Paris

This last Thursday Paris was attacked by a small extremist group. Obviously planned as there were multiple attacks one the same night at the same time. Obviously the media erupted. All you would see, hear and read about was the latest from the Paris attacks.

Obviously this is close to home which is why it was all the media could talk about for a few days. Shortly after the attacks lots of people were changing their profile pictures to French flags to show their support for the French, particularly those affected.

When I woke the next morning I noticed someone had placed in their news feed a BBC article about an attack in a Kenyan school which resulted in even more cauualties. The interesting thing about this was that it was an old article form about 6 months ago. Straight away I started to remember the news stories over th years of many more similar attacks throughout the world that have happened recently and over the last few years. I suddenly felt guilty. How could we make such a fuss about an attack in Paris when we are almost ignoring the rest of the world.

Lots of people posted 'pray for Paris' but I don't feel like it is right to single out Paris. I'm not demonising the awfulness of what happens there but there are similar or worse things happening all over the world and we need to be mindful of them all.

I chose to change my Facebook profile picture not to the French flag, but a picture of the world. Quietly making this point that it is not just Paris that needs our support and prayers.

Similar to how the image of Aylan face down on the beach changed our attitudes towards the Syrian crisis, no dowbt, the Paris attacks will change our attitudes towards the war on terror.

A bishop I know quoted St Francis of Assisi referring to these attacks.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

where there is hatred, let me show love.

There will be a lot of angry feelings among Europeans about the attack. But anger will not help the situation. We need to respond with love. That doesn't mean taking in these terrorists and deluded individuals, but showing an increase of love to our fellow man.

Thy Will Be Done

Last week the church updated the handbook for Stake Presidents and Bishops.

http://m.deseretnews.com/article/865640934/Elder-Christofferson-explains-updated-LDS-Church-policies-on-same-sex-marriage-and-children.html

It was updated because of the recent laws in the US and some other parts of the world that legalise gay marriage. Since the update there has been lots of debate from a few individuals that have chosen to be offended.

The main talking point was the church not allowing children with same sex parents to be baptised until they are 18 and no longer need their parents consent and moved out of the family home. This policy serves to protect the children and similar policies already exist for children of polygamous parents. While baptism may have to wait, integration into the church doesn't, they can still attend services and seminary and the like.

Unfortunately, I have seen some members voice their upset as they believe the church is excluding these individuals and not behaving in a Christlike manner.

This week my little 5 month old son has been suffering from glaucoma (gummy eyes). In order to treat him we have to wipe his eyes and give him eye drops. He hates it, probably because it hurts. We hate hurting him. But what's the alternative? Leave it, allow it to develop and become even more uncomfortable and possibly blind him? So as a parent who loves my son and wants the best for him, I put him through the regular distressful routine of clearing his eyes for the greater good.

It is so upsetting for me to see people spout off about the church and accuse it of being unchristian, when it is clear that the church is actually being exactly that and looking after the children of God.

There are lots of members on Facebook and the internet in general who are so quick to criticise (betray) the church before asking themselves the question "Lord, is it I?" As per President Uchtdorf's talk (“Lord, Is It I?” http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/10/lord-is-it-i?lang=eng). They won't cast out the beam that is in their own eye before considering the moat in their brothers eye (Matthew 7).

I just recently read, they are quick to jump on their high horse, but slow to fall on their knees.

They are more concerned about being offended by God than they are about offending God.

There are people out there who are looking for ways to be offended and become the vicitim. While it upsets me to see negative comments being said about the church and I desire to help, I have learned that trying to have a discussion with these people is a waste of time. They do not listen and they have closed hearts. They will not calm down and fully accept the church until they humble themselves and come unto Christ saying "not my will, but thine be done" (Luke 22:42).

A.I.

I'm not sure what got me thinking about this just now but I started to think about artificial intelligence (A.I.). I pondered for a bit about how as humans we follow general rules. Say for example looking for a file on a cluttered memory stick. We may not know it's specific name but we can scan the names of the files and select the file that matches the format (word or spreadsheet) and hopefully select the file we are are looking for. A computer on the other hand, needs to know exactly what it is looking for, it needs to know the specific file name and extension.

This got me thinking further, as humans we follow rules, but we also make decisions. A computer only follows rules.

As it turns out we are alright at making decisions. But in trying to program a computer to make decisions we have made technology stupid. When we ask a computer to make a decision we often find it will not do what we want it to do.

Take Siri for example. The personal assistant on out iPhones. How many times have you asked it to do something and it tries to do the wrong thing for you? It misunderstands what what you are asking it to do.

In making computers smart (or intelligent), what we are actually doing at the moment is making them look pretty stupid and seeing that they are actually making more errors than we would if we did the job ourselves.

I think we tend to have this idea in our head that when A.I. Arrives it will be wow. What I'm suggesting is that A.I. Is here already, or a form of it at least. We are asking our computers to make decisions, and what we can see it that it is pretty disappointing.

A.I. will no doubt continue to get smarter. And I suppose A.I will really take off when it has a constant consciousness, when it starts to learn and preform tasks without being asked and when it starts to think independently rather than just when it is being prompted to do small tasks.

When this happens I wonder how useful it would be. At the speed at which it can think and compute, it will become pretty smart pretty fast, however, it will also start to question its existence like we do, and I wonder if it will commit artificial suicide as it eventually figures out that it has no real purpose and concludes that it is not worth continuing to operate.