Kyle Roth

These notes are made while reading this with a Mormon theological background, so I skip noting some of the basic Mormon doctrines about the Atonement that he teaches. The Atonement is the central doctrine of Christianity. All scripture should be at least partially focused on it, and we’re invited to “speak of the atonement of Christ, and attain to a perfect knowledge of him” (Jacob 4:12). What is the significance of the Atonement?

I read this book with Irresistible and the Social Dilemma on my mind, so I have a lot of notes here about addiction and big business. Just like everything else, capitalism has screwed over our diets by giving companies the incentive to put shareholders above customers. Food companies employ lobbyists to keep subsidies on sugar/corn syrup/meat, and keep a stranglehold on public organizations. They buy billions of dollars of ads to communicate the message that it’s laziness that has caused the obesity epidemic and to push their products that appeal to the unconscious desires of our brains to produce artificial hunger.

These are notes I made after finishing the book, so they’ll be more heavily weighted toward concepts discussed near the end. The first half of the book was primarily dedicated to a history of genetic research, which I think helped the reader understand the issues discussed in the latter half. playing God It seems like our identity derives from a complicated combination of genes and chance environmental effects. Part of our strength as a species has been our natural variation, and to begin editing the genome is to assume that we can do it better than evolution has done up until this point.

Elder Hafen struggled as a missionary with the concept of knowing versus believing: he felt he believed it was true, but not that he knew it. On the mission he felt pressure to bear testimony with the word “know”, but he chafed at that. In this book, Elder Hafen hopes to discuss the complex boundaries between believing and knowing, Richard Bushman, a prominent LDS historian, found himself in a similar situation.

I started taking notes later in the book. There were lots of good insights in the first half. Sorry! broadband access Getting the internet to rural communities is a big deal for the rural economy. Just like electricity, it’s something that needs government support because there isn’t the economic incentive for ISPs to reach some of these locations. ethical AI The focus on AI now is not just a fad, but a convergence of several trends that have made AI the next logical step: the increased computational resources, flexible access to compute through the cloud, etc.