@JohnBrady Yes indeed. (Though after reading it, of course part of my brain went: they wouldn’t…would they?)
@ablerism Terrifying indeed. To my mind, Michael Sacasas has already provided the perfect rebuttal: Resist the temptation to confuse control for care.
@ReaderJohn Not familiar with Ellis; will check out. I follow the Tech Review editor on LinkedIn (that other blessedly uncharismatic social app, ha).
@bbowman Yes indeed. Relatedly: this is the late historian James Trent’s analysis of how American institutionalization of the “feeble minded” and intellectually disabled in the 19th-early 20th c became a self-justifying means-as-end. Rationalized as care; in fact, a means of control.
@ablerism Fell further and further out of my chair the more I read — poor Ivan Illich must be rolling in his grave.
@ablerism I finally was able to read this article at the end of my workday. It was very disturbing. But it was a perfect pairing with a quarterly pastoral-theology group I met with on Monday that discussed AI with two university professors, one a historian and the other a computer engineer.
@ablerism I’ve been thinking about trajectories a lot. I was typing a half-written post the other day about Bush era evangelicals (of whom I was a part) who defended torture and that being a trajectory for the kind of thinking that would usher Trump into office. And not just because of the moral horror of it, but because of the cloudy and base motivations that drove that kind of “thinking” in the first place. Anyway, as someone who was part of the nondenom mega church and mega church adjacent culture: I left it for some specific questions that didn’t have good answers, but broadly it was the, not just lack of interest in answering these kinds of means-ends questions, but a specific non-interest in asking them at all.
“If we keep saying the name “Jesus,” and the numbers go up, then basically no further questions are necessary… or welcomed.”
So while this was a shocking read — I’d never thought of churches using data this way — it is sadly entirely unsurprising to me.
Thanks for sharing it. I’m going to go convert to Catholicism now 🤓
@tinyroofnail I was thinking something like that when I read the article this morning: what were all the many rationalized-in-the-moment decisions that led here? Looking at this from this outside, it’s obviously shocking. But to the decision makers on the inside, it probably just feels like the next obvious step.
@jabel This haunts me too. It can never be said often enough that most of us are making what seem to us to be good-at-the-time decisions. Paving the road to hell, etc.
@jabel That’s a really good way of putting it. And it sounds a better note of sympathy, or at least pity. Gotta keep love’s tiny doors open
@ablerism It is. I’ve been homeless for too long, and it’s the only place I’ve enjoyed going — had any joy in — when I do.
@tinyroofnail I have no card to trump “joy,” and cannot recommend spiritual homelessness.
But when I was becoming Orthodox, I thought it obligatory to give a look at Rome also. I ended up Orthodox.
Have you been to an Orthodox Church for more than just once or twice?
@ReaderJohn I have never been to an Orthodox church even once, and still only a handful of times to Catholic ones. Proximity is part of that; I could walk to the nearest Catholic church if I really wanted to (not the safest idea, though), and it’s the oldest surviving one in New England. The two nearest Orthodox church are here and here. If you have any insight based on those links, I’m happy to hear it. I’ve also been physically invited to Catholic church before, albeit a long time ago; never been invited to an Orthodox one.
Anther part though is an existential(?) distance. When I left the nondenom business, I went to an Evangelical Free home churchish group that met at community center in Cape Elizabeth that has since merged back with the E-Free church it was originally part of. Though it definitely changed my trajectory, my circles didn’t really change much at all. I haven’t been attending since covid times first started, and my attendance was already pretty scarce in the year before. I’m “homeless” partly because any change either feels too much of the same (that I have lost essentially all feeling for), or it feels too “foreign,” with some sort of gap that feels difficult to hurdle, especially alone. (And I’m currently competing for an award for the lonliest most isolated religious man in the country right now.) With only slight, if any, exaggeration, looking out from the evangelical perch I grew up in, Orthodoxy might as well be Buddhism and Catholicism is “not necessarily heresy but really it’s heresy, wink wink.” (The question Are we together? famously answered for us by RC Sproul: Mmm… No.) And given that every Christian I know is still within that circle, my own view right now is basically from no man’s land, which comes with all of the certainty and action you’d expect there. 🥴
That’s the gist.
@tinyroofnail Thanks for the detailed picture. I’m reminded that I haven’t been to Maine in more than 30 years, which makes me sad.
For what it’s worth, we have people who travel more than 40 minutes to get to our parish, in some cases despite Orthodox Churches that are closer. But that’s too much to ask of someone in your situation.
I have no better suggestion than @JohnBrady‘s, though you’ll miss the full sensory experience without the aroma of incense, the cloud of witnesses (icons) and such.
@JohnBrady Oh boy. While I would dispute just about any overly burdensome view, I wouldn’t wish my “homelessness” on anyone. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a model for recommendation, even within a bracket for barely surviving something-called-evengelicalism.
@ReaderJohn I hope you find the time to get back up to Maine, and that you say hello when you do. Maybe you could even escort me to an Orthodox service. (Do Orthos visit other parishes when they vacation? There’s a very clear note here, and even specific thanks, at the Catholic church I mentioned for those who attend Mass on vacation, as well as for the the the ever-outsized number of seasonal residents. A sore spot, since we said goodbye to our lovely neighbors last night whose house was bought by just such a seasonal couple. They were driven out of town by closet NIMBYs, corrupt, self-dealing local politics, and shitty, smearing local journalism, but that’s another happy story.)
Thank you both. Someday, some way I’ll make my way to an Orthodox Church. You <del>ortho bros</del> gentlemen have certainly been compelling examples and voices for it.
@tinyroofnail Close to 50 years ago, my wife and I read a satirical set of astrological advice. My wife is a Taurus, and the advice for her sign included keeping on the move because otherwise she was likely to take root and become a tree.
That’s the only astrological advice I’ve ever seen come to pass.
It is hard to get my wife to travel anywhere anymore, though we do take a week in the Traverse City Michigan area every summer or fall. To be fair, my continued singing in a serious chorus tends to keep us from extended travel from September through April or May, while her flower gardening ties us down in the summer months. (Cat care concerns run all year.) My voice is deteriorating rapidly, though, so perhaps three-season travel is in our near future as compensation for the loss of singing.
“Do Orthos visit other parishes when they vacation?” I certainly do, but cannot speak for others. That one spends Sunday morning in church is something I don’t even question anymore, it having been ingrained from my early childhood. I think the Greek Church in Traverse City is starting to expect my visit each year.
@ReaderJohn You give a splendid image of rootedness and solidarity, including in Traverse City. Thank you for that.
Lord knows my excuses are both real and pathetic. This always makes me think of Rebecca West’s Macedonian woman — “sensitive and exalted.” (Forgive the length of that quote, which I’ve probably shared before. You can skip down to the last two, or even just the last paragraph, but the whole thing remains one of the most moving passages I have ever read.)
@tinyroofnail I didn’t recall that long passage, though I’ve read the book. I don’t think I’ve read anything else remotely like Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which was probably recommended for the beauty of the writing.
@ReaderJohn Neither have I — as unique as it is mesmerizing. And so very strange that I’ve only ever heard two people recommend it: Christopher Hitchens and Alan Jacobs
@tinyroofnail I generally have no idea who recommended a book, but I track what I’ve read and when. (I also have a list of the books I want to read, many of which I own already.)
I read Rebecca West less than two years ago. It seems longer ago than that.
@JohnBrady I’m worse: I occasionally discover that I’ve bought a book twice and haven’t read either copy yet.
@ReaderJohn She was my 2020 Covid read, and certainly the largest book I’ve read. Never read War and Peace, but found this funny:
@tinyroofnail Thanks for finally bringing this back around to AI. But yes, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a great book. I filled as many pages of my notebook with quotes from it as from anything I’ve read, probably. (Incidentally: I had recently finished Patrick Leigh Fermor’s trilogy of travel memoirs when I read West, and then last year read the Balkan Trilogy of Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War, so I have now read close to 3,000 pages about Eastern Europe in the years leading up to World War Two. It’s a thing you could do.)
@ablerism Yesterday I drove past “Faith Harvest Church” and while I’d never been what you’d call fond of the name, after reading this I found it deeply disturbing. That’s if it’s not entirely too late to comment on the original link. :)
@JohnBrady I found the battles in War & Peace to be the uninteresting parts and liked the family scenes a lot better. But I was surprised by how readable this book was. // @tinyroofnail
@ablerism I went back to the article and now find this at the top:
Update, August 22, 2025: We’ve substantially changed this story since its initial publication as we investigate factual issues related to Gloo’s current products and capabilities. This story is undergoing further review and will be updated when that process is complete.
I don’t see that as “Never mind. False alarm. Nothing to see here. Move along now.” because the appalling part is that churches would use it, not that it might do what it says.
@ReaderJohn Not much so-called AI does what it’s advertised to do, but in this case it really is the thought that counts.