Kyle Roth

I wrote this paper with Stephen Betts, a friend of mine doing Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia. (Click the title to download the preprint.) Our interest in the topic was initially piqued when we stumbled across the Wilford Woodruff AI Learning Experience, and this paper explores the unique intersection of Mormonism, transhumanism, and machine learning that makes such a thing possible. We’re currently looking for a venue to publish this work. Any feedback on the preprint is appreciated!

thinking for yourself permalink I recognized myself a little in this book, not in the events, severity, or locations but in the path to being “educated” in the sense that Westover intends. I’ll try to convey what that sense is with some quotes from the book. The first moment is after she takes a class on American history at BYU. She returns home and gets her face dirty while working, and her brother calls her a N—r, a joke he had made many times before.

(My own thoughts appear as sidenotes or in italics, to distinguish from the author’s thoughts.) Richard Bushman categorizes those who leave the church into two broad categories: those who feel “switched off”, and those who feel “squeezed out”. Mason summarizes the switched-off group as those who encounter troubling information about church history or doctrine, and as they discover more information they become jaded by it until they can no longer see the good the church does for them or for others. The squeezed-out group “fully embrace[s] the basic principles and ordinances of the gospel. But sometimes they feel alienated by things like the dominant political conservatism among the members … or how the church ministers to our LGBT … brothers and sisters,” (p. 3).

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? permalink Here are some of the ways that we come to understand the Atonement:

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. He felt that he didn’t have the right words to express his belief in the nuanced way that he needed, even though looking back he thinks he did believe. This makes me look forward to reading Bushman’s “Rough Stone Rolling”, to try to understand his language of faith.