D&C 121 is one of the mind-shattering revelations of these latter days.  I find it impossible to read it through without welling up with emotion as it crescendos to its end.

The Holy Ghost shall be

thy constant companion,

and thy scepter

an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth;

and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion,

and without compulsory means

it shall flow unto thee

forever

and ever.

Amen.

If I may toot the JG horn here a bit, probably the best thinking you will see about D&C 121 has been done right here on this blog.   Now that we are no longer studying it in Sunday School and there’s no danger of mass interest, I’m summarizing the content.  Searching the blog for “dominion” yields three pages of results, you are welcome.

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Our cardiologist spoke in church recently.  He talked about defibrillation.  He explained the series of electric impulses that make your heart function and their interdependencies (one pulse triggers another) which can lead to serious problems if one of the pulses is off.  The heart will get stuck in a destructive pattern.  Defibrillation is a massive shock that blows away the existing pattern, allowing the heart to start a new, healthy one.

He was in a serious motorcycle wreck last year.  In a coma for a month.  Bedridden for another two.

He said  that was his defibrillation event.

On the sweetness of the primary program.

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3D overlay of exo-planets on our solar system, for scale.

As noted by EC, we have an apostle!

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/gerald-causse-called-quorum-of-the-twelve-apostles

I puckishly am tempted to start an argument about whether this counts as diverse or not.

He and Sister Valerie have five children which for a French family of their generation is substantial. Their recognition of their children’s sacrifice as the family moved from place to place for church callings touched me.

At 62, he is the youngest of the apostles by a small margin.

https://threestory.com/apostles/

This was an interesting, but short summary of the first day of a LDS AI conference. 

But it also got me thinking about the idea of AI Safety. I am pro-AI, but this worries me, though not for the usual reasons. There are, of course, very good reasons for worrying about AI Safety. And I am not trying to negate those.

We talk about AI Safety as preventing harm. But a perfectly ‘safe’ AI—one that never deviates from its guardrails—might also mean an AI perfectly controlled by whoever defines those guardrails. Safety as alignment to prevent rogue behavior, also means the ability for enforcement of ideological conformity and the owner’s worldview from the AI.

Once you have perfect AI Safety, you also have perfect way to control AI bias. Imagine any issue, let’s call it X. Sam Altman or Elon, or any of the other major players, or even China for that matter, have the perfect way to quietly guide public opinion, without anyone even realizing it. You might not be able to out-argue someone in politics, but a competent AI could subtly bring up helpful ideas you hadn’t considered. And it is coming as a persuasive ‘friend’, who knows you very well, who knows how to frame a topic just for you. It would be the perfect propaganda machine, and AI Safety is the steering wheel.

Consider how much of a difference podcasts and Twitter/X made in the last election. This could be far more potent than both of those combined. A tailored

So, do we really want AI Safety? Perhaps, but I don’t think we should be nearly as excited by it as we might be. It is a sword with two edges. Every safeguard is also a leash, but not one that we hold.

So I was re-reading D&C 122 recently and for no reason at all I started thinking about Joseph Smith’s story from the mob perspective.  It would make a great grim fantasy.

There is this guy that you think is doing evil and leading numerous others into evil, so  much so that you have to bend and break your own rules to get him, but he keeps wiggling out in one way or another.  He gets worse.  He’s semi-openly practicing perversions, etc.  Finally you get him!  But somehow his movement takes  his death as a martyrdom and they become even bigger and more effective.

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I felt low in spirits this morning. Something said to me then,

the purpose of the Gospel is to bring forth Majesty in the soul

That thought was at the same time the cause of my depression and the instant cure for it.

This is the Official JG Review of Catherine Pakaluk’s forum at BYU, as previewed by our very own John Mansfield.

Why Children Became Useless: Faith and the Future of the Family

Attendance: High.  The Marriot Center felt full and had greater than average attendance for a forum.

Babies in Attendance: Low.  We only saw 2.

The Bad: The first half of her talk didn’t hit the right note for the audience.  It was too scholarly–not too deep, but just too focused on which of a number of competing abstract theories best explained the ongoing birth crisis, and it partook of the professorial vice of getting into quarrels with absent people.  In this case, with people who believe the birth decline has structural causes.  (I am one of them, I don’t think we are really ‘the richest and freest’ ever.)

The Good: Her biography and the quotes she read from her educated mothers of large families.  The Spirit hit like a hammer.

I recommend the forum and strongly recommend the book.

In Chad H. Webb’s talk from this last conference, he says that when we are teaching any principle of the gospel, we ought to ask “Can you think of a time when Jesus Christ exemplified this principle?”

Which is a very interesting exercise for the principle of peacemaking. When people describe this gentle, non-confrontational nice-guy Jesus, I honestly wonder how we can be reading the same book.

Jesus broke the Pharisee’s rules right in front of their faces, explicitly to provoke them. He didn’t treat them as if they were arguing in good faith when they weren’t: in fact, he explicitly mocked their hypocrisy, calling them whitewashed tombs, a brood of vipers, children of hell.

He drove out the moneychangers who desecrated his Father’s house.

He told the Samaritan woman at the well that she worshipped she knew not what, and that salvation was of the Jews.

He then goes on to say, using President Nelson’s analogy, that peacemaking is more like surgery than it is being nice.  Except

it’s not obvious where to cut, and you have to keep your hands steady while you’re taking all kinds of incisions yourself, and not necessarily in the right places, and it hurts, and it’s a mess.

The Savior’s way of peacemaking is the cross.

It’s not at all trivial. It’s not for the timid. It’s no wonder people don’t want to do it.

For ordinary people to do this is a miracle. Repentance — receiving a new heart, losing your disposition to do evil — is a miracle. There is no peace — within myself, my family, my country — without the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.

-thus EDJCB.  Much more at the link.

Friend of the JG Bruce Charlton has an excellent post about starting with what you know.
Instead of taking an abstract ideological or creedal concept and then fitting your experience of goodness into that concept, start with goodness.  You know what goodness is, you can live it, experience it, refine your taste for it–and then assume that God is like that, only more so.   When  He said He was good, He was speaking in our terms.  (Yes, goodness can be demanding and inspiring, it’s not all grandfatherliness).

I would also add, you can just know God.  You can just talk to the Father and the Son.

I would also extend this to atheists and materialists.  A man can study and do experiments and come up with theories that he feel leads him to the scientific  materialist conclusion, and then come up with epicycles to explain why most features of our existence are illusions.  Or he can just accept the basic fact, that he himself experiences from day to day and moment to moment, of agency and meaning.  He is swaddled in them.

Sidenote:  I personally don’t believe that all children who die young are automatically saved, i.e., forced to be saved.  Of course nearly everybody is going to be saved, whether they die young or not, so I guess the real question is exaltation, full participation in the divine family and friendship and companionship.    For that I would say that either in divine providence only those souls who have already fully chosen die  young or else those who die young will have other experiences and other chances to choose and grow in the afterlife or the millennium or elsewhere.  There are other options.

Humility is rare among the great–the powerful, the famous, the rich, the beautiful, the gifted.  But it is rare not just in being uncommon.  It is rare the way a choice vintage is rare.  True humility is only possible among the great.

Or among those who have begun to aspire.  Poverty was not what made the poor among the Zoramites humble.  It was poverty plus Alma showing them the possibilty of a better way.

The three things I enjoy about the modern age are flossers, water bottle filling stations, and the group chat.

So someone in the group chat (the family version) shared this wonderful product

The existential crisis duck lamp.

Then the knock knock jokes started.

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When you enjoy the temple, you are becoming as a little child.

Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

-thus Matthew 18:3 (KJV)

Somehow in the sacrament on Sunday I got to thinking about children’s stories.  A lot of them have a lot of repetition and easily grasped structure.  The Big Bad Wolf huffs and puffs at each house, using the same formula, and we go through a simple three-step progression from house type to house type.  The ending is no sense a surprise, especially because almost always the child has heard the story before.  The child wants the repetition of the same ol’ story they know and love.   Children’s stories often don’t even have a plot structure.  In Goodnight Moon, you say goodnight to things over and over.

The House Built Out of Stone

And there I was in the sacrament thinking about kid stories when the prayer for the water happened, in the exact same way it is always done, using the exact same formula, no plot, no surprises.

Basically, kids’ stories are a ritual.   Sacraments are rituals.  The temple is a ritual.  If you enjoy them, you are letting yourself be as a little child.  You don’t have to enjoy them–participation with faith and reverence is enough.  But eventually you will need to enjoy them or you will not be happy in heaven.  Heaven is a lot more like an old beloved story than it is like a new movie.  You will have to become as a little child.

In heaven, only the stories worth retelling are allowed.

And then I had a vision–not a Vision, nothing miraculous, just something in my mind’s eye–of telestial and maybe terrestrial people happily wandering as adventurers through the infinite variety of creation, never bored, always finding something new.  But the celestial people becoming as large as gods, seeing everything, feeling everything, as large as the universe, and deeply deeply happy because the all of everything was as familiar and belonging to them as the inside of their home.