialists.  These people may be very skilled, and may be able to produce a great deal that is of value to you, but there is one thing that they, signally, do not know: the value of the assets that you are protecting.  The value, that is, to you.  The value of an asset, whether a system, piece of information, or a database of collected information, has a value to the enterprise that holds it.  But it is only that enterprise, and the people who work there, who really do understand the value of that asset.  The value in a variety of ways, and therefore the protections that must be afforded to that asset.  Therefore, no outside firm can do a complete risk analysis, since they do not understand, or fully comprehend, the value, or values, and the range of different types of value, that the asset holds.  For the company.

Currently, our so-called artificial intelligence tools, may be able to perform some interesting feats.  But they do not understand.  And, particularly in regard to affect and emotion, they do not understand, even what these are, let alone how important they are.  Now, we can certainly make some effort to instruct artificial systems as to certain aspects of human behavior, and the indicators that the human may be in high states of emotion.  However, the systems will have no understanding, no comprehension, of these emotional states.  They will not understand the subtleties and nuances of emotional states.  We can give them a set of directives as to how to behave with regard to people, but they will not understand, they will only behave.  This is a backstop solution, and it cannot be complete.  It is akin to the difference between justice and law, in all of our human societies.  Supposedly, we think of our legal systems as providing justice.  We even call institutions related to the legal system departments of justice.  But we all know, in our heart of hearts, that there is a difference between legal and right.  We all know that there are times when our laws come to an unexpected situation, and are then unjust.  In the same way, we cannot simply give a set of commands to a computer, as to how to deal with a human that is in an emotional state, and expect that this will address all possible situations.  Because the computers do not have an understanding of emotion.

In this latter regard, I highly recommend reading "Affective Computing," by Rosalind Picard.  Her work looks not only at human factors engineering, but also at the significance of affect, or some similar analogue, in regard to motivation and decision in automated systems.

The churches of Port Alberni

It's pretty definite.  I am pretty sure that I am heading into a good, solid depression.  Likely the most intense that I've had since before I married Gloria.  (She seemed to have a very mitigating influence on my depression cycles.)  I can recognize the symptoms.  I'm already showing signs of cognitive decline and difficulties.  I've had more than five decades of experience at it.  This is not going to be fun.

It is not likely that I will, actually, commit suicide.  I have been deferring the act for more than fifty years, so I'm not sure whether it is now pointless, or overdue.  However, every time somebody does commit suicide, everyone is terribly surprised, and always says, "why didn't we know?"  So, I'll set down, in advance, the reason for committing suicide after all of these pointless wasted years.  It's the churches of Port Alberni that drove me to it.

Now, of course, my previous churches can bear a little of the blame.  Nobody particularly cares.  The churches that I came from didn't particularly care when my wife died and I was left a grieving widower.  I am in pain, I am damaged, and, undoubtedly, I am not an attractive proposition either for membership, friendship, or, of course, romantic entanglements.  However, supposedly the church is supposed to take care of damaged, hurting, grieving people.  Well, they don't.  The churches in on the North Shore didn't particularly care, despite years of contacts, work, help, and other contributions that both Gloria and I made to them.  The churches in Delta that I touched on, helped, attended, and participated in their volunteer work, didn't particularly care either.  In the six months since I moved away from Delta, absolutely nobody has initiated any kind of contact with me.

But, no, it's the churches of Port Alberni that bear the brunt of the blame here.  As I was going around church shopping, I made no particular secret of the fact that I was a grieving widower.  Again, see above, for the fact that I realize I'm not a terrifically valuable person, particularly in the current situation, but there has been pretty much zero attempt to address any of my needs, by any of the churches in Port Alberni that I have attended or touched on.

Noted elsewhere, I am not exactly a novice at church shopping.  I have experience in a number of church situations over many years.  I know how this works, and doesn't.  But the churches of Port Alberni set a new standard for not attempting to do anything to or for me.  Definitely Teflon.  I'm getting more comfort from coffee than from the churches.  And I don't even *like* coffee!

It has been bizarre.  One particular group has fooled me over and over again.  They have, consistently, every time I have attended, talked about the importance of fellowship, and coming alongside, and caring for one another, as well as the importance of sharing truly and deeply when we share vulnerabilities with each other.  And so I have shared!  Truly, honestly, deeply, and vulnerably!  And no one has cared!  No one has come alongside.  There has been absolutely no fellowship, at all, from this group.  There is another that has talked about the need to reach out.  The need to connect with the community.  The need to extend the church into the lives of all around us.  And they talked, and they talked, and they talked, and when I, or other members of the group, have proposed ideas as to how we could reach out to the community, and stand up, and step out, and reach out, they talk about how we can't do that and why we can't do that.  And they do nothing.  There is no connection in this group that keeps talking about connection.  (Yesterday one of the sermons was on the need to confess our sins to each other.  In *this* church community?  Where the concept of "safe space" seems to be completely foreign?)

I've signed up for the Grief Share daily emails, which seem to be a year's worth of canned, standard, pieces of "Christian" grief advice, all numbered.  Number 34, which came a while ago, suggests that we need to be honest in grief.  Oh!  Gee!  What a concept!  Actually telling people what's happening!  Well, yes, I'm trying to be honest in this blog, even though I come across as a whiny complainer while doing so.  However, there doesn't seem to be any point to it.  Twice today, and three times yesterday, people asked me how I was, and I said terrible.  And then I listened to *their* problems (for half an hour per).

However, I know that honesty is not necessarily the best policy.  I mean, it's pretty pointless isn't it?  Nobody cares.  As the old saying goes: can't complain, if you do nobody listens.  As illustrated above, it doesn't matter if you're honest.  Nobody cares, nobody asks for details.  They just complain about their own problems.

I don't know whether there's any point in being honest or not.  Recently somebody asked, possibly for the first time ever, how I was.  I replied that I was terrible.  He said that that didn't sound like me.  I pointed out that he didn't even know me.  He said, but you always seem so cheerful!  Well, have you ever asked?  Have you ever cared enough to ask?  Have you ever cared enough that when you get the answer terrible, you ask for details?  Have you ever listened to the details?  No.

Of course, I am well aware that nobody likes a whiny complainer.  So, of course I always present as cheerfully as I possibly can.  I'm smiling, generally if I'm not actually crying.  I try to be kind to people.  I try to return a pleasant comment to any clerk or cashier that I'm dealing with in a brief transaction.  It doesn't cost me anything to be cheerful, it doesn't cost me anything to provide a kind word to somebody who's in a generally thankless job.  That doesn't mean that I'm not having a terrible day myself, but just because I'm having a terrible day myself doesn't mean that I have to be presenting at glum face, and being terse, or even nasty, to anybody I'm dealing with on a random basis.  When people that I pass on the street are kind enough to say good morning I try to return as cheerful a good morning as I possibly can.  Doesn't mean I'm not having a bad day.  Doesn't mean I'm not depressed.  Doesn't mean that I'm not grieving and in pain.  You don't even know me.

Maybe it's my own fault.  I have, after all, made myself useful to the churches around here.  To pretty much every church I have attended.  The first week I was in town, I filled in in the kitchen for a funeral service, so that the church ladies could all attend the service.  As previously noted, Port Alberni does not make it easy to do church shopping, by having all of their church services simultaneously, at the same time, on Sunday morning.  So I have found midweek Bible studies, small groups, and prayer meetings and attend them regularly.  I go to the men's breakfasts, and not only do I go, but I am now a regular fixture in the kitchen preparing the breakfast.  I've always figured that there was no point in simply going and sitting in the service and expecting people to take notice of you.  But, it does seem that what this has resulted in is the church's only looking at my utility value.  They don't care about me, as me.  I very strongly suspect that I would have had a better result, at least better for me, had I just gone in and said I was new here and demanded that they pay attention to me, and cater to my needs.  It's not exactly my style, but, from what I've seen in the churches so far, it probably provides a better result for the newcomer.

It's my own fault in yet another way.  If there are contributing factors for going into depression, then exhausting myself helping out, contributing to, and providing various things for the churches, as well as checking up on, and supporting, particular parishioners who were, themselves, in need, was probably not the smart thing to do.  Especially since the churches all seem to be just "users."

Then there was yet another men's breakfast day.  A friend was suggesting "The Men's Table."  He thought it started up in Canada, but it seems to be limited to Australia.  That wasn't the only hiccup.  Ironically, the friend is an atheist, but, when I went tot he Website, I could see that there is definitely some kind of Christian agenda behind it, given the language.  (I speak Christianese fluently.)  "The Men's Table" describes itself as a "safe space."  The men's breakfasts here are definitely not safe.  So, having made months and months of efforts to support the church (universal) and the related programs, maybe it is time that I gave up on this toxic culture.

Atheists probably can't see the full significance here.  If there is no God, the church is just another misguided social club, like the Loyal Order of Moose Antler Wearing Drunks, or the Daughters-Of-The-Third-Star-On-The-Left-No-Not-*That*-One-The-One-Over-By-The-Three-Trees.  If there *is* a God, then the church is disobeying the commands they were given in setting up the institution in the first place.

So God has, like He did with Ezekiel (24:16) taken away the light of my eyes, and my comfort, and renewed and intensified my depression just at the time that he has brought me to the town with the most uncaring churches in BC (and possibly all of North America).  It is hard to avoid the conclusion that God hates me.