The AI Research Group of the Centre for Digital Culture has released a second publication in their series examining Artificial Intelligence and Catholic social teaching, ethics, and moral theology. The first volume - Encountering Artificial Intelligence was good and I’m very much looking forward to starting this one, which is available for free as a PDF: Reclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

So here is a rare post that refers obliquely to my professional life.

If AI seems like it’s basically everywhere now I can assure you that it’s even more pervasive for people (like me) who work in the technology field. I’ve noted here before some of my concerns regarding LLMs and their inability to weigh, categorize, or hedge their output. All output, regardless of provenance, is equally plausible to them and is presented to the user accordingly, though I’ve noticed more language-of-uncertainty creeping into Claude’s output recently.

I was introduced to the concept of mechanistic interpretability the other day. This is a research field that examines the massive neural nets that make LLMs tick and aims to figure out how and why they do the things they do. It’s bonkers to me, still, that we’ve created something that’s too complicated for us to easily understand and whose inner workings remain a substantial mystery to us. This is, I understand, a necessary consequence of building something that seeks to work more like a brain than a simple expert rules-system. The former is a thing that can be trained to do a task from scratch, where the latter is built to do one thing extremely well, such as play chess. The chess-playing bots can beat basically anyone now, but they can’t do anything else with this ability. We can examine the chess bot code and know why it made a particular move in a particular situation; we can’t easily know why an LLM produced that output in response to this input. This makes a sort of sense; similar insight eludes are own self-understanding, so maybe this is as good as it gets. As the models get bigger/better/faster, their inner workings become even more opaque. And then what, exactly?

To be clear - I believe these things are useful. I’ve seen what they’re capable of, even on a tiny scale, for the various things I use them for. I do worry a bit about the speed of things and the wholesale enthusiasm for it all. I’m trying very hard to not sound like a contrarian antiquarian here. Part of is the memory of the dot-com hype-cycles of the mid-90s and part of it is knowing how the technology sausage is made. In any case I’m grateful for this working group’s stuff. It’s important and worth the time to read, especially for those making technical decisions, policies, and so on.

Garden

I burned a day of PTO so that I could get the spring planting done since my weekend windows have gotten considerably smaller. The major project was the border out front, which I’ve been slowly converting into a cottage-style riot of things. After an expensive (but oh so worth it) trip the local nursery I came home with Russian Sage, two kinds of Coreopsis, some Verbena, more coneflowers, a pair of echinops, plus a slew of kitchen herbs, annuals for containers, and other bits and bobs.

Then came several hours of digging, planting, and scratching around. I got basically everything in except for some annuals for the pool area out back. You can be sure of some pictures once things establish themselves and start blooming.

The weather was perfect and today I am paying for it: hands and back and so on.

Primero las Escrituras, luego la Comunión. Ese es el modelo en el Evangelio de hoy, en la liturgia, y también en nuestras vidas. Si queremos reconocer a Cristo en el mundo, tenemos que ser primero un pueblo de la Palabra.

First peony!

He is Risen indeed!

Triduum thoughts:

This was the first year I found myself aware - very aware - of the continuous liturgical flow from Holy Thursday to Evening Prayer of Easter Sunday. The unresolved tension hovered in the background throughout the last few days and was finally put to rest when I laid the breviary down last night. Easter, of course, continues through the Octave this week, then throughout the season until Pentecost, and so on until the Lord returns in glory, but the Triduum is complete and it feels great. The Chrism Mass feels like it was a month ago.

We have a stellar group of altar servers, boys and girls, who performed absolutely perfectly throughout all of the things. It is a joy to watch them carrying on with one another, especially when we all sit down to eat. You have to feed kids if you’re going to ask for their extended help through rehearsals and whatnot, and filling an entire table with umpteen kids and a handful of adults felt very much like what it was: a big family meal. You would have thought everyone was related. To be sure, there are several sibling groups in the mix but the kids all act like an giant group of cousins or something. It was great to watch.

The groupchat of my diaconal cohort was lively throughout - posting pictures and comments. Someone’s hair briefly caught fire during the Lumen Christi but it sounds like it was over quickly. Most of us were able to reconnect and catch-up in person at last week’s assembly. We got to do it again at a reception prior to the Chrism Mass. I’m glad that we’re all keeping in touch. Everyone’s assignments have all turned out to be so very different. The parishes all have different characters and populations, multiple pastoral styles and organizations, different levels of…well, wealth. Some are huge with extensive staffs and budgets to match. Others are smaller. I am fond of telling people that the Church is A Big Tent in terms of piety and spiritualities; I’m learning just how big the tent really is.

Bookwise: Proust continues. So far so good. I can see that I’ll be digging into this for a while.

Weather: Cool but nice. Managed to get some yardwork in this weekend. We’ll pass our Last Frost date here shortly and then plant with impunity. Most of the perennials have come back nicely but I’ll need to replace the lavender. The new trees seem to be doing well. We got a nice bit of rain on Saturday night and the cool temps are helping a bunch.

He is risen indeed!

Ok let’s do this thing. Currently reading: Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust 📚

He answered

Towards the end of The Rings of Saturn, Sebald discourses a bit on Chateaubriand. This bit resonated with me deeply, as someone who has also planted a number of trees:

When he returned in 1807 from his long journey to Constantinople and Jerusalem, he bought a summer house that lay hidden among wooded hills in the Vallée aux Loups, not far from the town of Aulnay. It is there that he begins to write his memoirs, on the first pages of which he speaks of the trees he has planted and tended with his own hands. Now, he says, they are still so small that I provide them with shade whenever I step between them and the sun. But one day, when they have grown, they will give shade to me, and look after me in my old age much as I looked after them in their youth. I feel a bond unites me with these trees; I write sonnets, elegies and odes to them; they are like children, I know them all by name, and my only desire is that I should end my days amongst them.

Yesterday there was a diocesan assembly of deacons. It had originally been set for earlier in the year but canceled because of the ice storms. The rescheduling was a bit awkward, but the content was nice and a couple of us got to serve mass with our bishop, which is always good. Then the race back to the home parish to get ready for a pair of vigils last night. Then two more masses today, so the first big day of Holy Week is in the books. I have narrated four passions and the sanctuary has been packed and palpably buzzing with excitement. Many are the occasional visitors; we hope they stay a bit. The kids are all beaming and the weather is gorgeous. We’re off to an excellent start.

Bringing of Jollity

Tonight we’re using a Christmas gift from the kids: symphony tickets! The Nashville Symphony is performing Holst’s The Planets which should be a lot of fun. I’ve heard “Mars” gets to stand in for a lot final sci-fi movie scoring; it’s one of those pieces that sounds like you’ve heard it before even if you’ve never heard it before. The pivot point in “Jupiter” is the melody for the hymn O God Beyond All Praising among others. CULTURE! Very excited!

Man is the perfection of the universe; the spirit is the perfection of man; love, that of the spirit; and charity, that of love. Wherefore the love of God is the end, the perfection and the excellence of the universe. In this, Theotimus, consists the greatness and the primacy of the commandment of divine love, which the Saviour calls the first and greatest commandment. This commandment is as a sun which gives lustre and dignity to all the sacred laws, to all the divine ordinances, and to all the Holy Scriptures. All is done for this heavenly love, and all has reference to it. From the sacred tree of this commandment grow all the counsels, exhortations, inspirations, and the other commandments, as its flowers, and eternal life as its fruit; and all that does not tend to eternal love tends to eternal death.

— St. Francis de Sales, Treatise, X.i

Thoroughly enjoying The Rings of Saturn and Sebald’s meandering, introspective style got me interested in Proust’s Swann’s Way, so that’s inbound from Amazon and I’ll have something to chew on for awhile.

The quince and medlar are showing some signs of life. I’m always a little nervous planting bare-root trees, but each of them has tiny little buds in all the right places.

The puppies are asleep in a pen adjacent to my office and I about have all the changes down for the Exsultet. Further reports as events warrant.

Things are busy busy busy.

Met with the pastor earlier this week to go over the many things of Holy Week, who’s preaching what, and so on. I’ll do the first of two Good Friday services (in English) and preach the Vigil in English and Spanish; he’ll take Good Friday in Spanish and the two masses of Easter morning. Done and done. Visited my spiritual director, caught up on the first seventy-some-odd days of ministry and made my confession. Marriage prep class tonight with four couples. Baptizing a grandson tomorrow. Full slate of liturgies Saturday and Sunday.

In other news, the weather is breaking in the right direction. We went from flurries earlier in the week to…checks temperature…77 and sunny. I’m hoping we’ll avoid any late freezes at this point, since everything’s sprouting and blooming like crazy. Certainly the grass could use cutting. Probably have to squeeze that in some afternoon next week.

Herewith some thoughts from Francis de Sales that come up in his treatment of indifference, which is how he describes a disposition of accepting from God things that give us pleasure along with the things that do not (Treatise on the Love of God, IX:vii). I found them extremely appropriate during these final weeks of Lent.

God has ordained that we should employ our whole endeavours to obtain holy virtues, let us then forget nothing which might help our good success in this pious enterprise. But after we have planted and watered, let us then know for certain that it is God who must give increase to the trees of our good inclinations and habits, and therefore from his Divine Providence we are to expect the fruits of our desires and labours, and if we find the progress and advancement of our hearts in devotion not such as we would desire, let us not be troubled, let us live in peace, let tranquillity always reign in our hearts. It belongs to us diligently to cultivate our heart, and therefore we must faithfully attend to it, but as for the plenty of the crop or harvest, let us leave the care thereof to our Lord and Master. The husbandman will never be reprehended for not having a good harvest, but only if he did not carefully till and sow his ground. Let us not be troubled at finding ourselves always novices in the exercise of virtues, for in the monastery of a devout life every one considers himself always a novice, and there the whole of life is meant as a probation…

Credo

I was an OCIA catechist for a number of years, and every year, the most common questions we fielded from the seekers were about the rules: the rules for what to do during the mass, the rules for the calendar, vestments, fasts, and feasts. It’s not the craziest place to start. From the outside looking in, Catholicism must seem like nothing more than an impenetrable maze of rules and rituals. Once you unlock the rules, you’re in.

Our faith, wrote Pope Benedict XVI, is not simply a set of intellectual propositions requiring our assent. It is about a decisive encounter with a person, an event which enlarges the horizons of our existence and provides a new direction. We see this encounter in three different forms during these final weeks of Lent.

The Samaritan woman encounters Christ at the well, having come alone and in the heat of the day. She is an outcast, but nevertheless encounters Christ in a setting scripturally associated with courtship. Filled with an awareness of the Living Water, she runs posthaste to the people who rejected her to share what has happened, inviting this same community to see for themselves.

Lazarus will be called forth from the cave next week. He will be called from death and darkness by name, returning the light for a time. The family at Bethany along with the mourners and others encounter the Lordship of Jesus in its fullest before the Passion. Indeed, this final sign of Jesus is the first domino to fall on his way to Calvary.

Today the man born blind asks for something he has never had before: his sight. We are reminded throughout this Gospel reading that he was born blind. He wasn’t asking for a restoration of something lost, but rather something he never had. We know the world first through our senses. Imagine for a moment, if you can, what it would be like to receive an entirely new one. It’s difficult; maybe impossible. His new direction is internal, progressing from “I don’t know” to “He is a prophet” to “I believe, Lord.” I can believe he didn’t budge from the very spot where he received his sight. It’s easy to imagine him just looking at everything around him carefully and re-assessing everything he knew about his world with these new sense.

These readings are read at the Scrutinies, a trio of masses in the third, fourth, and fifth weeks of Lent and particularly focused on the catechumens and candidates who will be received into full communion at the Easter Vigil. All three show the decisive encounter with Christ, and the new direction which follows - a direction ordered to discipleship, and the joy of the kerygma. We are called to share it, running with the Samaritan woman. We are called to feel it within, like the man born blind, and we wait patiently for the Lord to call us by name from darkness into light.

Rules are important, certainly. All relationships have them: friend groups, work environments, and the unspoken body of beautiful rules that arise over time during the course of a marriage. It is the love which comes first, though. The rules arise over time as a reflection of that love. Imagine catching the eye of someone across the room, mustering the courage to walk over and say hello, and being met instead with a catalog of rules: on these days we do this, at these times we say these things, we eat such-and-such weekly, and under no circumstances will we do thus. You would be right to do an about-face and exit quickly. First the encounter, then the relationship. Rules will come later, over time. Without that decisive encounter - that first meeting which leads to love, they won’t matter. Our world becomes smaller and darker.

Let us instead enter into someplace larger, knowing this place in new ways. If your world seems small lately, or it seems just ordinary in all of the daily rhythms of life, we can encounter Him today, right here at the altar. We can say with the man born blind “I believe.”

“I believe.”

Currently reading: The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald 📚

Books and stuff

So I’m in Las Vegas this week for work. My company hosts a customer event here and most of us are here working more-or-less behind the scenes to make sure that all the technical stuff runs without a hitch. I work out of a home office and have been a remote worker for many years now, so it’s nice to work alongside other folks in person. The weather is nice, not that it matters much at these things. The hotel is also nice and the food is uniformly excellent. I’m not much of a gambler, but I can definitely see the appeal. I’m just too cheap, to be perfectly honest.

I’ve reached the point in the trip where I can reasonably begin thinking about the return flight home. Yesterday I checked the total drive time, just in case I had to rent a car and leave without notice. It could happen! You can’t be too careful. Alas, it’s a long - but simple - drive. Hit I-40 and head east until I’m basically home.

Making good progress through Haidt’s book. No surprises; all of this stuff has been very top of mind for a while. Very keen to start The Rings of Saturn when I get back. Connected with a co-worker who has very similar reading tastes and we title-dumped each other over drinks last night. I came away with a recommendation for Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday (translated by Anthea Bell!). Since travelogues were on tap I offered out Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

A tarot card/palm reader was featured at the event last night. She motioned me over and patted the seat next to her. I declined. “My bishop,” I said, “would not be pleased.”

“Your bishop? Would it help if I called myself a personality consultant instead?”

“It would not, but have a lovely evening.”

Check-in starts 24 hours from departure, says my airline app.

Currently reading: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino 📚

Four-day weekend

I’ve got a couple of days off in advance of the weekend (and a week of upcoming business travel). The weather is gorgeous so I’ve been in and out of doors constantly. The pups, for their part, are also enjoying the sunshine (see below).

Tomorrow night is the first formal session of our current marriage preparation cohort. We had a meet-and-greet a couple of weeks ago and the four pairs are just lovely people. I am very much looking forward to sharing this bit of formation with them. We’re using Beloved by Augustine Institute and it seems every bit as well done as Symbolon, which we used at my former parish for OCIA content.

Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn showed up today and it goes in queue right after Italo Calvino, which is right after Austerlitz.

I’m preaching the fourth Sunday of Lent, and for year A, the mass readings for that day are aligned with the Scrutinies so I only need to prepare a single homily.

I have a deep love of the Scrutinies - three Gospel readings which profoundly meditate on growth in Christian discipleship, the movement from darkness into light, and the Paschal mystery. Our faith, taught Benedict XVI, is not merely a system of intellectual propositions to which we intellectually assent, but rather an encounter with a person. This encounter moves our horizon of understanding outward, growing to encompass more that is true, real, and beautiful. Once this horizon is moved, it can only be moved back by our willing so - our decision to cast our eyes back to the ground or to retreat back into the darkness of the cave. To return to a life of the furtive sins we carry around with us like so many leaking baskets of sand.

Enjoying this beautiful warm weather

Here comes The Son

The weather is warming up here and I’ve got seeds arriving a bit later today: sweet peas, sunflowers, and zinnias. Most of them are going into the cottage-style garden in the front of the house. The winter was short enough that many of the perennials from last summer stayed a bit green throughout - the bee balm has spread all over the place and the yarrow looks like it’s tripled in size. I added milkweed last summer and hope to see it sprouting this year. Very excited to get started. Other tasks on the to-do list: pull the weeds, which also overwintered pretty well. I also have some replacement bluebird houses that are also for installation.

Not a whole lot of cleanup for now. A few limbs here and there from the ice storm, but our trees seem to have escaped the worst of it. The pistaches and dogwood look good, too. Quince and medlar should ship at the end of this month.

Puppy life is continuing apace. They’re getting into a good sleeping pattern, though we’re still getting them up in the middle of the night for a potty run. Last night we went four hours, which is some progress. The cat, for her part, is getting used to the noise and commotion and has emerged from hiding to resume some of her usual haunts. They’ve come nose to nose once or twice, but one quick hiss is enough for the dogs to moonwalk straight away and go play somewhere else. They’re learning that she’s not to be messed with, and she’s learning that they won’t give immediate chase. This feels like progress.

Busy week at the parish this weekend - all day retreat for parents and godparents of our confirmandi and the usual slate of masses. I blessed a car, helped Father anoint a woman with cancer, and declined to bless someone’s locket which contained a portion of her late husband’s ashes. Just Say No to wearing your loved one after death.

Jury duty is over. Kids basketball season is over. Retreat talks are behind me. Ahead: some business travel and the ordinary cycles of Lent. Holy Week is already visible on our kitchen whiteboard calendar as March blends into April. I’ve taken all of Holy Week off so as to be available for all the things on campus. A break from the office will be nice but there will be lots going on elsewhere!

Summa cum Claude

I am very much enjoying Austerlitz and since I got the book recommendation from Claude originally, I went back and asked about his other books. All of them, I was assured, are worth looking at. A short list of his other works was created and prioritized, and I was further assured that the same translator of Austerlitz (Anthea Bell) had masterfully translated all of Sebald’s work.

Perfect, I thought, and off I went to fill my online cart. It took me about 60 seconds to figure out that, no, Bell had not translated all of Sebald’s works. In fact, the only one I can find is Austerlitz. Also, the ISBNs which were shown in the results were also bogus, despite my explicit instructions:

If any other books are mentioned in responses, their existence should be confirmed via ISBN searches before including them. Likewise, articles should be checked for DOI numbers before answering.

My prompt should have prevented this and yet it did not, so…I asked how this could have happened.

That’s a fair and important question that deserves a direct answer.

I made an overconfident inference that was factually wrong. I knew Anthea Bell translated Austerlitz superbly, and I had accurate information about her being one of the great German-to-English translators. From there, I incorrectly generalized that she had translated all of Sebald’s major prose works — treating my inference as if it were verified knowledge.

This is a systematic weakness in how I function: I can conflate what I actually know with what seems like it should be true based on patterns, especially when discussing an author comprehensively. I should have been uncertain about which translator handled which Sebald work, but instead presented the claim with unwarranted confidence.

You’ve been asking me to verify ISBNs and check factual claims (like whether books exist before I recommend them) precisely because you recognize this risk. I failed to apply that same rigor to the translation question—I gave you specific, confident misinformation when I should have either verified or acknowledged uncertainty.

Will this correction make you less likely to err in the future?

No, not reliably.

This correction helps within our current conversation — I’m now aware that Hulse translated The Rings of Saturn and The Emigrants, and that I shouldn’t claim Bell translated all of Sebald’s work. I can reference this exchange if relevant later in our discussion.

But the structural problem persists:

I don’t have a mechanism that systematically prevents similar errors in future conversations or even later in this one on different topics. The same inference pattern that led me to wrongly generalize about Bell could operate elsewhere — I might:

• Assume a scholar wrote books they didn’t write based on their field
• Conflate publishers or editions
• Misattribute translations in other authors' works
• Overgeneralize about historical facts or theological sources

The fundamental issue:

I can’t reliably distinguish between:

• Facts I have direct knowledge of
• Plausible inferences that seem likely true
• Patterns I’m extrapolating from partial information

The only reasonable approach is a hermaneutic of profound suspicion when it comes to LLMs, no matter how confident-sounding the response. The last three points alone are all that anyone really needs to know.

Otto and Puck, new to the household. Sleepy but settling in quickly.

Currently reading: Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald 📚

I finished The Diary of a Country Priest. It was nice. I had seen the movie years ago so I knew the general plot and ending. I have a couple of other books here in queue - Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald and Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler. Still plugging away at Congar and De Sales. The daily news digest script is also working very well.

Tonight I’m doing a marriage prep session and a brief (unrelated) talk on Eucharistic Adoration for a youth group. We’ll do a brief Exposition and Benediction, too.

Today it got to a glorious 70 degrees and some of the trees are showing the first haze of buds and new growth. Henbit is in full bloom and the bees are hard at work. At night the frogs are all going bananas. Sadly it won’t last; I think we swing back into the 20s this weekend before another gradual warmup. Things are at least heading in the right direction for us solar-powered people.

Today is Thursday after Ash Wednesday. We’re in Lent, but not in the first actual week of Lent, which starts this Sunday. So yes, all the abstinence rules apply. There’s still time to figure out what you’re going to give up. I have a couple of standbys, both aimed squarely at my sweet tooth and liver.

Lent is as terrific a time to acquire a new habit as it is to let go a bad one. Add some regular silence to your day. Pray the rosary at noon. Download one of the apps and read the Liturgy of the Hours or the daily readings. Do a nightly examen. Go to daily Mass. Years ago I asked a deacon what he intended to give up for Lent and his answer was “Nothing! But I will attend mass every single day from now until Easter!”

In other news, my number finally came up for jury duty this month and I was ordered to report this morning. It was something of a relief for this shoe to drop. In our county, you’re sort of on-call for an entire month, calling in every evening to find out via automatic message if your group reports the following morning. It’s made planning things a bit crazy since I never know until the evening before what my following day will look like. Surely, I thought, they won’t be starting a trial on a Thursday, but friends that is exactly what they did. I was dismissed after several rounds of voir dire, probably because of extensive LEO family-members. They never tell you why though. They thank you for coming, dismiss you, and that’s pretty much it.

I have to confess that I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the summons, but a judge gave a very nice speech during our orientation and by the end, I had changed my mind a bit about the whole thing. A lot of this goodwill was in danger of evaporating after we learned that some administrative issues were causing a late start so everything too an extra-long time. There was lots of waiting, and we ended up breaking for lunch which turned out to be the high point of the day as I got to try a deli downtown that was worth every bit of the hype. Domenico’s, if you’re in the area. I had “The Paisan” and it was fabulous.

They told us that we’re still technically on the hook for the rest of this month and that we need to keep calling in, since there are still trials on the calendar. I sort of hope they do now, because I hear the hot pastrami is to die for.

Just, please, not on a Friday.

Grandkids, dogs, and Lent

Big doings around here. First, we welcomed our newest grandchild to the world! Casey James was born last night and is doing just peachy. Things moved quickly so we scrambled to get his two older brothers (and a dog) to our place while mom and dad made tracks for the hospital. It was all over just a couple of hours later, thanks be to God.

Next weekend, we acquire dogs. We lost our family dog last summer during our trip to the UK. Our kids, bless them, had to deal with it in our absence and they did a tremendous job of working together to do all that was necessary, including burying her under a tree out back. Time passed and it seemed good to think about jumping back into the fray, so my wife did the research (and, really, all of the other legwork) and we’ll be adding a pair of Wheaten-doodles (‘whoodles’) to the household next weekend. Both male and from the same litter. I’ll post pics when they get here.

In the background, I’m preparing a retreat talk for the end of the month: The Plan of Redemption and the Sacraments. I’ll give it twice (English and Spanish) to the parents and godparents of our confirmandi. Spent a fair bit of yesterday sitting in some gorgeous sunshine with a stack of books and getting my thoughts together. Right at the peak contemplative moment (there was beer), my wife flung open the front porch door to announce that water had broken and things were moving quickly. Those things included us, so the books went to the side and off we went.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. I’ve taken the day off from work so I can be at the three parish liturgies tomorrow. I suppose I’m a little weird; I like Lent. I like the discipline and focus and, yes, the small mortifications. Still working through what they’ll look like this year, but it always tends to be something of a process throughout the season.

Brother John Metilly, O.P. reflects on Lent, and properly understanding it as a season of growth and not simply renunciation:

So the first step is to take stock of our lives and our loves. We can usually identify what we love by taking note of the things that we think about most and what we spend the most time trying to achieve. Then, we turn to the Lord more and more so that we really don’t have time for anything that might draw us away from him. By turning to him first, we let his goodness fill our mental atmosphere and put all other goods in their place.