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.
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!
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.
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!
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]