Welcome to the podcast! Come be part of the conversations that happen around my kitchen table. He's John Vranian and he's been a stand up comic for more than 30 years. She's a man to McKinney and she's been my daughter for her whole life. Our family believes laughter is a gift from God. We often discover it while discussing culture, faith and family. So go ahead and pull up a chair neighbor. Can I call you Carl? There's plenty of room here for you. Welcome Carl to our kitchen table. We're getting ready to go on a big long. Wait a minute, you have to say welcome again because I think the music was too loud. Welcome Carl. Welcome again Carl. Welcome to you. Welcome to both of them. Can you hear through that hat? Look as we're going to your headphones over his hat. And look at our going to do a show next Saturday. Ain't we? We are. Are you nervous? We does. It has been a minute since we did stand up for the ninja. I wanted to know if you're nervous but first we have to acknowledge that dad just said it does. That's a reference to the dog. It was now answering questions with full sentences but they're not structured quite right yet. Yeah. He's not even quite the right verbs. But the fact that he's using verbs at all at this age is just so such a brilliant, the kidney baby thing. But I asked him the other day. We are talkers. I said who gave you that cheese and he goes, Emmy does. Emmy does. She does. He was so cute. So yeah, are you concerned or are you at a level now where you're like, yeah, we'll be fine. Um, or is that what are you going to find? I mean, days in preparation. Roman eight tells us that I will become God will work this out for my good. Okay. So he's going to Jesus Jesus. Is that why you've been in the rocking chair all day? Are you a little nervous and mentally preparing for it? No, I was just tired. We've got six days. Look at the way his microphone matches his shirt. I know. He's changed it last week. It's cool. Uh, okay. All good. Good. So I've been writing like crazy now that something's on the calendar. Do you want to tell him? Do you want to before like for the rift session, I'd be showing up with nothing. It's like, I hope they don't ask me if I have something because I got nothing. You want to tell me a new joke? I've got enough for the last the rest of the year. So is he having a new joke? Or did you already rift since then? Did you do it on the rift session? I don't listen to him. Oh, I'm not ready to beat. No. No, I'm still working on that stuff. You can't just steer the premise. You have to get the premise out of your head. I don't know that I want to send it out to all of America right now. Are you afraid that Carl's lost to you? Most of America's blissfully unomarital or apodca. You don't need your notes. You can just launch into it. The premise is that I don't think that I grew up with the same animals that my ancestors did because of the phrases of, you know, work me like a dog or sicker than a dog or drunk is a skunk. It's like, what were you doing to these animals? It's not a bad thing. And it's like, I got a friend who likes to say he's happy as a clam. It's like, how introverted do you have to be to get credit and still get credit for being happy? I mean, or just to look at that creature and be like, I bet he's happy. I'll bet he's gone around the bottom with it. How could he not be happy? Right. There's no form of locomotion. No ways to see. He can't hear. No. He's just existing. Locked in an opaque shell. Not even a pearl in the old clam. Okay. Everybody wants to be as happy as a clam. So I was looking up other phrases that are similar. It's your happy. She could go a while with that setup. I don't know. That's actually pretty good premise. No, they were, I could go up gone. There's crocodile tears and other. Yeah. Much other ones. What was the one that made me laugh about time? What was that one? Oh, yes. Two shakes of a lamb's tail. Oh, that's a lot of them. Do you not have clocks? I think they've those sheep alone. That was me. I was reading off of a stadium. I said, oh, two shakes of a lamb's tail. It's like, apparently our ancestors didn't have clocks. We've got to, we have got to come up with a better way to keep track of time. That was a half shake. I don't know how to read that. A shake and a half of a lamb's tail. He's really moving. Yeah. That would made us laugh. Yeah. Anyway, shower thoughts. You'll be ready to go by Saturday. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We haven't done a show together for a while. Yeah. We in Luke. And if you're in the Indianapolis area, green castle specifically. I believe it's open to the public. Probably have to double check on that. I think it is. Let us know. Send us the email. Even as we speak, I'm not sure it's on my website. It might be. We had to take things off the website. So your critics wouldn't harass our clients. That's true. We had to read just, but that was, that's been years ago. I'm starting to feel bold. And now those people are harassing other people. Yeah, they've moved on. They're harassing other people so I can. So it is officially she asked for promotional materials a little while ago. So new life Baptist church in green castle on Saturday, February 28th. And I don't know what the start time is. The pod ninja featuring John. John Brian. John Brian. John Brian. Luke's going to do three hours of the day. John Brian featuring for Luke McKinney, the pod. I can barely talk enough to get through a podcast, let alone three hours. That's true. I would come to that show if you were going to fill three hours. I'd have to read something. It'd be like a filibuster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stand on stage reading. You couldn't talk about. The worst of William Shakespeare. You couldn't talk about how weird animals were. And not time fast. Not for a significant amount of time. Yeah. This is the most he's talked for all day, I think. Yeah. At least been sleepy. And I had to freshen up for this. So get some sleep. Optimize. That's true. I'll say if you need an app every Sunday so that you'll be fresh enough to talk on the podcast, I wouldn't lie. Let your sleep. Yeah. I go with that. That's a good deal. I better not be sick again. Because I was sick with a sinus infection or a cold or whatever. And then I got over it for a week. And then I got it again. Like same exact thing for another three or four days. It's true. And that's disheartening. Because your body is supposed to learn from the previous, how to fight it off. How to fight it off. My body, my immune system has. It's supposed to get sick from the same thing. My immune system has ADHD. It's like, oh, I forgot. Well, how do you know that it was the same thing? I've never seen this before. Maybe one time should have paid attention the first time. Let's let his nose run again. Maybe it was COVID one time and like, rheumatic fever. The second time. That's probably it. Maybe so. So the she's seeing wasps in sex again. Yep. And it's there's no flying outside. And then you guys are. Oh, you know what else. Was it? Can I tell that you also took the cover off the air conditioning? No, I didn't. Oh, you didn't. Okay. Well, there you go. Why didn't you? You were going to. Aren't you supposed to? Because I'm not fooled by no false spring. I love that. I love. I totally was fooled. I was like, all right. I'm going to have to start mowing soon. And now I didn't think that at all. I did. I'm full of hope, John. It got to be close to 70 last week. I know. And my thought was not, oh, yay, spring is here. My thought was it's going to be awful. In my head. My thoughts back into the 20s. That winter book closed. He literally opened. He literally came to me. He came to me and he said, I'm going to take the cover off that air conditioner. He put away the snow blower. You wouldn't do that. I did. It didn't shed. And there's snow today. It's not enough for a snow blower. You're right. But I thought to myself, this man was born in Indiana, raised in Indiana. He lived here a long time. He hasn't noticed a pattern. He hasn't noticed how. He thinks February is the end of winter. If I don't acknowledge it, it's not safe to start thinking about spring with any sort of hope until the end of March. I tell you, we have to get into April before you can even start to go, OK, I'm going to be warm now. I don't learn. It's snowed in April like three or four years ago. It can snow. That's what I'm saying. You can be cautiously hopeful in April. I just flipped through life, not recognizing patterns of seasons or things my wife said a week ago. I just go through life. So how disappointed are you that it's snowing again? Does it bother you? It's another day. OK. That I'm going through. He didn't take off the cover after all. So that does show not that a little snow. A lot of people don't cover theirs at all. Yes. And I would say too, because I mentioned it to the kids. I was like, your dad was going to take the cover off that air conditioning unit. And I just don't think he realizes what month we're in still. Yeah, I don't think he knows. But what I told Kami was I made the conscious decision not to argue with you about it, because I was like, I don't handle any of that stuff. I'm not the one who winterizes the hose, like takes turns off the water spigot. I'm not the one who takes care of that air conditioning unit. I was like, it's fine. If he wants to, that is domain and he can be really surprised. He wants to actually spring six weeks early. Well, but I told her I just feel like he's going to be a little disappointed if he does this work and then winter returns inevitably. Like it's going to. So here it is. So the fact that you didn't actually follow through with that plan shows some forward thinking I would say. Yeah, good for you, Luke. Oh, I'm getting credit for laziness. Right. Look at you. It's just a, we just know we just know that Indiana of spring is a is a fickle and unpredictable thing. And it likes to, I mean, it was 60 at Christmas time. Mm-hmm. Christmas day, it was like 60 degrees here. Yep. That's nuts. But then it got really cool. Yeah, for several weeks. Like basically all the way through January, January was pretty miserable. Our snows stayed around. We've talked about this already, but like when it snowed, it actually stayed through to the next snow again. So the ground was sufficiently frozen. And if we can make it to, like if we can get to spring once we do and not dip back into like an April snow, that would really hurt things. But if we can kind of smoothly transition like we're supposed to, the flowers, the buds, on the trees are probably going to be really pretty this year. Probably. After a solid freeze like what we've had. Yeah. But I do remember it wasn't that long ago. I was driving the kids to one of their play practices in, it was in April and there were like pink buds on the trees, pink ones. And then it snowed. And green everywhere. And then it was like, it was that mental image of all this heavy like wet, thick snow on those branches and things were falling off. Branches were coming down because it was so heavy. And I was like, oh, no, not that. Well, Collin and I were out in the, in the side yard last fall, you may remember. And we planted a bazillion bulbs and blocks, seeds and what are they? Are they two lips? There's two lips. There's daffodils. There's one or the other, what do you say other bulbs? Two lips and daffodils. And there's something else too. And I can't remember what they are. Not miracles. Anyway, and we planted a bunch of flocks and those things all have to be like frozen. They have to be exposed to cold. Well, you got that. And we did get that. And so we'll see what sort of a job we did in probably late June when those come up. Well, the two lips will be up in April. And then they'll get snowed on and they'll die. Well, I should bring Collin over to see the fruit of his labor when they start. Should be the flower of his power. Should be nice. And then we're going to throw wildflower seeds everywhere this year. Everywhere? Everywhere. Well, I'm thinking about planting a garden too. Oh boy. I think I'm going to grow some okra. You know why? No. Because your mom likes it. I think it's pretty not good. She wants to fry it. Well, she wants to do whatever. My friend from Indiana who was part of a military family moved to Atlanta, Georgia. And I went and visited him. That's one of the things that they served me. But first I'm ever having okra. Okra. And I was like, that's a thing. It's like eating a giant vitamin. Yeah, it's not very good. It's very. Really? It's very easy. But it's also not. I've never craved okra since. I thought it was kind of like a cross between like celery. It's dark and crunch, but it's a dark green. So it's got a lot of, it's good for you. It was crunchy. It's not really good. It's got a crunch firmness to it. Yeah. Oh, maybe I haven't had it. And if you fry it and if you dip it in butter or if you dip it in chocolate. Or if you just, if you dip it in chocolate and then scrape the chocolate off of it and eat it and throw the okra away, it's not bad. So has Cammy, we've told you what Cammy's making, right? In the fridge. Have you seen in the fridge? No. I think we told you. Yeah, we did. We told you because she's doing it for school because she's trying to earn a badge. I'll go get it. Yeah, you go get it all I tell Carl about it. So she read Little Women, her class did, and in Little Women, there's this passage that's actually really hilarious where one of the girls is talking about how everyone at school is trading these pickled lines as like a currency. It's like, actually she describes it as a high honor if somebody gives you a pickled line. There they are. Oh, my stars. Oh, those look. So that is. It's hard to even see it. It's like this cloudy. Yeah. That is a pickle blind horse radish vinegar. Most of this liquid is vinegar. Yeah. That was boiled when she put it in there. And well, yeah, boiled. It's half vinegar, half water. Yeah, but if you boil it doesn't that kill all of the stuff in it that's going to pickle the line stuff. Kill it. Yeah, because vinegar has microbes and living things in it. I don't think that's what makes it. I don't think the vinegar acidity that. Yeah, I think. I don't know. I've never pickled a line before. So yeah, that's what all that is. Horse radish and mustard, mainly. And there's something else in there that I'm forgetting. But what's funny here is. And you put it in a jar that's labeled peaches. Peaches have in light syrup. So anybody just looking at this label is going to be in for a shock. Well, what's funny is Megan, Luke's sister, texted because she also read Little Women not long ago. Yeah. And when she found out Cammy was pickling lines, she goes, I want to try one of those. I thought when I read it, I was like, I need to know what all of these. I want to know what all these girls are so obsessed with. Because the passage in the book says, if you're really angry with a friend, if you're upset with somebody, it would suck on a line right in front of them and not even offer the other person any. And it just made me giggle. That's the way you show disdain for a friend is she don't give them even a single suck of your, you don't give them a single suck of your pickled blind. That's what it said in the book. And so Megan was like, I want to try one of those. So after Cammy put it together and it was in my fridge, I took a picture of it after like a week. I took a picture. I sent it to the sisters in the group thread with the sisters. And I said, Megan, I can already tell this is something you're going to love. Well, she probably she eats nasty. She like to make kombucha and. Okay. Well, kombucha is a different animal. But this is now are the limes peeled or are they in there in the. They're in there with the peel. But they're sliced. Like they're rhymes. Okay. There's slices into the rind. They're sliced so it can get into the inside. But I took a picture of it and I was. Pickle the day. I was making fun of Megan while simultaneously showing her what she was in for. And she thought I was completely joking. She's like, no, thank you. And I was like, no, but seriously, this is what you've asked for. And she goes, what is it? What is floating in it? That would be the limes, right? Or she had a little bits of horse radish. When you don't shake it, the horse radish flows to the top. Go to the top. It's sort of thick. So that's. So that's. Well, and the thing is, if you look up a pickled lime recipe for now, you'll get almost a completely different concoction because that is a could specifically a civil war era, like recipe as such that they probably would have been using in the little women book. And well, it's fairly, it's fairly cheap. There's not a lot of exotic. Right. Like horse radish and vinegar is not particularly. Well, limes are fairly exotic, aren't they? Well, citrus fruit is. Depending on what part of the country you live in. I don't know. Where do the grill limes? Can you grill limes in Georgia? Probably. That's polyphyrinous for their own. But like when you look at pickled limes just as it, as a standalone, you just Google it. A lot of times you get like Cambodian pickled limes or something that has like a spice element. It'll be spicy and it's red. And it kind of, it doesn't look terrible. Like it kind of looks appetizing. It's probably hot. That just looks like something you'd find in the sink after you've washed the dishes. It does. Yeah, it looks like dish water. It looks terrible. And so. It looks like dish water that you should have drained and put fresh in. Right. Because there's nothing to it. Dish water that somebody poured their hamburger grease in. Oh, yeah. That looks a little greasy. It does. So anyways, if you have, if you would like to try to pickle some oak grou with, you know, with the lime recipe. With a civil or a recipe. Well, we might try. Your mom, your mom would probably like this. I know. Your mom would probably legitimately like this. Yeah. That's why it was kind of teasing Megan, but not totally. I genuinely do think that once she tries it, she's going to like it. And we'll probably give some to mom too. If everyone hates it, then we will give it to Joe. Well, you know what your brother, what Andrew did last week. He sent your mom a taxi. And this is the sort of stuff that he does. He didn't send anything to me. Nothing to the boys group. But he sent a picture to your mother. And he goes, you want to guess what this is? It was a jar, similar to this jar, but it had something green in it. Did he make a terrarium? No. No, but it was floating. It was pine needles. Oh, yeah. He made a sprite. Yeah. He made his own sprite. Yeah. I know where he got that from too. I bet that's OK. He said, he said it turned out OK. It didn't. It wasn't as fizzy as he wanted it to be. So he's going to try again. And he's going to modify some things to try to get the fizz up. But he said it didn't taste bad. Yeah. I bet that's true. But yeah, he made his own sprite with pine needles. But if anyone offers him a candied pine cone, we've already been through this. We've been through that. Do not do not indulge a port. Candied? OK, here's what it's. We're 20 minutes in. There's no reason I can't just read this. In debt, Amy, what do you mean, Sid Meg looking sober? Why? I, oh, at least it doesn't pickled limes. And I can't pay them, you know, till I have money. From Marmy forbid me having anything charged at this shop. Tell me about it. Our limes, the fashion now, it used to be pricking bits of rubber to make balls. And Meg tried to keep her countenance. Amy looked so grave and important. Why you see, she said, the girls are always buying them. And then unless you want to be thought mean, you must do it too. It's nothing but limes now. For everyone is sucking them in their desks in school time and trading them off for pencils and feed rings and paper dolls or something else at recess. If one girl likes another, she gives her a lime. If she's mad with her, she eats one before her face and don't offer even a suck. They treat my turns and I've had ever so many of them, but I haven't returned any. And I ought for they are debts of honor, you know. It's nothing but limes these days. How older are these little women? I'm actually not sure what age they are at that point. Because the whole, like the series follows them into becoming mothers. Like the next book, they're actually have children, they're married and they've children. And she describes how each of them is a different sort of wife. They each have different strengths and different weaknesses, just like when they were at home together and they each had quirks and, you know, personalities. What is that one called, little, little women? No, it's called becoming mothers, I think. I don't know. It's called something mothers. Slightly larger little women. I have to look it up. I can't remember. But anyways, so bigger little women. What is it? Interesting. Well, I guess we'll probably have to try them when they're finished. When are they done? How long do they have to pickle? Like what's the? It's almost done. It just have to be like 10 years or? No, it's a month. It's a total of a month, but I think they're very good. It's not like scotch or bourbon or something where you have to. I would say there's probably a limit to when it stops getting better and starts getting better. We don't have to wait till 2050 to crack this open. I wouldn't recommend it because we did not, they're not canned. So like you just opened it. Right. We didn't add the boiling vinegar and then put the lid on so that it would seal. And so technically, I don't think it's shelf stable. It's been in the fridge this whole time. I can't imagine any sort of bacteria growing. It's just a little bit of a big thing in there. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know either. Good wives. That's what it's called. The next one. Okay. All right. Yeah. So much to talk about. Okay, go what do we have to talk about? Because I had a couple of things I wanted to mention. I wanted to mention Marcus's rant about. That's part of what we have to talk about. I have nothing on my mind to talk about. So you guys go ahead. All right. Cool. The fact that you raised your hand to say that you're really progress. All right. I have an announcement. I have nothing to talk about. Since this is an audio podcast, the fact that you just contributed like you did is actually very welcome and appreciated. Yes. Right. But I will write on the co-tails of your topics. We do have some things to talk about. So for one thing, we did not finish a conversation that you started earlier today about an article written by a person. Oh, the one you didn't read. What? What makes you think I didn't read it? Because you started explaining it after two periods. You're going to have to your left. Okay. All right. So there. Now you can't use that as an excuse to not continue to talk about it. It's, it's, go ahead. It doesn't erase the fact that you figured you had the whole just a bit after a paragraph. Why is that a paragraph? She did have the whole just a bit. I mostly did. Okay. And it wasn't just a paragraph. I would like to hear the parts that you didn't. It was the opening paragraph and then all of the bullets. I read the first paragraph of all of his bullets, which is a great way to skim. And so I did have the just fit. Now I've read every word. And that article is very much like what John described have how he qualifies everything and is very careful with his words. He being brainhandsome. Brainhandsome is, yeah, he's very careful, always very careful to make sure he covers his bases and that's one possibility. You can find out. We can try to, we can try to feel Luke's thoughts out of his head about why he wanted us to read that article and what he thought about it. We'll have to get under that hat first. That's the cat. Or we could talk about the fact that you read that Hiddiast strength for the first time. You made it all the way through. We could talk about Marcus Pitman upsetting C.R. Wiley. No, that's not actually that's not actually what happened. No, they're just on different sides of the issue. Right. Right. So the sides of the issue are that there are people who believe that AI is basically going to ruin everything. That AI is going to come in. It's going to take everybody's job away. It's going to take everybody's job away. And we sort of talked about this a couple of weeks ago. We did last week, actually. Yeah. But then you found an article by Brian Mattson. I found an article by Brian Mattson and it was a little, he was actually taking C.R. Wiley to task. Yeah. And somebody else, I can't remember the other lady's name. But you see Emma something. Yeah, but he's basically. It's basically refuting these AI alarmists who are almost goodness. We're ushering in the end of the world. They're going to replace human beings. The singularity is upon us. Your uncle sent me an article in a video this week about how the singularity is now. And there's a bunch of people that are like, oh, here we are on the singularity. And people don't even know what the singularity is that they're describing. So basically, it's when technology and mind, for lack of a bit of a sort, when human minds and technology basically become the same thing. That's what the singularity is when artificial intelligence becomes undifferentiated. You can't tell the difference between artificial intelligence and human consciousness, basically. And we are. I thought the singularity was what we supposedly started with before the big bang. Well, is it? It's, well, the singularity is, yes, that's what the singularity was, is believed to be, which is this before the creation of the universe, everything. There was nothing. And so it's, they, they envision this, this point, the singularity or all the stuff of the universe basically existed in a tiny little, right. But even that, even that's not quite right because the head of a pin is something, the head of a pin is a thing. Even it's really tiny. Right. And so the singularity is a thing that's very difficult to conceive of because we, you tend to think of it as a noun. And that's not really, there were no nouns. There were no things prior to the creation of the universe. So the singularity is an idea. Right, but I'm saying I've heard that term for the first time when we were talking to evolutionists about the big bang. And so I wasn't sure if that was the same singularity that we're misdefining now. Not, it's not exactly the same thing. But that confused me too. That's exactly. And depending on who you talk to, they're going to describe it differently. But my, the way I sum up what the singularity is is when there's no more differentiation. It's become a singular thing that our intelligence, our thoughts, our knowledge, whatever you want to call it. And then AI, whatever that is, become indistinguishable. It's a singular concept. Right. And so there is no, there's basically no humanity. You can't tell humanity consciousness becomes fused with whatever machine consciousness is. And so you got people like Elon Musk talks about this a lot and his augmentation and putting a chip in the brain and all that. All of those are things that are supposedly moving us towards the singularity. And I don't think, and Brian Mattson's article, basically he said in his article what I've been saying all along. And that is that there is another element to mankind that cannot be simulated. And it's the spirit. It's the soul. And so when you talk about intelligence, apart from the soul, it becomes incomprehensible because you can't, what is intelligence, you know, artificial intelligence, you know, what is it? And Mattson was trying to describe it and these other people are trying to describe it. But I don't think anybody is describing it correctly. I don't think I'm describing it correctly. It's not intelligence. It's something else. He just short-cutted it. He just said it thinks AI thinks and he put it in scare quotes and reasons in scare quotes almost indistinguishably from how humans do it by all appearances. And he's just like, I don't know how to talk about it other than that. It just looks like it's thinking. And then he skipped past it because he's like, here's the objections to it though. We've got this lady, the Susanna lady, who's complaining that we're going to lose our humanity if we are not embracing hardships and friction and challenges. She was talking about the shortcuts that we have because we're not thinking anymore. We're having the machines thick for us and that's a shortcut. And it's a problem, she's saying. It's kind of, it's causing us to lose the humanity. And what I thought was just super insightful of Brian is that she and others who are writing these articles telling people how to think about AI are short-cutting the thought process for those people who are reading their articles. So instead of... She's basically functioning like AI for those people. Instead of inviting them to a conversation where she invites them to ask questions about it and to think with her about ethics related to AI. And what is the difference between AI and humanity? She's just providing them with these tidy little shortcut answers. Well, not even answers, just basically objections. Well, the answer is, as Brian said, tastes not touch not, which is what gurus have been doing for centuries, since the beginning of time. Just inventing laws for people. Yeah, just don't even, don't even handle it, just get rid of it. And his point was, and I agree with this 100%. It's not going back in the box. I mean, we're not just going to throw AI out and go, well, that was the thing that, whew, you know, we're not going to deal with that anymore. I mean, it's here, and it's going to continue to develop, and it's going to continue to, for lack of a better term, evolve. Well, what I was trying to say last week when we talked about this, not as well, if I can, I'll admit, I was annoying last week. I've been annoying many times, but last week I was trying to talk about how I want our kids to be chaplains in the new age, in the new technological age. And that was annoying. Well, because Joanne texted later, actually sent us a polo and was like, okay, so what do you mean by a chaplain? And how's this job going to work? And what's it going to look like real specifically? And I said, honestly, that's on me because that's not a great way to talk about it. So thanks, Joanne. But the way that Brian says it, this is direct quote from Brian Madison's article. This is what he asks, who's now taking the shortcut here, Susanna? As a Christian intellectual, you have the opportunity to do the hard work of Eve. Do the hard work of Eve. To mature, to grow, to become lady wisdom enough to fulfill your role as gods. Was it vice-jurrent? I don't know this word. Visagerant? Whatever that word is. God's... Oh, I meant to look that up when I read it too, because I'm not sure exactly what this is. I'm a venagerie. God's the surgery. If I can give the second grade word instead. Anyways, she could do this by helping people figure out and understand this new created thing, artificial intelligence. She could teach how to be its lord instead of its slave, how to think through the house and the winds and the wise, to think through the context and the trade-offs, to distinguish between what frictions matter, meaning what hardships make us human. What frictions we actually need to endure. And what sorts of outsourcing are and aren't dehumanizing? When's it okay for us to go ahead and use a machine to shortcut things? She could help to learn and teach how to use technology and tools wisely in humane and life giving ways. That would be, to borrow a phrase, truly and deeply to no good and evil. But instead, she thus far chooses to write nightmare essays about how scary large language models are and to issue dire warnings against using them all together. That's not interesting. Well, then he goes on to make the point. And this has been made by other people that you could say this about any technology, any labor saving device that we've ever created. If you're going to say, AI is wrong and bad because it's short-cutting and it's allowing us to do, it's reducing the friction, basically making it easier for us to do things. Then you can say that about a shovel. You can say that about a car. And she would probably acknowledge that too. And she would probably acknowledge that too. She would probably acknowledge that too. Many things have been labeled demonic. Right. And she would probably acknowledge that too. But his point is we should be inviting people to the conversation to help them understand how we're arriving at our various conclusions when we say this is something we should not shortcut and this is something we can, you know, in good conscience. Instead of just telling them, here's the conclusion, we should invite them to figure it out for themselves too. Because what he says is to issue dire warnings against using new things, just saying touch knot and taste knot, that is the easy path. That is the frictionless path. That is a shortcut. And it is an abdication of the very God-given human calling that she praises, one that I wholeheartedly affirm. In other words, that being able to discern or to seek wisdom in any particular choice, when you've got a situation in front of you and there's two different paths you could take or more, two or more paths. And you're asking how and why, you know, when and where, what should we do here? The human thing, the thing that makes us human, is the ability to wrestle with it, to ask those questions and then arrive at a conclusion. Instead of just going to the nearest computer and typing in a query and going, well, here's what it told me. And people have been doing that with fellow humans for a long time. There are certain people who are just not comfortable making decisions or they don't have a lot of wisdom or they're not even trying to learn discernment. So they just go to their pastor, you know, or they go through the process. Right. I remember my grandmother years ago, I remember standing in the living room at our old house on Miller Street and my grandmother asked me a question. I don't remember what the question was, but I remember I went over to the, I think the dictionary and looked up the answer to the question. So she must ask me what a word meant or something like that. I went to the dictionary and I remember my parents then having a conversation within a earshot. So they weren't like saying this so that I would hear and saying, this is what, this is what intelligence is. Intelligence is not necessarily knowing the answer, but knowing where to go to look for an answer is what they said. Now I remember that like it was yesterday where they were like, they were basically affirming me for saying, yeah, you didn't know. So, but you knew where to go to look to find the answer. And there are, there are people who don't trust themselves to look for an answer. You know, they're afraid that they're going, what if I look in the wrong space? What if I don't know how to spell it? How am I supposed to look something up the dictionary if I don't know how to spell it? It's like, well, yeah, then you're, it's, that's a hurdle that you're going to have to get over, but it's not insurmountable if you're willing to pursue knowledge, then, then you can do that in a bunch of different avenues. I just thought it was profound. And again, I mean, I thought it sounded like a good biblical correction of somebody. Like I like the way he handled that. He basically said, here's the common ground that we have. And here's where you have unknowingly deviated from it. And I liked, I liked that. Well, I'd be surprised if she agrees with him that she's sorry. Probably not. Yeah. She may not, I don't know. Well, and also to his credit, he said that this was like a, this was a beginning article. She's going to write a series of articles about this. And so this was her initial, here's my introductory article about things I'm going to write about. And so he said, I don't want to, I don't want to treat this like the final product. So she may, right. She may come around on some things. No, but I think it's profound. I'm not even talking about Susanna, whoever she is in this instance. I'm talking about, it's, he put his finger on something that I've been noticing for a long time, which is that certain people try to outsource their humanity and have been doing it for a long time. Even before the invention of AI, they would go try to find a guru, a celebrity, a spokesperson, somebody that they could just ask, what am I supposed to do here? And fortunately, you brought that up last week too. Fortune tellers, oh, I have this career move that I'm thinking of making. Yes or no? You know, and so those are shortcuts. Those are people who have a, people do that when they have a really hard time sitting in the unknown or going through a wrestling process of, you know, uncertainty where you're still trying to figure things out. And they don't like that. It's tension. It's, it's the friction that Susanna talked about in her article. There's a friction involved mentally when you're still trying to arrive at a conclusion and you don't have it yet. And people hate it. And so they'd rather just go find somebody or something that will just put a dot on your eye, you know, or somebody who's just going to check a box in your brain. And so that's Brian's point is that, you know, you don't need GROC or chat GPT telling you what to do. And people have been looking to theologians or fellow, fellow Christians to just answer things for them for a long time since probably the beginning. So it's reminding me of what we heard in the sermon today that this is Romans eight. Romans 826 is like why the spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know what to pray for as we ought to spirit himself in her seats for us with groaning so deep for words. And the point that was made today in the sermon shout out to Peter heck was that we don't know, we don't know what we're talking about. We don't know what we want to pray. We don't know what to say. We don't know what to do. And it causes us to be nervous about things, you know. It causes us to panic a little bit. It's like, I don't even know what to ask God for. I don't even know what to, it's just the right thing to do. And so it says that the spirit intercedes, the spirit comes in at the point where you don't know what to do. The spirit comes in and basically communicates on your behalf. So it functions as the, as the go between. It's encouraging because when you're going through something and it's testing you, it's like, you know that it's going to be used for your good, but you also don't know if you're allowed to ask for it to stop. Like, is this the thing where you're, where it's okay to say or take this from me? Well, there's, there's so much uncertainty about, there's so much uncertainty in life. There are so few neat, tidy, absolute answers. This is always good. This is always bad. Clams are always happy. Clams are always happy. There's so, there's so few hard answers and, and hard easy answers, you know. Well, what I don't want, and I did say something along these lines last week, I don't want kids, I don't want our kids to be asking tough questions like, you know, is this something I should be asking God to help me endure? Or is this something I should be asking God to help me take, to help me get rid of it, help me be rid of it? That's a, that's a relevant, rational question to wonder. I don't want my kids to go out. This is difficult and it's hard for me to, you know, think through. So I'm going to go ask, I'm going to go ask the question. I'm going to ask God. I'm going to go type this in and see what chat GPT has to say. Because our point last week was, first of all, chat GPT's has to have anything to say. It doesn't talk. It doesn't reason. It's just aggregating all of the other answers that it's found, you know, millions of them throughout the internet, but that doesn't necessarily make it anymore. Right. And so if you don't already have wisdom and discernment, then you're not going to know when you get an accurate response or, you know, a helpful response from something like AI. But on the flip side, if we raise children who are chaplains, you know, who can help others think through things first, and then they enter into the world, the virtual world where AI exists and they can type queries in just like their friends can. Well now they're taking the skill with them. They're taking the human process with them and wisdom discernment is going with them. So do we think that they're trying to get it out of AI, which is not going to happen? You can't get wisdom from AI. That's not where it comes from. You can recognize it when it's repeated by AI. Right. Along those lines, and I mean, we've already been going 43 minutes, but part of that was because we were talking about snow and wasps and and your okra and okra and pickled lines. But so Marcus mentioned that AI prompt prompting AI is a form of art. This is Marcus Pittman. Marcus Pittman from war. And I think I agree with him that prompting AI is art. And he got a lot of push back. He got some some angry comments. Well, but he got angry comments from people who are pretty sure aren't artists. Like I'm pretty sure there are people. One of the commenters literally said, you know, he was mocking Marcus. He was like feeling creative, huh? And then he's like also Marcus, quote, chat GPT make me something. Nice. I replied to that and I was like, why did you go ahead and tap that into chat GPT and see what you get? Make me something. See if you get a piece of art. See what happens. Yeah. You know, since you think it's a shortcut, that's that easy. Yeah. And somebody said respectfully disagree. I've been following you long enough to know you typically take the roadless travel when it comes to matters of technology. So I'm not terribly surprised. OK, that's a bit of a slam. Just because he takes the roadless travel. Anyway, I think you're simplifying God's all powerful commands as props. Because Marcus said that God is the original prompt or that God prompted the universe into creation. Yeah. By literally speaking, forgetting the very nature of artificial intelligence, she puts that in quotes, it learns and thinks without props. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't. You know, the idea that it's learned without props, there are massive data. Center that are vast networks of GPUs, which are literally hundreds of miles of electronic connections and circuits. It's not a thing that just happened without people. There was a mind that intentionally made AI possible. Right. It's a huge disservice. Actually. Yeah, it says it's a huge disservice to actual art and creativity that was creative by image bearers to say that AI created art is just as worthy. Right. That's not what he said. That's not what he said. He didn't say AI created the art. In fact, he said the opposite. He said, you don't praise the paintbrush. Right. You don't praise. You know, he said the clay person writing the prompt is the artist is an artist. Right. The person writing the prompt far too much research done on the brain and what happens when we stay relying on technology to do everything for us. And the results are not good in any realm. Okay. This is a person who doesn't understand. Well, AI works. But I think that would be true for her. I think that the people who are objecting are basically just coming out and saying, I am not capable of making art through AI. It would be a sin for me. And that's what I said to you in our thread when you sent that or somebody, I think I might have sent the link to Marcus's. No, you did. But she was saying, you know, I shouldn't be making we. She said, we shouldn't be making art using AI. And what I said to you was, I think this is just, you know, you should believe her. Confirmation that the weaker brothers exist. And if her conscience won't allow her to make art, it's probably for good reason. She probably is in grave danger, especially not knowing that it's a tool and still talking about it in terms like it's a sentient thing of its own that it thinks without prompt. If she thinks that's what it is, then she should stay far away from it because it would be dangerous to her and her conscience won't let her do it, you know, cleanly. So, so it'd be better to just stay away. Right. But if you, if you are a person who would like to, who would like to know just how difficult it is to prompt AI, then go to AI with a specific thing. Now you need to be, you need to have a pretty good idea of what you want to get out. If you go in with an open ended, hey, make me a picture of an iceberg, you know, with a flower growing on top of it, that, it will be able to do that. But you need to have a very specific, clear idea of what sort of art you're trying to get out. You have to have something in your mind that you want it to reproduce. And then try to get it to do that. Try to explain to AI what you have in your mind and see if you can get it to reproduce it. If you can, then congratulations. You are a, you are an artist. But as someone who has done quite a bit of generative AI, it's extremely difficult to get it to reproduce what you have envisioned in your mind. Yeah, but I think on the other hand, I think there is another class of people who are not capable for one reason or another of coming up with a vision. They're not capable of setting a goal of something that they think they want and then trying to aim to create that thing. Those are the people you might call impressionable. So they're just waiting for somebody else's idea to come and stick to them instead of coming up with one of their own. They don't come up with unique ideas. Those are the people who are vulnerable. Those are the people who are kind of outing themselves when they're like, we shouldn't use AI. If you just go in there until it to make your stuff, it's going to make stuff and then you're going to be led by the AI instead of doing the leading. And it's true for them. If that's possible for you, you definitely shouldn't. But I just don't think they're creative. I don't think they've ever gone, oh, I had this idea for a great skit or a short video. Be really funny. And here's the characters. And here's what they do. And they're going to, you know, they're going to say this and this to each other. And try to get a robot to do it for you. It's like, well, I've written some, some prompts. I've written some, what are called GPs for chat GPs. And basically it's a prompt that sticks around. That's the easiest way to describe it. And so rather than having to go in and prompt AI to write blog posts, for example, I can go into the GPs and it's already, the framework has already built there. But, you know, people are going to, people are going to listen to this and they're going to go, oh, so it writes your blog. And it's like, what do you mean by write it? I mean, I don't publish what the GPT produces because it's not good enough. It needs to be, it doesn't sound like me. It doesn't, it's not written like me. It's got, it's got the right sort of ideas. And it comes up with ideas. It sees things that I don't, that I don't see immediately. But I always have to go in and rework what it has given me. It does, it does not write my blog, but it does help, it does help outline it. It does help give me some, some ideas for things that I had. It's so much like trying to brainstorm with a kid, so much like trying to brainstorm with, you know, a five-year-old or something. Yeah. And in particular, we've talked before about the kids when they, when they start to understand the basic pattern of a joke, but the jokes they're telling are not funny. They're not there. That was what it did the other day because I was, I was using chat GPT to do an outline for our comedy writing workshop. And I gave it, you know, two or three points we wanted to cover. And I said here, break this up into 15-minute segments. And it took the liberty of, because I wanted it to be you and me both. I was like, I wanted to have two different presenters presenting. So break it up into, you know, speaker one and speaker two so we can kind of take turns. And it took the liberty of doing the corneus, stupidest back and forth script between you and me where we're like literally finishing each other sentences and stuff. Yeah. It was terrific. It was terrific. I was cracking up for the wrong reasons, but I was laughing. So I had to fix all of that. And then it was like, give examples, you know. Here's the point, you teach this point, which is the point I gave it. So it was good. And it's like, for example, give examples here. And then the examples were just so bad. It was like, you know, what do you call us? Such and such and so and so. And dude, it, which is like the form, you know, he'd recognize it as it's trying to be funny, but it was so not. Well, I was going to do that very thing. I have a, I have a GPT that I've written and I'm not going to bring that up right now. I already did twice. Well, I mean, I'm not going to bring up the GPT. Oh, he's on his phone, Carl. You can see. And so if you go, if you go to AI, I'm not going to tell you which one, but you're going to say, uh, right, 10 jokes about what should we, what should we have? What should we write about? About what should we write about Luke? 10 jokes about pickled lines. And oh, I was going to say about pickled lines. Don't you have to put two concepts in there? Pickled Limes and animals. And what? What animal? I'm just going to give it pickled lines. If we give it an and it's going to be even worse. All right. So write 10 jokes about pickled lines. This is going into AI. All right. And so, uh, this is the good AI too, not the free version, right? Yeah, he subscribes. It just said something went wrong. Yeah, that you get that half the time. I said, right 10 jokes about pickled Limes. You didn't say please. It's something go wrong again. Yeah. Well, this is this is pretty anti-climatic. And that is what happens. Come on. Do you use AI to do your art? Are you on our Wi-Fi to that matter? No. No, I'm not. That might be part of it. Oh my gosh. All right. Let me go to a different AI. Right? Thank you. This is actually making my point. What an artist we have here. This is speeding up. Right 10 jokes about pickled. All human work is coming to an end. Limes. It actually might be a little tainted because this is the one that I, this is the AI that I used to do my comedy writing stuff. So it's, this one's going to be biased. And this might actually be better because I've spent quite a bit of time talking to this AI about comedy. So it kind of knows how comedy is supposed to work. About a jar of pickled Limes. They taste like a margarita that made bad decisions in college. Pickled Limes are just regular Limes that couldn't handle the pressure and said, fine, I'll live in vinegar. Leave me alone. Okay. You ever buy into a pickled lime? Your face folds up like you just read your own search history. I don't trust pickled Limes. They look like they've seen things, sour things, traumatizing things. I just like watching you shake your head and discuss it at all of these. A lime becomes pickled when it finally admits life isn't getting any sweeter. Uh huh. This is AI. When I've told it to write jokes, pickled Limes are what happened when citrus gives up on being refreshing and decides to be confrontational. I bought pickled Limes. I brought pickled Limes to a party. People kept, people kept asking, is this a garnish or a dare? My favorite, my favorite is when it does that. And then it tells you afterwards what it has done. Like continue like this. Are you adding more jokes like this? Right. I've noticed it does do a lot of personifying of objects. Pickled Limes brighten your drink or regular Limes brighten your drink. Pickled Limes interrogate it. Okay. Okay. Uh I tried to make lemonade with pickled Limes. Now my family doesn't speak to me. Again. All right. So what these are? Oh, there's one left. Uh. Pickled Limes tastes like a fruit that joined a monastery and took a vow of sourness. Mm hmm. That's the closest. That's the closest one to an actual joke. That one actually has some merit. It's not good, but it's close. So you got one kind of joke out of ten. So what did it do here? What it did was it has a billion joke forms. Uh. It's an LLM. It's a large language model. And so it has literally billions of jokes that it knows most. So when you ask for a joke about pickled Limes, it goes out. It consults its repertoire. It's a library of joke forms. And you've taught it to stop using knock knock. I've. That was what it was probably trying to do. I've taught it to stop that. And so it's these are pretty terrible. And so it's not using it's not using my system. But what it's doing is it's going it's finding joke forms and it's just slotting in things about Limes and and Pickling into those joke forms. And that's why you get you ever bite into a pickled lime. I mean, that's the that is a joke. Right. And then it says, well, what then it says, well, what would happen if you bite into a pickled lime? And it goes, well, it's sour. It's a lime. It's pickled. And so it takes all of those things and goes, well, your face would fold up like what? Like you just read your own search history. And see, that's where it falls apart. Right. That's where it's like, okay, what would cause your face to screw? It's got a million of those things. It could it could say, you know, like you just and so it's not actually thinking about how comedy works. It's not really thinking. It's just these are mad lives. It's just doing mad lives. Yes. And, um, right. But if you don't know that and I am convinced that like a very small number of people actually know what they're doing when they're prompting AI, if you don't know that it's not thinking, it probably would be better to just abstain or stay away. I do think there are people who should not be messing around with AI. Well, and that's why that's why you go, is this art? Is this comedy? I tried to make lemonade with pickled limes. Now my family doesn't speak to me. Now my family doesn't speak to me. Is literally a punchline that you could use for all, you could use it for anything. You know, I didn't put, I put tap water in the iron instead of distilled water. Now my family doesn't speak to me. You know, I bought skim milk instead of whole milk. Now my family doesn't speak to me. You're asking if it's art and I feel like you're undermining what Marcus was saying because it is art because you're the artist. Now you also recognize that it's not good art yet. The only one that I would even pretend to entertain is it tastes like a fruit that joined a monastery and took a vow of sourness. I mean, that's, you're on the right track. But that's still a ways away from it. You know what it kind of reminds me of, you know, when people before the Renaissance would be funny to say took a vow of pucker. You know, pucker is a funnier word. It's got a funnier word, yeah. You remember, like, you know, before we learned about lighting and shadowing, like highlights and shadows and paints painting, like before, you know, Rembrandt came out and just made like photo realistic drawing or paintings with his oil on canvas. When we were still kind of using whatever you could make with berries. Not just stick figures, but like, remember that one painting of Jesus where like one of his eyes is really creepy. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's real creepy. It's just off. It's like that. But that's still better than what somebody like me can do with a paintbrush because I'm just not a painter sort of artist. Like, nothing that I draw is impressive, but I at least can recognize that it's not. And the same with you with comedy, only somebody who's capable of recognizing good comedy can go into an AI, you know, any AI software and go, well, how can I get this tool to cooperate with me better? Because I know that right now you're Jesus over there. Your little collection of jokes is like Jesus with one eye way too big and it's a little creepy. Right. Right. It needs to be. What? If you keep messing with it. It needs to go in and adjust it and to reprompt it or in the case of comedy. Perfect your techniques and stuff. Like we are in the early days still of AI where we're drawing up with fresco, you know, drawing our frescoes and, you know, and so it's recognizable. Now we've gone a little past cave drawings, I'd say, but it's still not Rembrandt. This is not Rembrandt. If you think you can walk in and just tell it to paint you something that looks like what's on the Sistine Chapel, you have another thing coming. Yeah. What do you have to say, Luke? When life gives you lines, do anything but pickle them. Thanks for visiting the comedian's house. If you want to spend more time with our family, you can follow John Branion on YouTube and Facebook. Also, email nextdoor at johnbranion.com with your comments and questions. We'll see you next time. See you next time.