Inexplicable. Seriously?

Lordy, the stupid things that come out of mouths attached to religion-addled brains.

Too hash? Consider. The Trump-supporting Dallas pastor, Robert Jeffress, preached this to his congregation the day after the failed assassination attempt: "What happened yesterday is also a demonstration of the power of almighty God. I mean, what happened was inexplicable apart from God. God spared him for the purpose of calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation."

Seriously, inexplicable? As in, can't be explained?

That's just dumb. The kid missed the shot. It happens. Perhaps he wasn't a good marksman. Or maybe he felt rushed. He'd just chased a police officer off the roof, so he knew he'd been discovered, and had to work fast. Or the steeply pitched roof affected his aim.

Or this. Trump turned his head at an opportune moment. Trump himself acknowledged that he was turning to look at a chart that he was using in his speech.

Did God make him turn? Don't be absurd. Do you think that, but for God, he'd not have turned to look at that chart?

Trump's movement is completely explicable in terms not just of what he was doing in that moment, but, in a broader existential sense, of the stochastic happenings that carom off each other continually as reality plays out at each point of space and time. Existence is a dice roll. A shooter's intention and a speaker's movement line up, or they don't, without apparent reason. Because of how our brains are wired, we typically only notice when some seemingly momentous coincidence occurs. But make no mistake: coincidences occur constantly.

Which presents a golden opportunity for mush-minded thinking. Because coincidences are happening continually, there are always some available to take the believer wherever he wants to go. Constructing meaning from randomness is utterly commonplace in the belief buffet. It's a trademark feature of religious practice by denizens of pews and pulpits to align notable coincidence with divine providence—at least when when events conform to some desired narrative that the believer wants to advance. With religion, the stupidity (sorry, that word again) never ends.

Sometimes it gushes forth. "If you didn't believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now!" bellowed Republican Senator Tim Scott at the Republican National Convention. "Thank God Almighty that we live in a country that still believes in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega. Our God still saves."

Tim Scott's standard for what qualifies as miraculous is clearly quite low, but it's entirely consistent with what I've observed in a lifetime of watching persons captive to religion. Heck, I used to be one myself. But I must admit I always had a hard time with miracles and other bizarre claims. I made the best of it, but was often secretly embarrassed by the stuff I heard in church. Even as a kid I knew deep down that a lot of it was crazy. What's fascinating to me is that the Tim Scotts and Robert Jeffresses are never embarrassed as they spew nonsense. Nor are many other grownups I observe with dismay.

Genuine miracles don't happen, because the only things that ever do happen are things that can possibly happen. Occurrences that are rare but possible and thus explicable don't count as miracles. Sorry, they don't.

Rare outcomes happen in nature. Rarity means uncommon, not impossible. Everything unfolds on a probability curve. Such rarities include the vast majority of miracles recognized by the Catholic Church, which overwhelmingly tend to be unexplained recoveries from dire disease processes that ought (probabilistically speaking) to be fatal. But we know that in principle such recoveries can occur as a result of entirely natural processes, such as the body's sudden spectacular marshaling of its immune system, for reasons that aren't presently understood.

Just because the doctors you consult don't know why someone got better doesn't make it a miracle that they did. There are monumental examples of this, and utterly banal ones. I got better. Did the antibiotic help or hurt? Don't know. Doctors don't understand the placebo effect, either, but it's undeniably real, and has to be accounted for in medical studies of drugs and procedures. And so on.

For many decades, certain authors and medical practitioners have been exploring the body's own innate capacity for self-healing. Bernie Siegel, for example. Or Andrew Weil.

Interestingly, none of the Catholic miracles involve outcomes that we know in principle can't happen in nature, such as the spontaneous regeneration of an amputated limb. Because humans absolutely can't regrow missing limbs, such regeneration would qualify as a genuine miracle if it ever happened. It never has, and never will. Maybe that should tell you something.

Long ago, some Catholic friends were having a hard time understanding why I claim their "miracles" don't count. What would? they asked. I pointed out the window at the municipal water tower across the field. Having that tower suddenly move several hundred feet would be a miracle, I said. At least once we ruled out David Copperfield-type illusions operating from our perspective in the living room where we were sitting. We could walk over to the tower's new location and kick at its base. Yup, a miracle.

A lot of miracle claims are mush-minded motivated reasoning, as with the Jeffress and Scott quotes above. It's a game religious types seemingly don't realize they're playing, but they do it all the time. The failed assassination attempt lets them tell themselves that Trump has been chosen by God, which is exactly what they wanted to believe anyway. Indeed, there's even been a messianic aspect to this among some Christians, which is bizarre and disturbing.

Thus religious practice often involves exercises in motivated tea leaf reading. Maybe God is trying to tell us this. Or that. Maybe. God never speaks clearly, so the possibilities are endless. The maybes slot effortlessly into worldviews. We get to play out scenarios in our head and choose the ones we like, and then incorporate them into our personal realities. God communicates through "signs," suggested Marjorie Taylor Green, with her really dumb mention of earthquakes and eclipses. Christians thus find themselves in the business of interpreting what earthquakes and eclipses mean. (Apparently they don't mean fault slippage or orbital mechanics.) Robert Jeffress said the failed assassination attempt was God's way of  "calling our nation back to its Judeo-Christian foundation." Sure it was.

But as I wrote elsewhere, there is only one reality, and it's our job to discern it. Not only will religion not help, but it will rot the thinking brains we need to discover and act upon what's real. It will train us how to not think. It will cause us to eschew empirical processes in favor of deeply irrational ones. We can do better than that. And if we're to survive as a civilization, we must.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

Way to go Joe

A good pun, huh?

Making Trump a martyr

Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, wrote this on social media about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump: "Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination."

That is false: three essential words that need to be repeated continually in this age of unreality in which we live.

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at the ballot box.

You save democracy by voting.

Expect a tsunami of MAGA Republicans to echo Vance's despicable slur and blame Biden. This horrible moment is too good a political opportunity, especially for a movement that, taking its guidance from the top, has never had much decency to begin with.

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana said: "Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop."

Incendiary rhetoric? Violent rhetoric? What a stupendous feat of projection—itself an enduring hallmark of the deranged right. There is only one side—only one candidate—with an actual record of incendiary and even violent rhetoric, over and over and over, and it isn't Biden.

Let's be clear. The searing magnitude of Trump's manifest unfitness for office, and threat to democracy and the Constitution, is the greatest danger our national polity has faced since the Civil War. That reality needs to be hammered continually. Doing so isn't an incitement to violence; it's an incitement for the American electorate to rise up and ensure by voting that such an unfit human being never gets close to the Oval Office again.

This tragic incident makes the job even harder, but we mustn't let up. Not for a moment. Every time you hear a MAGA apologist blame Biden for violence, use it as a reminder of what we're up against.

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The Perplexity dialogues: Dielectric grease

This is my second installment of "dialogues" I've had with Perplexity, an AI based search engine. If you didn't see my previous introductory post, you might want to read it first.

Dielectric grease is a (usually) silicone grease that's applied to certain electrical fittings where you want to seal out water or prevent corrosion, such as under a spark plug boot. Because the grease is itself an insulator, I've always wondered why having it on the contacting surfaces doesn't interfere with the flow of electricity. I decided to ask Perplexity. As you can see, it took a few tries to get the answer I was after. The fact that you can proceed iteratively, with followups, is a powerful feature.

Perplexity's initial responses were quite unsatisfying. For example, it said: "The key is that dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it." Which is exactly what I was confused about in the first place; the thing that needed to be explained. How can putting an insulating substance on both parts of connection not impede the flow of electricity?

I tried a third time: "You're not answering my question," I said. "In fact, you're making my point. You say that 'dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it.' Since it's an insulator, why can electricity nevertheless flow between contacts that both have a film of dielectric grease?"

Perplexity responded with "You're absolutely right, I should have explained this more clearly," and then it proceeded to do so. Which makes this an interesting dialogue. I reproduce it below.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the stunningly rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in search and much else that's underway right now. Enormous new data centers are being built at a furious pace by all the big players, and many you haven't heard of, to support the mad rush into AI. They all use enormous amounts of electricity. It's been reported that an AI search uses many times more electrical power compared to a regular Google search. So my Perplexity dialogues are burning copious amounts of electricity. Way to go, Mike.

Another big offender is cryptocurrency mining, which is a batshit crazy waste of electricity.

The impact of AI on a rapidly warming climate is no small concern. Already we have a stressed electrical grid and power generation that's struggling to keep up. We badly need to retire old fossil fuel electrical generation facilities and replace them with carbon-free renewables such as solar and wind. We need clean electrical generation to power our new electric vehicles, heat pumps, and much else.

A striking example of how things have suddenly careened off track is Google itself, which is failing miserably in its previous commitment to be "net zero" on carbon emissions by 2030. Far from reducing its carbon footprint, Google is now growing it rapidly. "Google cited artificial intelligence and the demand it puts on data centers, which require massive amounts of electricity, for last year’s growth," said an AP article.

In addition to the energy problem, there are huge questions about the societal implications of this brave new AI world we're rushing into headlong. Will the good outweigh the bad? Ever the pessimist, I have my doubts.

Be that as it all may, here is my latest Perplexity dialogue. As before, the largest bold headings are my actual questions; all the rest is Perplexity's answers. And as before, if you want you can view the actual Perplexity session from which this dialogue was constructed by downloading the session's html, here. Ignore all the gobbledygook that appears, and click on the Download button in the upper right part of the page. Then open the downloaded file with your browser.

---

Why doesn't dielectric grease interfere with electrical connections?

Answer

Dielectric grease does not interfere with electrical connections because it is a non-conductive lubricant that is designed to protect electrical components from moisture, corrosion, and contamination without disrupting the flow of electricity. The key points are:

• Dielectric grease is an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it.
• When applied properly to tight, well-fitting electrical connections, dielectric grease seals out moisture and contaminants that could otherwise cause corrosion and deterioration of the connection.
• While dielectric grease should not be used to fill loose or poorly fitting connectors, as that could impede the electrical connection, a thin coating on the connection helps protect it without interfering.
• Dielectric grease has its own drawbacks, such as attracting dust and potentially melting in high heat, so it is not recommended for all electrical connections, only those that need protection from harsh environments.

In summary, dielectric grease is specifically formulated to protect electrical components without compromising conductivity when used properly on tight, well-sealed connections.

But why doesn't the thin layer on the fittings impede electrical conductivity?

Answer

The thin layer of dielectric grease on electrical connections does not impede electrical conductivity because:  

 

Dielectric grease is a non-conductive lubricant. It is specifically formulated to protect electrical components without disrupting the flow of electricity through the connection.

 

When applied properly to tight, well-fitting electrical connections, the dielectric grease seals out moisture and contaminants that could otherwise cause corrosion and deterioration of the connection.This helps maintain the conductivity of the connection. 

 

However, dielectric grease should not be used to fill loose or poorly fitting connectors, as that could impede the electrical connection. A thin coating on the connection helps protect it without interfering. 

 

The key is that dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it. When used correctly on well-sealed connections, it enhances conductivity by preventing corrosion, without disrupting the flow of current.

You're not answering my question. In fact, you're making my point. You say that "dielectric grease acts as an insulator, not a conductor, so it does not allow electricity to flow through it." Since it's an insulator, why can electricity nevertheless flow between contacts that both have a film of dielectric grease?

Answer

You're absolutely right, I should have explained this more clearly. The reason why a thin layer of dielectric grease does not impede electrical conductivity is due to the concept of electrical tunneling.

Electrical Tunneling

Even though dielectric grease is an insulator, when applied in a very thin layer between two conductive surfaces, it allows electrons to "tunnel" through the insulating layer, enabling electrical current to flow.

How Electrical Tunneling Works:

• When the conductive surfaces are in very close proximity (on the order of nanometers), the electrons can quantum mechanically "tunnel" through the thin insulating layer of dielectric grease.
• This occurs because the insulating layer is so thin that the electron wave functions can overlap between the two conductive surfaces, allowing the electrons to pass through.
• As long as the dielectric grease layer is sufficiently thin (typically less than 10 nanometers), the tunneling effect dominates, and the grease does not significantly impede the electrical conductivity.

So in summary, the thin layer of dielectric grease acts as an insulator, but the electrical tunneling phenomenon allows current to flow between the conductive surfaces it separates, without being impeded. This is why dielectric grease can protect electrical connections without disrupting conductivity.

That helps. Quantum mechanics to the rescue.

Answer

Based on the search results provided, here is the key information to answer your question: The reason a thin layer of dielectric grease does not impede electrical conductivity is due to the quantum mechanical phenomenon of electrical tunneling.

Electrical Tunneling Explanation

• Even though dielectric grease is an insulator, when applied in a very thin layer between two conductive surfaces, it allows electrons to "tunnel" through the insulating layer.
• This occurs because the insulating layer is so thin (typically less than 10 nanometers) that the electron wave functions can overlap between the two conductive surfaces, allowing the electrons to pass through.
• The tunneling effect dominates when the dielectric grease layer is sufficiently thin, enabling current to flow between the conductive surfaces without being significantly impeded by the insulating properties of the grease.

So in summary, the thin layer of dielectric grease acts as an insulator, but the quantum mechanical tunneling phenomenon allows electrons to pass through without disrupting the electrical conductivity of the connection. This is why dielectric grease can protect electrical connections without interfering with the flow of current.

Yes, you already told me that. I was making a humorous quip about "quantum mechanics to the rescue."

Answer

Ah I see, my apologies. I should have picked up on your humorous quip about quantum mechanics coming to the rescue in explaining why dielectric grease doesn't interfere with electrical connections.

 

You're absolutely right, I had already explained the concept of electrical tunneling through the thin dielectric grease layer, and your comment about quantum mechanics solving the puzzle was a clever and insightful remark on my previous explanation. 

 

Thank you for the feedback - it will help me better recognize and respond appropriately to subtle humor and wit in future conversations. I appreciate you taking the time to engage with me and help improve my conversational abilities.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.

The Perplexity dialogues

Are you familiar with Perplexity? It's one of the new AI-based search engines.

What's remarkable is that you can ask it very detailed questions, which it parses, understands, and responds to with striking specificity. If the answer isn't clear, or you want more information, you can ask follow-up questions, which it will respond to in the context of what's already been said. In this manner you can, if you wish, engage in long-running "dialogues" on a topic, poking and prodding, following tangents, going deeper. It's actually quite amazing.

I've been increasingly using Perplexity to quickly zero in on information I'm looking for, where I wouldn't have bothered with the tedium of a Google search. I still catch myself wondering about some obscure thing or another, and it dawns on me: Just ask Perplexity.

The contrast with Google is stark. For one thing, Perplexity understands your question, even a complicated one, in considerable detail. (I've heard that Google is working to increase the amount of AI in its own query processing.)

For another, it constructs a detailed response that, if all goes well, gets exactly to what you asked. Google responses, by comparison, are still largely a collection of links. It's your job to plow through those links, process the source documents, and (hopefully) find what you're looking for. By contrast, Perplexity pulls the relevant information out of the source documents and constructs a customized response, and that response is very well organized.

Of course, Perplexity isn't infallible. As with all things you encounter on the internet, it's still your job to ascertain your confidence in its answers. I've had situations where I wasn't happy with how it formulated an answer or explained a concept, so I drilled in with follow-ups until it seemed to be making sense. I'll share some of those in later posts. Perplexity does show you its sources, and you might want to consult them on subjects that are very important, or at least verify that they're sufficiently authoritative for your particular needs.

I said you can ask Perplexity complicated questions. Here's an example:

"Suppose I discharge a fully charged battery by n Amp-hours at a very high rate relative to the battery's capacity. The very high discharge rate will reduce the battery's capacity. Can we say anything about how many Amp-hours of charge will be required to bring the battery back to full charge?"

I thought Perplexity's answer to this one was more convoluted than it needed to be, with extraneous detail. After a couple of iterations of follow-up we both agreed that the discharge rate doesn't matter: Amp-hours in equals Amp-hours out. That, too, for another post.

What follows below is one of my first Perplexity dialogues. I've reproduced the questions and answers, but it would have been too tedious to include the linked sources and all the rest that were part of the original session. If you want to see and read it in its original form, which I recommend, click on this. Ignore all the gobbledygook that appears, and click on the Download button in the upper right part of the page. This downloads the source html file. You will then need to open it using whatever mechanism your browser provides for viewing downloaded files. (Firefox, Edge, and Chrome all pop up download dialogues. You'll need to click on the appropriate document when the download completes.)

Here then, the dialogue. And yes, I changed the subject after two questions. I was doing some initial experimentation with Perplexity. The largest bold headings are my actual questions; all the rest is Perplexity's answers:

---

Is conjecture a verb?

Answer

Yes, "conjecture" can be used as a verb. It means to form an opinion or reach a conclusion on the basis of information that is not certain or complete. For example, "He conjectured that the population might double in ten years" or "She conjectured the existence of a completely new species".

 

Yes, but you changed it to "conjectured." Can I say: "If we were to conjecture..." ?

Answer

Yes, you can say "If we were to conjecture..." The word "conjecture" can be used in conditional sentences to express hypothetical situations, as in "If we were to conjecture the outcome, it might lead to a..."

 

Was the author of the Gospel of Matthew the apostle of the same name?

Answer

The authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is a topic of scholarly debate. While the gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew, most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of Judaism. The claim of his gospel authorship is rejected by most biblical scholars, and the author is not named within the text. The attribution "according to Matthew" was added possibly as early as the second century, but the actual authorship remains uncertain. Therefore, it is not definitively established that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was the apostle of the same name.

 

You say "most modern scholars." Can you characterize "most"?

Answer

The term "most modern scholars" generally refers to the majority or a significant number of scholars in a particular field. In the case of the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew, the majority of modern scholars, including biblical experts, hold that the gospel was written anonymously by an unknown Jewish author in the late first century. While the gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew, this attribution is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and the actual authorship remains uncertain. Therefore, "most modern scholars" indicates a prevailing consensus among experts in the field.

 

How strong is that consensus?

Answer

The consensus among scholars regarding the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is generally strong in favor of it being written by an anonymous Jewish author in the late first century, rather than the apostle of the same name. This consensus is based on a variety of evidence, including the lack of direct attribution within the text and the presence of technical legal aspects of Judaism in the gospel, which suggests that the author was a Jewish individual familiar with such matters. While there may be some minority views or debates on this issue, the prevailing scholarly opinion supports the conclusion that the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is not attributed to the apostle of the same name.

 

You didn't mention that much of Matthew's gospel comes from Mark.

Answer

The Gospel of Matthew is believed to have been composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The relationship between the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel According to Mark is a topic of scholarly discussion. It is widely recognized that much of the content in Matthew's gospel comes from Mark, with Matthew incorporating about 600 of Mark’s 649 verses into his Gospel, and Luke retaining about 360 verses of Markan material. All told, 97% of Mark is reproduced in Matthew and/or Luke. This dependence on Mark's Gospel is one of the factors that contribute to the scholarly consensus that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was not the apostle of the same name, but rather an anonymous Jewish Christian writing for Christians of a similar background. Therefore, the strong consensus among scholars regarding the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew is based on various textual and historical evidence, including its relationship to the Gospel According to Mark.

 

Matthew's gospel also doesn't seem to be an eye witness account, does it?

Answer

The Gospel of Matthew is not generally considered an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus. While some early church tradition holds that the Apostle Matthew wrote the book, modern scholars question this attribution. The gospel itself does not explicitly claim to have been written by the apostle, and it is widely believed to have been composed in Greek, possibly by an anonymous Jewish Christian, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The relationship between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as the lack of direct attribution within the text, has led to the majority of scholars believing that the Gospel of Matthew was not written by the apostle of the same name and does not represent an eyewitness account. Therefore, the prevailing scholarly opinion is that the Gospel of Matthew is not an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus.

 

You also didn't mention that Matthew also used Q.

Answer

Yes, you are correct. The Gospel of Matthew is also believed to have used Q, which is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings, and is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to the Q source hypothesis, both Matthew and Luke used the Q document as a source for the sayings of Jesus, and this is one of the factors that contribute to the scholarly consensus that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was not the apostle of the same name, but rather an anonymous Jewish Christian writing for Christians of a similar background.

 

And the apostle Matthew wouldn't have written in Greek, correct?

Answer

The language in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written is a topic of scholarly debate. While some early church tradition and certain scholars have suggested that the gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, the prevailing view among most modern scholars is that it was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The claim that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel in Aramaic and later translated it into Greek is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and there is no extant manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic or Hebrew that predates the Greek manuscripts. Therefore, while the issue is not definitively settled, the consensus among most modern scholars is that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and its original language remains a topic of ongoing scholarly discussion.

 

But if the apostle did write it, he would have written in a Semitic language, right?

Answer

The question of whether the apostle Matthew would have written in a Semitic language is a matter of scholarly debate. While some early church tradition and certain scholars have suggested that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, the prevailing view among most modern scholars is that it was composed in Greek, probably sometime after 70 CE, with evident dependence on the earlier Gospel According to Mark. The claim that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew and later translated it into Greek is not supported by the majority of modern scholars, and there is no extant manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew in Aramaic or Hebrew that predates the Greek manuscripts. Therefore, while the issue is not definitively settled, the consensus among most modern scholars is that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, and its original language remains a topic of ongoing scholarly discussion.

 

So Brant Pitre's contention that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle is outside the mainstream of scholarly opinion.

Answer

Yes, the contention that the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew is outside the mainstream of scholarly opinion. Most modern scholars hold that the gospel was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of Judaism. The claim of his gospel authorship is rejected by most biblical scholars, and the author is not named within the text. Therefore, the view that the apostle Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew is not supported by the prevailing scholarly consensus.

 

Copyright (C) 2024 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here.