Tech and News

Technology yet to thwart human quest for truth 

HENRY ERGAS

In 1677, German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz announced that he had laid the foundations for a “characteristica universalis” – a “universal symbolic system” able to “express all our thoughts” in formal terms. Leibniz’s primary objective, which led him to (among other things) develop the infinitesimal calculus, analyse Chinese ideograms and attempt to decipher the predictive algorithms of the I Ching and the Kabbalah, was not to create a universal language. It was to translate human information processing into a fully specified symbolic structure that could capture the logic underlying any proposition “as exactly as arithmetic expresses numbers or geometrical analysis expresses lines”. The capacity to manipulate the resulting formulations would make his system “the greatest instrument of reason”, so lucidly solving every possible problem that “when the project is accomplished, it will simply be up to humans to be happy”. That Leibniz’s goal was beyond his grasp hardly needs to be said; and despite the hullabaloo about ChatGPT, no one could seriously contend it will ever be achievable. But if it resonates today it is not just as a precursor to Artificial Intelligence’s utopian ambitions, nor because it reminds us of the intertwined splendour and arrogance of genius, especially when it believes it can cure humanity’s woes. Rather, it is because Leibniz, in seeking to untangle contemporary polemics, was trying to address the traumas of an era marked by a cacophony of claim and counterclaim that fatally blurred the lines separating truth from falsehood. And then, as now, new technologies of information and communication were blamed for the collapse of the boundary between fact and fiction. At the heart of those technologies was the print revolution and especially its impact on the news. Until 1600, people of all classes only became aware of developments slowly, sparsely and sporadically; by 1640, news from an extraordinary variety of sources was diffused with what was considered lightning speed, bewildering frequency and ever greater regularity. There had, in the 16th century, been news sheets, typically issued in single editions. But as the market expanded, their structure and shape changed, with the first regular newspaper appearing in Germany in 1609 and then being quickly imitated throughout Europe. Particularly in relatively literate urban centres, intense competition between publishers did the rest: within a few decades, nearly one Florentine in 12 saw a newspaper every week. Fuelled by, and fuelling, intense religious and ideological conflict, the emerging press’s partisan savagery would appal even today’s Twitteratti. The prequel to the lynching in 1672 of the powerful de Witt brothers in The Hague is a case in point, with published calls for their noses, ears and genitals to be cut off, as they were, prior to their remaining parts being dismembered, roasted and eaten by the jeering crowd. The English press, which boasted 350 news publications in the period from 1641 to 1659 alone, was less bloodthirsty; but if it looked moderate, that was only by comparison. To make things worse, as the press boomed, accuracy was abandoned in a mad rush to beat rival publications. Hard copy might have promised hard fact. Instead, said the great philosopher Pierre Bayle, the news explosion cast Europe into “an impenetrable chaos of incertitude”. Matters were not helped by governments that – following Machiavelli’s precept that “Everyone sees what you seem, few perceive what you are” – outdid each other in funding news outlets, both at home and abroad, to peddle convenient fictions. The overall result was aptly summarised by the anonymous Italian commentator who noted that “those too accustomed to lies will never believe the truth”. Against the backdrop of a bloody civil war in England, and the even bloodier Thirty Years War on the continent, the West descended into an unprecedented crisis of disbelief. Faced, in John Donne’s words (famously imitated, shortly after Germany’s invasion of Poland, by WH Auden), with a world “all in peeces, all cohaerance gone”, many thought the solution lay in re-establishing certainty, if necessary by force. It is thus no accident that the crisis spawned Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, with its brilliant justification of autocracy and its fulminations against freedom of expression. Nor is it an accident that Hobbes’ even more brilliant contemporary, Blaise Pascal – who was also a pioneer of computational logic – argued that because ascertaining the truth so far exceeded mankind’s capabilities, only a leap of faith, and the unquestioning acceptance of autocratic rule, could restore peace and good order. All that underpinned a swerve to stronger, more repressive states and tighter controls over information, often through statutes that prescribed terrifying punishments for spreading “false news”. At the same time, in an age in which people feared for their immortal soul, the theological constraints on what could be said tightened too. Where the rulers were Protestant, the established Protestant churches preached political passivity. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, having just introduced the distinction between “doctrines” and “dogmas”, moved to strictly enforce orthodoxy: Nicolaus Copernicus in the 1530s and 1540s did not suffer the rigid church discipline inflicted on Galileo Galilei a century later, despite his ideas being no less radical. Of the major powers, it was only in England, where both the monarchy and the established church were too weak to install absolutism, that some measure of press freedom survived. But confounding absolutism’s advocates, it did not precipitate a return to chaos. On the contrary, English publishers discovered that a reputation for not peddling lies boosted sales; printed news, it turned out, permitted competing accounts to be compared in a way never before possible, making falsehoods easier to discern; and governments learned that the truth will out, bringing new-found accountability. Together, those factors helped forge an environment in which commerce, science and scholarship could flourish, allowing Britain to overtake the continental powers. Now, history is not a morality tale, in which the past dispenses cheap lessons for the present and the future. But with ChatGPT fanning already widespread fears about “fake news” and unleashing a tsunami of regulation, notably in the European Union, it is worth remembering that every revolution in the technologies of information and communications has provoked similar outcries. And it is also worth remembering that regulation, whatever its merits, has never proven costless, much less a panacea. Yes, the late, lamented Cormac McCarthy had a point when he called man “A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make a machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it”. But even though Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds” is not around the corner, the unhindered human quest for the truth remains very hard to beat – even by the smartest and most evil machine.

ClimateHealing

 Can the Climate Heal Itself?

By Andy Kessler

Dissenters from the catastrophe consensus on warming are worth listening to.

Stop with all the existential- crisis talk. President Biden said, “Climate change is literally an ex i s te n t i a l threat to our nation and to the world.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also talks about the “existential threat” of climate change. National security adviser Jake Sullivan identifies an “accelerating climate crisis” as one reason for a “new consensus” for government picking winners and losers in the economy. Be wary of those touting consensus.

But what if the entire premise is wrong? What if the Earth is self-healing? Before you hurl the “climate denier” invective at me, let’s think this through. Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years— living organisms for 3.7 billion. Surely, an enlightened engineer might think, the planet’s creator built in a mechanism to regulate heat, or we wouldn’t still be here to worry about it.

The theory of climate change is that excess carbon dioxide and methane trap the sun’s radiation in the atmosphere, and these man-made greenhouse gases reflect more of that heat back to Earth, warming the planet. Pretty simple. Eventually, we reach a tipping point when positive feedback loops form—less ice to reflect sunlight, warm oceans that can no longer absorb carbon dioxide—and then we fry, existentially. So lose those gas stoves and carbon-spewing Suburbans.

But nothing is simple. What about negative feedback loops? Examples: human sweat and its cooling condensation or our irises dilating or constricting based on the amount of light coming in. Clouds, which can block the sun or trap its radiation, are rarely mentioned in climate talk.

Why? Because clouds are notoriously difficult to model in climate simulations. Steven Koonin, a New York University professor and author of “Unsettled,” tells me that today’s computing power can typically model the Earth’s atmosphere in grids 60 miles on a side. Pretty coarse. So, Mr. Koonin says, “the properties of clouds in climate models are often adjusted or ‘tuned’ to match observations.” Tuned!

Last month the coddling modelers at the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization stated that “warming El Niño” and “ human- induced climate change” mean there is a “66% likelihood that annual average global temperatures will exceed the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2027.” Notice that El Niño is mentioned first.

Richard Lindzen, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of an early Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, told me, “Temperatures in the tropics remain relatively constant compared with changes in the tropics-to-pole temperatures. The tropics-polar difference is about 40 degrees Celsius today but was 20 degrees during the warm Eocene Epoch and 60 degrees during Ice Ages.” This difference has more to do with changes in the Earth’s rotation, like wobbling, than anything else. According to Mr. Lindzen, this effect is some 70 times as great as human- made greenhouse gases.

OK, back to clouds. Cumulus clouds, the puffy ones often called thunderclouds, are an important convection element, carrying heat from the Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere. Above them are high-altitude cirrus clouds, which can reflect heat back toward the surface. A 2001 Lindzen paper, however, suggests that high-level cirrus clouds in the tropics dissipate as temperatures rise. These thinning cirrus clouds allow more heat to escape. It’s called the Iris Effect, like a temperature- controlled vent opener for an actual greenhouse so you don’t (existentially) fry your plants. Yes, Earth has a safety valve.

Mr. Lindzen says, “This more than offsets the effect of greenhouse gases.” As you can imagine, theories debunking the climate consensus are met with rebuttals and more papers. Often, Mr. Lindzen points out, critics, “to maintain the warming narrative, adjust their models, especially coverage and reflection or albedo of clouds in the tropics.” More tuning.

A 2021 paper co-authored by Mr. Lindzen shows strong support for an Iris Effect. Maybe Earth really was built by an engineer. Proof? None other than astronomer Carl Sagan described the Faint Young Sun Paradox that, 2.5 billion years ago, the sun’s energy was 30% less, but Earth’s climate was basically the same as today. Cirrus clouds likely formed to trap heat—a closed Iris and a negative feedback loop at work.

In a 2015 Nature Geoscience paper, Thorsten Mauritsen and Bjorn Stephen at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology reran climate models using the Iris Effect and found them better at modeling historic observations. No need for tuning. Wouldn’t it be nice if the U.N. used realistic cloud and climate models?

Earth has warmed, but I’m convinced negative feedback loops will save us. Dismissing the Iris Effect or detuning it isn’t science. Sadly, climate science has morphed into climate rhetoric. And note, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained in April that green spending “is, at its core, about turning the climate crisis into an economic opportunity.” Hmmm. “Catastrophic,” “existential” and “crisis” are cloudy thinking. Negative feedback is welcome.

TheVoiceImpactPotential

 

A LETTER THE VOICE COULD

WRITE TO BUREAUCRATS

Dear (insert name of head of relevant department/agency/government business enterprise),

As you know, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice has been given a constitutional right by the Australian people to make representations on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. That right is not limited to making representations about matters that have a direct or special or substantial or different effect on ATSI people. The voice has a constitutional right to make representations about any matters that may relate even indirectly to ATSI people and about matters that affect all Australians.

The voice hereby advises that we will make representations to you on the following matters, at least: (insert matters relevant to the bureaucrat/department/agency/, for example, in the letter to Treasury, APRA or the RBA this will include any change in interest rate policy, bank lending and consumer credit policy or policies concerning regulation of financial services entities. In the letter to the Dept of the Environment, it will cover every proposal for development of any mineral, mining or hydrocarbon project, or any dam or other infrastructure. In the letter to the Department of Health it will include every proposal to build, replace or renew any health facility, every proposal for expenditure on health policy, and every alteration of health policy).

For the voice’s constitutional right to make representations to have practical effect, the voice must be given advance notice by your (department/agency/body) of any proposed decision, evaluation, assessment, expenditure, policy change, or any other matter that may relate to ATSI people.

Advance notice of decisions is essential so that the voice has the opportunity to obtain information about the matter and then make a representation if appropriate. This view is reflected in the voice design principles released by the government, which provide (among other things) that:

• The voice will be able to make representations proactively.

• The voice will have its own resources to allow it to research, develop and make representations.

• The parliament and executive government should seek representations in writing from the voice early in the development of proposed laws and policies.

Accordingly, in addition to the specific matters listed above, the voice hereby requires you to give us advance notice of any proposed decision, evaluation, assessment, expenditure, policy change, or any other matter that may relate to ATSI people.

Given that the voice’s constitutional right to make representations is not limited by reference to the size or importance of a matter relating to ATSI people, you must not censor or filter matters upon which we may wish to make a representation. While we may not wish to pursue minor or trivial matters, we wish to make that judgment, not have you make it for us.

In order to give the voice adequate time to consider such matters and formulate any representations, we require you to give us notice of all relevant matters as soon as such matter arises and, in any event, at least 90 days before the decision, evaluation, assessment, expenditure, policy change, or other matter is made.

You must provide all documents, and access to all your personnel, which the voice considers appropriate to enable it to effectively make representations … this means that any material that is before a decision maker, or during the development of a policy must be made available to the voice if the voice requests it.

We put you on notice that you must not implement any such matters unless the voice has been given the time to make proper representations and discuss them with you.

The voice is in the process of hiring qualified professionals to enable it to exercise properly our right to make representations in every area of government which affects ATSI people. In the interim we will have (insert number) voice officers dedicated to monitoring matters that arise in your (department/agency/body), and we propose at least (number) will be permanently embedded in your offices to enable the voice to work effectively. We envisage that in the fullness of time there will be a voice agency within your [department/agency/body ] so that effective oversight of your policy development, policies and decision making can be carried out by the voice on a continuous and ongoing basis.

Please note that failure to comply with the requirements contained in this letter or to give proper consideration to any representations made by the voice may render any action taken by you liable to challenge by the voice in the courts, with the real risk that any decision taken will be rendered invalid until we have been given time to exercise our constitutional right to make representations. Where we deem necessary, we will not hesitate to prosecute the constitutional guarantee which has been afforded to us by the Australian people, including seeking injunctive relief to prevent the making of a decision which affects ATSI people, to ensure that our right to make representations has been provided in a way that is both substantive and practical.

Moreover, you will be aware that s 75(v) of the Constitution provides an irremovable right to judicial review of any unlawful decision made by an officer of the commonwealth affecting that person’s interests. Please be aware that the voice takes the view that s75(v) protects it, or any other persons affected by any final decisions made by an officer of the commonwealth relating to ATSI people. Please be advised that if your department makes a final decision which affects ATSI people and during the process of making that decision fails to give due consideration, does not provide the voice procedural fairness, or considers the representations in an unreasonable way (in other words, if you do anything which provides the basis for a constitutional writ under s 75(v) of the Constitution) we will not hesitate to commence action in the Federal Court of Australia to invalidate that decision.

We are in the process of establishing a Voice Legal Affairs unit which will be equipped to provide legal advice to staff in your (department/agency/body) so that they may better understand their legal obligations and the broader administrative law implications of our constitutional right to make representations. We will advise you when the VLA is established and look forward to working with your (department/agency/body) so that the representations of the voice are received in a way that conforms with the Constitution. In the meantime, we suggest that your staff undergo legal training concerning the obligations on them to take due consideration of any representations by the voice which are constitutionally mandated for consideration. Your sincerely, (insert name)

CEO, The Voice, Canberra

God's GPS

God Is My Global Positioning System

By Mike Kerrigan

Like a rebound in basketball that fortuitously finds a flatfooted forward at the 3-point line rather than near the rim, grace falls freely on the undeserving if they’re open to it. So I try to be receptive and hope for a few lucky bounces off life’s spiritual backboard.

A recent Friday morning came with such a rebound. These rare moments happen on Fridays, when my mind isn’t distracted by a full week’s work in front of me, and usually when I’m driving somewhere. I punched my destination—an unfamiliar lunch spot north of Charlotte— into my truck’s GPS and began to follow the verbal directions.

Strangely, the way it directed me wasn’t the familiar path I wanted to take. GPS knew what I couldn’t: that an accident ahead on my preferred route would have prevented me from arriving at my desired destination on time. Free though I was to do otherwise, I chose to follow my GPS.

Around 30 minutes later I missed the exit for the restaurant. I like to think I was mentally preparing for the important business meeting ahead, but the truth is, I’m powerless when Gordon Lightfoot comes on my playlist. I couldn’t hear the directions over my own singing.

GPS respected my choice, promptly recalibrated, and calmly gave me new directions to follow.

I missed no further exits, made the lunch appointment, and had a productive meeting. Such is God’s love. He knows and wants what’s best for me, always and everywhere. If I ask and—this is important—in the quiet, listen, he’ll tell me the surest path toward the good I seek.

And when I can’t align my will to his for a measly half-hour, he doesn’t forsake me. Instead, he meets me where I am, however lowly and however often, and from there tells me the best way forward. I am never lost while there’s breath in me; in his “proceed to the route” is patient love beyond all understanding.

I am grateful for life’s long rebounds, even if I get them only on the occasional Friday drive. Perhaps to pull down more of these precious spiritual boards without confusion, I’ll listen to Gordon Lightfoot on my Thursday rather than Friday commute.

Mr. Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte, N.C.

ChatGPT

 

ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution

By Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt And Daniel Huttenlocher

Anew technology bids to transform the human cognitive process as it has not been shaken up since the invention of printing. The technology that printed the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 made abstract human thought communicable generally and rapidly. But new technology today reverses that process. Whereas the printing press caused a profusion of modern human thought, the new technology achieves its distillation and elaboration. In the process, it creates a gap between human knowledge and human understanding. If we are to navigate this transformation successfully, new concepts of human thought and interaction with machines will need to be developed. This is the essential challenge of the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

The new technology is known as generative artificial intelligence; GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. ChatGPT, developed at the OpenAI research laboratory, is now able to converse with humans. As its capacities become broader, they will redefine human knowledge, accelerate changes in the fabric of our reality, and reorganize politics and society. Generative artificial intelligence presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the beginning of the Enlightenment. The printing press enabled scholars to replicate each other’s findings quickly and share them. An unprecedented consolidation and spread of information generated the scientific method.

What had been impenetrable became the starting point of accelerating query. The medieval interpretation of the world based on religious faith was progressively undermined. The depths of the universe could be explored until new limits of human understanding were reached.

Generative AI will similarly open revolutionary avenues for human reason and new horizons for consolidated knowledge. But there are categorical differences. Enlightenment knowledge was achieved progressively, step by step, with each step testable and teachable. AI-enabled systems start at the other end. They can store and distill a huge amount of existing information, in ChatGPT’s case much of the textual material on the internet and a large number of books—billions of items. Holding that volume of information and distilling it is beyond human capacity.

Sophisticated AI methods produce results without explaining why or how their process works.

The GPT computer is prompted by a query from a human. The learning machine answers in literate text within seconds. It is able to do so because it has pregenerated representations of the vast data on which it was trained. Because the process by which it created those representations was developed by machine learning that reflects patterns and connections across vast amounts of text, the precise sources and reasons for any one representation’s particular features remain unknown. By what process the learning machine stores its knowledge, distills it and retrieves it remains similarly unknown.

Whether that process will ever be discovered, the mystery associated with machine learning will challenge human cognition for the indefinite future.

AI’s capacities are not static but expand exponentially as the technology advances. Recently, the complexity of AI models has been doubling every few months. There-fore generative AI systems have capabilities that remain undisclosed even to their inventors. With each new AI system, they are building new capacities without understanding their origin or destination. As a result, our future now holds an entirely novel element of mystery, risk and surprise.

Enlightenment science accumulated certainties; the new AI generates cumulative ambiguities. Enlightenment science evolved by making mysteries explicable, delineating the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding as they moved. The two faculties moved in tandem: Hypothesis was understanding ready to become knowledge; induction was knowledge turning into understanding. In the Age of AI, riddles are solved by processes that remain unknown.

This disorienting paradox makes mysteries unmysterious but also unexplainable. Inherently, highly complex AI furthers human knowledge but not human understanding— a phenomenon contrary to almost all of postEnlightenment modernity. Yet at the same time AI, when coupled with human reason, stands to be a more powerful means of discovery than human reason alone.

The essential difference between the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of AI is thus not technological but cognitive. After the Enlightenment, philosophy accompanied science. Bewildering new data and often counterintuitive conclusions, doubts and insecurities were allayed by comprehensive explanations of the human experience.

Generative AI is similarly poised to generate a new form of human consciousness. As yet, however, the opportunity exists in colors for which we have no spectrum and in directions for which we have no compass. No political or philosophical leadership has formed to explain and guide this novel relationship between man and machine, leaving society relatively unmoored.

ChatGPT is an example of what is known as a large language model, which can be used to generate humanlike text. GPT is a type of model that can be automatically learned from large amounts of text without the need for human supervision. ChatGPT’s developers have fed it a massive amount of the textual content of the digital world.

Computing power allows the model to capture patterns and connections.

The ability of large language models to generate humanlike text was an almost accidental discovery. These models are trained to be able to predict the next word in a sentence, which is useful in tasks such as autocompletion for sending text messages or searching the web. But it turns out that the models also have the unexpected ability to create highly articulate paragraphs, articles and in time perhaps books.

ChatGPT is further specialized beyond a basic large language model, using feedback from humans to tune the model so that it generates more natural-seeming conversational text, as well as to try to contain its propensity for inappropriate responses (a substantial challenge for large language models). ChatGPT instantaneously converts its representations into unique responses. The ultimate impression on a human conversant is that the AI is relating stationary collections of facts into dynamic concepts.

ChatGPT’s answers, statements and observations appear without an explanation of where they came from and without an identifiable author. On its face, ChatGPT has no discernible motive or bias. Its outputs are complex, but its work is astonishingly rapid: In a matter of seconds, it can produce answers that coherently explain a high-level topic. They are not simply copied from the text in the computer’s memory. They are generated anew by a process that humans are unable to replicate. It is able to incorporate hypotheticals and nonobvious psychological inferences. It can prioritize among billions of data points to select the single set of 200 words that is most relevant (or will appear most relevant to a human reader). In its own words, it makes probabilistic judgments about future outcomes, blending information from discrete domains into an integrated answer. It appears to accept contrary views, presenting them as simultaneously compatible. It imitates other writing without copying it. Even though the model is incapable of understanding in the human sense, its outputs reflect an underlying essence of human language.

We asked ChatGPT to explain its own capabilities. Can it predict the future?

No, it responded. “I can only provide information and answer questions based on the data that I have been trained on. I do not have personal experiences or consciousness, so I am not able to make predictions or forecasts about future events.”

Is it able to make probabilistic judgments?

“I can provide probabilistic judgments based on the data that I have been trained on. For example, if I have been trained on a large dataset of weather patterns, I might be able to provide a probabilistic judgment about the likelihood of a particular type of weather occurring in a specific location on a given day. However, it is important to note that these probabilistic judgments are based on patterns and trends in the data, and they may not always accurately reflect

Prompt: Write a short essay in the thought of Henry Kissinger about the role of artificial general intelligence in international arms control.

The response began: “As we stand on the cusp of a new technological revolution, the question of artificial general intelligence and its role in international arms control becomes increasingly pressing. Will AGI bring about unprecedented stability, as advanced systems take over the decision-making processes associated with nuclear deterrence? Or will it introduce a new set of dangers, as the global balance of power is altered by the development of highly intelligent machines?” We queried ChatGPT on topics of immediate interest, such as Russia’s role in maintaining or undermining European stability. It gave seemingly thoughtful, concise answers in less than a minute, balancing contradictory information and answering fully without appearing to have an opinion. On the receiving end, generative artificial intelligence appears superhuman or at least greatly enhanced cognitively. To the naive user, it seems like a supremely fast and highly articulate librarian-scholar coupled with a professorial savant. It facilitates the summary and interrogation of the world’s knowledge far more effectively than any existing technological or human interface, and it does so with unique comprehensiveness. Its ability to integrate multiple knowledge domains and imitate multiple aspects of human thought makes it polymathic to a degree that exceeds the ambitions of any group of top-level humans. All of these qualities encourage unquestioning acceptance of whatever GPT generates and a kind of magical atmosphere for their operation. Yet at the same time, it possesses a capability to misinform its human users with incorrect statements and outright fabrications Within a few days of ChatGPT’s launch, more than a million people signed up to ask it questions. Hundreds of companies are working on generative technologies, and investment is pouring in, tilting discoveries to the commercial field. The huge commercial motives will, for the foreseeable future, take precedence over long-range thinking about their implications. The biggest of these models are expensive to train—north of $1 billion per model. Once trained, thousands of computers work 24 hours a day to operate them. Operating a pretrained model is cheap compared with the training itself, and it requires only capital, rather than capital and computing skill. Still, paying for exclusive use of a large language model remains outside the bounds of most enterprises. These models’ developers are likely to sell subscriptions, so that a single model will serve the needs of many thousands of individuals and businesses. As a result, the number of very large language models in the next decade may be relatively constrained. Design and control of these models will be highly concentrated, even as their power to amplify human efforts and thought becomes much more diffuse. Generative AI will be used beyond the large language model to build many types of models, and the method will become increasingly multimodal and arcane. It will alter many fields of human endeavor, for example education and biology. Different models will vary in their strengths and weaknesses. Their capabilities—from writing jokes and drawing paintings to designing antibodies—will likely continue to surprise us. Just as the large language model developed a richer model of human language than its creators anticipated, generative AIs in many fields are likely to learn more than their assigned tasks imply. Breakthroughs in traditional scientific problems have become probable. The long-term importance of generative AI transcends commercial implications or even noncommercial scientific breakthroughs. It is not only generating answers; it is generating philosophically profound questions. It will infuse diplomacy and security strategy. Yet none of the creators of this technology are addressing the problems it will itself create. Nor has the U.S. government addressed the fundamental changes and transformations that loom. The seeming perfection of the model’s answers will produce overconfidence in its results. This is already an issue, known as “automation bias,” with far less sophisticated computer programs. The effect is likely to be especially strong where the AI generates authoritative- sounding text. ChatGPT is likely to reinforce existing predispositions toward reliance on automated systems reducing the human element.

The lack of citations in Chat-GPT’s answers makes it difficult to discern truth from misinformation.

We know already that malicious actors are injecting reams of manufactured “facts,” and increasingly convincing deepfake images and videos, into the internet—that is to say, into ChatGPT’s present and future learning set. Because ChatGPT is designed to answer questions, it sometimes makes up facts to provide a seemingly coherent answer.

That phenomenon is known among AI researchers as “ hallucination” or “stochastic parroting,” in which an AI strings together phrases that look real to a human reader but have no basis in fact. What triggers these errors and how to control them remain to be discovered.

We asked ChatGPT to give “six references on Henry Kissinger’s thoughts on technology.” It generated a list of articles purportedly by Mr. Kissinger. All were plausible topics and outlets, and one was a real title (though its date was wrong). The rest were convincing fabrications.

Possibly the so-called titles appear as isolated sentences in the vastness of GPT’s “facts,” which we are not yet in a position to discover.

ChatGPT has no immediately evident personality, although users have occasionally prompted it to act like its evil twin. ChatGPT’s lack of an identifiable author makes it harder for humans to intuit its leanings than it would be to judge the political or social viewpoint of a human being. Because the machine’s design and the questions fed to it generally have a human origin, however, we will be predisposed to imagine humanlike reasoning. In reality, the AI is engaging in an inhuman analog to cognition. Though we perceive generative AI in human terms, its mistakes are not the mistakes of a human; it makes the mistakes of a different form of intelligence based on pattern recognition. Humans should not identify these mistakes as errors. Will we be able to recognize its biases and flaws for what they are? Can we develop an interrogatory mode capable of questioning the veracity and limitations of a model’s answers, even when we do not know the answers ahead of time?

Thus, AI’s outputs remain difficult to explain. The truth of Enlightenment science was trusted because each step of replicable experimental processes was also tested, hence trusted. The truth of generative AI will need to be justified by entirely different methods, and it may never become similarly absolute. As we attempt to catch our understanding up to our knowledge, we will have to ask continuously: What about the machine has not yet been revealed to us? What obscure knowledge is it hiding?

Generative AI’s reasoning is likely to change over time, to some extent as part of the model’s training. It will become an accelerated version of traditional scientific progress, adding random adaptations to the very process of discovery. The same question put to Chat-GPT over a period of time may yield

changed answers. Slight differences in phrasing that seem unimportant at the first pass may cause drastically different results when repeated. At the present, ChatGPT is learning from an information base that ends at a fixed point in time. Soon, its developers will likely enable it to take in new inputs, eventually consuming an unending influx of real-time information. If investment continues to surge, the model is likely to be retrained with rising frequency. That will increase its currency and accuracy but will oblige its users to allow an everexpanding margin for rapid change. Learning from the changing outputs of generative AI, rather than exclusively from human written text, may distort today’s conventional human knowledge.

Even if generative AI models become fully interpretable and accurate, they would still pose challenges inherent in human conduct. Students are using ChatGPT to cheat on exams. Generative AI could create email advertisements that flood in-boxes and are indistinguishable from the messages of personal friends or business acquaintances. AI-generated videos and advertisements depicting false campaign platforms could make it difficult to distinguish between political positions. Sophisticated signals of falsehood—including watermarks that signify the presence of AI-generated content, which OpenAI is considering— may not be enough; they need to be buttressed by elevated human skepticism.

Some consequences could be inherent. To the extent that we use our brains less and our machines more, humans may lose some abilities. Our own critical thinking, writing and (in the context of text-to-image programs like Dall-E and Stability.AI) design abilities may atrophy. The impact of generative AI on education could show up in the decline of future leaders’ ability to discriminate between what they intuit and what they absorb mechanically. Or it could result in leaders who learn their negotiation methods with machines and their military strategy with evolutions of generative AI rather than humans at the terminals of computers.

It is important that humans develop the confidence and ability to challenge the outputs of AI systems. Doctors worry that deep-learning models used to assess medical imaging for diagnostic purposes, among other tasks, may replace their function. At what point will doctors no longer feel comfortable questioning the answers their software gives them? As machines climb the ladder of human capabilities, from pattern recognition to rational synthesis to multidimensional thinking, they may begin to compete with human functions in state administration, law and business tactics. Eventually, something akin to strategy may emerge. How might humans engage with AI without abdicating essential parts of strategy to machines? With such changes, what becomes of accepted doctrines?

It is urgent that we develop a sophisticated dialectic that empowers people to challenge the interactivity of generative AI, not merely to justify or explain AI’s answers but to interrogate them. With concerted skepticism, we should learn to probe the AI methodically and assess whether and to what degree its answers are worthy of confidence. This will require conscious mitigation of our unconscious biases, rigorous training and copious practice.

The question remains: Can we learn, quickly enough, to challenge rather than obey? Or will we in the end be obliged to submit? Are what we consider mistakes part of the deliberate design? What if an element of malice emerges in the AI?

Another key task is to reflect on which questions must be reserved for human thought and which may be risked on automated systems. Yet even with the development of enhanced skepticism and interrogatory skill, ChatGPT proves that the genie of generative technology is out of the bottle. We must be thoughtful in what we ask it.

Computers are needed to harness growing volumes of data. But cognitive limitations may keep humans from uncovering truths buried in the world’s information. ChatGPT possesses a capacity for analysis that is qualitatively different from that of the human mind. The future therefore implies a collaboration not only with a different kind of technical entity but with a different kind of reasoning— which may be rational without being reasonable, trustworthy in one sense but not in another. That dependency itself is likely to precipitate a transformation in metacognition and hermeneutics— the understanding of understanding— and in human perceptions of our role and function.

Machine-learning systems have already exceeded any one human’s knowledge. In limited cases, they have exceeded humanity’s knowledge, transcending the bounds of what we have considered knowable. That has sparked a revolution in the fields where such breakthroughs have been made. AI has been a game changer in the core problem in biology of determining the structure of proteins and in which advanced mathematicians do proofs, among many others.

As models turn from human-generated text to more inclusive inputs, machines are likely to alter the fabric of reality itself. Quantum theory posits that observation creates reality. Prior to measurement, no state is fixed, and nothing can be said to exist. If that is true, and if machine observations can fix reality as well— and given that AI systems’ observations come with superhuman rapidity—the speed of the evolution of defining reality seems likely to accelerate. The dependence on machines will determine and thereby alter the fabric of reality, producing a new future that we do not yet understand and for the exploration and leadership of which we must prepare.

Using the new form of intelligence will entail some degree of acceptance of its effects on our self-perception, perception of reality and reality itself. How to define and determine this will need to be addressed in every conceivable context. Some specialties may prefer to muddle through with the mind of man alone—though this will require a degree of abnegation without historical precedent and will be complicated by competitiveness within and between societies.

As the technology becomes more widely understood, it will have a profound impact on international relations. Unless the technology for knowledge is universally shared, imperialism could focus on acquiring and monopolizing data to attain the latest advances in AI. Models may produce different outcomes depending on the data assembled. Differential evolutions of societies may evolve on the basis of increasingly divergent knowledge bases and hence of the perception of challenges.

Heretofore most reflection on these issues has assumed congruence between human purposes and machine strategies. But what if this is not how the interaction between humanity and generative AI will develop? What if one side considers the purposes of the other malicious?

The arrival of an unknowable and apparently omniscient instrument, capable of altering reality, may trigger a resurgence in mystic religiosity. The potential for group obedience to an authority whose reasoning is largely inaccessible to its subjects has been seen from time to time in the history of man, perhaps most dramatically and recently in the 20th-century subjugation of whole masses of humanity under the slogan of ideologies on both sides of the political spectrum. A third way of knowing the world may emerge, one that is neither human reason nor faith. What becomes of democracy in such a world?

Leadership is likely to concentrate in hands of the fewer people and institutions who control access to the limited number of machines capable of high-quality synthesis of reality. Because of the enormous cost of their processing power, the most effective machines within society may stay in the hands of a small subgroup domestically and in the control of a few superpowers internationally. After the transitional stage, older models will grow cheaper, and a diffusion of power through society and among states may commence.

A reinvigorated moral and strategic leadership will be essential. With-out guiding principles, humanity runs the risk of domination or anarchy, unconstrained authority or nihilistic freedom. The need for relating major societal change to ethical justifications and novel visions for the future will appear in a new form. If the maxims put forth by ChatGPT are not translated into a cognizably human endeavor, alienation of society and even revolution may become likely.

Without proper moral and intellectual underpinnings, machines used in governance could control rather than amplify our humanity and trap us forever. In such a world, artificial intelligence might amplify human freedom and transcend unconstrained challenges.

This imposes certain necessities for mastering our imminent future. Trust in AI requires improvement across multiple levels of reliability— in the accuracy and safety of the machine, alignment of AI aims with human goals and in the accountability of the humans who govern the machine. But even as AI systems grow technically more trustworthy, humans will still need to find new, simple and accessible ways of comprehending and, critically, challenging the structures, processes and outputs of AI systems.

Parameters for AI’s responsible use need to be established, with variation based on the type of technology and the context of deployment. Language models like ChatGPT demand limits on its conclusions. Chat-GPT needs to know and convey what it doesn’t know and can’t convey.

Humans will have to learn new restraint. Problems we pose to an AI system need to be understood at a responsible level of generality and conclusiveness. Strong cultural norms, rather than legal enforcement, will be necessary to contain our societal reliance on machines as arbiters of reality. We will reassert our humanity by ensuring that machines remain objects.

Education in particular will need to adapt. A dialectical pedagogy that uses generative AI may enable speedier and more-individualized learning than has been possible in the past. Teachers should teach new skills, including responsible modes of human-machine interlocution. Fundamentally, our educational and professional systems must preserve a vision of humans as moral, psychological and strategic creatures uniquely capable of rendering holistic judgments.

Machines will evolve far faster than our genes will, causing domestic dislocation and international divergence. We must respond with commensurate alacrity, particularly in philosophy and conceptualism, nationally and globally. Global harmonization will need to emerge either by perception or by catastrophe, as Immanuel Kant predicted three centuries ago

We must include one caveat to this prediction: What happens if this technology cannot be completely controlled? What if there will always be ways to generate falsehoods, false pictures and fake videos, and people will never learn to disbelieve what they see and hear? Humans are taught from birth to believe what we see and hear, and that may well no longer be true as a result of generative AI. Even if the big platforms, by custom and regulation, work hard to mark and sort bad content, we know that content once seen cannot be unseen. The ability to manage and control global distributed content fully is a serious and unsolved problem.

The answers that ChatGPT gives to these issues are evocative only in the sense that they raise more questions than conclusions. For now, we have a novel and spectacular achievement that stands as a glory to the human mind as AI. We have not yet evolved a destination for it. As we become Homo technicus, we hold an imperative to define the purpose of our species. It is up to us to provide the real answers.

Mr. Kissinger served as secretary of state, 1973-77, and White House national security adviser, 1969-75. Mr. Schmidt was CEO of Google, 2001-11 and executive chairman of Google and its successor, Alphabet Inc., 2011-17. Mr. Huttenlocher is dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are authors of “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future.” The authors thank Eleanor Runde for her research.

Generative artificial intelligence presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the start of the Enlightenment.

Can we learn, quickly enough, to challenge rather than obey? Or will we be obliged to submit? A third way of knowing the world may emerge, one that is neither human reason nor faith.

WesternValues

 

The decline of Western Christianity makes us vulnerable to dictators and dogmatists

• The Daily Telegraph
• 25 Feb 2023
• CHARLES MOORE

While Putin abuses Christian rhetoric in Ukraine, we have replaced our traditional foundation with a new, censorious religion

It is true that something strange has happened in the ethical atmosphere of the West

here is an undercurrent in some conservative circles which sympathises with Vladimir Putin because he is a Christian leader of a Christian country.

For many years now, the Russian president has deployed his faith for political purposes, both domestic – he has the Russian Orthodox Church and its Patriarch, Kirill, firmly under his thumb – and foreign. Putin said, in 2013: “We see many Euro-atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual.”

He was at it again this week, in his big speech on the anniversary of his bungled invasion of Ukraine. The West’s attitude, he said, “is all about the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and abuse of children, including paedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life… Millions of people in the West realise they are being led to a spiritual disaster. Frankly, the elite appear to have gone crazy…”

It’s not like that in Mother Russia: “We will protect our children from degradation and degeneration,” said the man who has orphaned and deported thousands of infants and teenagers.

Ever since watching General Galtieri’s broadcast in 1982, when he announced the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, I have found the relationship between military aggression and religious faith both comical and disgusting. Invoking “the protection of God and his holy Mother,” the bemedalled and drink-befuddled dictator proclaimed: “Glory to the great Argentine people. May this be God’s will.”

It appears not to have been. Margaret Thatcher, who led Britain in the Falklands victory, once expressed her own attitude to politics and faith: “I never thought that Christianity equipped me with a political philosophy, but I thought it did equip me with standards to which political actions must in the end, be referred.”

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is brutal and utterly unnecessary. If he were to follow Mrs T’s suggestion and refer his own political actions to Christian standards, he would retire and live out his remaining days praying penitently before the icons in one of those great Russian Orthodox monasteries.

Never forget that tyrants know how to exploit the power of religion. In his speech to the Reichstag in March 1933, shortly after assuming supreme power, Hitler declared that his government “regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation”. In fact, as his behaviour over the next 12 years proved, he detested Christianity because its defence of the weak “crippled all that is noble in humanity”. For similar nationalistic reasons in the Second World War, Stalin, whose atheistic communism was absolute, nevertheless boosted the Orthodox Church which, until then, he had persecuted.

It is perfectly possible that, unlike those two, Putin is genuine in his faith. The same could be said of the Taliban the West has now allowed back to run Afghanistan or the ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their sincerity does not excuse them. Their invocation of religion as the moral authority for their violence is borderline psychopathic. It makes them even more contemptible than straightforward murderers.

So why would any conservative even toy with sympathy for Putin? Given his depravity, I can think of no good reason, but I can see why there is some resonance in the rhetoric he deploys, just as there was in Hitler’s denunciations of Bolshevik threats and decadent democracies in the 1930s.

It is true that something strange has happened in the ethical atmosphere of the 21st-century West. Although a century has passed since Christianity was assumed to be the active, personal faith of most Western citizens, there was a long period when it was accepted as normative in morality and foundational in culture, law and values.

Most people, for example, thought marriage was the best instrument for social stability and for bringing up children, and was solely a union between a man and a woman. Rules for sexual conduct were seen in the light of this primary purpose – the propagation of the human race with the maximum chance of maternal and paternal love. So were attitudes to life, ruling out, for example, euthanasia.

Social change, in policies to alleviate poverty or improve health care, was welcomed not so much as class struggle but as deriving from Christian concern for the poor. Most schools were explicitly Christian, and almost all schools founded their educational ideas on a hierarchy of value which had Christian (and classical) roots. The Bible told stories of noble – and appalling – human conduct which were taught from infancy and offered, from the Ten Commandments onwards, the basis of law.

Even democratic politics related to Christianity. The famous separation of church and state is often depicted as the defeat of the former by the latter, but its roots are Christian. Jesus’s words “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” were sophisticated political philosophy. From them, a cohabitation of the sacred and the secular within free nations gradually developed. (It is a great problem for democratic pluralism that Islamic thinking still seems to struggle with this subject.)

The pursuit of women’s rights and, more recently of LGBT+ rights, also has Christian roots, via Christianity’s concern for the dignity of each human person and the overriding obligation (which Hitler hated most of all) of compassion. The same applies to the focus on defeating racism.

It is also true, however, that these preoccupations are now so strong in public policy, and in top-down culture such as that offered by the BBC, that they attain to the status of a new religion. The highest religious duty has moved from loving God and neighbour (and relating the two) to loving yourself and whatever identity for that self you choose to select. This is destructive of social peace.

Like most religions which hold official sway, this new one quickly becomes intolerant. I respect – though I do not agree with – most of the arguments made for single-sex marriage, but I find it dismaying that people who oppose the principle behind such marriages are in effect blocked from public office. As a newspaper columnist in his sixties, I can probably get away with writing this, but I am aware that an ambitious person from a younger generation would be unwise to take the risk. Kate Forbes, the latest victim, has not tried to “impose her religious beliefs” on anyone. She has merely stated them, as is her right and, some Christians would argue, her duty. Her views on this accord with those of other mainstream faiths. Are practising Jews and Muslims also to be debarred from public service?

Even quite moderate politicians now feel entitled to tell religious bodies what to practise. Before the recent vote in the General Synod of the Church of England, Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House of Commons, wrote a public letter to her local bishop demanding he vote for same-sex marriages in church. How long before she instructs him who should receive Holy Communion?

There is one other respect, unfortunately, in which Putin is right. The new, woke religion is hostile to Western civilisation, which it sees as racist, greedy and trapped in its “colonialist” mindset. Christian conservatives are surely well placed by their beliefs to steer between reactionary Russia and woke narcissism. Both, though in very different ways, hate our Western way of life.

Pell ‘our greatest Catholic … a saint for these times’

In his eulogy for George Pell, former prime minister Tony Abbott celebrates a wonderful life, a once-in-a-generation gathering and a rededication to the ideals the late Cardinal lived for.

By TONY ABBOTT

This funeral is a sad farewell to a great friend, and more, a joyous tribute to a great hero.

It’s the celebration of a wonderful life; a once-in-a-generation gathering of the people of faith; to rededicate ourselves to the ideals George Pell lived for, and to draw strength, from each other, for the struggles ahead. He was a priest, a bishop and the prefect of a Vatican secretariat, but he was never a mere functionary; in each of these roles, a thinker, a leader, a Christian warrior and a proud Australian who wanted our country and our civilisation to succeed.

In the pulpit, from the lectern, on TV, in the opinion pages, across the dinner table, after mass or in confession – as everyone here would know – he was always thoughtful, often charismatic, occasionally imperious, constantly concerned for the wellbeing of others, and a pastoral priest who could find an echo of Christ in even the worst sinner.

In short, he’s the greatest Catholic Australia has produced; and one of the country’s greatest sons. No one else has been both archbishop of Melbourne and archbishop of Sydney. No other Australian has been as senior in the leadership of the Roman church, or as influential in its conclaves.

He was instrumental in the foundation of three centres of higher learning: the Australian Catholic University, the University of Notre Dame, here in Australia, and Campion College, perhaps his favourite, named for the Jesuit martyr; our first liberal arts school, dedicated to giving its students a good grounding in the great books, and the great debates that have shaped our civilisation, and made it man’s finest social and cultural achievement so far.

And far from being an apologist, or a dissembler about the sins of the church – personal, financial, or intellectual – he was their hammer. As he knew, “ecclesia semper reformanda” – the church is always in need of reform. Here in Australia, he was the first archbishop to sack misbehaving clergy, and report them to the police, rather than hide them in another parish. In Rome, he tried to ensure that the collections from the faithful were used for the glory of God, rather than the indulgence of the higher clergy. Most recently, he called a draft Vatican document further eroding the apostolic tradition a “toxic nightmare”. Never one to mince his words.
To the smug, to the venal, to the lazy, to the wayward, and to the intellectually sloppy, he was an existential reproach – and because that’s all of us, in some way, it’s hardly surprising that he became a target.

For all his presence and his natural authority, he was personally humble and never fell for the modern conceit, that he was bigger than that which had shaped him: faith, church and country.

In his celebrated eulogy for another Catholic hero, BA Santamaria, he declared it was “the mark of the false prophet that all men speak well of him”; before observing that “Bob” had “triumphantly avoided this fate”.

And so it was, even more, with the cardinal himself. His recent observation, that the climate change movement had “some of the characteristics of a low-level, not-too-demanding pseudo-religion”, was the kind of comment that enraged its adherents, precisely because it was true.

Throughout history, that’s what people have been martyred for, for telling the unpopular, unpalatable truth; and it’s not possible to honour the cardinal, without some reference to his persecution.

He was made a scapegoat for the church itself. He should never have been investigated, in the absence of a complaint. He should never have been charged, in the absence of corroborating evidence. And he should never have been convicted, in the absence of a plausible case, as the High Court so resoundingly made plain. Had he died in jail, without the High Court’s vindication, this – today – would have been a very different event, even though his innocence would have been no less, had it been known only to God.

His greatest triumph, in fact, was not to have held the highest ecclesiastical offices of any Australian, but to have kept his faith in circumstances that must have screamed: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Not to succumb to anger, self-pity or despair – when almost any other human would – and instead to have accepted this modern-day crucifixion, walking humbly in the footsteps of Our Lord; that’s the heroic virtue that makes him, to my mind, a saint for our times.

And as I heard the chant, “Cardinal Pell should go to hell”, I thought, at least they now believe in the afterlife. Perhaps this is St George Pell’s first miracle.

Indeed the ultimately triumphant life of this soldier for truth, to advance through smear and doubt to victory, should drive a renewal of confidence throughout the universal church.

If character means to “trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too”; if it means bearing “to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools”, George Pell was the greatest man I’ve ever known. And if faith means the ability to endure crushing adversity, no one could be a better advertisement for it – especially with those of us for whom it often remains tantalisingly out of reach.

So I will hold on to him in my heart, from love of a friend and mentor; and as a gentle chide for virtues sought, but not yet attained. And in these times, when it’s more needful than ever to fight the good fight, to stay the course and to keep the faith, it is surely now for the Australian church to trumpet the cause of its greatest champion.

There should be Pell study courses, Pell spirituality courses, Pell lectures, Pell high schools and Pell university colleges; just as there are for the other saints. If we can direct our prayers to Mother Teresa, Thomas a Becket and St Augustine, why not the late cardinal too, who’s been just as pleasing to God, I’m sure, and has the added virtue of being the very best of us.

Tony Abbott delivered this eulogy at the Thursday funeral of the late George Pell.

Cardinal George Pell

 Quadrant 

A Pearl in an Eroding Landscape

• 17th January 2023
 
•  Comments (2)

George Pell



Below is the text of George Cardinal Pell’s address to an August 2022 fundraising dinner at Campion College — one more reminder of the great man and mind we have lost.
________________________


I was born and then educated in the olden days of the nineteen forties – fifties, when La Nina was also operating, and the Ballarat of my youth was regularly wet and cold. We had no central heating.

It was a primitive time with Bob Menzies as Prime Minister sustained by Democratic Labor Party second preferences. A government was in peril if unemployment rose beyond three percent. Some of the cognoscenti, like Patrick White and Sydney Nolan fled to London, then Dame Edna escaped from Moonee Ponds, but most Aussies enjoyed their good fortune and refused to acknowledge their lack of sophistication or feel inferior, to the dismay of their betters. I suspect this was one cause of D.H. Lawrence’s earlier exasperation with Australia.

I was educated at St Pat’s in Ballarat, run by the Christian Brothers, to whom my generation and earlier generations are eternally grateful; or should be! The brothers and the nuns worked for pocket money as no government funding was available for non-government schools. Without their sacrifices many young Catholics between 1870 and 1970 would not have received a Catholic education.

It was a primitive time. Men only married women. Husband and wife usually stayed together and during those times when marital bliss evaporated. Most did not live together before marriage and many went regularly to church. Probably more than half of the Catholics were at Sunday Mass. During the Second World War a group called the Communists dominated many Australian unions, damaging the war effort considerably until Hitler invaded his Communist ally, Russia. A group of Australian patriots, including many Catholics threw the Communist union leaders out. This was a good thing.

“The time is out of joint; o cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right”
— Hamlet

It was a primitive age, as multiculturalism had not been invented and the Greek and Italian migrants had to assimilate. The “wogs” and “wops” were expected to know their place, but even in primitive times there were turn-ups, the unexpected. The most powerful group of Catholic activists was led by a Melbourne man, an Italian-Australian, and almost all his foot soldiers were Irish Australians. It worked well, although one or two conceded in a whisper that a name like ‘Santamaria’ was not ideal in every circumstance.

St Pat’s was not an academic school as few of the brothers, our only teachers, had university degrees. Our school was renowned for producing Aussie Rules footballers and priests, over 300 in fact since 1893, more than any other Australian school. When I was welcomed back as a new bishop in 1987, the headmaster explained to the boys in the cathedral that the college was renowned for producing two Brownlow Medal winners (the best and fairest player in the Victoria Football League) and two bishops. The achievements were mentioned in that order.

It was a primitive age. I, and a large cohort of my class (we had 90 boys under one teacher in year seven) studied Latin and French each year from year seven, and we had external written government exams for years ten to twelve. The results of such examinations were, of course, irrefutable evidence of achievement for those in less reputable high schools and Catholic schools.

We also studied a play of Shakespeare each year from year nine, starting with Julius Caesar, wrestling with the antique language, probably not understanding too much of the drama and variety of human experience presented to us, but being regularly exposed to the greatest writing in our language. My cohort also studied Chaucer and Milton, Browning and the Romantic poets, Emily Bronte, Hemingway etc.

It was a primitive age. We had no television until 1956, the year of the Melbourne Olympics; there were no drugs available to students in Ballarat, but plenty of alcohol, no internet pornography, although Man magazine could be purchased from below the counter, no mobile phones, no computers, no internet.

The Second Vatican Council had not taken place. The Irish-born Dr Daniel Mannix, a great tribal leader, was still Archbishop of Melbourne, before dying, at the age of ninety nine in 1963. He provided reassurance to his followers whom he encouraged into the middle class, a probably unmatched example of social mobility, and he did not disturb the Protestant majority as much in his later years as he did in the great First World War debates on conscription. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life were plentiful (there were approximately 200 seminarians for the diocesan priesthood of Victoria and Tasmania when I entered Corpus Christi seminary in 1960), while the Catholic community was clear-headed, confident and narrow-minded. Protestant churchgoing rates were not as high as ours (we took consolation in this), but the Protestant schools were still imparting a Christian moral framework to their students for public life and, indeed, family life. It was the invention of the contraceptive pill and the consequent sexual revolution of the 1960’s spread, for example, by the music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, which upended this.

As a grumpy old male, entering into his ninth decade of life, and emerging from the ancient provincial setting I have described, some would claim that it is not surprising that I would echo the words of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, that “the time is out of joint”.

At this stage, to bolster my disreputable credentials and explain the disadvantages of my early environment, I cannot refrain from pointing out that Kentucky Fried Chicken opened their first Australian outlet in Ballarat in the 1970s, I think, working from the premise that if they could be successful in Ballarat, the most conservative city in Australia in their estimate, they could sell their chickens anywhere in the nation.

Are my origins, in the ancient provincial mists, sufficient to explain away my suspicion, with Hamlet, that “something is rotten in the state”? Am I blinded by sentimental nostalgia for a simpler, vanished past? After all, I was born during the Second World War and now we have no world war, only the naked Russian aggression in distant Ukraine and clumsy, disturbing Chinese belligerence as it attempts to re-establish the Middle Kingdom as the world’s number one power. A possible Chinese naval base in the Solomon Islands is still some distance away.

I don’t think Australian life is rotten at the core, but times are changing, and not always for the better. The inevitable Royal Commission of the future into Victoria could find a situation parallel to that of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland in the 1970’s-80’s, and too many Australians were content with the overreaction of bossy nanny states during the COVID crisis, when the churches were closed before the casino (at least in Victoria). Many in the Catholic leadership were too docile.

But hundreds of thousands of immigrants want to come to Australia each year (there are not too many clamouring to migrate to China). Before COVID, Australia had four of the world’s top ten liveable cities and returning from Rome and travelling around Sydney’s suburbs I marvel at the prosperity, the fine homes, continuing mile after mile. In the Heritage Foundation’s 2020 Index of Economic Freedom Australia was ranked as the first country . Campion has been born and the two Catholic universities provide something of a bulwark against the worst.

But the times are changing and many are uneasy, especially the social conservatives, regularly assailed by the woke activists, even in sport (as we saw in the controversy over Israel Folau and in the bravery of the Manly Seven). Some leaders in Big Business have buckled or enthusiastically embraced anti-Christian measures. Corrs, the lawyers, recently dumped the Melbourne Archdiocese as a client, without consultation and after being retained for more than 60 years. It was under a Federal Liberal government that official forms replaced the term “mother” and “father” with “birth persons”. I had spoken with a succession of the Labor leaders about the importance of maintaining a situation where pro-life and pro-family candidates could still be endorsed (unlike the Democrats in the USA), but I have been surprised by the exuberance of so many woke activists in the Coalition parties. I did not anticipate such a rapid collapse. The presence of Dutton and Taylor offers hope, unless they are heavily outnumbered, but I am tempted to claim that the only conservative blow stuck by the last Federal government was to reduce substantially the numbers of students doing poisonous arts courses, although they did protect the maths curriculum against the woke nonsense.

The Catholic vote is fractured, but a good number could be mustered to defend Catholic schools. However the significant grouping for the future is the gospel Christians in all the Christian churches, especially the Catholics. Many, but not all of these are migrants and there are significant groupings in some places such as Western Sydney.

In my youth I remember Archbishop Mannix explaining that in democracies, unlike the autocracies of the past, Christians can defend themselves through their votes. Our opponents are hoping that Catholics will keep silent in the public square after the shame of paedophilia. Such a Christian silence on the moral issues of the day would be a serious dereliction of duty, following one massive failure with another, an abuse of the abuse. However it is not sufficient to speak, as people need to listen and I suppose the anti-Christian forces on both sides of politics will only be tamed when they are shown Christians have votes, which they will sometimes use.

Population has drained from the countryside, union membership has fallen and parliaments are dominated by a tertiary educated meritocracy, increasingly secular where the two major parties do not differ too much, at least on non-economic measures. This is the context for the taming of the social conservatives, exemplified in the NSW parliament, where the main parties are led by two good men, believing, practising Catholics and produced the most draconian euthanasia legislation in Australia.

Despite all this, I am not an ecclesiastical Tim Flannery predicting religious collapse, complete disaster in the next decade or so. Nor do I think much of Flannery’s insights into climate. This bizarre conviction that we can change the earth’s climate patterns is one piece of evidence that the times are out of joint. It is a billion dollar, perhaps one trillion dollar juggernaut, probably heading in the wrong direction. Tim seems to have been a bit down in 2004. Australia was for him particularly vulnerable. “We are going to experience conditions not seen for 40 million years”, and he also thought “there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis. In 2006 the threat of rising sea levels joined the dangers of drought. In an article entitled “Climate’s Last Chance”, Tim exhorted us to “picture an eight story building by the beach, then imagine waves lapping its roof” (I.P ibid p191).

The next year, 2007, was a mixed year because, while he felt Australia was in a “one-in-1,000 year drought” and that Brisbane and Adelaide could run out of water by year’s end, he was optimistic about the embedded energy in South Australia’s hot rocks. The Rudd Labor government invested $90 million of taxpayers’ money in this Cooper Basin geothermal project. Surprise! Surprise! The project failed, was abandoned and money was lost — a smaller sum, however, than the Vatican lost on the Sloane Avenue, London, purchase (that was 150 million euros).

Something is not right, is off key, when a man with Flannery’s views can be published, and published regularly, in reputable journals. We joined Alice in Wonderland when Tim was declared Australian of the Year in 2007.

IN THE post-Christian vacuum which is developing the esteem for freedom, the lynch pin of the Liberalism project, from which society and the Church have received substantial benefits, is also under sustained assault. The renamed climate change movement against carbon dioxide (which not only enhances the growth of vegetation, but is essential for it), has many of the characteristics of a low level, not too demanding, pseudo-religion. When religious belief is lost or deconstructed the survivors like to embrace some grand narrative and seem to need something to fear. Almost unconsciously they seek to appease the higher powers (of nature in this case) with the sacrificial offering of fossil fuels, of coal and oil. Unfortunately for them, modern economies will continue to need coal and oil. Democratic majorities in Australia and throughout the First World will not consent to regular electrical blackouts, power failures at the height of summer or winter. And of course our foes and allies in the Third World need coal and oil for their industrial and modernising programmes, just as we did in the past and continue to do. They are sensible and clear-headed on this point and would be bemused by Western virtue signalling. In 2021 1,893 new coal fired power stations were being constructed around the world, 446 in India, 1,171 in China, and none in virtuous Australia, which also abstains from developing nuclear power stations (I.P. ibid p46). Australia has resources of coal and uranium, apparently sufficient for thousands of years, and I am sure these will be developed and exploited to the benefit of our descendants for many generations when our aberrant enthusiasms have lapsed.

There is no one obligatory Catholic position on climate change, because we are a religion, teaching faith and morals, and do not impose any scientific straitjacket. Every person has a right to be foolish, if he thinks it wise (this is also true of myself). The climate challenge is not one of my major concerns, although I enjoy introducing a few facts into the hysteria e.g. no computer program has accurately predicted future weather patterns; and some historical facts about the warming periods around the time of Christ’s birth and the Medieval warming from 900 – 1300, when Australia suffered from some terrible droughts. The worst lasted for 39 years between 1174 – 1212A.D. and a later mega-drought lasted for 23 years between 1500 – 1522

My major concerns are elsewhere; with the Catholic Church and the rise of a belligerent China.

The 2021 census in Australia showed a spectacular rise in the number of those who declared that they subscribe to no religion, now numbering 38.9 per cent; an equally spectacular drop in the numbers of the Uniting and Anglican churches, with losses of 22 per cent and 20 per cent respectively and the substantial, unprecedent decline by 4 per cent of Catholic Church membership in five years. All this slippage followed significant Christian losses in the previous five years.

A point to be pondered is that the Catholic decline was so much lower than the Protestant percentages, although Catholics bore the brunt of the hostility from the media and the activities of the Royal Commission on institutional paedophilia.

All of those who love Christ and the Church are dismayed by these losses, but differ, sometimes acrimoniously, on how they should be addressed. We have a clear division between those who believe that we are the servants and defenders of the Apostolic Tradition, with no power to change substantially the doctrines that come to us from Christ and the apostles through Scripture and the Catholic magisterium. Opposed to them is an older cohort, generally a little bit younger than myself, who give the last word to modernity, who believe we are masters of the Apostolic Tradition and can amend it to bless homosexual unions and create women priests. Some also reject the basic Christian teachings on sexuality.

The recent Plenary Council has come and gone and was largely irrelevant to the preaching of the gospel and the threat of decline, being more concerned with the redistribution of power.

Australia’s finest theologian, a woman who happens to be orthodox (a positon now regarded as conservative) was not invited to be a delegate. The nation’s leading Catholic academic and an outstanding public intellectual (he was Vice-Chancellor at ACU) was barred from writing any Council documents. There were no young priests, who are in fact one of the hopes for the future with their zeal, their theological discrimination and intellectual firepower and, of course, few Latin Church ethnic parishioners.

Council members requested that the priesthood, family and education be discussed; to no avail and naturally there wasn’t a squeak on the approaching threats to religious freedoms in our schools, hospitals and retirement homes. A goodly percentage of the Council’s pacemakers were self-absorbed, not interested in missionary expansion, isolated from the real world, from the clash between good and evil, faith and darkness. One can see how the Church disintegrated in Belgium, Holland and Quebec. Jesus got a few mentions, more than Jesus Christ, and faith was hardly mentioned at all, much less evangelisation or the unborn.

The Council seemed unaware of the causes for the revolution in manners and morals which has also built up in Australia, exemplified in the brutal incivility and power plays of the social media, and the spread of pornography into every section of society, male and female. The tribal power politics of the advancing Cancel Culture is threatening to overthrow the foundations of liberalism, which has allowed the Churches to survive in Australia even as the Judaeo-Christian legal foundations on life, marriage, family and sexuality were undermined.

In the new politics of gender and race, white males, and especially old white males, represent the worst of the past, of the detested racism, colonialism, sexism and patriarchy etc. To quote The Australian‘s Paul Kelly (whom I have found regularly helpful in trying to understand what is happening in our wider society because of the decline in Christianity), these forces are bitterly opposed not just to Christian civilisation, but to the foundations of our traditional Western consensus “that all people, regardless of race, religion, sex or gender are equal before the law and share a common dignity”.

The issues in dispute could scarcely be more basic. Reason, freedom, truth, risk banishment, while notions of Divine Law, immutable natural law, have a quaint and antiquated ring about them, and are seen as expressions of a failed mythology.



Some writers e.g. Larry Siedentop in Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism, recognise liberalism’s debts to Christianity. Most do not. My suspicion is that the links are even more profound and any Western society which is based on the premise of equality before the law for all people and ascribes a common dignity to each and every person, citizen or foreigner, productive or dependent, young and healthy or old and dependent – such a society can only continue when sustained by Christian ideals of universal love, often expressed as human rights, derived from a Creator God. One does not need to be a Christian for this as a post-Christian instinct or sympathy can suffice, but this, too, is declining, savagely dismissed in our universities. The brutal forces driving evolution, the law of the jungle, the economic and intellectual inequalities among humans, the differences between the strong and the weak, the sick and the healthy, all fly in the face of any claims of universal human dignity. Already a significant section explicitly endorses tribalism, revenge, raw power and domination rather than any movement to consensus. In a hostile post-Christian Australia sustaining the liberalism ideal might be as difficult as planting democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I do not believe that the battle is over, that the field has been lost. Recently a senior public figure told me that the only option now for Christians in Australia is to head for the catacombs and that the rot could only be stopped by a few martyrdoms. I hope and believe that this is a misreading of the situation, excessively pessimistic. But the situation is on the turn and mighty tides are running against many, but not all Christian teachings. Most Australians still believe “everyone has a right to a fair go”. Just as certainly if the situation is not to worsen, not only Christians, but all those who value our Western way of life need to “have a go”, which is the second bedrock of the Australian consensus, the common sense of our ancestors which gave us our decency and prosperity.

Before I begin to commend what Campion is doing and try to relate it to the societal changes I am describing, we must turn our attention briefly to a recently perceived danger, a game-changer in every respect: the belligerence and hostility towards Australia of China on the rise, rich and powerful.

War is a real possibility in the next decade, more probably over Taiwan, but not necessarily. Jim Molan’s recent book Danger on our Doorstep (2022, Harper Collins), even when taken with a stiff pinch of salt, warns against a second Pearl Harbour and provides little comfort. I strongly recommend you read it.

One of the few vitally important tasks of the Albanese government is to increase our capacity to defend ourselves, inflict damage on any aggressor in the short term, and be able to do so for the next 20or 40 years. We hope and work for peace, but if the worst were to happen, or even big trouble occurred, largely fought out to the North, present high levels of rhetoric would then be of absolutely no use. Deeds are needed, not words.

China regards us as a weak link in the American alliance, because of our trade dependency with them and because of our military weakness. A power vacuum and an unprotected and frivolous society are temptations for dictators especially if they are wanting to distract their citizens from local problems such as poverty and inequality, oppression and discontent, 35 or 40 million surplus males and the prospect of over 200 million fewer people in the workforce in 2050.

China will refocus the Australian national conversation, however the situation develops, and I am not just talking about increased taxes for defence spending or the introduction of national service. Australia might be forced to decide whether we love our nation sufficiently to be prepared to defend it; whether we believe in freedom and democracy enough to resist a powerful dictator. Almost inevitably Australia will be forced to draw on the strengths of her Western civilisation in the centuries of dialogue or struggle, which will accompany the rebirth of the Middle Kingdom, a once mighty civilization, as old as Greece and older than the Roman Empire; but very different from our way of life, and presently very oppressive towards her citizens.

Another significant factor is that Christianity, mainly Protestantism, is spreading in China as it spread in the hostile pagan Roman Empire. Already China probably has 60-90 million Christians and is one of the largest Christian countries in the world.

It is a reasonable proposition that the Australians of the future, on at least some occasions, will have more to interest them than the State of Origin matches and the Melbourne Cup. But in any event, Australia will need clear-headed, capable patriots.

Where and how does Campion fit?

Campion College is a very small community of students and teachers, and in some senses needs to be small to enhance the question and answer, objection and response, the dialogue, which is at the heart of all genuine tertiary education, especially in the humanities.

Campion is not practical, as its main B.A. course does not provide any specific professional preparation or qualification. Campion College is not contemporary, as it is ahead of its time, although it is a bright example of political incorrectness. It is dedicated to the study of Western Civilization, that magnificent flowering from the fusion of the ancient traditions of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome which produced Constantinian Christendom that lasted until the Reformation, the Reformation itself, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. New nations were set up by the Europeans; the Spaniards and Portuguese and then the French and English, in America, Australia and New Zealand, and colonial rule was established in Africa and parts of Asia. This came at a price, sometimes at huge moral cost. But there were also gains in education, health, law, transport, the spread of democracy, to balance out the dark side of the French Revolution, Nazism and Communism and Colonialism. The century of humiliation suffered by the Chinese is deeply felt there and fuels their assertiveness, but Hong Kong until its recent takeover, with Singapore are remarkable human achievements.

Campion studies history through Christian spectacles, evaluating the right and wrong, the good and evil, rejects any notion of a whitewash and works to diminish prejudice. But it inculcates a love and pride in our tradition, just as we love our families while recognising their failures. The liberal arts program aims to impart to the students “an integrated understanding of the events, ideas, movements, personalities and works which have shaped the development of Western Culture, in the four key disciplines of history, literature, philosophy and theology. Optional units are also offered in science, mathematics, Latin and Ancient Greek.”

In other words, students are introduced to the wisdom of the ages through our tradition, the Western tradition. They learn of the central virtues, about faith and reason, about the search for meaning. They learn to analyse and synthesize , to say what they mean and mean what they say, to write and think logically and clearly and to have practical wisdom, something worthwhile to say on the basic human issues beyond whatever profession they might choose to follow.

This is an ideal personal base for any professional career and for that unmentionable role, which is vital to society, of wife and mother, the nurturing of children. It can even help the despised male of our species to be good fathers – and husbands. Because this education is good for individuals, it follows that it is good for society. Much of what Campion College now strives to do was done 100 or even 50 years ago for the elite and the battlers by family, school, church, university and even much of the media. No longer.

One can describe what society needs in a variety of ways e.g. tradition, ritual and cult; confident, modest people; not fearful and therefore not tempted to authoritarianism. One could say that society needs religious faith, a respect for order and hierarchy, patriotism, an awareness of Original Sin, the flaw which runs through every human heart and community, and an equal awareness that the human capacity for improvement is limited; progress is difficult, because success is not guaranteed by good intentions.

Every society to avoid going backwards needs social conservatives from across the spectrum to transmit to the young what is worthwhile from the past. Our society is already suffering from a slowly spreading domestic chaos, damaged families, fragile children, alcohol, drugs, porn. Children need adults who will bring stability, set down boundaries so that love and respect can flourish and where the concepts of duty, honour and compassion are exemplified.

Youngsters need to be shown that there are moral truths, of right and wrong, which we do not invent, just as there are truths of maths, physics, ecology and public health. Society needs to understand that behind evolution is the Creator God, who is not only rational, stupendously intelligent, but good, kind and interested in us. Our society needs to remember that we believe in free speech, because we believe in truth; that things can be known as they are, however imperfectly. If there is no truth, there is no endpoint in debate or discussion. The more powerful tribe simply decides and imposes its solution by force. The knowledge of God’s final judgement, that each person will be obliged to answer for his life’s work, that there is a heaven and hell – all this knowledge is stabilizing for society and it is a consolation to the victims of history to know that the scales of justice will balance out in eternity.

Campion College is not alone in this struggle, which is carried forward by many agents, millions even in Australia; most of them working quietly, unseen. The Ramsay Institute’s contribution is especially valuable and all the forces of righteousness should strive to co-operate, whatever the problems in the past.

The Culture Wars continue, and while our losses are considerable, the field has not been lost. The many victims of the chaos will be increasingly open to our message and appreciative of your help. Campion has joined the fray and is contributing steadily. It is a pearl in the desert. I congratulate the College’s founders, for their vision and perseverance as I commend the work of Dr Paul Morrissey and his staff and students. They all deserve our support and I am sure that you, the Campion family, will continue to provide it.