David Capes
That’s a very unpopular topic. There was a book back in the 60s by a psychologist, I can’t recall his name. “Whatever Happened to Sin?” and he was wondering, in the 60s, why people stopped talking about that, except religious folks. You did one lesson on dogs.
Janet Siefert
Yes. I have a special affection for dogs. I’m not the only one. A lot of people do. And science has some interesting ideas here. Everything from the evolution of canines from wolves, which we keep trying to figure out how that happened. And it’s not something we understand. There’s been a co-evolution between dogs and humans. We’ve lived together for so long that there’s been a co-evolving so it’s a wonderful platform to think about how science works and how science thinks about evolution. You know, in Scripture, dogs are not looked on favorably. They’re not ever considered unclean, so they’re not forbidden, but they’re also not viewed the way we see dogs today.
David Capes
Yes, dogs then were often roaming packs, going around the edges of communities, and they could be a bit vicious and they could be a bit scary for kids and families. Today, we sleep in the bed with our dogs, and they go with us on walks, those kinds of things.
Janet Siefert
You know, if I had the ability to, I could write a theological paper and a science paper on this. I did a little bit of research and I have a suspicion of something. I’m old enough to know that when I was about five or six, you’d hear about a rabid dog in the neighborhood, and everybody went in their houses. The kids had to be careful. Well, there are documents showing that rabies was present in the ancient Middle East, and I can imagine that part of that reflection of how dogs were seen in Scripture is because rabid dogs existed back then. But there was no recourse, no vaccine, there was nothing, there was nothing to combat that.
David Capes
I saw Old Yeller when I was a boy, and I cried like a seven-year-old would. All right, so you’re in a series now on AI.
Janet Siefert
Yes, artificial intelligence, and that has been a popular topic. AI is at the place where it’s like the gold rush. We don’t really know what is going to happen. We know a lot of things are happening. A lot of people are not familiar with it, but it’s in every news article. There are good things, there are bad things.
David Capes
Some people are making a lot of money off it.
Janet Siefert
Well, it appears that they are. Either that, or they’re speculating they’re going to make a lot. It could be speculating, because there’s a lot of money being spent, but it’s not clear how they’re going to recoup that. Just in the state of Texas, there’s over 40 data centers that supply the cloud that gives AI its engine, and that’s just in Texas.
David Capes
When you expand that to the 48 states or globally, one of the things that I’ve heard, and it’s probably been a part of your conversations as well, is the massive demand of power to drive all of these centers to make it work.
Janet Siefert
Yes, the last Hall of Reason was exactly on this. It was the functional way that AI is going to happen. And all of the attending engineering and all of the buildings and the cost to the environment, both from the power side of it, and the water side. Because you hear questions about what’s going to happen. Who’s going to maintain all of these huge, huge complexes. There’s several out in West Texas. That’s part of what I think that gold rush attitude is. We’re going to have to stop and think about how we utilize the power where the power comes from.
There’s probably some interesting solutions that don’t always make the news. I do know that there are small nuclear reactors that are about the size of the back of a pickup truck that are probably going to be used in some of the facilities. But you say “nuclear” in the news, and that’s scary to people. I know there’s a big data center that Texas Tech and Governor Perry are doing in the panhandle, and they’re planning on just regular nuclear reactors to fuel it. So there’s, there’s a lot to think about.
David Capes
Other than AI, can you prognosticate far enough to say, okay, these are some things that I will cover in the future?
Janet Siefert
Well, I’m going to do four more sections on AI for the rest of this year. I’ll be honest, that’s keeping me busy trying to keep up with everything. I’m not even sure what the last one’s going to be like, because the field is changing so much.
Every once in a while, I’ll say, does anybody have any suggestions? And I had somebody suggest dreams. They wanted me to cover dreams and what that meant. And I think maybe what I like about that suggestion is the fact that we live in two realms. We live in a realm that I can talk about, that I can measure with the tools I have as a scientist. Then there’s that realm that I cannot measure that has to do with the things that you and I are familiar with, grief, love or loss or faith. So maybe a couple of sessions on people thinking about the fact that there are things that God wants us to look at from the science side, but we can never ignore the rest of it.
There’s this whole other spiritual realm that as a scientist, I can’t address it, but as a human being, I can actually talk to you about. And that divide, that place where those sort of overlap. I think maybe people need to appreciate that there’s two sides to us human beings. I am intrigued. I’ve given a couple of talks on hominid evolution, and I think I might do another one on that. But a lot of times, honestly, what I do is, as the summer progresses, I just try to see what’s in the public eye, what people are thinking about.
David Capes
There’s a lot of science in the news, just like the science of nuclear power. Let’s say, if those become a reality again, then what does that mean? How does that work? There’s a lot of things that you could cover on that. So, are there any topics that you’re not going to cover? You just know that right now, that whatever it is, you aren’t going to cover it.
Janet Siefert
Politics! There is a science to politics, but not I’m not even going cover that.
David Capes
That’s probably a good one to stay away. If a person wants to know more about Hall of Reason and how they can keep track with what you’re talking about on a monthly basis, how do they do that?
Janet Siefert
All right, so we have a great website now that’s very versatile, and very useful. And we have a whole section on the homepage that shows what we teach here at the library. Hall of Reason is listed on there. It’s on the front page, on the home page. We actually are recording this year’s so those are available after each class. I put the resources back up so anybody that wants to look at them can. They are certainly welcome in person too.
Let me say that one of the things that the class has really morphed into, I mentioned it already, is the discussion. It’s not just a matter of somebody lecturing and you listening. It’s an opportunity for a community of people that certainly don’t all agree. They’re certainly not all the same age. It’s not a group of people that all have a certain lifestyle or a certain culture that they’ve always lived in. It’s very diverse, and it continues to get even more so.
From the conversations the last couple of times, I can just tell there’s a real need for people to have an opportunity, without there being angst or refusal to listen to somebody else. There’s a real need for people to have a chance to have intellectual conversation. Now, when I say intellectual conversation, I don’t mean that they have a certain education. We have all different levels of education.
David Capes
Some have high school educations, some college, or more.
Janet Siefert
Exactly. We have for example, some retired engineers who attend. But it really matters to get outside of your own echo chamber and sit with other people and respectfully have a discussion. And it has really morphed into that, I have to say.
David Capes
That’s terrific. So then go to the web page, which is lanierlibraryandlearningcenter.org and from there, they can find Hall of Reason. You also do another thing that we’re going to talk about on another podcast called “Faith and Fiction” as well. Dr Janet Seifert, thanks for being with us today here on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Janet Siefert
David, it was a real pleasure.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
