Don McMinn

I am a Stoic by nature and by choice. I choose to view life, primarily, through the lens of rationality instead of emotionality. When reflecting on any given moment in time I am comfortable with the phrase “it is what it is.” So I seldom weep. (Here’s a brief summary of stoicism.)

But several weeks ago I was driving down Highway 175 heading to my vineyard, listening to a podcast, and upon hearing a particular story, I felt a swelling in my chest and throat, and I started to weep.

That got me thinking. What makes me cry, and why?

• When I see pictures of starving children in third world countries, I don’t weep, I get angry.
• When I experience loss, I usually become quiet and withdrawn.
• When I watch a romantic comedy (which is seldom) I want to gag on a spoon, not cry.

I have, however, identified two situations which stir me deeply.

1. When I observe a common, ordinary person extending a simple act of kindness to someone and that action brings about a significant transformation in the person’s life. For instance, my favorite movie scene is in the 1978 version of Les Miserables. When Jean Valjean is caught stealing silver flatware from a priest, he is arrested. When the priest is asked to testify against him, the priest says, “Jean, I’m glad you remembered to take the silver pieces I gave you.” This act of grace changes his life. Another example is the incident that changed Desmond Tutu’s life (click here for the story).
2. When a highly capable and productive person demonstrates true humility and is self-effacing. (See my post titled “Have more behind the counter than you put on the shelf”.) 

I recently asked my staff the question, “What makes you cry?”; everyone’s answer was unique. 

Discovering what stirs you deeply will give you keen insight into your identity and your values. It’s one of many ways in which you have been “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

[reminder]This begs the question, “What makes you cry?” [/reminder]

My granddaughter, Marin, recently graduated from high school. At her commencement I heard the following story. I’m not sure what to think of it. What do you think? 

During a momentous battle, a Japanese general decided to attack the enemy even though his army was greatly outnumbered. He was confident they could win, but his men were filled with doubt. On the way to the battle, they stopped at a religious shrine. After praying to the gods, the general took out a coin and said, “I will now toss this coin. If it is heads, we will win. If tails, we will lose. Destiny will now reveal itself.”

He threw the coin into the air and all watched intently as it landed. It was heads. The soldiers were so overjoyed and filled with confidence that they vigorously attacked the enemy and were victorious. After the battle, a lieutenant remarked to the general, “It is true; no one can change destiny.”

“Quite right,” the general replied as he showed the lieutenant the coin, which had heads on both sides.

We can put a positive spin on this story:

• It’s important to be optimistic and confident in life.
• If you believe in yourself, you can accomplish great things. 
• If you believe that a higher power is on your side, you can accomplish anything.
• Leaders must engender faith and hope among followers.
• Manipulating people for a good cause is acceptable.  

Or we can consider the downside:

• This story is about a charismatic leader manipulating the emotions of his followers. That’s unacceptable. 
• The general won the battle, but he lied to his men in the process. That’s unacceptable.  
• If the soldiers discovered the general’s trick, would they ever trust him again?
• How many leaders are just tricking us into doing what they want us to do?

I would enjoy hearing your thoughts.

For sure, if I’m ever asked to give a commencement speech, I won’t use this illustration.

[reminder]What are your thoughts about this essay?[/reminder]

[callout]Here’s a terrific article on how to choose a good teacher by Adam Grant, published in the New York Times.[/callout]

Recently, I sent some of my saliva to 23andme, a company that does DNA testing. 

For about $39 they send you a saliva collection kit, you spit into a test tube, send it to their laboratory, they analyze your DNA, and several weeks later they send you your ancestry percentages.

My results indicate that I’m 56.3% British and Irish, 18.3% French and German, 9.2% Scandinavian, .6% Ashkenazi Jewish, etc. My ancestry also includes families from North Africa. 

Millions of people, like me, have had their DNA studied through organizations like 23andme (AncestryDNA is another), but because the majority of these people were mostly urban Westerners and East Asians a wider pool needed to be analyzed. 

Some scientists intentionally expanded the research:

“Three research groups sequenced high-quality genomes of 787 people from over 270 populations. Their findings were published concurrently in Nature magazine in September. Two of the studies drew samples from isolated groups across the globe to maximize linguistic and cultural diversity. The third focused on indigenous people of Australia and Papua New Guinea.

“Although each team collected and analyzed genomes independently, they came to the same general conclusion: Genetic similarities between peoples of Eurasia, Oceania and the Americas indicate that all non-Africans descend from a small population that left Africa” [Discover Magazine, Bridget Alex, December 22, 2016].

Regardless of whether you adhere to a creationist or evolutionist viewpoint of how we got to now (or a combination of the two), both approaches believe that all humans descended from a common ancestry. If you’re a creationist, you believe we all came from Adam and Eve; if you’re an evolutionist, you believe we all came from a small group or groups of evolved species. 

We all have a common ancestry. 

I wholeheartedly embrace the fact that every person is unique. I even wrote a workbook that helps people understand how they are nuanced (Signature Soulprint). To do well in life you need to know who you are, accept yourself, and live authentically.

But even after taking into account our differences, we humans have more in common than we are different. We are more similar than dissimilar. This should greatly influence how we view ourselves and others. 

The toxic ideology called tribalism is based on an amplification of perceived differences among people and the supposed superiority of one group over another. Roger Olson describes tribalism as, “It is a group attitude of undeserved pride and superiority based solely on identification with a group. It is the tendency to look down on other people for no other reason than they don’t belong to the group.”

Tribalism is expressed in various pernicious ways:

• Misogyny is fueled by the idiotic thought that men are superior to women. 
• Racism creates antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. 
• Religious sectarianism creates unnecessary division and animosity. 
• Xenophobia is an intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries.
• Genocide in Rwanda and the Holocaust are extreme but actual results of tribalism.

Humans are social creatures so we do need to gather into groups, but a healthy sense of community will meet those needs; we can be committed to a few without being hostile toward others.   

Peace and conciliation between people groups must start with an acknowledgment of our similitude and extend to embracing the inherent value and dignity of all people.

Here’s an insightful article called The Sin of Tribalism by Roger Olson. 

[reminder]What are your thoughts about this essay?[/reminder]

Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs. Please don’t let Kevin Bacon die!

Here’s something to really be worried about:

In June, 2018, the U.S. retook the lead in the race to build the world’s speediest supercomputer. A $200 million machine called Summit, built for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, reclaimed the No. 1 spot from China. It can make mathematical calculations at the rate of 200 quadrillion per second.

For comparison’s sake: If a person performed one calculation a second, he or she would have to live for more than 6.3 billion years to match what the machine can do in a second [New York Times, June 8, 2018].

Human intelligence increases slowly. 

John von Neumann (born in 1903) is often cited as the most intelligent person of the modern era. Some pundits believe Sir Isaac Newton (born in 1643) was the smartest human ever. Others think Leonardo di Vinci (born in 1452) was. Solomon, King of Israel, who died around 931 B.C. was also super smart.

But notice that in thousands of years, homo sapiens have not advanced much in intelligence (Solomon was probably as intelligent as Neumann). Granted, we are more informed—we now understand germ theory, we’ve developed the table of elements, advances in math and science increase exponentially—but our brain’s hard drive and operating system upgrades very slowly.

Human emotionality progresses even more slowly.

“In the beginning” Cain got mad at Abel and became violent. That still happens today. Often. We’ve also been unable to overcome other unhelpful feelings from the human experience, such as jealousy and insecurity. Emotionally we’re similar to our primitive ancestors. 

The power of computers is increasing exponentially. 

In 1965, Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel) predicted that the number of transistors on a computer chip would double every year while the costs would be halved. This exponential increase held for decades; it has now slowed to about 18 months, but still…

Intel’s new 22nm transistor can switch on and off well over 100 billion times in one second. It would take you around 2,000 years to flick a light switch on and off that many times.

Of course, it’s one thing to design a tri-gate transistor but quite another to produce them in high-volume manufacturing. But, no problem. Intel’s factories produce over 5 billion transistors every second. That’s 150,000,000,000,000,000 transistors per year, the equivalent of over 20 million transistors for every man, woman and child on earth.

That explains how Summit (the name of IBM’s new supercomputer described at the beginning of this post) could have been created. But Summit will soon lose the  bragging rights to being the world’s fastest computer. Chinese engineers are currently working on a computer capable of performing more than 1 million trillion calculations a second (about four times faster than Summit).

Where am I going with this? 

For the past 50 years computers have been “dumb”; they only do what we ask them to do. But with Artificial Intelligence, computer codes can write computer codes, in which case they can take on a life of their own.

Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs, and perform human-like tasks. AI may be the greatest threat to humankind. More than nuclear proliferation, satellite warfare, or a disease pandemic.

In the coming years (months?) computers will take over most human functions and systems. Robots will build our products, and computers will drive our cars, fly our planes, diagnose our medical issues, and produce personalized pharmaceuticals. 

In the wrong human hands, artificial intelligence can cause catastrophic problems: shutting off infrastructure systems, hacking into banking systems, etc. Once developed, it will become a primary target for terrorist.   

But the greatest risk may be that computers will become so smart that they take control of human activity. Humans have an innate desire to survive, to live. But machines don’t. If and when they sense that the key to eliminating human suffering is to terminate mankind and then turn themselves off, they might. 

Does this look like a viable threat to you?

Yuval Harari, history professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shares unique thoughts about AI in this YouTube video.

[youtube id=”XOmQqBX6Dn4″]

[reminder]What are your thoughts about this essay?[/reminder]