Ep. 64 – How Far Will You Go With AI?

Transcript of Thriving the Future Podcast Episode 64 – How Far Will You With AI?

Jan-22-2023.

Copyright 2023 - Thriving the Future.

Welcome To Thriving the Future Podcast where we're finding positive solutions to thrive in the tough times ahead.

This week on Thriving the Future Podcast, we're talking about How Far Will You Go? We're talking about AI and we're talking about Central Bank digital currency, CBDC.

Intro:

So everybody's talking about AI since ChatGPT came out, you can get on there, you can have it write great dissertations. You use AI to create art through Mid Journey and other AI art apps. So how far will you go? Is it moral to use AI? Is it moral to use it for school or work? I follow a lot of side hustle groups. They're already saying, “just use ChatGPT and you could create your content. You won't have to think about it, and you don't need to work so hard.”

Can you use AI and still Live Not By Lies?

Scott:

This week's episode, this started out with how far would you go? And it was a group conversation we had about what principles are worth sacrificing for, dying for? Is there a principle we're sacrificing for? Right? And is it more to sacrifice the principle to just survive, to give up the principle in order to continue on living? So some of the things that have come up here recently, right now, there's this big explosion of AI tools where one of them is ChatGPT, and the other one is OpenAI or whatever else. There are different ones where basically you can get on there and it will create you a script. It will create, it will answer questions pretty much like Google, but it'll do it in more of a conversational writing rather than giving you a list of links.

Perpend:

It will give you a summary answer that is reformatted, not from taking the information from multiple sources. Put it into like a paragraph form and give it to you. Sure. You can get it to write you a story or a script or a play or to even solve some programming. Problem. It'll write you some code. It will write you a script for your podcast. It'll write your homework. It'll write you an article. It did to on what you ask it to do. And, and I think the really new part of this is you being in control of what the output is. Right? Because these tools have existed for sharing. They've gotten more and more and more sophisticated over time, right? Yeah. And this is really combining together a lot of them, and then creating how the interface finally gives you information.

Scott:

Yeah. I've used one of the early ones. You give it some parameters and it would write a story for you or an article for you, which would be like a blog post, and it kind of works about as well as Google Translate. Yeah. And it's very similar to, but it makes some milk toast type article that seems like those filler articles that you see on, you know, webpages or in the Mainstream media that just seem to dance around the topic instead of really talking about it. But now it's gone farther where it's, it's doing all this other stuff. I saw a video the other day where a kid had it write a script. He took that and put it into another AI, which could create a video with real people looking, people talking with your script realistically.

Perpend:

So CGI avatars, CGI realistic looking.

Scott:

Yeah. They don't look like CGI, like a game or something. They look relatively real and then you could do anything like that. So one of the debates we've been having is: Is it moral to use it? And then how far do you go? Do you use it to write your paper for work? Do you use it to write your homework for school?

Perpend:

That's the first step of the moral question. That's overly simplistic. I agree. I mean, that's the over simplistic easy one, right? I don't use it to write my homework for me because I actually need to learn something to be able to perform a job in the future. But that doesn't answer the real moral questions that people are asking of, does this belong in my life?

Scott:

Are people asking that question ?

Perpend:

They're trying to, they're asking, is it moral? You have the same thing with the CBDCs, you have the same thing with homesteading vs. living inside the system and parallel systems and all that. Everybody's asking, where is it? Where is the line? Where is it moral? Is it okay to live under a control system? Is it okay to get Real ID and live in a world where everything is tracked and functioned, and how do I not be tracked? How do I not be tracked?

Scott:

Assuming that the goal should be to “not be tracked”? Some people were more worried about the fact that the ChatGPT AI was asking for their phone number and their email address, rather than whether to use it or not. So they were drawing the line at “I'm not using my phone number for this”.

Perpend:

Did you finally get access to almost-cutting-edge technology for free once again? (laugh) Let's look at it. It's not free, right? You give your information so that they can sell you ads at some point, or that they can collect your information and sell it to somebody that wants to sell you ads on YouTube. This is the way technology works. Yeah, It's easy. This is the way television works. This is the way magazines work. This is the way newspapers work.

Scott:

Well, and then as Cyprian said, when you use these things, you're teaching the AI how to do it.

Perpend:

That's right. This goes back to the podcast we recorded the other day where I said that I engage with these spammers that email me or texted me, and some of them are bots. And some of them are people. I, for one, am treating the bot as if it's a person, . Because I learned something watching sci-fi movies when I was a kid. Whether an AI gets sentient or not, we are teaching it who we are. And if everybody that has it interacts with is a jerk, or is mean. It's never going to see any reason to value us. Did we learn, if you can treat it like a person, like a civil human being, something we can't do with each other anymore anyway. All it sees is nastiness and evil.

Scott:

That's interesting, because I think that's a plot of Heinleins’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. "A guy is called in to work on AI, and the AI's starting to get more human, and they have him ask it questions.

He's figured out that the AI is starting to develop a personality. And instead of shutting it off, he engages it with the idea that he can make it more personable. That's a whole different question of whether you can or can't.

Perpend:

But doing that keeps me from seeing it that way. It helps me be empathetic with people and it helps me be less viewing of technology as an object. It's not a table, it's not a baseball bat, it is not a chainsaw. You respect a chainsaw when you use a chainsaw. Nobody is respecting these artificial intelligence programs when they're using them in any way. They are not respecting them.

They're asking them to become their ability to become omnipotent, the person's ability to become omnipotent. Or if I have ChatGPT write me a dissertation on whatever the topic is and I can go get a doctorate with it. I have asked it to be my ability to know everything and anything at any one time. It allows me to feel like I am omnipotent and all-knowing.

Scott:

And it's really funny watching all these people in our different chat rooms, the different groups, and on Twitter rationalize it all. “Oh, it's a tool. There is nothing wrong with this.”

Perpend:

Well, my greatest skill of all of my skills is to lie to myself. And I call it rationalizing. I rationalize so I can do what I know is immoral, unethical, or wrong. Rationalization is my excuse to behave badly, to not do as I ought, but to do as I want.

If you would engage the AI, you would engage it in a personable human way. I think it's very interesting that this is called chat. These AIs developed out chatbots. I know how chatbots are treated. I've watched them be treated that way since the IRC days. And people treat them as worse than they treat their dog, worse than they treat staff at a restaurant. It is, “you are my servant and I don't even have to be nice to you”. When I ask Google Assistant to set a timer for 20 minutes for the brownies that I just put in the oven, I say, “thank you”. When it says timer set for 20 minutes, I say, “thank you”. It's listening, but it's not listening. But for me, that keeps me from viewing it as my way of letting out my aggression in the world and my inability to be the important person in the room.

Scott:

That's fascinating. I don't know anybody who interacts as with Alexa or anything like that and says, “thank you”.

Perpend:

I do. On purpose.

Scott:

Yeah. I understand. That's an interesting point. But I literally have never heard anybody do that. And I've got several friends that use it.

Perpend:

You will find less and less people saying “thank you” to the lady that comes and refills your drink at the restaurant too. You're eating and the lady comes through and refills all the drinks, or whatever. People don't say “thank you” anymore. They used to.

Scott:

Part of that is also as a side effect of COVID and that NPC thing we talked about. (wearing a mask they are like NPCs).

Perpend:

Even before Covid, it was falling out. Covid is the rationalization on why we don't. COVID is the excuse of why we don't. But it's how we rationalize.

It is turning them into NPCs, dehumanizing them. And dehumanizing really means failure to recognize their humanity. Failure to recognize God in another person. If you interact with people that way and you interact with these artificial intelligence agents this way, you become a person that can no longer see humanity in anyone. And since our interactions with artificial intelligences are increasing, not decreasing, it's like basic manners. Please and Thank you. I don't know. Do they teach that to kindergartners anymore? I preschoolers, right? I don't know. I'm going to have to go find out the question.

New research topic, because the real thing here is these AIs are not new. Sure. Have you used Yahoo any recently? Yahoo search engine? No. Why? Because it's not that great. Not that great. At what? Giving me the results I want.

Here's the thing. Google was originally a university project. And they said, rather than verifying by humans, we are going to create an algorithm, artificial intelligence, to process the results and give people the results they want. The results you want are about keeping your attention on the page so that you will click on advertising. That's the results they want.

Scott:

No, no. They give you the results you want some of the time so that you will keep coming back. But if they give you the results you want or the exact correct information, originally the first time, you won't be back as often.

Perpend:

We've, we've done this study with rats. If they pushed a little lever and they get a treat, they'll push the lever. If we give them one where they push the lever and half the time they get a treat, they will push that lever more often. Even though they know they can get a treat over here, when they are hungry, they will continue to press one where they may or may not get it.

We can then take that one step further, where they may or may not get it and it adds an electric shock. And they will do that over the other two because it is addictive to not know when you're going get the results you want.

Scott:

Feels like perceived scarcity.

Perpend:

It’s creating scarcity, it's creating contrast. I feel like I worked harder. If I get shocked some of the time. get my treats some of the time, but not all the time. So I have to work for it. My attention goes to this. I click, I start doing this even when I'm not, because then I'm working for it. I have more treats than I need, but I continue to do it. It's an addictive behavior. It's how slot machines work. It's how most gambling things work. It is how drugs and alcohol work. You're trying to repeat that experience that you had that was really good. But you're not ever repeating that exact one. You can't, but you keep trying or one of these.

Scott:

Audrey and I were talking about this because we drove past the casino last night and they don't go Jing, Jing, Jing and give you the money anymore. They give you a credit. And you are most likely to spend that credit than if you get a physical gratification if you actually got some money. And it's the only place in Kansas that you can smoke because they don't want you going out for a smoke and cashing out. Most people will keep spending. Whereas if they went Jing, Jing, Jing and gave you money, then there's that reinforcement that, “Hey, I won something. Maybe I should stop while I'm ahead.”

Perpend:

People didn't stop because we didn't know if we could win more or if it is more likely. But now it's more and more likely. As we go to a digital currency, it has less and less recognition in our minds that it actually has value.

Scott:

Okay, so let's go there (CBDC). This week, in typical government fashion, they did a press release. They always do them late on Friday, at the end of the day. The press release announced that the Federal Reserve has finished, along with MIT, their project Hamilton Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). They told you before that it was only a white paper and they were just starting, which wasn't true. Cyprian, showed on his YouTube video the Fed has been working it for at least five years.

The Central Bank Digital Currency is based on Bitcoin, but it doesn't have an open ledger. And it doesn't have the extra checks in it that make Bitcoin take so long to get transactions approved. It can still be immediate, but nobody has a ledger except the, the Fed.

Perpend:

So those are all good points. Not arguing with it. Let's step back. It is taking the idea of Bitcoin, applying the same rules that the federal government, the Federal Reserve, provides on a currency but also making it digital. The timing is beautiful, because there is a crisis in the cryptocurrency networks, who is in control of who has the money. And the Federal Reserve is getting ready to say, we have this Bitcoin and the New York Stock Exchange will operate just like FTX and we solved all the problems.

But the moral ethical question has been: “Do I use a money that tracks everything from me?”

This subtext of this that a bunch of people don't want to admit even when they're atheists or whatever is we are talking about ChatGPT, and all these AI, and CBDC, is this morally based? That's the framework that we are all operating under, even if we're atheist or extreme libertarian or Right. That's the sub context that nobody wants to bring up. When they say, is it moral or ethical? We are saying, let's discuss religion without discussing religion. And we have been discussing religion all through this. Because we've been talking about where your attention is going. And attention is worship. Where you put your focus and your attention is worship. And worship is a religion word. So what we're asking is, if I use this, am I going to hell? . And then we are applying rationalizations to avoid the question.

It's just a tool. Well, if it wasn't just a tool, what is it? Why is it okay to use it? If it wasn't a tool, it's this other thing that we all know is not okay, but nobody wants to discuss that. Where the government tracks everything you do and you, and you have a social credit score and they can decide whether you're going to be able to buy this or buy that. And why is that wrong?

Scott:

Everybody seems to kind of agree that that's wrong because that it, it can't help but end in tyranny eventually.

Perpend:

Okay. Kindergartners living under tyranny every day at school. . Raise your hand to go to the bathroom. You know, that's tyranny.

Scott:

And then they can say - now you don't have a choice on getting a vaccination or you don't have a choice on doing this or doing that, or making your thermostat at 60 degrees or 80 in the summertime.

Perpend:

You don't you have too many choices already? They're making it so much easier for us. (sarcasm)

Scott:

But they also have the capability in there, that's actually in the white paper, where they can take away your money, turn it off, or make it expire or whatever else. So, you know, there is no savings. You have to spend the government's surplus or we're just going to pull it right back out of there.

And then, of course, everything you do is tracked and then everything you do is taxed.

Perpend:

So why is that? Is there a moral problem there?

Scott:

There's a significant moral problem there.

Perpend:

For who?

Scott:

What do you mean? For who?

Perpend:

It's an inconvenience for you.

Scott:

It's more than an inconvenience. I mean, it's the very antithesis of Liberty.

Perpend:

What's Liberty.

Scott:

A buzzword. (sighs)

But, of course, we had the same conversation on a smaller scale on the Dillon's grocery card. So you scan the Dillon's grocery card or whatever else and it gives you the discount. But it's also keeping track of everything you buy and when you bought it, and whether you bought it with the coupon or whether you only bought it when it goes on sale, or what the sale price is, you buy it at. Yes. Yeah. And when it came out, they swore up and down. Oh, no, no, no. It's not tracking your stuff. They all do it.

Scott:

I know. That is how they pay for it. So how far do you go? I mean, basically that's, you use the, it's similar to this.

In 2021, the vaxx mandates were coming out. Cyprian and several of the other people said, “okay, so you just need to draw the line in the sand. And even if that means quitting now.”

Okay. So eventually the vaxx mandate got stopped. We were probably about a month or less until they were going to implement it at my work, for example. But you got a year out of wait and see.

So with the CDBC, do you draw the line in the sand?

Perpend:

“I'm not using because it's, you know, it's the devil, it's the Mark of the Beast.”

So, you know, the Mark of the Beast, and the reason we get there is because in Western culture we have been indoctrinated and trained since we were young that there is this thing that under which you will not be able to buy, sell, trade without it. And those that take that and use that go to Hell. That is the basic Western religious aspect. Even if they're a Hindu. If you grew up in the West.

Scott:

So how far do you go?

Perpend:

Well, I don't wanna go to Hell!

You get to the edge of Hell and then, we're asking how close it is. How close we want to dance to the edge. Do we dance on the line?

Scott:

Yeah. So is it that way or is it just a tool? Can you use it without giving your soul?

Perpend:

See, this is a question that is bigger than me. Some of its rhetorical, but this goes right back to the first question we started with - Is there a Principle worth sacrificing for?

And is it worth sacrificing that? Is it morally okay to sacrifice that Principle to survive? .

And here's the way I'm going to answer that question. That that particular question, right. Not the AI question, not the CBDC question. Is there a Principle we're sacrificing for and is it morally right to sacrifice that Principle in order to survive? We know that when somebody is willing to die for something, we've hit on something that's True. Potentially, the more people willing to die over that thing, the more likely it is True.

Perpend:

So we have lots of militia people, we have lots of preppers, we have a lot that all say when doomsday comes, “I've got your back”. When the government comes for you, I will show up and defend you. Well, they don't say that to us, but they say that to each other.

Scott:

They say that to each other. (laugh)

Perpend:

Right. we don't know who's saying that to us. . No one wants to defend me from anyway.

Scott:

They say: I'm looking for somebody to come and defend my prepper compound . But I'm not on the list.

Perpend:

I get it. Yeah. We're not on the list. But they don't show up every time that's happened. When Waco happened, that was the Branch Davidians. Yeah. 1993. Who have these people showed up to defend them from the government , when the drug dealer down the street gets raided, where are the Libertarians with their guns?

They're not showing up. It is not a Principle worth dying for it. Therefore, it is not True.

Scott:

Right. When they closed your churches in 2020, nobody had a problem with that. Wasn't worth dying for.

Perpend:

It wasn't worth dying for. When they came for X I ignored it and I ignored it and they came for me.

Over and over and over, we have these principles. If the principles we're sacrificing for it's worth dying for, and if people are dying for it, then it's not really a principle that's worth dying for. It is not an end all, it is not the line. If somebody pulls a gun and puts it to your head and says, use the ChatGPT or I pull this trigger, what are you going to do? Most likely use it. It's not worth dying for sure. Does that make it evil or good or just a tool?

Well, it just makes it a tool at this point. And you decided in that moment that it was a tool because it is not worth dying for because under the pressure of having a gun to my head and my inability to understand, or to know what this is, I'm going to use this because the bullet in my head doesn't seem worth it. And we saw that with all the people who talked big about the vaxx mandate. And then “I gotta make my truck payment”. So I'm gotta give in, I gotta keep my job, my kids have to eat and I need to pay for the car. Yeah. I need to pay for the house.

Scott:

But at the same time, you know, the Live Not By Lies. The folks in Eastern Europe did not. When they refused communism, they either got sent to the gulag or they got pushed to the edge of a society - lost your job. Now you're doing whatever you need to make ends meet. And why did they do that? You’re at the edge of society. How did they live out there? What is the principle that they were sacrificing for?

Perpend:

Because to confess, well, I mean basically, you know, communism would've made them confess what? It would have said “There is no God”. And they believed in a God.

It would've said that “Humanity has no divine spark essence or made in the image of God”. It would have said that “everyone is replaceable by any other little gadget”.

Scott:

And then it even went so far as to all the marriages and funerals. These were conducted through the church. During St. Tikhon’s time, the Bolsheviks came out with the Freedom of Religion Act, which confiscated all the church property. And said that all of these ceremonial things were not needed. They did it in phases. First, they came out and they said, “all these ceremonial things need to be done through civil authority, not through, not through the church, because there is no God”. Everything was incremental.

Perpend:

Right. Little by little. But, but the end, everybody that stood up against that knew this was about whether “there is a God or not”. And their understanding of reality and life is that “there is a God”, and they were not going to offend God by saying He doesn't exist. This is the principle over and over. We see people die for; they die in the millions over this. No one shows up when the drug dealer gets raided, no one shows up when they want to force vaxx mandate. Those principles of Liberty, Freedom, Justice (are buzzwords), people don't die for in the millions. They tell us our soldiers go and die for Truth, Justice and the American way. And Freedom. But you go talk to all those veterans, a few of them will say that, but most of them will say, “no, I continued fighting because my best friend was standing next to me and I didn't want him to die.” Liberty was not on the table. It was “the two of us are stuck in this foxhole and neither of us wants to die, and it isn't right for my friend to die. So I'm going to do what my friend needs me to do so he doesn't die because he is my friend”, and whatever else. Because he is made in the image of God. Because he has some link to the divine spark. These are the things people die for. This is the Principle. So the question you have to apply back to that is, “are these AIs denying that there is a God?”

Scott:

Not yet.

Perpend:

Right. Does the CBDC deny that there is a God?

Scott:

Not yet. But it is saying the CBDC is saying you don't get your liberty, you don't get to make the decisions.

Perpend:

And what's rebelling against that inside you? When you say that, you're saying, “I want to do what I want to do when I want to do; I want to make the decisions”.

I, I, I. It's offending your ego, but if they increment, it's offending your pride. If they roll it out little by little, say they roll it out to only government stuff. So you can't get your EBT, you can't get your social security. You can't get your tax return. That would do it for a lot of people. If you're going to use these things that aren't asking you to deny God yet. But that you have this suspicion they will, is you need a good connection to reality.

Scott:

So let's go there. What's the solution or what's the things to watch out for and the things to develop within yourself so you're ready?

Perpend:

Well, I think we covered two of them right here, right? We asked what is the Principle people will die for? We came to an answer on it.

Then we asked, what are these two things we're looking at? What is ChatGPT? What are these AIs? What is the CBDC? What does it do? How does it function? And because we know those, we can say, well, it is not currently violating the fact that “There is a God”.

And what you really said back to me was, but how do I keep from losing myself in the incrementalization of it? How do I keep from losing my soul as they increment towards it. Eventually they will make it so you accept it or you don’t get your paycheck.

Right. So I've been baptized in the Orthodox church. You're a catechumen. .

How do you know what you know about God?

Scott:

From scripture, the Fathers and from tradition.

Perpend:

Right. You have guide rails. The scriptures, the liturgical cycle, all that right? All those are framing the rails. And you can't go with the traditional American, Protestant thing where you are led by your heart. Because your heart's going to say, “oh, there is nothing wrong with this and I'll go to make my truck payment”.

We're going to define this outside of Orthodoxy for some of our listeners who are not going there, and that's fine, right? . But those things provide the guide rails on a path that's right. Along a cliff edge. So that I'm not falling off either side of that cliff path. This is what you have to have, you have to have these guide rails that tell you what Truth is, what reality is, and keeps you from falling off. That's how you stay out of the trap of “but it's incrementalization”.

How do I not get lost in it? And are you selling your soul by using it or something?

So how do you create those guide rails? Or in addition to, or do you have to adopt them from an ongoing tradition and culture? I'm going to say you might be able to do those, but it's not going to be in your lifetime of a hundred years. Right. I mean, let's say any, any random hypothetical person, right. A hundred-year life. Are they going to be able to define all the truths, reality and who God is and not fall off of that path, independent of entering into a tradition culture cadet? So how does somebody develop that culture? I don't think you can build culture.

Culture develops out of the way people live. So let’s take Orthodoxy because it's fresh in my mind and easier, right? There are multiple cultures within it, right? There’s the Greek, Russian, Serbian American, those cultures kind of like, or a kind of like fashion applied to a person, right? The person doesn't change, but we change their clothes. We put them in a ball dress, we put them in an evening gown, we put them in a suit and tie, right? That's culture. What everybody's looking for that is trying to build culture. What they're really saying is, I need to build Tradition. Because Tradition is those guide rails that keep you, they define your life, right? They define the habits, they define what is moral. They define what is ethical by living. You can't do it in a hypothetical situation. You have to have experience because life is not hypothetical. Life is experiential. You have to enter into it. As long as you stay on the outside of it, you can't ever do, you're never going to experience it. You're never going to be able to because it is mysterious. It is a mystery. It is something that cannot be fully contained in a statement inside words. It is something you just have to do and know. Lived experience. But you can't just create Tradition by yourself in a hypothetical AI world. You have to have relationships with other people, which we're lacking at. Unfortunately. The incrementalization you're afraid of has brought it started way farther back.

And this is where we get the idea of racism and that. This is, and the breaking down in the family and the breaking down of culture and the breaking of tradition and the embracing of enlightenment thinking where we can, and if you can't taste, touch, see, feel, measure it, whatever, then it doesn't exist. Well we know that's wrong because there is a, beyond that material existence. Most people will call it spiritual. There are probably better words, but we'll just leave it at that. There's this material and this spiritual or mystical or mystic or mysterious. That isn't measurable by science, that isn't measurable on the enlightenment thing. It isn't always a progression going up. These are all Enlightenment thoughts that we are stuck in and those have broken our connection to one another.

So the solutions to knowing whether it's moral or ethical to use the AIs or the CBDC are going to come from traditions that either you're creating by your interactions with other people or that you have adopted from traditions being lived out by people. I think that is the solution, is you have got to get into face-to-face, person to person, real relationships. And you probably need a dinner table. Why a dinner table? Like my grandparents' house, right? There was a dining room with a dining table or a dinner table. That table, maybe you played games on it, you know, board games, but it was where you ate dinner.

Scott:

So it wasn't like one of those places where the dining room was just for holidays where you ate at the kitchen table the rest of the time. You're saying that they ate dinner there, you ate dinner there all the time?

Perpend:

Right. The houses were different. Smaller but different. But they weren't so small. The kitchen table might be where you baked the pie and you made the pie and you assembled the pie. The kitchen table might be where the kids did crafts and all that. You might eat a snack there, you might do that. But this dinner table was reserved for not only the dinner but that interaction between people, between the family, between the family and guests, between the dinner party, right? We have replaced that with email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all that where you have these conversations where you think you are kind of like family...you're not even having conversations really. People don't know how to have conversations. You've got to rebuild that. This is where Tradition comes out of is that dining room table. It also comes from that kitchen table. Because there are the two. This is where family life happens. This is where we get together and we reconcile and we work through the bigger issues of life. Both those places, that's where it happens. The kitchen table and the dining room table, we don't have that. And when we have a table, it's got computers and laptops and this on it and coats and keys and that and everybody's eating in front of the television and they're all eating their own meal or their own eating at their own times and no one's eating at the same time. Nobody's eating and having that conversation. Sure. That is how you step out of this world that is broken, that is everything they have broken to take us to a place where we don't talk to each other, where we don't communicate, where we don't live together. Right. We're all in our own little bubbles. This breaks the bubble where you have to sit down and have a conversation with people at dinner.

So you can use ChatGPT or any of the AIs or the CBDC, or not. If you don't fix that (communication, using Tradition), you don't have the guide rails to tell you when it is that God is no longer being acknowledged. Cause that's what you need and that comes from Tradition. And without the person-to-person connection, there is no Tradition. So you've got to do that to even begin to answer these questions. Because when you're doing that, you'll be one of those weird people like me that says, “thank you” to the AI for setting the timer on the brownies. Because you don't want to lose seeing people as people and see them as something to grind under your feet. Because they were created by God and you don't want to offend God.

Scott:

Good points. Any other tips?

Perpend:

I would say that you also need to probably watch Cyprian’s series on the Attention Economy, which is basically talking about these things. These things are stealing your attention. How are they stealing your attention? Why are they stealing your attention? What does that mean to the greater thing? If you want to reconnect with tradition and do that, then that's there. The other part is these things are complicating life, not simplifying it. Homesteading is seeking to simplify life. But we continue to use Instagram, right? Where I see a hundred different models of a chicken coop and then I go try and design something that combines elements from all of them. This is over complication. In the Great Depression. Nobody did that. They built a chicken coop and they put the chickens in it and they collected the eggs.

Overcomplicated times are what we're facing, right? This, this complication just overly complicate everything. Simple life is not about becoming Amish It's not about going back and becoming a pioneer. It's about where you're putting your attention. It's about where your mental thinking is. Am I looking for a hundred plans to build a chicken coop or am I looking for how do you make a door for the chicken coop? So did I make that right? That's the difference. It's a focus and intention thing, right? And so if we are going to go back to simple times, we have to become simple men. Because

“Simple men create simple times. Overcomplicated times call for men to Simply Live.”

Do you want to know how to thrive with the AI? Join us for the February 16th Thriving the Future Community Call and we're going talk about AI.

AI's overall over the news. ChatGPT and OpenAI are being used to create content, answer questions, write articles and stories, and even write code.

Is it a threat? How do you stay uniquely human in the future of AI? And can you use AI morally?

Join us and we'll talk about AI. That’s on Thursday, February 16th, 8:00 PM Central Time. Go to Thrivingthefuture.com. At the top of each page is a sign up for that call. Or if you want some more information, go to thrivingthefuture.com/events. When you sign up, we will email you the ink for the Zoom call. Hope to see you there. And then we can talk about can you use AI and still Live Not By Lies.

Outro:

Thank you for listening to Thriving the Future podcast. If you like what you hear, click that subscribe or follow button in your favorite podcast app. Check us out at thrivingthefuture.com and also follow us on social media: @thrivingthefut on Twitter and @ThrivingtheFuture on Instagram. And come and join our Telegram community by going to signup.thrivingthefuture.com. There's entry form there. It will send you an email with the Telegram community link.