change the way we think about religion?
Societies grow and change all the time, but it can be tough to think about big-picture shifts when you’re living through the practical details of the day to day. Take the recent popularity of large language models (LLMs). In the short term, we face important sociological questions about how they fit into the norms of everyday life. Is it cheating to use an LLM to help you write, or to generate new ideas? How will new kinds of automation change work, or will they take jobs away?
These are important questions, but it is also useful to take a step back and think about what rapid developments in technology might do to our foundational social relationships and core beliefs. I was fascinated by a recent set of studies published in PNAS that suggest automated work and LLMs could even change the way we think about religion.
In the article “Exposure to Automation Explains Religious Declines,” authors Joshua Conrad Jackson, Kai Chi Yam, Pok Man Tang, Chris G. Sibley, and Adam Waytz review the findings from five studies. In one, their analysis of longitudinal data across 68 countries from 2006 to 2019 finds nations with higher stocks of industrial robots also tend to have lower proportions of people who say religion is an important part of their daily lives in surveys.
I was most surprised by the results of their fifth study—an experiment teaching people about recent advances in science and AI. Respondents who read about the capabilities of LLMs like ChatGPT showed “greater reductions in religious conviction than learning about scientific advances” (8).
The authors suggest one reason for this pattern is that “people may perceive AI as having capacities that they do not ascribe to traditional sciences and technologies and that are uniquely likely to displace the instrumental roles of religion” (2). This is important for us, whether or not you’re personally religious, because religion is a socially powerful force – people use shared beliefs to accomplish things in the world and solve problems, even to cope with hardships like losing a job.
But these results show that new changes in technology, like the advent of LLMs, might be expanding people’s imaginations about what we can do and achieve, possibly even changing the core beliefs that are central to their lives over the long term.
Evan Stewart is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at his website, or on BlueSky.The Myth of “Fossil Fuels”
...and the Myth US Transitioning Away from Oil to “Green” Energy
by Brian Shilhavy April 24, 2023 The United States has been the world’s most dominant economic nation since World War 2, and the primary way they have maintained their empire has been by controlling the world’s oil and energy. But the world is quickly changing as more and more people wake up to the fact that the Ukraine war has been a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia, and that the goal of the U.S. has been to cut off Europe, which does not produce near enough oil to meet the needs of its population, from the cheap energy they were importing from Russia. The blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline was part of that strategy, to force Europe to start buying more of their energy from the U.S. instead of Russia. But the rest of the world is striking back now, and quickly abandoning the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which has been called the “petrol dollar,” being the currency that the world has used to trade oil. In order to convince the American public to support the endless wars the U.S. has engaged in since the end of WW II, which have primarily been wars to control the world’s oil, they have had to engage in decades of propaganda spreading lies and myths to justify their military actions. So let’s dispel some of these myths regarding energy and oil, including the myth that petroleum is a “fossil fuel” and not “renewable.” Myth #1: The U.S. is Switching to “Green” Energy to Reduce Carbon Emissions and Our Dependency on OilWith legislation being passed at both the State and Federal levels to force Americans to consume less energy produced by “fossil fuels” and start using more “alternative energy” sources, such as electrical vehicles in place of gas-powered vehicles, it must be true that the U.S. is transitioning away from oil, correct? Based on the evidence, this is not only false, but the opposite is true. Within the past few weeks, the Biden Administration approved ConocoPhillips’ $7 billion oil and gas drilling Willow project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve (source), and they also allowed 73.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to be leased for oil drilling by 32 oil companies (source). [...] Myth #2: The U.S. Produces Enough Oil for Its Population, but Lacks Refineries to Refine it Because No Permits Have Been Issued Since 1977 to Build a New RefineryThis myth has been told so many times over the past few years, I actually thought it was true until I did some checking to verify it. [...] But at the U.S. Energy Information Administration website, they have a page titled When was the last refinery built in the United States? On that page, they list 16 new refineries that have been built since 1977, including 2 in 2021. (See chart above.) [...] Yes, it is not surprising that the “hefty $2 billion price tag was no match for Exxon, who completed the expansion on time and on budget“, given that they had their most profitable year on record in 2022 and had plenty of money to spend! To believe what the U.S. Government and their puppet corporate media is saying about the U.S. transitioning away from its dependence on “fossil fuels” is to completely ignore the actual facts that prove it is just the opposite. Myth #3: Petroleum is a Fossil Fuel with Limited Supplies and is Not RenewableThis is the biggest myth of all, the myth that oil comes from decaying fossils of animals and plant life formed over billions of years. This is the myth that allows the oil barons to control the world, by simply reducing output and controlling prices to create “energy shortages,” when in fact many scientists believe that petroleum is the second most plentiful liquid on the planet, second only to water. The alternative “abiotic” view is that oil is continually being produced by the earth. This information is hard to find in English, and much of the research on “abiotic oil” has been conducted by Russian scientists for many decades now. [...] There are a couple of videos I was able to find that give a short summary of “abiotic oil.” One of the main videos that is circulating in the Alternative Media video channels is a presentation given by someone who claims to be a geologist. It is a sloppy presentation, but the copy I found did list the sources, so I will include it here.  Sources:
[...] But the best work on this topic of “abiotic oil”, in my opinion, is from Dr. John Kenney, the founder and Chairman of JP Kenny Petroleum Ltd, and also a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences – Joint Institute of The Physics of the Earth. [...] Here is an interview he did with NPR (National Public Radio) back in 1994. He had just published a paper where he claimed to have created petroleum in a laboratory. Geological Petroleum: The True Origins of Hydrocarbons 1. The essence of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins. The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is an extensive body of scientific knowledge which covers the subjects of the chemical genesis of the hydrocarbon molecules which comprise natural petroleum, the physical processes which occasion their terrestrial concentration, the dynamical processes of the movement of that material into geological reservoirs of petroleum, and the location and economic production of petroleum. The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins recognizes that petroleum is a primordial material of deep origin which has been erupted into the crust of the Earth. In short, and bluntly, petroleum is not a “fossil fuel” and has no intrinsic connection with dead dinosaurs (or any other biological detritus) “in the sediments” (or anywhere else). The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of petroleum is based upon rigorous scientific reasoning, consistent with the laws of physics and chemistry, as well as upon extensive geological observation, and rests squarely in the mainstream of modern physics and chemistry, from which it draws its provenance. [...] As will be shown explicitly in a following articles, petroleum has no intrinsic association with biological material. The only hydrocarbon molecules which are exceptions to this point are methane, the hydrocarbon alkane specie of lowest chemical potential of all hydrocarbons, and to a lesser extent, ethene, the alkene of the lowest chemical potential of its homologous molecular series. Only methane is thermodynamically stable in the pressure and temperature regime of the near-surface crust of the Earth and accordingly can be generated there spontaneously, as is indeed observed for phenomena such as swamp gas or sewer gas. However, methane is practically the sole hydrocarbon molecule possessing such thermodynamic characteristic in that thermodynamic regime; almost all other reduced hydrocarbon molecules excepting only the lightest ones, are high pressure polymorphs of the hydrogen-carbon system. Spontaneous genesis of the heavier hydrocarbons which comprise natural petroleum occurs only in multi-kilobar regimes of high pressures, as is shown in a following article. 2. The historical beginnings of petroleum science, – with a touch of irony. The history of petroleum science might be considered to have begun in the year 1757 when the great Russian scholar Mikhailo V. Lomonosov enunciated the hypothesis that oil might originate from biological detritus. Applying the rudimentary powers of observation and the necessarily limited analytical skills available in his time, Lomonosov hypothesized that “… ‘rock oil’ [crude oil, or petroleum] originated as the minute bodies of dead marine and other animals which were buried in the sediments and which, over the passage of a great duration of time under the influence of heat and pressure, transformed into ‘rock oil’.” [...] The scientists who first rejected Lomonsov’s hypothesis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were the famous German naturalist and geologist Alexander von Humboldt and the French chemist and thermodynamicist Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac who together enunciated the proposition that oil is a primordial material erupted from great depth, and is unconnected with any biological matter near the surface of the Earth. [...] During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev also examined and rejected Lomonosov’s hypothesis of a biological origin for petroleum. [...] With extraordinary perception, Mendeleev hypothesized the existence of geological structures which he called “deep faults,” and correctly identified such as the locus of weakness in the crust of the Earth via which petroleum would travel from the depths. 3. The enunciation and development of modern petroleum science. The impetus for development of modern petroleum science came shortly after the end of World War II, and was impelled by recognition by the government of the (then) U.S.S.R. of the crucial necessity of petroleum in modern warfare. In 1947, the U.S.S.R. had (as its petroleum “experts” then estimated) very limited petroleum reserves, of which the largest were the oil fields in the region of the Abseron peninsula, near the Caspian city Baku in the present country of Azerbaijan. At that time, the oil fields near Baku were considered to be “depleting” and “nearing exhaustion.” During World War II, the Soviets had occupied the two northern provinces of Iran; in 1946, the British government had forced them out. By 1947, the Soviets realized that the American, British, and French were not going to allow them to operate in the middle east, nor in the petroleum producing areas of Africa, nor Indonesia, nor Burma, nor Malaysia, nor anywhere in the far east, nor in Latin America. The government of the Soviet Union recognized then that new petroleum reserves would have to be discovered and developed within the U.S.S.R. The government of the Soviet Union initiated a “Manhattan Project” type program, which was given the highest priority to study every aspect of petroleum, to determine its origins and how petroleum reserves are generated, and to ascertain what might be the most effective strategies for petroleum exploration. At that time, Russia benefited from the excellent educational system which had been introduced after the 1917 revolution. The Russian petroleum community had then almost two generations of highly educated, scientifically competent men and women, ready to take up the problem of petroleum origins. [...] In 1951, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins was first enunciated by Nikolai A. Kudryavtsev at the All-Union petroleum geology congress. [...] Kudryavtsev was soon joined by numerous other Russian and Ukrainian geologists, among the first of whom were P. N. Kropotkin, K. A. Shakhvarstova, G. N. Dolenko, V. F. Linetskii, V. B. Porfir’yev, and K. A. Anikiev. [...] With the passing of the first decade of the modern theory, the failure of the previous, eighteenth century hypothesis of an origin of petroleum from biological detritus in the near-surface sediments had been thoroughly demonstrated, the hypothesis of Lomonosov discredited, and the modern theory firmly established. [...] Such predictive proof of the geologists assertions for the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins had to wait almost a half century, for such required the development not only of modern quantum statistical mechanics but also that of the techniques of many-body theory and the application of statistical geometry to the analysis of dense fluids, designated scaled particle theory. Read the full Introduction and other articles at Gasresources.net. |
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