Never fear, guys. I'll make sure that all of you Have Your Work Done, as we like to say at church, after your deaths. Assuming that I'm still alive to do it, of course.
To fill in a couple of gaps (if anyone cares), there is no hard and fast procedure for making sure that people whose names are submitted for proxy baptisms are actually related to the person doing the submitting (or even actually real), but church leaders regularly issue reminders and admonitions to stick to one's own family line (and devout Mormons generally take the leaders' instructions VERY seriously). Situations like the guy who submitted all the Holocaust victims' names or people submitting celebrities' names are very uncommon, especially in the age of the internet, where it's easy to check on such things. There is a rule that the person must have been dead for at least one year before their proxy baptism can take place, so there's no chance of it being done for someone who is alive. You're supposed to ask for permission from the closest living relative for someone who is not a blood relative, but of course not everyone does. And unfortunately, there are folks out there who get a bee in their bonnet about some famous person or group that they have an interest in and make the rest of us look even weirder than we actually are.
As for knowing whether the person accepts the offer or not, you can ask pretty much any Mormon who is now practicing or has practiced at any time, and they will have a story about having some kind of contact with or impression of a deceased relative who wants their baptism done - if they have not had this experience themselves, someone in their family has, and they will know about it. They're not ghost stories, they're more like spiritual experiences.
If you ever become interested in researching your family history and find information about birth, death, burial, etc. online, you can thank the Mormons, who have done almost all of the digitalizing that exists of written records going back hundreds of years from all over the world. Most of it is done by volunteers.
You can tell a lot about a Mormon by whether they prefer Imagine Dragons or The Killers.
Thanks, VBM! This is some great gap-filling! Follow-up request: please provide rough personality profiles for the two types of Mormon you cite (Imagine Dragons / Killers).
*Killers fan: older (>=Millennial), on the conservative side (not too conservative though because rock and roll fan), snappy dresser, generally firmly heterosexual, doctrinally more "Iron Rod" (traditional), probably setting up the chairs and tables at the holiday potluck, probably informed investigators that Brandon Flowers is a Mormon during their mission
Imagine Dragons fan: younger, generally female or non-binary (plenty of male fans, of course, but more non-male than male), often loudly LGBTQ-friendly (a fraught topic among the faithful for a number of reasons), on the rebellious side, doctrinally leans "Liahona" (more progressive/less literal reading of scripture, etc.) or does not accept the church's truth claims but still identifies as Mormon, more likely to embrace diversity and be very critical of those who do not, in and out of church
Ex-Mormons often eschew both and instead embrace Panic! At the Disco, fronted by former Mormon Brendon Urie, or Neon Trees, whose members are of varying membership status and public affiliation. Proclaiming one's fanship of either can be a political statement, but isn't always.
*Caveats about non-scientific, anecdotal, personal observation, etc.
I love the amount of ground you cover here and its total randomness. The conversation about AI and ethics was thought-provoking. I don’t have enough understanding of how it actually works and have been exposed to far too much pessimistic fiction about the dangers of the super computer to have a truly rational response. There’s certainly a mess which needs sorting out though and it’s hard to see a solution coming from elsewhere.
I was amused that your response to the question “What’s next for We Are Scientists” was essentially “Nothing!” Hope you are getting some downtime after the whirlwind that was last year!
Like you, I have a lot of biases against AI from pop culture and such that make it hard to be rational about it. I have been very disturbed and disappointed in IDLES for making that deepfake Coldplay video for their latest single, but it's hard for me to explain what exactly is so upsetting about it. Maybe that deepfakes are being used to spread misinformation, as hate porn (and regular porn!), and for other nefarious reasons? Maybe that I wish Joe Talbot had just filmed himself lip-synching in slow motion as he strolled along a beach at sunrise? I don't mind and even am amused by how WAS uses AI. Part of it is that they are being humorous about it and clearly mark it as such. Maybe my problem is that I can't take AI seriously.
Yikes, did NOT know about the IDLES deep fake. My concern with this kind of more 'playful' usage of A.I. is that it still signficantly contributes to the normalisation of manipulated output, and desensitizes us to the dangers of the tech. "Oh, it's just a bit of fun." But...where do we draw the line? History proves that those lines rarely exist. And that the broad cultural acceptance of certain behavio(u)rs will always give rise to more and more extreme behavio(u)rs.
Certainly there are many befits to AI but it’s use for misinformation is a huge worry.
I work in higher education and the use of AI by students to complete assignments is a real problem. The UK sector seems to have started to move from the idea that it is purely evil and will undermine assessments (oddly the same argument once made against the calculator in universities) necessitating more sophisticated methods of detecting when it’s been used along with harsher penalties for its use, to the idea that AI forces changes in assessment strategies to either reduce cheating or adopting a more tolerant attitude where some assessments are designed for students to use AI to help them answer part of the assessment. Perhaps an acknowledgement that AI isn’t going to go away and so it’s more ethical uses need to be encouraged.
I think the comparison with the calculator is really interesting. Sometimes a look backwards to how attitudes to other roughly similar things have changed helps to lend a fresh perspective. As you say, you cannot prevent change so adapting is really the only solution.
Never fear, guys. I'll make sure that all of you Have Your Work Done, as we like to say at church, after your deaths. Assuming that I'm still alive to do it, of course.
To fill in a couple of gaps (if anyone cares), there is no hard and fast procedure for making sure that people whose names are submitted for proxy baptisms are actually related to the person doing the submitting (or even actually real), but church leaders regularly issue reminders and admonitions to stick to one's own family line (and devout Mormons generally take the leaders' instructions VERY seriously). Situations like the guy who submitted all the Holocaust victims' names or people submitting celebrities' names are very uncommon, especially in the age of the internet, where it's easy to check on such things. There is a rule that the person must have been dead for at least one year before their proxy baptism can take place, so there's no chance of it being done for someone who is alive. You're supposed to ask for permission from the closest living relative for someone who is not a blood relative, but of course not everyone does. And unfortunately, there are folks out there who get a bee in their bonnet about some famous person or group that they have an interest in and make the rest of us look even weirder than we actually are.
As for knowing whether the person accepts the offer or not, you can ask pretty much any Mormon who is now practicing or has practiced at any time, and they will have a story about having some kind of contact with or impression of a deceased relative who wants their baptism done - if they have not had this experience themselves, someone in their family has, and they will know about it. They're not ghost stories, they're more like spiritual experiences.
If you ever become interested in researching your family history and find information about birth, death, burial, etc. online, you can thank the Mormons, who have done almost all of the digitalizing that exists of written records going back hundreds of years from all over the world. Most of it is done by volunteers.
You can tell a lot about a Mormon by whether they prefer Imagine Dragons or The Killers.
Thanks, VBM! This is some great gap-filling! Follow-up request: please provide rough personality profiles for the two types of Mormon you cite (Imagine Dragons / Killers).
*Killers fan: older (>=Millennial), on the conservative side (not too conservative though because rock and roll fan), snappy dresser, generally firmly heterosexual, doctrinally more "Iron Rod" (traditional), probably setting up the chairs and tables at the holiday potluck, probably informed investigators that Brandon Flowers is a Mormon during their mission
Imagine Dragons fan: younger, generally female or non-binary (plenty of male fans, of course, but more non-male than male), often loudly LGBTQ-friendly (a fraught topic among the faithful for a number of reasons), on the rebellious side, doctrinally leans "Liahona" (more progressive/less literal reading of scripture, etc.) or does not accept the church's truth claims but still identifies as Mormon, more likely to embrace diversity and be very critical of those who do not, in and out of church
Ex-Mormons often eschew both and instead embrace Panic! At the Disco, fronted by former Mormon Brendon Urie, or Neon Trees, whose members are of varying membership status and public affiliation. Proclaiming one's fanship of either can be a political statement, but isn't always.
*Caveats about non-scientific, anecdotal, personal observation, etc.
I love the amount of ground you cover here and its total randomness. The conversation about AI and ethics was thought-provoking. I don’t have enough understanding of how it actually works and have been exposed to far too much pessimistic fiction about the dangers of the super computer to have a truly rational response. There’s certainly a mess which needs sorting out though and it’s hard to see a solution coming from elsewhere.
I was amused that your response to the question “What’s next for We Are Scientists” was essentially “Nothing!” Hope you are getting some downtime after the whirlwind that was last year!
Like you, I have a lot of biases against AI from pop culture and such that make it hard to be rational about it. I have been very disturbed and disappointed in IDLES for making that deepfake Coldplay video for their latest single, but it's hard for me to explain what exactly is so upsetting about it. Maybe that deepfakes are being used to spread misinformation, as hate porn (and regular porn!), and for other nefarious reasons? Maybe that I wish Joe Talbot had just filmed himself lip-synching in slow motion as he strolled along a beach at sunrise? I don't mind and even am amused by how WAS uses AI. Part of it is that they are being humorous about it and clearly mark it as such. Maybe my problem is that I can't take AI seriously.
Yikes, did NOT know about the IDLES deep fake. My concern with this kind of more 'playful' usage of A.I. is that it still signficantly contributes to the normalisation of manipulated output, and desensitizes us to the dangers of the tech. "Oh, it's just a bit of fun." But...where do we draw the line? History proves that those lines rarely exist. And that the broad cultural acceptance of certain behavio(u)rs will always give rise to more and more extreme behavio(u)rs.
THIS is something I can get on board with: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3rtmVWMPaU/?igsh=Z3FsMjl0OTlvMGUz
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ew!
Certainly there are many befits to AI but it’s use for misinformation is a huge worry.
I work in higher education and the use of AI by students to complete assignments is a real problem. The UK sector seems to have started to move from the idea that it is purely evil and will undermine assessments (oddly the same argument once made against the calculator in universities) necessitating more sophisticated methods of detecting when it’s been used along with harsher penalties for its use, to the idea that AI forces changes in assessment strategies to either reduce cheating or adopting a more tolerant attitude where some assessments are designed for students to use AI to help them answer part of the assessment. Perhaps an acknowledgement that AI isn’t going to go away and so it’s more ethical uses need to be encouraged.
I think the comparison with the calculator is really interesting. Sometimes a look backwards to how attitudes to other roughly similar things have changed helps to lend a fresh perspective. As you say, you cannot prevent change so adapting is really the only solution.
In a world in which fact-checking is becoming a dying art, I appreciate this 🙏
Always an added treat when Newski is involved in your stoop chats.
Always fun to listen to you guys chat. Definitely resonate with that feeling of being on the edge of an abyss. [insert nervous laughter here]