In AA, they are coming out with a new addition of the Big book, using modern language, because apparently people are having a difficult time understanding language used in the 1940s.
For example, Bill W speaks about being trapped or surrounded by quicksand. Apparently, nobody today understands quicksand. So they remove the word quicksand.
I'm 44, and this makes me feel like an old man yelling at clouds.
In the novel The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, after the Pope remarks that the aliens involved are "other children of God", I had the thought that perhaps when humans create AI robots, the Pope might consider these robots to be grandchildren of God.
I'm not trying to drag religion into this, despite my obviously doing so on the surface.
I am trying to see where certain flexibilities might be found, since there seems to be some flexibility on personhood in law.
It started, funny enough, out of seeing the very first Doctor who episode from the 1960s, where the doctor and crew land on prehistoric Earth and primitive man is having trouble making fire, and the doctor has to figure a way on how to encourage humans to create fire on their own.
My own deal evolved from there into I should always probably have a lighter in case I need to light something of flame, not in a pyromaniac way, but in the way of, "does anybody have a lighter?" Type of way. Somebody leaving to light a candle, start a campfire, need to light a smoke, whatever.
Or even to melt the ends of a nylon rope to hedge against unraveling.
This has oddly come in handy more often than one would think.
This reminds me of a small but fond memory of mine. One of my friends in high school, up from elementary, was slightly a troublemaker. But not terribly so. One day, we found ourselves sitting at the same lunch table. He occasionally smoked, I did not (I still don't). This meant that he had a lighter and I at the time did not (I now carry a lighter with me at all times for unrelated reasons).
He made a comment about how good orange peels smelled when you burned them. I leaned into this comment with curiosity and personal ignorance on the matter.
He said yeah and then looked around made the shush shush signal and leaned in, and invited me to do the same. He took an orange peel and brushed it across his opened lighter flame. Nobody caught us, and I smelled firsthand What he was talking about. Nobody got into trouble over this innocent demonstration. But for sure as hell you would have gone into trouble for this uncensioned demonstration of fire usage.
I recall a Youtube video [can't find link right now] between Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson where they discuss probable expectations of alien biology based on parallel//independent evolution on Earth. Eyes were one example.
I recall a scifi story by Stephen Baxter where a human-made probe on Mars eventually evolved into advanced, aware, spacefaring Von Neumann probes. After a few million years, one curious probe traces serial numbers back to Earth in search of their creators. However, humans had devolved back into a type of monkey that was directly symbiotic with a literal tree of life. The probe concluded that such a primitive creature could never have developed technology, and left.
From a recent comment around here I (re)learned that some software developers "just build to spec and they're done"; it's not their fault that some user presses a button and accidentally launches all nuclear missiles [or whatever], that wasn't stated as "don't allow it" in the spec so it's not their fault.
And then QA does their good job and gets hate for saying that accidental nuclear genocide [or whatever] might be a bad thing so let's fix that before release to the customer.
Sure, "code to spec and you're done". But are you actually really done? Are you sure?
For example, Bill W speaks about being trapped or surrounded by quicksand. Apparently, nobody today understands quicksand. So they remove the word quicksand.
I'm 44, and this makes me feel like an old man yelling at clouds.