As we saw earlier in teancum (Free will and algorithms, war of the heavens 2.0) algorithms in networks are programmed to make autonomous decisions, according to their own learning. Their constitution builds on past experience to modify the future of our responses.
Christofer Wylli of Cambridge Analytica (CA) tells us: «Data is our new electricity. The data itself is not a problem, there is incredible potential and amazing things we can do with it. But what CA has exposed is the failure, not just of our legislators but of us as a society, to put the limits on that.»
In this article I expose the risk of returning to the events that occurred before the rebellion of the heavens. That is, the formation of a single manipulated vision in the service of an opaque cause, such as that of Lucifer.
The algorithms in the social networks, and in the administration. end with the diversity in the thought and in the economy. In the words of Irene Lozano «The violation of data privacy combined with the intolerance of the algorithm is explosive. Together they suppress the immune system of our intellect to allow the entry of all kinds of toxic bacteria, which lead us where others want us to go.»
In politics, it takes a certain number of people to activate the levers of power. In the gospel the plan of salvation can be accomplished in one person. With a result as lean as a single soul
«how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!» (D&C 18:15)
Therefore this dispensation and its gospel are not designed for hegemony, but get their own affirmation in opposition. In the internal debate against the opposites.
Our Contest
An algorithm does not change the past, it calculates from there to predict the future or to shape it. The gospel, as an interpreter of reality, changes the past through repentance. The present through faith and moves into the future with the sound of hope. This lack of determinism is what makes us free to tell or explain the world that the beast has. For the gospel, by contrast, is a daily decision and a continuous discernment.
The gospel circumscribed in God’s plan, we can only live if we discern the world with the light of Christ. Moroni makes it clear: «I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil…». (Moroni 7:19) Nephi also explains it «And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil…» (2 Nephi 2:5)
Now, more than instructed, we are buried under tons of information. Our discernment is not capable of processing everything. Moreover, if instruction or information reaches us through the manipulated whisper of an algorithm, then everything is altered. That invisible manipulation is designed to reinforce our fear, opinion, idea, prejudice. It creates a manipulated information environment that avoids inner debate and discernment and reinforces the trend that interests them about us. Without realizing it we join «1/3» class groups for many issues.
And so we observe perplexed as peoples and nations choose, in apparent freedom, the irrational. And we ask ourselves, albeit in a less dramatic way,
«how can a people like this, that are without civilization (and only a few years have passed away, and they were a civil and a delightsome people)…how can a people like this, whose delight is in so much abomination» (Moroni 9:11-13)
Lucifer’s algorithm
Moroni’s invitation to discern good from evil necessarily includes knowing the whys and wherefores of things. However, the algorithms hide them and dazzle us with the how of them. Fernando Román (programmer, mathematician) and Rafael Merino (economist) clarify this idea «…there is another essential philosophical threat of the ALA (Automatic Learning Algorithms) with respect to democracy and sovereignty, and that is that they suppress the whys of our search for the meaning of things. By this we mean that the predictions of the ALA, by their very nature, focus the interpretation of social reality on how things will happen and not on why they happen».
The most complete statement we have of Lucifer’s plan is this:
«…here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor» (Moses 4:1)
The plan of salvation was known to all. But Lucifer needed to explain his, so he talks about how. But he doesn’t explain why he presents himself, he takes it for granted that he will do it without losing a single soul.
Algorithms in the war of the heavens
That «algorithm» of Lucifer, which the Father clearly reveals in 32 words in verse 1, is a summary. It is not a detailed explanation of the adversary’s plan. However, the statement attacks the individual’s sovereignty and discernment. But it is encapsulated in a shell of goodism. Opposing it requires asking why? and not just getting excited about the how.
There were many factors and interveners in the plan of salvation, which were excluded from the algorithm of the adversary.
The light and the truth,
the economy of resources,
the constitution of agency,
the design of the fall,
the propagation of light etc.
His plan only wanted to alter the behavior of more than half the population of the heavens. There was no time to discern.
Your number on our forehead
Weapons of mathematical destruction segregate sectors of the population. They anticipate whether they will be able to repay the student loan, whether there is a risk of non-insertion due to a crime, whether they are potentially violent, whether they are suitable for mortgage, whether they will be productive in a job. These ALA make decisions about aspects of our lives that are closer and closer to home. They do so without human intervention. They learn by themselves, with the danger of an increase in their deviations. The risk is that this loom weaves thread by thread a way of thinking about the world where there is no why but how.
Lucifer’s plan put a number on the forehead of 1/3 of the heavens. Not immediately, but gradually. He persuaded them to think a certain way. A form devoid of discernment. Emotional and populist.
Now we are faced with absolute confidence in a plan of not losing a single citizen. It is the plan of the future, but to analyze why it would be discerning. And there is no time for that, only to marvel at how the future does things.
Encapsulated in that intention reside dark unrevealed interests. It is not a worldwide conspiracy. It is the way of the old contest looking for its natural slope. There is neither a center nor a general command.
The number of the beast «…caused all, small and great, rich and poor, free and slaves, to have a mark put on their right hand or on their foreheads; and that no one could buy or sell, but he who had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of its name. (Rev. 13:16-17)
If you don’t buy or sell, you’re out of the world. This verse shows the uprooting of the different. A way to segregate the citizen unless he thinks like the big block.
The great unification of Lucifer
As in his creations; the variety of races and cultures on earth sends us a clear message of God’s plan. If we look at the number of beliefs, ideas, and people that exist on earth, we may consider them anomalies in God’s plan. Perhaps we think that the right thing would be a uniform plan, that would make our world the same homogeneous block that we assume in the pre-existence. But all evidence that He is pleased in diversity. God’s plan, therefore, includes the plan of salvation and this includes his gospel. All the diversity that sometimes overwhelms us belongs to His plan even if it does not accept His gospel. We can guess that when he says, «my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways» (Isa. 55:8) he applies to all our judgments.
Though we are all His children, variety is the hallmark of His house. Risking a little is this line (privilege in teancum) I suggest that in the heavens there were groups with profiles that differentiated them, that made us unique, even being of the same Father. However, Lucifer and his «social tools» managed to unify more than 1/3 of the heavens into a single tribe, a single nation, that of the damned. All of them with a seal on their forehead of 32 words. That linguistic algorithm, prevented them from discerning in more depth, kept them in the emotional layer of the matter.
The algorithms, here on earth, have more than 32 words. They are refined and very effective. The effect is similar. I will give an example quoted in Cathy’s O´Neil book.
PredPol
The police in some countries use predictive algorithms (the best known is PredPol). This algorithm, based on police records, predicts areas of the city where more crime will occur. Suppose that the records, which feed PredPol, are correct and unbiased by prejudice. This algorithm will point to the most depressed and racially disadvantaged areas, with the highest unemployment, those most likely to generate the highest number of crimes. This prediction generates more police presence.
What effect does it have? so that the families who can afford it leave the place. The most disadvantaged will be left behind and the situation will be more segregated than before. The algorithm’s prediction is fulfilled, because inside it is the desired effect.
The problem in this case is that there is no human to correct and discern good from evil. There is a cession towards an opaque technology, of our will and sovereignty. A surrender towards a plan of the «I will surely do it» type and a request of the «give me your honor» class.
The diversity of the skies
Someone who knows the plan of salvation will realize something. There are a multitude of nations and peoples integrated into the kingdoms of glory. The diversity of the earth continues in the heavens under the criteria of the glory that each one can endure.
We have a very clear example in the early days in Babel.
«And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.» (Gen 11:1)
This situation, apparently idyllic, is where we are going, a globalized world. First in its economy and then in «the same words», that is, in the same thought.
«Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.» (3)
Just as we leave the world of typography for the digital, they leave the old world of stone and mix, for the new one of brick and asphalt. In this leap they acquire the same consistency as the tower they built.
«Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.» (4)
Making a name for oneself is not only an expression of pride, it is also an expression of identity. They are creating it in the how of things. In the brick and asphalt, in the height and their goal of reaching the sky. That avoids its spreading, its disintegration. They want a great tribe, a single nation. The homogeneous of the adversary. They are our times, our present.
However, we are individual, not global. Reflecting the pre-existence and the earth, the kingdoms of glory show diversity «for as one star is different from another in glory, so they differ one from another in glory in the telestial world» (D&C 76:98).
Jehovah’s Correction
«And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.« (5-6)
I wonder, where’s the problem?
Three years before Adam’s death «…And the Lord administered comfort unto Adam, and said unto him: I have set thee to be at the head; a multitude of nations shall come of thee» (D&C 107:55)
From the beginning the Lord took nations as the metric unit of action in man’s history. We can understand it from another perspective in the words of Lehi «…therefore, if [they were] one body, it would remain as dead» (2 Nephi 2:11) The complete unity of men would bring a risk of paralysis in their plan.
A single path in history would lead to a single opportunity to succeed in the survival of humanity. The variety in his work, composes a delicate ecosystem that is sustained in cultural mutations, of his languages, of his different ways of seeing the world. Israel’s dispersion returns to its recollection, full of the knowledge and experience of the diversity of nations and cultures.
The Essential Obstacle
This idea, in appearance, is an obstacle to his plan of salvation and his gospel. All these borders of different natures (territorial, linguistic, etc.) hinder communication. But they also protect and encourage new ways of thinking. The gospel needs to be rooted in a culture. Because it is a seed that does not transport its own soil. Without the diversity of nations, races and cultures, we would not have an ecosystem in history where we could sow. In the same way that countless species provide life, the opportunity to survive and perpetuate itself on earth.
This is what we can suppose from that intervention of Jehovah when men «came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar» (2). Therefore, the Lord’s plan, which is general, includes the diversity to which we consider obstacles. However, his gospel will not be global in this world. It is sustained in the diversity of beliefs. Otherwise there would be no humanity to plant. The Lord referring to His church arranges it so that
«…stand independent above all other creatures beneath the celestial world» (D&C 78:14)
This independence from other creatures is only possible when it is part of a whole.
Prudent as snakes
The time is coming, when we will see that the recollection of Israel will be in front of the recollection of the world. The algorithms, used without the light of Christ, weave humanity into a single cloth, with a single thought pattern.
Faced with this block of the genus «1/3», maintaining our identity will be a matter of «integrating our jewels» (D&C 60:4). Neither our hearing, sight nor smell will assure us a correct discernment. Only touch will remain. Touch continues with an iron bar.
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