24AR29-30

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AR 29:30 - Divine data compression

In this issue:
ESCHATOLOGY - we once thought nuclear war was the only annihilation threat

INTELLIGENT DESIGN - Finely tuned - fearfully and wonderfully so

MORMONISM - "adjustments may seem small. But ..."

Apologia Report 29:30 (1,671)
August 14, 2024

ESCHATOLOGY

"Why Mankind's Greatest Threat Is, Mankind" by Victor Davis Hanson (New York Post, May 11 '24) -- "Sometimes the saber-rattlers boast of using nuclear weapons, surprise invasions, or rocket barrages, such as we saw against Israel last month. 

   "Or as Erdoğan recently warned Greece of Turkey's new missile arsenal, 'We can come down suddenly one night when the time comes.' 

   "Taiwan is told it will be absorbed. 

   "North Korea warned recently it would 'annihilate' South Korea. ...

   "The aim of wars, of course, is to defeat the enemy. 

   "But usually in history the victors do not annihilate the losers - wiping out their people, civilization, language and physical space. ...

   "In 1453, the Ottomans finally overran the 1,100 year-old city of Constantinople, the hub of Hellenism, Christianity and the Byzantine Empire for over a millennium. 

   "They killed, enslaved, or relegated to inferior status the entire population, and turned the majestic Hagia Sophia cathedral into the mosque that it remains today. 

   "The conquerors appropriated the shell of the once greatest city in Christendom as their new capital of an Islamic Ottoman Empire. 

   "So ended the ancient Christian Hellenic civilization of Asia. ...

   "As for the destroyers of entire civilizations, they prove not always just the stereotypical mass murderers of history like Attila the Hun, Tamerlane or Genghis Khan.

   "Often the annihilators were the well-educated, such as Alexander the Great, student of Aristotle, and companion of philosophers. 

   "The annihilator of Carthage, Scipio Aemilianus, was an intellectual who befriended the brilliant historian Polybius and was a patron of literature. ...

   "And the more such conquerors feigned no intention of erasing their enemies, the more they methodically did so - and in the aftermath shed crocodile tears over the extinction."

   Hanson (senior fellow in classics and military history, Hoover Institution, Stanford University) concludes: "We live today with far easier tools of civilizational destruction - nuclear, bioweaponry, cyberwar and perhaps soon, artificial intelligence. 

   "And from Israel to Greece to Taiwan, there are plenty of vulnerable peoples and nations threatened by their historically hostile neighbors.

   "It would be a grave mistake to assume in 2024 that such annihilation cannot happen again - even in our globalized and supposedly civilized world." <www.tinyurl.com/muuc8jw2>

   Also, you might wish to visit <www.tinyurl.com/3yu3382v> to see a two-minute promo video for Hanson's new book: The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation. <www.tinyurl.com/Amazon-END-OF>

   Oh, and one "last" thing: Have a nice day!

 ---

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Here's how Paul introduced this discovery to me: "Fearfully & Wonderfully: Cubic millimeter of brain (1 millionth of total) mapped in detail. (Nature Journal) … covers 57,000 cells, 150 million synapses, incorporates 1.4 petabytes (Pb = 1,024 Tb) of data." 

   Me (Rich) again, we're talking about just ONE cubic MILLIMETER of a single human brain. That, folks, is DATA COMPRESSION.

   The story ran with the title: "Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail" by Carissa Wong (Nature, May 9 '24) -- "Researchers have mapped a tiny piece of the human brain.... The resulting cell atlas, which was described today in Science and is available online, <www.tinyurl.com/5deavz73> reveals new patterns of connections between brain cells called neurons, as well as cells that wrap around themselves to form knots, and pairs of neurons that are almost mirror images of each other.

   "The 3D map covers a volume of about one cubic millimetre, one-millionth of a whole brain, and contains roughly 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses - the connections between neurons. It incorporates a colossal 1.4 petabytes of data. 'It's a little bit humbling,' says Viren Jain, a neuroscientist at Google in Mountain View, California, and a co-author of the paper. 'How are we ever going to really come to terms with all this complexity?' ...

   "Neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues then cut the sample into around 5,000 slices - each just 34 nanometres thick - that could be imaged using electron microscopes. ...

   "'I remember this moment, going into the map and looking at one individual synapse from this woman's brain, and then zooming out into these other millions of pixels,' says Jain. 'It felt sort of spiritual.' ...

   "When examining the model in detail, the researchers discovered unconventional neurons, including some that made up to 50 connections with each other. 'In general, you would find a couple of connections at most between two neurons,' says Jain. Elsewhere, the model showed neurons with tendrils that formed knots around themselves. 'Nobody had seen anything like this before,' Jain adds. ...

   "The team plans to produce similar maps of brain samples from other people - but a map of the entire brain is unlikely in the next few decades, he says." (Don't bet on it. We seem to remember that the initial predictions about how long it would take to complete the human DNA genome were similarly extravagant.) <www.tinyurl.com/yc3s4bac>

   Let's return to the subject of data compression. With the above in mind, consider this Scientific American headline: "AI Boom Could Use a Shocking Amount of Electricity" <www.tinyurl.com/289pr3kn> That's right, powering artificial intelligence models takes a lot of energy and storage space. No wonder there's a huge interest in making use of those DNA petabytes.

   Before we know it, will AI scientists in China urge the CCP to ramp up their organ-harvesting to include cryogenic human brain tissue preservation labs simply to stock their mammoth server farms? Inclined to bet against it? Think Hanson would?

 ---

MORMONISM

"For Mormon Missionaries, Some 'Big, Big Changes'" by Lauren Jackson (New York Times, May 10 '24) -- for one, this counterfeit church is now "encouraging new missionaries to spread the gospel on social media and, for some, with acts of community service closer to home. ...

   "In the last few years, the church has also changed some rules for missionaries themselves - loosening restrictions on dress codes (women can wear pants) and how often they can call family members back home (once a week, not just on Christmas and Mother's Day).

   "To outsiders, the adjustments may seem small. But to missionaries who adhere to strict rules while on assignment, the shifts are dramatic. ...

   "The church believes missionary work" - both in this life and the afterlife - "is essential for the world's salvation," and that "people must be baptized in the [LDS] faith to get to the highest level of heaven after they die. ...

   "'Knocking on doors and approaching people on the street are no longer seen as useful as they once were because of shifts in American culture,' said Matthew Bowman, a professor of religion and history at Claremont Graduate University who holds the chair of Mormon studies. <www.tinyurl.com/2dzwzup6> He is also a church member. ...

   "Many of the changes, especially the push to evangelize on social media, were fueled by the pandemic, which shut down in-person church gatherings and forced Latter-day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses to find alternatives to door-to-door preaching. ...

   "So far, the changes appear to be working: In the last three years, as pandemic restrictions lifted and young members responded to an appeal from the church's top leader for them to serve, the number of full-time proselytizing missionaries has risen by around 25 percent, according to church data. At the end of last year, the church had about 72,000 full-time missionaries serving around the world.

   "The church has just under 17.3 million members globally but has seen growth slow. From 1988 to 1989, during a surge in growth when the church expanded into West Africa, the church grew by about 9 percent. Last year, the church grew by about 1.5 percent."

   And, "since 2012, when the church lowered the age women could become missionaries to 19 from 21, more women have been going. "Then the church made its dress code change, allowing women to wear pants in 2018."

   Earlier in the piece this remark was also included, but without an origin date reference: "Once deployed, men in some areas are allowed to wear blue shirts and go without ties, while women can wear wrinkle-resistant dress pants in 'conservative colors.'" <www.tinyurl.com/47b5txez> 

   For additional context on this topic, see "LDS Church Growth: Amid the good news, there are areas of 'concern'"; by David Noyce and Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Jun 2 '24 Salt Lake Tribune. (Example: "West Africa, unlike the continent's eastern and central regions, has seen its Latter-day Saint growth slow. In addition, California continues to bleed members, and growth rates in Utah, home to the global faith's headquarters, remain near historic lows.")

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