Transcript: Episode 0099

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Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.

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I am Corey J.

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Mahler.

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And I'm still, whoa.

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Today's Stone Choir is going to be the prequel to the beginning of our series on the Septuagint.

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It's something we've been talking about for probably about 16 months now.

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Been excited for a really long time to begin doing these episodes.

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We have been holding off waiting for a book to be published so that we could release this episode at the same time that that book could come out.

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Hopefully, it's going to be coming soon, but we're not going to wait any longer.

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The next episode that we do, probably not next week, because we're going to have to do a bunch of final prep to prepare that episode.

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We've been working on it for 16 months, but we want to get all our ducks in row because the Septuagint series is going to be the most important thing that Stone Choir ever does.

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And so we got to get it right.

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We want to make it enjoyable, listenable, digestible, and understandable.

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And so it's going to be the 100th episode.

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We'll be beginning of that.

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This is our 99th episode, and I call it a prequel because as I was preparing my comments in the preamble for the 100th episode, for the Septuagint episode, I was going to talk about what we're going to discuss today.

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And once my preparatory comments got probably best about the 30-minute mark, I realized this should really probably just be an episode by itself.

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Because what we're going to talk about today doesn't have anything to do with Septuagint.

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It has to do with a methodical approach to what we learn and how we learn, how the human mind works.

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So the title of the episode is The Context Window, which is a term of our from LLM's Large Language Models or AI.

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We're going to be talking in some detail about how AIs work in this specific regard, but this is not a bunch of nerd stuff.

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You don't need to know or care about AI.

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This is about how the human mind works.

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This is about your brain, my brain, how we process information, how we store it, how we access it, and how we reason with the information that we have.

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This episode is going to be the intersection of the genealogy of ideas and the IQ episode, and it's specifically related to how much can you hold in your mind at once when you're mulling over something.

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And that's really what the context window is.

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For an LLM, the context window is kind of its RAM in a way.

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It's its working set of whatever conversation you're having at a given time.

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How much of that conversation can it remember and refer back to, both what you've said to the AI and what it's said to you?

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Because as long as you stay inside that context window, it can have perfect recollection of everything that's been spoken.

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The problem and the reason for doing this episode is as soon as with an LLM, you spill over the maximum extent of that context window, it just loses its mind.

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It can't remember anything larger than that window.

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And the human mind works the same way, just fuzzier.

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So you can be having a conversation with someone, and if the conversation goes on for 10 or 15 minutes, you can remember most basic things that they said 10 minutes ago, maybe.

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You get the gist of it.

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You couldn't quote it back to them, but you're on the same page, because you've been having a back-and-forth, and you can sort of understand it.

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So with humans, the context window is fuzzy.

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With computers, it's very fixed.

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The reason that we want to talk about it is the preface for the next episode, the Septuagint episode.

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When we begin that series, we are going to be going through about 2,500 years of Church history.

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We're going to be presenting numerous facts in order.

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It's going to be another timeline episode, a bunch of staccato points about this guy did this at this time, and it influenced someone else later, someone else chose to either follow or to deviate from his path.

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And we have a series of those events leading up to today.

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And so the Septuagint, when you put all of the facts related to that translation of the Bible, as it's commonly referred to, you end up with where we are today.

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And the point that we're going to be making in that episode is that when you look at the entire timeline, the conclusions that we have today about the Septuagint are invalidated.

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The only way to have the current view of the Septuagint that's commonly held by pretty much everyone in the Christian Church and elsewhere is to make mistakes somewhere along the way in the timeline.

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As we've been doing the prep for that episode, we realize that this is just, it's a huge amount of information, and we're going to be distilling a lot.

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Part of the reason that we've put off releasing the Septuagint series until that book was published was we wanted to put something in your hands.

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Basically, the book is someone's master's thesis.

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It's just the historical aspect of this.

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Its portions of this timeline is not everything that we're going to talk about.

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It's a subset of it.

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But it's a lot of the really important parts in the specific context of church history, which is really vital.

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So the thrust of the master's thesis about Septuagint is that nothing new is being said.

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This is all settled history.

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It's not controversial.

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It's not some weird new discovery.

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We're not talking about gold tablets here.

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We're just talking about looking at the way the church has historically viewed the Septuagint versus the Masoretic text, which is what we call the Hebrew Old Testament.

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And the Septuagint, I should have defined for those who aren't familiar, the Greek Old Testament.

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We'll give the historical details in the next episode.

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But as we were looking at this huge timeline, we realized we're going to blow out your context window.

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You're not going to be able to keep it all in your head.

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And that's fine, except that we're going to be telling you new conclusions derived from that timeline that will be controversial.

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Unlike the book, the book is not controversial, but it's very valuable because it lays out the basics.

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Our conclusions are going to be controversial, and we don't want to seem to be manipulative of people by saying what I'm going to say next.

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When we're going through that episode, people are going to have to not fight back as we're going through.

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Because what's going to happen is we go through the details of the history of the Septuagint.

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If you know a little bit about some detail somewhere along the timeline, or one of your favorite theologians has had this opinion about it, you're going to be shouting at your phone or wherever you listen to this podcast and saying, well, that can't be because of this other thing.

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We don't want to brainwash anyone.

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We don't want to blow smoke.

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We're not trying to play any magic tricks.

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So I'll say it here, and I'm going to say it again in the next episode.

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When we're going through that very detailed timeline, every time you have that impulse, every time you hear something like, that's crap, that can't be right.

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This other guy said this.

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Please pause the recording, write it down either on a piece of paper on your computer, and then put it out of your mind.

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Both of those things are necessary because I don't want you to forget what you thought was objectionable.

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Not trying to play a game where you just have to believe whatever we say.

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That's despicable.

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It's the last thing that we would ever want.

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But if you were just sitting there stewing because you know, we have to be wrong because we didn't talk about that one thing.

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It's going to be a long episode.

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We might end up breaking even the timeline into multiple chunks, depending on how long it gets.

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What we need from you as listeners is to cooperate for the duration of the episode and just let us make our case.

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Let's make the entire case without arguing, which is why you need to pause and write things down.

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Basically, once again, we're asking you to be jurists.

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If you've ever been in a jury, if you've ever seen jury instructions on TV, the judge will say, don't discuss this amongst yourselves.

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Don't look it up on the internet.

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You are only to listen to what's presented in court.

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And when you begin your deliberations, then you can talk freely.

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But as long as the court case is open, you have to keep an open mind.

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You have to take in everything that you hear, whether it's true or false, and not pre-judge, not reach any conclusions until the case is closed.

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That's essentially what we are doing here.

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I absolutely want you to take the most critical, brutal approach to what we say in the next episode.

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That's fine.

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I want you to write it all down.

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But if you are just convinced at every point, when we are 30 minutes into that episode, there will probably be at least 3 hours, and you are already convinced that we are wrong in the third century because of something that some guy said in the 15th century, you are not being a good jurist.

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You have already prejudged based on something you brought in from outside and it's going to break our case.

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Now again, maybe the case is completely fabricated, and we are lying and we are trying to play games.

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I don't want you to be misled by our approach.

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So I am going to say flat out, pause the recording and write down your objections, and then just set them aside.

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Continue listening and know that that piece of paper is going to be there.

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You are not going to forget because you have written it down.

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We are not going to be able to trick you.

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The reason for all of that, and the reason for this episode is a preamble, is that the scope of the information we are going to be presenting blows out your context window.

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There is more there than you can take in.

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And I was thinking about this in the shower this morning, I realized that this is actually akin to something that happened in my childhood.

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Bill Clinton ran for president when I was in high school.

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He was the first Broomer president, and so he was young at the time.

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And the fact that he was so young relative to Bob Dole was a big deal.

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And there was a lot of discussion at that time by the Democrat Party in particular of two things.

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Rock the vote was a big thing that they were pushing on MTV, and the Motor Voter Bill was something that Congress passed around that time.

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The specific intent of Rock the Vote and the Motor Voter Bill was essentially to make every single person in the country a voter.

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No matter what, no matter how low information anyone was, in particular, the younger they were, the less they knew, the more important it was the Democrats that those people voted.

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Historically, in the US, voting has been seen as something that's a duty, but it's a duty to participate in something where if you get it wrong, you're going to harm your neighbor.

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You can't make a mistake in voting about something, because if you do, your neighbor is going to be hurt, you're going to be hurt, your family is going to be hurt, you're choosing usually between two not great options, but if you pick the wrong one, you're going to make things worse for both yourself and your neighbor.

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And the Democrats have been devoted for a very long time to making things as bad as possible.

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And so they wanted as many as low information, low propensity voters as possible to be participants, which is why today, once you're registered to vote, it's basically automatic and perpetual.

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They made it as easy as possible with legislation when I was a kid, so that once you're registered to vote, it just sticks forever, so that it's virtually frictionless for you to go vote.

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The reason that's relative to this discussion today is that what happened there and what we're living in the aftermath and the continuum of is end-stage egalitarianism, where everyone's valuable, everyone's opinion is valuable, everyone gets a vote because we're all equals.

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And so it doesn't matter if the person voting is an 18-year-old that has no idea what's going on, but they heard a commercial that sounded like the other guy was really bad.

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What happened with this end-stage democratic egalitarianism is that the act of voting itself is described in religious terms.

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They describe it as sacrosanct, and they will basically elevate voting to the highest moral good, even above caring about for whom you vote.

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Doesn't matter who you vote for, just vote.

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You've all heard that said.

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That is a religious tenet to say it doesn't matter who you vote for as long as you vote, because the highest good is participation.

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So what occurred to me, and the reason for this is that when you exclude culpability for getting things wrong, when you exclude any notion that a man should know what he's doing before he does something, when you create an environment inside the voting booth where no sin can occur, when you vote, you are absolutely doing a moral good.

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And the only sin that could occur related to voting would be if someone prevented you from voting, if they discouraged you from voting, or if they physically prevented you.

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That would be the highest sin imaginable in democracy, because your vote is sacred.

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The problem with that is that maybe you're an idiot, and you don't know what you're doing.

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And when you step into the voting booth, you've been lied to for the five minutes that you're paying attention, and you end up voting for the worst of two possible options.

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Foolishly, you didn't know any better.

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But what has happened with our society is that we're told that's fine.

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You did the right thing because you voted.

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Whatever else, at least you participated.

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And even if you got something wrong, you can participate again in four years or two years, and you can vote in the opposite direction, that will be good.

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As long as you're voting, you're always moral.

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That's what the I Voted stickers are.

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The I Voted sticker that they hand out is basically like the ashes that are put on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday.

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It is a secular religion saying, I have been absolved of my sins by the virtue of my vote.

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What this has to do with context window and all these discussions we're going to be talking about is that if participation by itself is the highest moral good, then you are free from any notion of having to do it well.

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You're free from any notion of having to actually know what you're talking about.

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And that is the problem that we see every day on social media and elsewhere.

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All those social media people, it has many bad things, but fundamentally, it's just people talking to each other.

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It's almost always strangers talking to each other.

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So you get to know people.

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But it's fundamentally, you're just talking to other random people who could be anywhere on the planet.

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The participatory element of social media is exactly like the participatory element of voting.

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As long as you vote, you've done a good thing.

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And that's what we see on social media.

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As long as you have an opinion and you speak up, you've done a good thing.

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It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong.

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It doesn't matter if you have any facts in mind.

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All that matters is that you participated.

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And so the end stage is that on social media, what we see today is even intelligent Christians give no thought whatsoever when they're wading into some debate that's maybe been going on for years.

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Arguments have been going on where they've seen one element of a thousand, but they don't care to learn any of the backstory.

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All they care about is, well, I need to have an opinion about this.

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I saw one person do one thing, another person do another thing.

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I have to pick a side and I have to make my voice heard.

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This is just basically how we all behave today, and it's repugnant.

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And part of it is that it's the collapse of our own personal context windows to the last 30 seconds, 15 seconds.

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You don't need to know any backstory, because if you see one person do something, you're now free to judge them.

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You have all the information you need to make a profound moral judgment for against that person.

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You picked your side, you've declared it, and because you said it out loud, I voted, I have performed the highest moral good by stating my opinion on the internet.

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That's pretty much what we've been reduced to functionally.

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It's very much like the subject in last week's episode.

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We talked about how addiction being elevated to an excuse for sin.

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Once you've psychologized away the notion that sin exists, it's just patterns of behavior, when you're absolved from having to actually behave in a moral fashion, in a fashion that evaluates your actions, when morality is no longer a factor, when it's just, well, I'm participating, I'm an addict, so of course I do addict things.

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I want to stop being an addict, but there's no moral culpability.

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I'm going to vote, it doesn't matter who I vote for, but I have to do it because it's important to participate.

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I see two guys talking on the internet, I'm going to make my voice heard because that's the important thing.

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And as long as I do that, I bear no moral culpability for the degree of ignorance that I've just expressed.

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And when we lay out the entire subtuogen argument, it's going to be so much bigger than anyone's context window that if you take that approach, if you take the last 15 seconds of whatever we said and you react indignantly, you're not going to get anything out of it.

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You won't learn anything, it's going to be a waste of your time.

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And I want you to be able to get something out of it, and that involves this precursor where we say, there's this thing going on in all of our heads.

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Again, this isn't about LLMs or AI.

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This is about how our brains work.

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We have a finite amount of scratch space.

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I've been speaking now for 18 minutes.

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You can remember bits and pieces of what I said three, five, eight minutes ago, but you couldn't recite it verbatim, and that's fine, because I'm making a series of points, and you're generally coming along.

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Next week, next month, the only thing that I care about you remembering is the notion of the context window, that you can only hold so much in your head at once.

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It's why Corey and I often on Stone Choir, we'll repeat things.

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We aggravate some of the smarter guys in the audience by repeating things ad nauseum, and we'll often use that explicit term.

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We know that we're being redundant because we want it to sink in.

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We know that you listen for 90 minutes or two hours, and maybe only two or three things are going to actually implant themselves.

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We try to make sure it's the things that we care about.

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We try to make sure it's the things that we made the episode for, and not some random joke or something.

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So we're cognizant of the fact that this is how everybody's brains work.

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No matter how smart you are, you have an outer limit to what you can hold in mind.

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But once you realize that you have this personal limitation, it does begin to have a moral tenor.

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Because if you personally can only remember the last five minutes of a conversation, and it's been going on for 20 minutes, think twice about getting angry about the last thing that a guy said, because maybe it ties back to something you forgot.

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And we see this on social media where guys, even when the text record is right there, we need to have post, post, post, post, and anyone could go back and read all of them.

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They'll get mad about something at the end of a thread that's only 15 minutes long because they forgot what was going on earlier.

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That's not only a behavioral problem, but it's a moral problem.

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Because when you're reaching dire conclusions about something, this guy is evil, this guy is terrible.

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If you do that with just absolutely no effort whatsoever, but you do with a clean conscience because, hey, I voted, I participated, I posted, my conscience is clean.

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That's a bad thing.

00:19:35.912 --> 00:19:41.312
It's a bad place that we've gotten to and I don't, I've been on the Internet my entire life basically.

00:19:41.312 --> 00:19:46.872
I don't know what discussion was like before the Internet, but I can't imagine it was this stupid.

00:19:47.932 --> 00:19:51.892
And the only thing that we can do to try to help is say, hey, this is a reality.

00:19:51.892 --> 00:19:53.872
We can only fit so much in our head.

00:19:53.872 --> 00:20:02.612
So if in the course of a discussion or approaching an idea, if your context window is big enough, it's not going to be just bigger than a discussion.

00:20:02.612 --> 00:20:10.412
It's going to be the last week or the last month of discussions because that's what's actually relevant for whatever is being said right now.

00:20:10.412 --> 00:20:14.012
We all have these limitations and they're going to be different for different people.

00:20:14.012 --> 00:20:17.632
Some people is going to be very small and they just can't keep up with much of anything.

00:20:17.632 --> 00:20:21.612
If that's how God made you, I can't call you names, that would be wicked.

00:20:21.612 --> 00:20:33.932
All I can do is encourage you to recognize, yeah, I can't keep up, and so I'm just going to step out because I can't in good conscience judge these matters because I'm not entirely sure what's going on here.

00:20:33.932 --> 00:20:36.412
That is an entirely moral and elicit position.

00:20:36.412 --> 00:20:41.012
It's one that we should hear a lot more of because it applies to a lot more people than think.

00:20:41.012 --> 00:20:44.852
We have to get away from the notion that I voted, I posted, my conscience is clean.

00:20:45.192 --> 00:20:46.992
That's not a good place to be.

00:20:46.992 --> 00:20:56.932
And it causes problems when we try to tackle complicated subjects because the complexity is not because of some intricacy of interlocking parts.

00:20:56.932 --> 00:20:58.552
It's just, it's big.

00:20:58.552 --> 00:21:01.292
We're going to talk about 2500 years of church history.

00:21:01.292 --> 00:21:03.012
That's a lot to cover.

00:21:03.012 --> 00:21:06.172
And although those pieces are interlocking, they're also sequential.

00:21:06.172 --> 00:21:10.092
So as we go through them one by one, it's a simple case to make.

00:21:10.092 --> 00:21:19.572
But when you get out to the 2500 year mark, you're like, I can't fit all that in my head, which is why I said, I'm going to explicitly ask people, write down your objections.

00:21:19.572 --> 00:21:21.632
Don't forget the things that are confusing.

00:21:21.632 --> 00:21:31.472
And I think that at the end of that episode, we will have either answered those questions to your satisfaction, or in most cases, you'll realize that the question wasn't really all that relevant.

00:21:31.472 --> 00:21:37.052
It seemed important at the time, but once you have the fuller picture, maybe it just doesn't matter all that much.

00:21:39.292 --> 00:21:50.532
The Book of Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah in approximately 587 BC, right around there, depending on how you number some of the years.

00:21:50.532 --> 00:22:08.352
And the book is a poetic lament about the destruction of Jerusalem in about 586 or 587 BC by the Babylonians, of course, as a punishment from God for the apostasy of the Southern Kingdom.

00:22:08.352 --> 00:22:12.372
The Northern Kingdom, Israel, had already been destroyed at this point.

00:22:12.372 --> 00:22:24.132
And so in the fifth chapter of this book, one of the lines, the fourteenth verse, the old men have left the city gate.

00:22:24.132 --> 00:22:27.912
Now for some, that may seem like a strange statement.

00:22:27.912 --> 00:22:34.352
You may not recognize what that's saying, but tied in to what Woe was saying about democracy.

00:22:35.972 --> 00:22:43.992
Historically, how many matters were handled was the old men of the city would meet together in the gate and discuss them.

00:22:43.992 --> 00:22:49.472
If you had a problem, you would take it to the elders at the gate, and they would render a decision.

00:22:49.472 --> 00:22:56.792
That's how things were conducted, because there is a certain sort of wisdom, a degree of wisdom that comes with old age.

00:22:58.172 --> 00:22:59.312
It is at least supposed to.

00:22:59.312 --> 00:23:07.972
Obviously, not all of the elderly are wise, but there is wisdom that comes along with length of years.

00:23:07.972 --> 00:23:16.932
This is sort of the inversion of what happens with democracy, because by and large, democracy is simply a melee.

00:23:16.932 --> 00:23:39.492
It is a free for all, and you have everyone participating, so called, regardless of the level of information, regardless of the level of experience, and yes, experience does count for something, regardless of all of these things that were considered important historically, and that are considered important in scripture.

00:23:39.492 --> 00:23:44.612
Scripture doesn't condemn the old man standing in the gate to render decisions.

00:23:44.612 --> 00:23:46.752
In fact, scripture goes the opposite direction.

00:23:46.752 --> 00:23:48.512
You can think of Leviticus.

00:23:48.512 --> 00:23:52.192
You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man.

00:23:53.952 --> 00:24:01.592
One of the roles of those who have lived along life and gained this wisdom is to render solid counsel.

00:24:03.132 --> 00:24:05.012
That is not what democracy does.

00:24:05.012 --> 00:24:08.372
It does the exact opposite of that.

00:24:08.372 --> 00:24:16.092
In fact, if you can just gin up support among the youth, there's a pretty good chance you can win certain elections.

00:24:16.092 --> 00:24:27.812
It may be that you have completely and entirely deceived them because they don't have this necessary context of a long life, this wisdom that is gained through length of years.

00:24:27.812 --> 00:24:30.932
And so perhaps you win the democratic context.

00:24:32.732 --> 00:24:34.352
But that's not a good thing.

00:24:34.352 --> 00:24:38.492
And we see the same thing happening all over the place in our society.

00:24:38.492 --> 00:24:41.692
Social media is obviously one of the great examples.

00:24:41.692 --> 00:24:46.552
This isn't to say that the youth shouldn't have a say that their voice shouldn't be heard.

00:24:46.552 --> 00:24:48.952
But it's to say that it should be tempered by wisdom.

00:24:49.912 --> 00:24:52.172
Because God does highly praise wisdom.

00:24:52.172 --> 00:24:54.112
It is a gift from God.

00:24:54.112 --> 00:24:58.152
It is something that we as Christians and just as men should value.

00:24:59.852 --> 00:25:08.772
It's not in the roar of the crowd that you find truth, that you find justice, that you find sound conclusions.

00:25:08.772 --> 00:25:11.952
It's not to say that necessarily those things are at odds.

00:25:11.952 --> 00:25:24.752
Because of course, the crowd can be led toward the truth almost as easily as it can be led toward a lie, even though sometimes lies are more pleasing in their presentation, not in their consequences.

00:25:24.752 --> 00:25:26.912
That's how sin tends to work.

00:25:27.952 --> 00:25:37.392
Rather, it is to say that just because the crowd approves of something, does not mean that that thing is true or correct or good or just.

00:25:37.392 --> 00:25:43.252
We often see this playing out in the various public fora that we now have a society.

00:25:43.252 --> 00:25:45.272
We no longer have a public square, really.

00:25:45.752 --> 00:25:49.432
We have a virtual one and we call it social media.

00:25:49.432 --> 00:25:56.492
It happens to be that different age cohorts have sort of divided themselves up among the various platforms.

00:25:56.492 --> 00:26:07.592
Facebook is now the older generation, X is sort of millennials, plus or minus a bit, and then you have things like TikTok and such that are the younger generation.

00:26:08.712 --> 00:26:18.052
But by and large on these platforms, particularly the first and the third, you don't necessarily see the truth being what is winning out.

00:26:18.052 --> 00:26:25.572
There's an ongoing raging battle, as it were, on X for what is true and what is not, a little bit more than the other platforms.

00:26:25.572 --> 00:26:29.792
But what you see is things that are attractive, that are flashy.

00:26:29.792 --> 00:26:32.212
Those are the things that get the most views.

00:26:32.212 --> 00:26:43.712
It's in fact admittedly one of the reasons that I phrase things the way that I do sometimes, because if you don't capture people's attention, they are never going to see what you said.

00:26:43.712 --> 00:26:48.932
In fact, you have to do that if you want to get out whatever message it happens to be.

00:26:48.952 --> 00:26:56.652
Usually, I'm trying to force people to think, which is part of the purpose of this episode and the podcast more generally.

00:26:56.652 --> 00:27:09.852
But I word things the way that I do, so that people will react to them, because that reaction will at least cause them to pause for a second and maybe think about what I said, which is the goal.

00:27:09.852 --> 00:27:28.692
Hopefully, they will think about it and arrive at some sort of conclusion, assess it in a rational fashion, even in a critical fashion, instead of just scrolling by it to the next thing that happens to be shiny or flashy, which is so often what happens with these systems we've built because basically it's a dopamine treadmill.

00:27:28.692 --> 00:27:41.152
But the issue with these sorts of systems, with democracy, with things like that, is that we have abandoned the idea of expertise.

00:27:41.152 --> 00:27:46.152
And along with the idea of expertise, we've abandoned, as Woe said, accountability.

00:27:46.152 --> 00:27:50.392
Because what do you have if you are the old men standing in the gate?

00:27:50.392 --> 00:28:01.812
Well, you have a certain sort of respectability because you are the gray head that scripture commands us to honor, the men before whom you are supposed to rise, which is to honor these men.

00:28:03.992 --> 00:28:18.212
But at the same time, you have a degree of accountability, not just because of the fact that you are an elder and you are serving in that office, you're in that position, but also because you are, in a very real sense, the ones guiding this city.

00:28:18.212 --> 00:28:26.892
And if you guide it poorly, the consequences are disastrous for you and for your family, and for everyone who lives in your city.

00:28:26.892 --> 00:28:28.052
In other words, your neighbors.

00:28:29.152 --> 00:28:35.012
You have a duty, by virtue of that office, to render correct decisions.

00:28:35.012 --> 00:28:45.592
Incidentally, that also means that you have a prior duty, not to seek or to hold that office, if you do not have the capacity to render those proper decisions.

00:28:45.592 --> 00:28:51.212
Again, democracy subverts this, because the only thing that is considered good is voting.

00:28:51.212 --> 00:28:57.612
And the only thing that is considered bad is being precluded from voting, being excluded from the decision.

00:28:58.552 --> 00:29:06.132
Well, some men should be excluded from making these decisions, because some men are in fact incompetent to make certain decisions.

00:29:06.132 --> 00:29:24.792
An example that I will often use, because it's rather visceral and it gets the point across quite clearly, if you need open-heart surgery, you are not going to go down to the bus stop and take a poll as to what method should be used or how it should be pursued, or which sort of products should be used in the procedure.

00:29:25.732 --> 00:29:35.052
No, you go to a doctor who is an expert in open-heart surgery, because the alternative is you're probably going to die.

00:29:35.052 --> 00:29:39.572
We all recognize that expertise exists in many fields.

00:29:39.572 --> 00:29:46.012
If you want a new suit, you're probably going to go to a tailor, not an auto mechanic.

00:29:46.012 --> 00:29:51.532
Inversely, if your car has a problem, you are probably going to go to the auto mechanic, not a tailor.

00:29:52.492 --> 00:30:07.132
We recognize that this expertise exists in all sorts of fields, and yet because of the propaganda for democracy, we have been trained to reject expertise in batters of politics, which is really what we're discussing.

00:30:07.132 --> 00:30:11.272
This is the umbrella term, the large sense of politics.

00:30:11.272 --> 00:30:14.772
And so we've been told that no, every opinion is relevant.

00:30:14.772 --> 00:30:19.612
Every opinion is of equal weight, of equal value with regard to political questions.

00:30:19.612 --> 00:30:20.912
And that's simply not true.

00:30:21.932 --> 00:30:34.892
Because there are men who have dedicated their lives and their talents to these things, and men who have been given certain gifts by God, and are able to render good decisions.

00:30:34.892 --> 00:30:38.972
Whereas many men, most men in fact, are not able to do so.

00:30:38.972 --> 00:30:45.812
But the fundamental conceit of democracy is that every man has an equally valid opinion.

00:30:45.812 --> 00:30:48.352
And that is simply not true.

00:30:48.352 --> 00:30:50.592
It is particularly not true in politics.

00:30:51.312 --> 00:30:56.312
Now, of course, there is some nuance with this when it comes to theological questions.

00:30:56.312 --> 00:31:00.532
Because theologically speaking, the same thing is true.

00:31:00.532 --> 00:31:03.832
Not all men have the same level of aptitude.

00:31:03.832 --> 00:31:06.532
Not all men have been given the same gifts.

00:31:06.532 --> 00:31:11.792
Some men are much more competent theologically than others.

00:31:11.792 --> 00:31:13.732
That is simply a truth.

00:31:13.732 --> 00:31:19.452
However, every man needs to get certain theological questions right.

00:31:20.632 --> 00:31:25.012
Now, we happen to have safeguards in place, which is great news.

00:31:25.012 --> 00:31:27.492
We call them the confessions.

00:31:27.492 --> 00:31:29.992
And in fact, the confessions and the creeds.

00:31:29.992 --> 00:31:32.272
I mean both of those when I say confessions.

00:31:33.872 --> 00:31:36.052
You should know those.

00:31:36.052 --> 00:31:37.472
You should hold those dear.

00:31:37.472 --> 00:31:39.012
You should hold to those.

00:31:39.012 --> 00:31:40.652
You should cling to those.

00:31:40.652 --> 00:31:42.252
Because those are the guardrails.

00:31:42.252 --> 00:31:49.012
And any man should be able to understand at least the major confessions, the major creeds of the Church.

00:31:50.772 --> 00:31:56.652
Now, there are going to be many other issues that most men will not be able to understand.

00:31:56.652 --> 00:32:02.592
The communication of attributes is fairly complicated, is fairly nuanced.

00:32:02.592 --> 00:32:08.552
Most men are not going to thoroughly understand that issue or even why it necessarily matters.

00:32:08.552 --> 00:32:11.412
But do you have to understand it to be saved?

00:32:11.412 --> 00:32:13.252
The answer is no.

00:32:13.252 --> 00:32:18.032
If you read, believe and confess the creeds, that is sufficient.

00:32:19.032 --> 00:32:23.812
But it doesn't mean that these other theological issues are unimportant.

00:32:23.812 --> 00:32:28.632
It simply means that you don't necessarily have to have an opinion on them.

00:32:28.632 --> 00:32:33.392
It is entirely fine to simply say, I don't know.

00:32:33.392 --> 00:32:35.912
Or even to say, I don't care.

00:32:35.912 --> 00:32:40.372
Now, for some of these issues, perhaps it is worthy of caring about them.

00:32:40.372 --> 00:32:43.752
But if you don't have the capacity, then just simply say, I don't know.

00:32:43.752 --> 00:32:45.752
That is a fine answer.

00:32:45.752 --> 00:32:52.312
It is something that Woe and I are perfectly willing to say on subjects about which we don't know that much.

00:32:52.312 --> 00:32:59.172
If you ask me a question about quantum chemistry, I'm probably going to tell you, I don't know.

00:32:59.172 --> 00:33:02.112
Because I don't know that much about that subject.

00:33:02.112 --> 00:33:05.192
It is not my area of expertise.

00:33:05.192 --> 00:33:10.712
And I don't consider that I should have an opinion on absolutely everything.

00:33:10.712 --> 00:33:15.472
In fact, I have opinions, I have positions only on those things about which I know something.

00:33:16.332 --> 00:33:27.792
Now, of course, I'm not talking about just matters of taste, because certainly you can have an opinion with regard to taste, so food or even clothing, and not necessarily be an expert in either of those things.

00:33:27.792 --> 00:33:29.672
That's a different matter.

00:33:29.672 --> 00:33:32.212
We're talking about matters of truth.

00:33:32.212 --> 00:33:44.632
When it comes to matters of truth, whether it is a theological truth or a mathematical truth, or a truth in chemistry or physics, whatever it happens to be, you don't necessarily have to have an opinion if you don't know anything about it.

00:33:45.672 --> 00:33:50.132
So I have positions theologically, because I understand theology.

00:33:50.132 --> 00:33:58.792
I have put in the time and effort to understand the subject, and God has given me certain gifts, so that that time and effort were not wasted.

00:33:59.932 --> 00:34:05.212
However, I don't have those sorts of opinions with regard to every other field.

00:34:05.212 --> 00:34:16.092
And so you will notice if you look at the comments that I have made, whether it's on X or elsewhere here on the podcast, I generally do not speak about most subjects.

00:34:16.092 --> 00:34:23.632
Now, partly it's because they're not subjects that are necessarily fit for this podcast, but it's also because I don't have an opinion on them.

00:34:23.632 --> 00:34:30.212
I don't have a position on them, and neither does Woe for many of them, because we aren't experts in those things.

00:34:30.212 --> 00:34:43.492
Yes, I recognize that I talked about biology and I've talked about psychology in previous episodes, but I actually do have sufficient training and knowledge in those fields to speak on them to the extent that I did.

00:34:43.492 --> 00:34:50.332
I'm not going to go beyond that, because I don't think that they should be democratized.

00:34:50.332 --> 00:34:55.872
I don't think that I should have a say on things about which I don't know anything.

00:34:55.872 --> 00:35:07.092
The fundamental problem with democracy is that it says that every man should have a say on the political, when vanishingly few men are experts on the political.

00:35:07.092 --> 00:35:29.352
The idea that someone who is 18 and knows nothing about politics, and probably just started reading Marx will say for the most extreme example, the idea that that person should have the exact same say in politics as a man who has been a statesman for 20 years is utterly and completely absurd.

00:35:29.352 --> 00:35:31.872
And yet that is what democracy advances.

00:35:34.312 --> 00:35:35.392
I want to be very clear.

00:35:36.472 --> 00:36:02.832
Again, I am drawing a very not sort of wall between the two, but a strict delineation between the political and the theological, because I am in fact saying that you do indeed have to have opinions on the theological, but only in so far as they are the core issues of the faith that are contained in and addressed by the creeds, which is to say the things you need to know to be saved.

00:36:03.932 --> 00:36:13.712
The other things, the tangential, the ancillary issues, not all of them ancillary, but some, you do not need to have an opinion on those.

00:36:13.712 --> 00:36:45.552
On the other hand, with the political, most men do not need to have opinions on the political, because it is outside their area of expertise, and it is something that if they involve themselves, they are probably going to be doing it to the detriment of their neighbor and to the detriment of themselves, because if you in fact involve yourself in something, it is incumbent on you to have a certain degree of competence, because if you don't have that competence, you are inflicting harm on others, which is to say that you are sinning.

00:36:45.552 --> 00:36:58.992
You should not involve yourself in things about which you do not have sufficient knowledge to make an accurate assessment, to engage in a way that is actually helpful to others instead of harmful to them.

00:37:00.572 --> 00:37:10.992
Which is why the very idea of mass democracy, specifically mass democracy is the worst example, is not only absurd but wicked.

00:37:10.992 --> 00:37:24.652
It is an openly evil thing, because it asks those who are least suited to make decisions, to make those very decisions, and to inflict harm on their neighbor, and in fact to feel like they have done a good work in doing so.

00:37:24.652 --> 00:37:29.372
Because all of the propaganda tells you that if you go and vote, you've done a good thing.

00:37:29.372 --> 00:37:36.832
It's your civic duty, which is incidentally how we used to run the calculation in political science for how voting was rational.

00:37:36.832 --> 00:37:37.872
No longer the case.

00:37:37.872 --> 00:37:43.052
Now it's that you feel good, and I wish I were kidding, but that is actually what the modern literature says.

00:37:43.052 --> 00:37:45.752
It's the warm fuzzy feeling you get from participating.

00:37:47.092 --> 00:37:56.632
But the propaganda tells you that this is something you should do, and it's a good thing, and that you've done this great and wonderful work if you go and vote.

00:37:58.232 --> 00:38:07.712
And it's simply not the case if you don't know why you voted that way, why you should vote that way, why you should not have voted another way.

00:38:07.712 --> 00:38:16.892
Now of course, all of this comes with the practical caveat that in the modern world, we do live under a democratic system presently.

00:38:16.892 --> 00:38:22.992
And so, yes, it does matter if you go out and vote, because it really is just a head count.

00:38:22.992 --> 00:38:31.872
But you should listen to men who actually know the issues, who understand the issues, who can say, this is the way you should vote, and here is why.

00:38:31.872 --> 00:38:36.372
It's important to do that because there's nothing wrong with having leaders.

00:38:36.372 --> 00:38:38.692
Every movement has leaders.

00:38:38.692 --> 00:38:40.632
Every field has leaders.

00:38:40.632 --> 00:38:49.352
And most of the men under those leaders don't understand all of the actions or all of the reasons for the actions taken by the leader.

00:38:49.352 --> 00:38:50.592
That's entirely fine.

00:38:50.592 --> 00:38:53.092
God created hierarchy everywhere.

00:38:54.152 --> 00:39:03.812
Children don't have to understand why their parents tell them to go to bed at a certain time, or why they have to eat their vegetables, or any of a thousand other things they do.

00:39:03.812 --> 00:39:17.252
But it's good if they do them, because God has put that person in a position of headship, a position of authority over, in the case of a father over his children, in order to lead them and guide them for their good.

00:39:17.252 --> 00:39:20.552
That's what political leaders are supposed to do.

00:39:20.552 --> 00:39:30.712
It's not a bad thing when someone exercises authority or exercises control, because that has been given to that man by God, and he is to use it for good.

00:39:30.712 --> 00:39:38.132
Now a man who uses it for evil is no longer acting on behalf of God, and that is a different question we've addressed in previous podcasts.

00:39:38.132 --> 00:39:44.312
But there is nothing inherently wrongful or evil or bad about power and authority.

00:39:44.312 --> 00:39:54.672
In fact, they are goods that come from God, that he has given to certain men, and it is incumbent on those men to exercise them in accord with God's desires.

00:39:55.752 --> 00:40:26.472
When we look at a system like democracy, which instead of recognizing the natural hierarchy that God has built into his creation, including among men, and rejects that, which is what democracy does, instead of looking at that hierarchy, looking at the design of the system created by God, and recognizing that natural conclusions flow from it, that we should organize our society in a certain way.

00:40:26.472 --> 00:40:29.552
If you reject those things, you wind up with worse outcomes.

00:40:29.552 --> 00:40:33.752
And not only do you wind up with worse outcomes, but you wind up harming your neighbor.

00:40:33.752 --> 00:40:39.572
You wind up with actively evil outcomes, because the system itself is the problem.

00:40:40.852 --> 00:40:52.032
And again, to tie it back into the discussions that we're having and leading into the Septuagint episode, the same thing is true with regard to most discussions.

00:40:52.032 --> 00:41:00.632
Because there are going to be men who understand the issues, and there are going to be men who do not understand the issues, and there's going to be a spectrum.

00:41:00.632 --> 00:41:06.452
Because there are men who are experts in the topics being discussed, and there are men who know nothing about them.

00:41:06.452 --> 00:41:10.952
Not all of those men on that spectrum should have equal say.

00:41:10.952 --> 00:41:17.252
Because the men who are experts, the men who know more about subjects, should have a greater say.

00:41:17.252 --> 00:41:24.912
And in fact, the men who know nothing should remain silent, because that is the right thing to do when you know nothing about the subject.

00:41:24.912 --> 00:41:28.472
Now, if you happen to have a reasonable question, that's a different matter.

00:41:28.472 --> 00:41:31.612
You can ask questions, of course.

00:41:31.612 --> 00:41:39.632
But the man who knows nothing about a subject should not stand up and say, well, I think we should do this, because he has no reason to advance the position.

00:41:41.172 --> 00:41:48.872
The men who have the knowledge also have a duty to use it in a godly fashion.

00:41:48.872 --> 00:41:57.812
Again, this is tying into so many episodes we've done, and there's a sort of irony here that I brought up with Woe while we were discussing the topics.

00:41:57.812 --> 00:42:21.892
The fact that we're doing Context Window is the 99th episode, because in a very real way, we're drawing on so many previous episodes that the entirety of the corpus of the podcast is the Context Window of this episode, is the Context Window for the things that we are saying, the positions we're advancing, and indeed, what we will be doing in the Septuagint series.

00:42:21.892 --> 00:42:34.432
Now, we're not saying that you have to know absolutely everything we have said in every single podcast thus far, in every episode thus far, but it's certainly helpful if you remember the contours and the major points.

00:42:34.432 --> 00:42:38.972
Again, it's one of the reasons that we tend to repeat the things that we say.

00:42:38.972 --> 00:42:43.992
Because if we repeat them, you are more likely to retain them.

00:42:43.992 --> 00:42:45.132
That's not an indictment.

00:42:45.132 --> 00:42:45.952
That's not...

00:42:45.952 --> 00:42:47.512
It shouldn't be heard as an insult.

00:42:47.512 --> 00:42:49.512
It shouldn't be received as an insult.

00:42:49.512 --> 00:42:51.932
That is simply how the human mind works.

00:42:51.932 --> 00:42:53.172
It's how my mind works.

00:42:53.172 --> 00:42:54.692
It's how Woe's mind works.

00:42:54.692 --> 00:42:57.992
It's how the mind of every single man ever to live works.

00:42:57.992 --> 00:43:01.252
The way that you memorize things is repetition.

00:43:01.252 --> 00:43:03.872
I hope we would all remember that from school.

00:43:03.872 --> 00:43:11.572
If you learned a foreign language, one of the ways that you learn it is rote memorization, at least for that core vocabulary, which is just repetition.

00:43:11.572 --> 00:43:15.592
It's flashcards and looking at it in English and then the other language.

00:43:15.592 --> 00:43:16.692
That's how we learn.

00:43:16.692 --> 00:43:17.752
It's one of the reasons.

00:43:17.752 --> 00:43:27.592
It's one of the core reasons that we repeat things so many times in these episodes, because we want you to remember the key points, because otherwise, why are you here?

00:43:27.592 --> 00:43:30.372
And otherwise, why are we here?

00:43:30.372 --> 00:43:37.492
If we're just talking and you aren't actually listening or learning anything, we're both wasting our time.

00:43:37.492 --> 00:43:40.992
We don't want to waste your time, and we don't want to waste our own time.

00:43:40.992 --> 00:43:49.032
And so we hope that you take away from these episodes the core points that we're making in them, which again is why we repeat them.

00:43:49.032 --> 00:43:57.312
Because if it's repeated three, four, five times, you have a much better chance of remembering it than if it's said once in passing.

00:43:57.312 --> 00:44:05.052
And this is not something, again, that is unique to us, that is unique to really anything when it comes to human endeavors.

00:44:05.052 --> 00:44:07.112
Read scripture.

00:44:07.112 --> 00:44:12.712
Things are repeated two, three times in the same paragraph sometimes in scripture.

00:44:12.712 --> 00:44:14.952
God knows how the human mind works.

00:44:14.952 --> 00:44:33.292
God inspired Moses, particularly, if you're looking at the first five books of scripture, to write the same thing multiple times in short order, sometimes spaced, which incidentally, we know that spaced repetition is one of the best ways to remember things, partly because scripture was meant to be read aloud.

00:44:33.292 --> 00:44:53.512
So if you heard something, and then you heard it again a minute later, and then again a couple minutes after that, you had a better chance of retaining it, which is vitally important when something is delivered orally, which is exactly obviously what we're doing with a podcast, unless you happen to be one of the people who reads the transcript instead of listens.

00:44:53.512 --> 00:44:58.152
So we repeat things so that you will remember them, because otherwise there's no point.

00:44:58.872 --> 00:45:00.652
For us or for you.

00:45:02.132 --> 00:45:11.872
I'm going to give you a brief lesson on LLMs or AI, and the point again is not to nerd out or give you any reason to care about technology.

00:45:11.872 --> 00:45:13.272
This is an example I'm giving.

00:45:13.272 --> 00:45:15.532
As I said, this is how our brains work.

00:45:15.532 --> 00:45:18.452
Joseph Corey was talking about repetition.

00:45:18.452 --> 00:45:24.092
The reason that I have found LLMs particularly interesting is I'm learning more about myself.

00:45:24.092 --> 00:45:25.172
I'm learning more about you.

00:45:25.492 --> 00:45:33.092
I'm learning more about being human by watching how they're trying to tune these machines to think like humans.

00:45:33.092 --> 00:45:41.032
And think isn't scare quotes there because it's not thought the way we think of thought, but there is something akin to reasoning.

00:45:41.032 --> 00:45:44.692
And there are places where it's absolutely an effective reasoning engine.

00:45:44.692 --> 00:45:47.592
There's an example I'll give here in a little bit.

00:45:47.592 --> 00:45:56.012
So when we're talking about LLMs and we're talking about context window, I'm just going to give you a few brief technical details.

00:45:56.012 --> 00:45:57.892
Again, this is about us.

00:45:57.892 --> 00:46:07.952
What they're trying to do with these machines, with these robots, is to fit a version of the human brain in a software so you can run on a computer.

00:46:07.952 --> 00:46:09.412
There are two elements to that.

00:46:09.412 --> 00:46:15.952
There is the training of the model, which is going to be based on the corpus of whatever data they can get their hands on.

00:46:15.952 --> 00:46:19.872
And for a human, the comparable notion would be basically your entire life.

00:46:20.412 --> 00:46:28.932
Everything you have ever been exposed to, everything you've ever learned, everything you've ever studied, gets compressed into your brain somehow, and some of it sticks.

00:46:28.932 --> 00:46:41.792
With an LLM, the model that you will run, and that's why they have specific names, some of them I've downloaded and I run locally, one of the ones that I use the most often, because it's the best right now, is Llama 3.3.

00:46:41.792 --> 00:46:45.192
In one month, it's going to be obsolete because they're about to release Llama 4.

00:46:45.192 --> 00:46:46.072
It's going to be way better.

00:46:46.072 --> 00:46:47.792
It's going to be smaller, faster.

00:46:47.792 --> 00:46:48.752
It's going to do everything better.

00:46:49.792 --> 00:46:52.592
But the underlying technology is more or less the same.

00:46:52.592 --> 00:47:09.512
They take a huge corpus of whatever information they could get, without regard to copyright, they stuff it into a file, they perform lots of complicated math on it, to essentially summarize all human knowledge as best they can.

00:47:09.512 --> 00:47:11.912
And it works incredibly well.

00:47:11.912 --> 00:47:18.092
When I was talking about this stuff a year and two years and three years ago, I didn't think it was going to get as far as it has today.

00:47:18.612 --> 00:47:23.312
They're doing a really good job, and that's both a wonderful thing and a terrifying thing.

00:47:23.312 --> 00:47:27.592
But for today's episode, we're just talking about kind of the machinery.

00:47:27.612 --> 00:47:37.492
Once that model is locked in, once you have your Lama 3, the one that I run is about 70 gigabytes, that is a fixed thing.

00:47:37.492 --> 00:47:41.312
Unlike your brain, your brain is always accumulating new knowledge.

00:47:41.312 --> 00:47:45.332
These models, when they're locked in for training, they're done.

00:47:45.332 --> 00:47:46.412
They don't change anymore.

00:47:47.672 --> 00:47:49.152
And then they're run at run time.

00:47:49.152 --> 00:47:50.412
And so that's the difference.

00:47:50.412 --> 00:47:55.192
When you have a brain, your brain is always on, it's always learning, and it's always running.

00:47:55.192 --> 00:47:58.532
So you're talking, you're thinking, you're ingesting, whatever.

00:47:58.532 --> 00:48:04.172
You are not discrete parts the way this is.

00:48:04.172 --> 00:48:09.152
When a model like Lama 3 or Lama 4 gets locked in, it's not going to change anymore.

00:48:09.152 --> 00:48:19.592
No new information can be added to it, which is what makes the conversational context a very different aspect of how they operate, and that's when they're actually being used.

00:48:19.592 --> 00:48:34.552
When all this information is stuffed into the model and it's put in a file, then your LLM provider, maybe if you're running it locally, I'm using LLM Studio, which is cross-platform, I recommend it if you can run it on your machine.

00:48:34.552 --> 00:48:42.132
When you're actually interacting with an LLM, the conversation is what has this context window that I talked about earlier.

00:48:42.872 --> 00:48:54.752
And the context window is another very distinct aspect of how we interact with each other, because it's unrelated directly to knowledge in the broad sense.

00:48:54.752 --> 00:48:58.472
The context window is just whatever has happened recently.

00:48:59.912 --> 00:49:10.332
And so, say for example, I fire up LLMA 3, I ask it a question about the Septuagint, and it gives me an answer, I ask a follow-up question, it gives me another answer, I ask another follow-up question.

00:49:11.392 --> 00:49:21.292
The context window for that session, that one chat is going to be whatever conversation has occurred between me and the robot.

00:49:21.292 --> 00:49:28.032
For the duration of that conversation, it has perfect recollection, as I said earlier, of everything in the conversation.

00:49:28.032 --> 00:49:30.892
But it knows nothing about any previous conversations.

00:49:30.892 --> 00:49:34.572
Each chat is a separate chat, it forgets perfectly every time.

00:49:34.572 --> 00:49:37.352
Because the file, the model, is unchanging.

00:49:37.352 --> 00:49:38.952
It's fixed in space and time.

00:49:39.632 --> 00:49:41.892
As versioning, it just doesn't go anywhere.

00:49:41.892 --> 00:49:43.372
It's read-only.

00:49:43.372 --> 00:49:45.192
The conversations are ephemeral.

00:49:45.192 --> 00:49:48.632
So you can have one conversation after another, and they don't flow into each other.

00:49:48.632 --> 00:49:51.212
And the context window is the limit.

00:49:51.212 --> 00:50:12.392
The reason that the context windows are there is that the inference process, which is what this part of the LLM interaction is called, is very expensive to get the information back out of that model at runtime, and then to incorporate new information with your question, and its answer and your feedback takes a lot of memory.

00:50:12.392 --> 00:50:20.112
It takes additional memory and additional computation, and there's a hard limit for every model about how much context window they can have.

00:50:20.112 --> 00:50:29.692
As I said earlier, as soon as you exceed the context window for your chat, it's going to begin to lose its mind, and it's going to do one of a couple of things.

00:50:29.692 --> 00:50:38.912
The typical simple solution is truncation, where it will either forget the beginning of the conversation, or it will forget the middle of the conversation.

00:50:38.912 --> 00:51:06.392
So if it forgets the beginning of the conversation, it will remember the last thousands of words that you've had back and forth, but it won't remember how you started the chat, which can cause conversation to get very confusing if you keep going, because once it's forgotten how the conversation began, it might start repeating itself, or it might start talking about totally unrelated things suggested by the most recent context, but without regard for the initial context.

00:51:06.392 --> 00:51:21.492
So one of the other methods is truncation in the middle, where it will remember the beginning of the conversation, it will remember the recent part, and it just throws out some portion of the middle, because that's less likely to influence what it's going to say next.

00:51:21.492 --> 00:51:32.092
Another method, a third method is key value quantization, where they basically compress the conversation in real time the same way that the chat itself is compressed.

00:51:33.012 --> 00:51:36.112
And this compression is Lossy.

00:51:36.112 --> 00:51:38.672
There are two different types of compression on computers.

00:51:38.672 --> 00:51:41.192
One is lossless and the other is lossy.

00:51:41.192 --> 00:51:43.092
You've all interacted with zip files.

00:51:43.092 --> 00:51:53.972
That's a lossless compression, where you take a file, you zip it, it gets a lot smaller, you can email it to somebody, put it on his drive or whatever, and then when you unzip it, you get exactly the same file.

00:51:53.972 --> 00:51:56.792
Byte for byte, bit for bit, it's identical.

00:51:56.792 --> 00:51:58.132
That's lossless compression.

00:51:59.832 --> 00:52:03.152
The other type of compression is lossy compression.

00:52:03.152 --> 00:52:11.172
This would be things like images, and JPEGs are a good example, or audio files, like the one you're listening to now.

00:52:11.172 --> 00:52:19.152
The audio file of this podcast is several gigabytes when Corey is editing it, because it's uncompressed on his machine.

00:52:19.152 --> 00:52:24.812
When he finishes mastering it and he outputs it for the podcast services, it's compressed as an MP4.

00:52:25.532 --> 00:52:35.312
That is a lossy perceptual encoding process where it throws away data, but it throws away things that the human ear typically can't hear.

00:52:35.312 --> 00:52:42.372
And some people have noticed that the audio quality on our podcast is a lot higher than some others because we use a higher bitrate.

00:52:42.372 --> 00:52:44.632
But even at that, it's still compressed.

00:52:44.632 --> 00:52:49.312
And the difference in bitrate is literally how much is being thrown away.

00:52:49.312 --> 00:52:55.932
The more of the original signal you throw away, the further it gets from the purity of the first form.

00:52:55.932 --> 00:53:02.692
So there's no way to reconstruct the original, uncompressed version of this podcast from the file that you get.

00:53:02.692 --> 00:53:04.972
But it's close enough that it doesn't matter.

00:53:04.972 --> 00:53:09.572
That's pretty much what LLMs try to do with this huge corpus of human knowledge.

00:53:09.572 --> 00:53:13.152
They're compressing it by throwing away redundant bits of information.

00:53:14.212 --> 00:53:21.372
But they try to use very fancy methodologies to preserve the relationships between words, so it doesn't throw away anything important.

00:53:22.112 --> 00:53:31.912
And in the middle of a conversation, if an LLM quantizes the conversation, so it doesn't truncate, but it just starts to compress it, it compresses in the same way.

00:53:31.912 --> 00:53:35.312
It starts to throw away things that might be redundant.

00:53:35.312 --> 00:53:37.772
And the end result is that it just gets fuzzier.

00:53:37.772 --> 00:53:39.272
It might work just fine.

00:53:39.272 --> 00:53:40.892
It might work very poorly.

00:53:40.892 --> 00:53:48.352
The longer it goes and the more it has to quantize, the more it has to compress, the worse it's going to get because the more it's throwing away.

00:53:48.352 --> 00:53:50.552
And this is similar to how the human mind works.

00:53:50.952 --> 00:53:52.252
We don't remember things perfectly.

00:53:52.252 --> 00:53:54.072
We remember bits and pieces.

00:53:54.072 --> 00:53:58.972
And as Corey said, like typically when we learn, we remember the contours of things.

00:53:58.972 --> 00:54:03.072
So you can't reconstruct a conversation, but you have the gist of it, hopefully.

00:54:03.072 --> 00:54:06.892
If you're paying attention to even keep up, you have a general idea of what was said.

00:54:06.892 --> 00:54:13.552
You could probably spit back a few things that were said, maybe close to verbatim, enough to, you get the point.

00:54:13.552 --> 00:54:14.692
And that's sufficient.

00:54:14.692 --> 00:54:17.872
If you get the contours, you don't need the rest.

00:54:17.872 --> 00:54:21.332
And that's one of the beautiful things about the way God engineered our minds.

00:54:21.332 --> 00:54:27.632
We don't have to be perfect recorders like a camera with perfect recollection of everything all the time.

00:54:27.632 --> 00:54:30.872
That would be almost horrifying for the few people who have it.

00:54:30.872 --> 00:54:32.472
It's kind of hard on them.

00:54:32.472 --> 00:54:34.892
It's nice to have some degree of forgetting.

00:54:34.892 --> 00:54:38.492
But at the same time, you don't want to forget stuff that's important.

00:54:38.492 --> 00:54:50.152
In the conversation with an LLM, in the context window, as long as you stay inside that window, and so it's, the windows are measured in tokens that are basically like pieces of words.

00:54:50.152 --> 00:54:52.312
So, you know, just talk about it in terms of words.

00:54:52.312 --> 00:54:57.032
Say that the window for a model is 100,000 words.

00:54:57.032 --> 00:54:59.032
That's a long conversation.

00:54:59.032 --> 00:55:02.112
That's a longer conversation that you're going to have with most people most of the time.

00:55:02.112 --> 00:55:04.992
But it's enough room that you can paste in a document.

00:55:04.992 --> 00:55:06.512
You can ask questions about the document.

00:55:06.512 --> 00:55:07.552
It's not too long.

00:55:07.552 --> 00:55:10.432
You can go for a while before it runs out of context.

00:55:10.432 --> 00:55:15.852
And as long as you stay inside the context window of that AI, it's going to remember perfectly.

00:55:16.572 --> 00:55:20.112
People don't work that way, but we work similarly.

00:55:20.112 --> 00:55:35.292
What I mean is this, in conversation, one-on-one conversation, not when you're talking about your expertise of things you've known forever, just you're sitting down cold with a total stranger, and you have some back and forth where you're getting to know each other.

00:55:35.292 --> 00:55:42.592
If you have no priors, no shared priors with that person, you're probably trying to establish them, first of all, when you try to get to know someone.

00:55:42.592 --> 00:55:47.452
But your context is going to be limited to the conversation you're having with each other.

00:55:47.452 --> 00:55:52.372
Your context is going to be limited to what they have said and what you have said.

00:55:52.372 --> 00:55:55.252
You don't have any prayer context because you just met them.

00:55:55.252 --> 00:55:57.052
On the other hand, say you met them yesterday.

00:55:57.052 --> 00:56:01.632
You met somebody at a coffee shop, you go back the next day at the same time, they're both there.

00:56:01.632 --> 00:56:09.852
If you have a decent memory, your context for today's conversation is going to conclude some way you heard yesterday.

00:56:09.852 --> 00:56:13.432
Maybe they said that their pet was sick, and so today you ask them about their pet.

00:56:14.472 --> 00:56:24.552
And it's not simply, it's a biographical detail, oh, I know that there's a pet for this person, but they expressed something that was important, you remember that, and you incorporate it into today's conversation.

00:56:24.552 --> 00:56:29.332
So your context window is expanded the more you talk to them.

00:56:29.332 --> 00:56:31.372
But you're not going to remember everything perfectly.

00:56:31.372 --> 00:56:35.592
You maybe forget their birthday, some people are really good at that, some people are really bad.

00:56:35.592 --> 00:56:38.532
You're going to remember some details, you're going to forget others.

00:56:38.532 --> 00:56:42.492
And some of that's compressing, and some is just, it's falling out of your context window.

00:56:42.952 --> 00:56:44.552
And that's how people work.

00:56:44.552 --> 00:56:48.552
It's how our minds work, it's not a defect, it's not, oh, you're stupid.

00:56:48.552 --> 00:56:49.992
You just don't remember everything.

00:56:49.992 --> 00:56:53.272
Why would you remember every single thing about some total stranger, even if you liked them?

00:56:53.272 --> 00:56:58.512
Like, it's, you have more important things to spend your limited faculties on.

00:56:58.512 --> 00:57:06.732
The reason that this is a problem for us as men living today is I framed the beginning of this discussion.

00:57:06.732 --> 00:57:19.152
Because participation itself has become the ultimate moral good, we no longer give any regard for how much context we have for any given situation before we weigh in.

00:57:19.152 --> 00:57:29.432
So, you might only have a few pieces of information, particularly when you see, say, some online fight, which Corey and I are involved in more than most people.

00:57:29.432 --> 00:57:35.632
And most people think that we must be really terrible jerks because these fights are always occurring.

00:57:35.632 --> 00:57:41.332
And by itself, that's not an unreasonable conclusion, but what is it missing?

00:57:41.332 --> 00:57:48.852
It's missing every bit of every conversation that we've ever had with these people with whom there's some sort of fight or disagreement.

00:57:48.852 --> 00:57:56.152
And as I've said before, I don't want anyone else to care about online drama or to feel bad for us because people say mean things.

00:57:56.152 --> 00:57:56.732
I don't care.

00:57:56.732 --> 00:57:57.992
I don't want you to care.

00:57:57.992 --> 00:58:02.872
But it is a specific example of someone getting some tiny piece of context.

00:58:02.872 --> 00:58:10.032
They see a screenshot of Corey said this and someone else said that, and then Corey responded with this.

00:58:10.032 --> 00:58:23.452
And you see that, and your context is limited to 50, 100 words, and you make a profound, exacting moral judgment on exactly what happened, and you're going to have a very strongly held opinion, maybe for the rest of your life.

00:58:23.452 --> 00:58:28.712
You're going to think Corey is a terrible guy, or he's a great guy or whatever, but you don't know what happened before.

00:58:28.712 --> 00:58:31.092
You don't know how the conversation started.

00:58:31.092 --> 00:58:33.592
You don't know if those guys ever talked before.

00:58:33.592 --> 00:58:47.652
You don't know how many times the specific subject that they were debating or discussing or arguing has come up in other contexts where other aspects of what Corey is saying, or I'm saying, it's not even about us.

00:58:47.652 --> 00:58:52.292
It's just when we're online, we see these things happening in their drive-bys.

00:58:52.292 --> 00:58:58.312
You just see something flip by for 30 seconds, you make a judgment, and sometimes you weigh in.

00:58:58.312 --> 00:59:13.452
And our admonition here for this is that when your context is so small that you really have no idea what's going on, if your highest moral good is participation, then yeah, with a clean conscience, you're going to weigh in and say, what a jerk, this guy's going to hell.

00:59:13.452 --> 00:59:14.932
Can you believe he said that?

00:59:14.932 --> 00:59:16.612
Which happens all the time.

00:59:16.612 --> 00:59:19.092
It is completely absurd and it's un-Christian.

00:59:19.092 --> 00:59:22.172
But I'm concerned as much about the absurdity as anything.

00:59:22.172 --> 00:59:30.612
Like the un-Christian part is dire, but the fact that absurdity is leading to un-Christian behavior goes to me what time it is.

00:59:31.352 --> 00:59:34.452
It's not that there's some dedication to evil by these people.

00:59:34.452 --> 00:59:35.912
It's just that they don't care.

00:59:35.912 --> 00:59:36.992
Why should they care?

00:59:36.992 --> 00:59:41.972
They did the right thing by making a comment, and therefore I voted my conscience is clean.

00:59:41.972 --> 00:59:43.172
It's silly.

00:59:43.172 --> 00:59:54.392
And so the purpose, the lesser purpose of this episode in highlighting context windows, is to get you to just think about the fact that you only know so much about any given situation.

00:59:54.392 --> 00:59:56.272
You know, the juror example is a prime one.

00:59:57.572 --> 01:00:07.552
Both sides, in a civil or a criminal trial, especially a criminal trial, and the judge, they're very strict rules governing what can be entered into evidence.

01:00:07.552 --> 01:00:12.132
They control the context window for the entire jury deliberation.

01:00:12.132 --> 01:00:24.412
And the rules that are set forth are that you were to have nothing inside your deliberation context beyond what is introduced as evidence in court, and you are not to forget anything.

01:00:24.692 --> 01:00:28.272
Everything that's there that was admissible, you should consider.

01:00:28.272 --> 01:00:30.972
And as a juror, consideration means weighing it.

01:00:30.972 --> 01:00:34.052
So you may consider evidence and say, I disregard that entirely.

01:00:34.052 --> 01:00:35.732
I think that person was a liar.

01:00:35.732 --> 01:00:37.732
I think that that testimony was false.

01:00:37.732 --> 01:00:39.212
I think it was shoddy.

01:00:39.212 --> 01:00:43.312
That in you as a trier of fact as a juror, that's your job.

01:00:43.312 --> 01:00:45.252
But you should at least consider all of it.

01:00:45.252 --> 01:00:49.072
You are not free to say, I didn't even listen what that guy said.

01:00:49.072 --> 01:00:51.092
That would be jury malfeasance.

01:00:51.092 --> 01:00:53.792
You can't just sleep while someone's testifying.

01:00:54.172 --> 01:01:00.512
If you don't find them interesting, you can consciously judge he's not interesting, but you can't just disregard it.

01:01:00.512 --> 01:01:08.172
You can't throw away that context because in the purpose of a trial, it's been determined by the system to be key.

01:01:08.172 --> 01:01:11.732
And so this notion of context windows pops up all the time.

01:01:11.732 --> 01:01:17.792
And in the case of a jury trial, there are rules and you're going to be professional about it.

01:01:17.792 --> 01:01:28.692
Hopefully, pretty much everyone listening to this would be, but you're not going to be as cavalier as you would be in other situations, like saying that someone's going to hell because you saw a screenshot on the internet.

01:01:28.692 --> 01:01:34.552
And I think that that's not the standard that Christians should be holding ourselves up to.

01:01:34.552 --> 01:01:39.032
If you don't know everything, you can find something questionable.

01:01:39.032 --> 01:01:40.012
That's fine.

01:01:40.012 --> 01:01:44.572
As Corey said, he posts things and I post things to get people to think.

01:01:44.572 --> 01:01:55.252
And getting people to think often involves raising questions in their minds, to challenge assumptions, to use a word in a way that they haven't considered before, and to make you think.

01:01:55.252 --> 01:01:57.992
It's fun for us to do that because it's valuable.

01:01:57.992 --> 01:02:00.812
And it's fun because it's beneficial.

01:02:00.812 --> 01:02:12.172
It helps people to be better citizens, better Christians, just better thinkers to actually spend a little bit of time with metacognition, thinking about thinking, and taking this stuff seriously.

01:02:12.172 --> 01:02:18.112
Not disregarding the fact that your context window is 30 seconds long for some given interaction.

01:02:18.672 --> 01:02:22.692
Take seriously the fact that you don't know squat, and you should keep your mouth shut.

01:02:22.692 --> 01:02:25.372
That's a perfectly fine conclusion to reach.

01:02:25.372 --> 01:02:27.212
And it should be everyone's default.

01:02:27.212 --> 01:02:31.692
I don't know enough to comment is a perfectly, it should be the default.

01:02:31.692 --> 01:02:36.692
Someone wants you to condemn someone, or to argue about something, or to, what do you think about this?

01:02:36.692 --> 01:02:38.312
If you don't know, say, I don't know.

01:02:38.312 --> 01:02:41.672
And if you don't think it's worth your time, say, I'm not going to let that into my context window.

01:02:41.672 --> 01:02:44.592
I mean, don't talk like that, but you know what I mean.

01:02:44.592 --> 01:02:50.952
If it's not worth your time to consider the evidence, okay, great, but you don't get to have an opinion.

01:02:50.952 --> 01:02:52.632
This is something I've said repeatedly.

01:02:52.632 --> 01:03:02.012
I don't expect anyone to agree with us or listen to us, but if you have no interest in our argument, you're not in a position to render judgment.

01:03:03.732 --> 01:03:15.272
Technically speaking, a context window applies only to an individual or to a machine to which a context window is relevant, which is to say an LLM or a so-called AI.

01:03:16.452 --> 01:03:25.612
However, there is a very similar thing that plays out with human organizations and even civilizations.

01:03:25.612 --> 01:03:38.552
There is a sort of context window for those as well, because in the case of an organization, you are going to have a certain history for that organization, assuming it's been around long enough to have such a thing.

01:03:38.552 --> 01:03:42.152
So think a very old corporation or law firm or even a country.

01:03:43.652 --> 01:03:50.372
Certain things that are past a certain age are going to simply be forgotten.

01:03:50.372 --> 01:03:53.612
They are going to fall out of the context window.

01:03:53.612 --> 01:04:03.792
But by and large, human organizations and civilizations tend to do what Woe described as dropping things out of the middle.

01:04:03.792 --> 01:04:14.372
Because by and large, we all know in the US context, the United States is founded upon the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

01:04:15.492 --> 01:04:23.212
If you start asking people specifics about the years between that and today, things start to get a little fuzzy.

01:04:23.212 --> 01:04:28.832
Because by and large, how we work in these contexts is we drop things out of the middle.

01:04:28.832 --> 01:04:31.372
We don't remember those specifics.

01:04:32.412 --> 01:04:41.472
Because obviously, the beginning is one of the most important parts of an organization, or a country, or a civilization, whatever it happens to be.

01:04:41.472 --> 01:04:48.152
And what is happening presently is important, because that dictates what will or will not happen in the future.

01:04:48.152 --> 01:04:53.232
But some of the things in the middle are perhaps not as important, or at least not considered as important.

01:04:53.232 --> 01:04:55.832
They tend to start falling out of memory.

01:04:57.052 --> 01:04:59.132
Key points will be retained.

01:04:59.132 --> 01:05:01.252
Certain particular important events.

01:05:01.252 --> 01:05:04.012
Most people know that we had a civil war.

01:05:04.012 --> 01:05:06.112
Things like that tend to be remembered.

01:05:06.932 --> 01:05:14.592
Now, if you ask people about the war we had with Mexico, they're probably going to know less about that than the civil war.

01:05:14.592 --> 01:05:30.072
And so there's the same sort of concept with regard to creations of human beings, whether a corporation or a country or a civilization, something similar to a context window.

01:05:30.072 --> 01:05:44.872
And when we talk about the Septuagint, as we will be doing in the upcoming series, we are dealing in a civilizational context window, and also in an organizational context window, because we're dealing with the Church.

01:05:44.872 --> 01:06:01.352
And we do mean uppercase C Church in this case, because we are going to be dealing with the ancient Church, we're going to be dealing with Rome, we're going to be dealing with the Reformation, we're going to be dealing with certain organizations after the Reformation, and also some tangentially related bodies.

01:06:03.312 --> 01:06:18.632
This civilizational context window is vitally important, because in order to draw the right conclusions, you really need to have the entirety of this particular timeline in mind.

01:06:18.632 --> 01:06:30.952
It's one of the reasons that Woe said to write things down with your objections, your questions, your considerations, and then put them aside, because you need to try to retain the timeline in your mind.

01:06:31.712 --> 01:06:33.392
Now, you may not be able to do that.

01:06:33.392 --> 01:06:40.692
Most men will not be able to do that, because again, we're talking about quite a lot of years here, and there's a lot of information.

01:06:41.952 --> 01:06:52.432
But you will be able to retain enough to make an assessment, and I will summarize it at the end of the episodes, as I usually do, to help you along with drawing those conclusions.

01:06:54.132 --> 01:07:02.672
The reason that it is important to have the entirety of this context window is related to what Wo said about social media.

01:07:02.672 --> 01:07:06.712
This comes up with certain posts all the time.

01:07:06.712 --> 01:07:10.472
You could pick any of a handful of dozens of posts from either of us.

01:07:10.472 --> 01:07:16.452
If you don't understand the context, you may very well draw wrong conclusions.

01:07:16.452 --> 01:07:22.492
Now, often the post stands alone, but the context adds something to it.

01:07:22.492 --> 01:07:30.212
When it comes to the issue of the Septuagint, we are going to lay out the case that you need to know this historical context.

01:07:30.212 --> 01:07:42.112
You need to know the fullness of this timeline, why things happened, when they happened, who caused them to happen, the consequences of those things happening, etc., etc.

01:07:42.112 --> 01:07:50.612
All of these things matter because they lead up to where we are today and what we should do with that information.

01:07:50.612 --> 01:08:19.672
Now, if you only have the context of today, and maybe a couple of decades or even a century, maybe you have a context window that goes back into the middle of the 1900s, maybe two centuries back into the 1800s, say, that is going to be insufficient to draw accurate conclusions because you are going to be missing things that happened thousands of years ago that are relevant to us today.

01:08:19.672 --> 01:08:24.712
And now there are those who will think, oh, it happened two thousand years ago, how relevant could it be?

01:08:24.712 --> 01:08:29.332
I would encourage you to think about that statement for a moment before advancing it.

01:08:30.532 --> 01:08:38.652
Because as Christians, something that happened two thousand years ago is fairly relevant to our interest today.

01:08:38.652 --> 01:08:44.612
In fact, happened fairly close to exactly two thousand years as we sit here now in 2025.

01:08:48.152 --> 01:08:58.572
It is not to say that you need to know everything that happened in history to have a true and living faith in Christ, a salvific faith.

01:08:58.572 --> 01:09:00.432
We are not advancing that.

01:09:00.432 --> 01:09:09.792
We are never going to advance that in the entirety of the Septuagint series, because that is not the point, it is not even among the points that we will be making.

01:09:12.072 --> 01:09:27.012
The points we will be making are related to what we should be doing as Christians, where things have gone astray in the past, how we can address them today, and why those things happened, and why we should do certain things in response.

01:09:28.052 --> 01:09:35.152
You can use an existing translation of scripture and come to a saving faith in Christ.

01:09:35.152 --> 01:09:42.792
Again, I highly recommend, as should any Christian, the guardrails that are the creeds that are the confessions.

01:09:42.792 --> 01:09:51.912
Our faithful ancestors have drawn those up, and used them and passed them down to us to protect us from certain issues that arose in the Church.

01:09:53.372 --> 01:10:00.492
We are going to point out another issue that arose in the Church, and should have been addressed in centuries past but was not.

01:10:01.932 --> 01:10:08.692
It matters that you understand that context window of thousands of years.

01:10:09.752 --> 01:10:13.392
That is again why Woe said to write things down.

01:10:13.392 --> 01:10:14.692
That is a long time.

01:10:14.692 --> 01:10:18.632
That is a lot of information that we will be presenting.

01:10:18.632 --> 01:10:21.212
You do not have to hold all of it in your mind.

01:10:21.212 --> 01:10:25.192
Thankfully, God has given us the ability to write things down.

01:10:25.192 --> 01:10:27.812
At least now we have universal literacy.

01:10:27.812 --> 01:10:32.192
Say what you will about it, whether it has been on balance, good or bad.

01:10:32.192 --> 01:10:34.232
Most of us know how to read and write.

01:10:34.232 --> 01:10:35.572
So you can take notes.

01:10:35.572 --> 01:10:43.932
You don't have to hold the entirety of it in your mind because you can look back at your notes and make that assessment deliberately.

01:10:43.932 --> 01:10:50.672
You can deliberate on what we have presented and what conclusions you should draw from it.

01:10:52.052 --> 01:11:05.012
That is why context window matters, because if you do not have a sufficient context window, you will draw inaccurate conclusions because you are doing it based on insufficient information.

01:11:06.232 --> 01:11:16.192
For instance, I can give a simple, perhaps one could say extreme example, but a very simple example to draw this out.

01:11:16.192 --> 01:11:24.012
If introduced into evidence in a criminal case for assault, battery, whatever it happens to be, it's probably assault given most jurisdictions.

01:11:24.092 --> 01:11:38.072
But a criminal case for criminal assault, and you have a video that starts in the middle of a fight, and all you see is man B punch man A and knock him unconscious.

01:11:40.012 --> 01:11:42.732
You should probably have some questions.

01:11:43.892 --> 01:11:47.032
Why do I not have the rest of the video?

01:11:47.032 --> 01:11:54.112
Why do I not know what happened before this particular incident, before this punch?

01:11:54.112 --> 01:11:57.532
Why do I not know what led up to this moment?

01:11:58.632 --> 01:12:04.912
Why have I not been given sufficient context to make an informed decision?

01:12:04.912 --> 01:12:13.172
Because if all you saw was one man punch another, well, that's wrongful, because you aren't supposed to assault other people.

01:12:13.172 --> 01:12:29.112
However, if in the previous 30 seconds of the video, not introduced into evidence, this is a bad judge in the hypothetical, but in the previous 30 seconds, as it turns out, it wasn't man B starting the fight with man A.

01:12:29.112 --> 01:12:32.652
It was man A running up and punching man B.

01:12:32.652 --> 01:12:35.672
And so man B was in fact defending himself against man A.

01:12:35.672 --> 01:12:44.372
Well, that change matters, because now you have the full context window, and now you can draw an accurate conclusion, whereas you could not do that before.

01:12:45.832 --> 01:12:51.992
You need to have an adequate context in order to draw accurate conclusions.

01:12:51.992 --> 01:13:00.872
It is not necessarily a complete context, because a complete context would be a perfect history of the world all the way back to creation.

01:13:00.872 --> 01:13:02.152
No man has that.

01:13:02.152 --> 01:13:04.472
No man could hold that in his head.

01:13:04.472 --> 01:13:18.972
What you need to know are the facts that are salient to the issue, the things that are necessary to know to draw accurate conclusions, given the context.

01:13:18.972 --> 01:13:35.452
That is what we are going to endeavor to present in the Septuagint series, the necessary context to draw accurate conclusions about the Septuagint, about the Masoretic text, and about this particular part of Church history.

01:13:35.452 --> 01:13:37.712
And it's only this particular part of Church history.

01:13:38.452 --> 01:13:45.652
We are not arguing over the problems between Rome and the Protestants.

01:13:45.652 --> 01:13:48.612
We are not arguing about the problems between Rome and the East.

01:13:48.612 --> 01:13:55.872
Some of these things will come up tangentially, but we are not addressing them as the problems themselves.

01:13:55.872 --> 01:14:00.672
It is again the context that matters and the salient facts.

01:14:00.672 --> 01:14:21.592
So for instance, in the hypothetical that I gave you about a man who is actually defending himself, not assaulting the other man, assaulting him, but justified because it's self-defense, it would not be relevant necessarily that the two men are married, not to each other, but to other women, or unmarried.

01:14:21.592 --> 01:14:23.692
That's not necessarily relevant.

01:14:23.692 --> 01:14:32.392
And so when you're talking about a particular issue, it is the salient facts, the facts that are relevant to the issue at hand that matter.

01:14:32.392 --> 01:14:37.272
That is what we will be addressing in the timeline and in the Septuagint series.

01:14:37.272 --> 01:14:47.752
Because the question, essentially, is what is the Masoretic text, and what is the Septuagint, what is the Greek text?

01:14:47.752 --> 01:14:50.112
Which one is scripture?

01:14:51.652 --> 01:15:05.032
The information that you need to answer that are the relevant facts about that question and the relevant parts of church history, and in fact world history, that lead up to that, that contribute to it.

01:15:05.032 --> 01:15:08.732
It's not all of the other fights that have happened in the history of the church.

01:15:08.732 --> 01:15:15.692
It's not all of the differences politically between Rome and the Protestants, or even theologically between them.

01:15:15.692 --> 01:15:23.132
It is only those things that are relevant to this specific question, which is to say, don't get lost in the weeds.

01:15:23.132 --> 01:15:26.552
Focus on the core issue, which we will focus on the core issue as well.

01:15:27.692 --> 01:15:31.712
Take notes, recognize that, yes, you may have questions.

01:15:31.712 --> 01:15:34.932
We will probably address them as the series progresses.

01:15:34.932 --> 01:15:39.352
If we do not, by all means, please feel free to ask them.

01:15:39.352 --> 01:15:49.192
These are important issues that we are going to be addressing, and you need to have an adequate context window in order to draw those sound conclusions.

01:15:49.192 --> 01:15:58.152
But in order to acquire that context window, you need to set aside those objections and listen to the fullness of the case that we will be presenting.

01:15:58.152 --> 01:16:11.652
It is the same thing that you do as a juror, because you listen to one side present his full case, you listen to the other side present his full case, and then you render a decision based on the evidence presented.

01:16:11.652 --> 01:16:15.832
That is what we're asking you to do, because that is your Christian duty as a man.

01:16:16.912 --> 01:16:29.552
This is not necessarily something that is going to be a salvation issue, which is something we have to address ad nauseam, because it comes up so much, particularly from the adversaries and the enemies.

01:16:30.572 --> 01:16:33.832
But not everything in life is a salvation issue.

01:16:33.832 --> 01:16:41.512
Some things matter because they are matters of the truth, and the truth does matter, because the truth flows from God.

01:16:41.512 --> 01:16:43.292
Again, it is one of the transcendentals.

01:16:44.432 --> 01:16:51.672
That is why the issue of the Masoretic text versus the Septuagint matters so much, because it is a matter of truth.

01:16:52.412 --> 01:16:56.552
You can read the Masoretic text and come to a saving faith in Christ.

01:16:56.552 --> 01:17:03.812
You can be a Christian and have only the ESV or the KJV or the NASB at your disposal.

01:17:03.812 --> 01:17:08.472
You can be a Christian without ever knowing the Septuagint exists.

01:17:08.472 --> 01:17:14.672
But that isn't the question we're asking, and it isn't the question we will be answering.

01:17:14.672 --> 01:17:18.072
Because the question is, what is the truth?

01:17:18.072 --> 01:17:19.952
How has God preserved his word?

01:17:20.652 --> 01:17:22.832
What should we do as Christians?

01:17:24.692 --> 01:17:26.992
Don't get off into the weeds.

01:17:26.992 --> 01:17:35.072
Don't let people confuse you and befuddle you with questions that are ancillary at best, or tangential, or even irrelevant.

01:17:36.152 --> 01:17:38.492
Focus on the core issue.

01:17:38.492 --> 01:17:45.072
This is going to be probably the most controversial series that we will ever do on this podcast.

01:17:45.072 --> 01:17:47.852
And also, as Wo said, the most important one.

01:17:48.952 --> 01:17:52.632
Because it is an issue that strikes at the heart of church history.

01:17:52.632 --> 01:17:59.092
Again, it is not an issue of salvation, but it is an issue of the utmost importance to Christians.

01:17:59.092 --> 01:18:03.812
Because it is a matter of God's truth, it is a matter of God's word.

01:18:03.812 --> 01:18:08.572
And we should be absolutely uncompromising when it comes to the things of God.

01:18:10.332 --> 01:18:12.772
I want to reiterate just one additional point.

01:18:14.172 --> 01:18:30.312
When we go through the matters of the Septuagint, when we go through this history, as we go along, as like the reason for iterating through these historical events, is that we're going to be pointing out all the things that everyone got wrong.

01:18:30.312 --> 01:18:34.992
And the conclusion is that everyone got this question wrong.

01:18:34.992 --> 01:18:40.552
That sounds like a scandalous, incredibly egotistical thing to say, so I'm just going to say it straight up.

01:18:41.252 --> 01:18:51.392
But in the context of this discussion of the context window, when we point to their errors, we're going to be pointing out that they were very minor errors in most cases.

01:18:51.392 --> 01:18:54.352
They made the most intelligent errors possible.

01:18:54.352 --> 01:19:02.932
They made the reasonable errors in their moment, because their context window was not as large as it should have been to reach the right conclusions.

01:19:02.932 --> 01:19:25.272
And that's part of the reason for introducing the concept here as a separate episode, because while this is the prequel to the Septuagint episode, and this applies all the time, but in the specific case of the timeline narrative of the Septuagint from 2500 years ago until today, the mistakes were small, they seemed entirely innocent, they seemed entirely reasonable.

01:19:25.272 --> 01:19:39.872
Given the knowledge that they have and the situations that they were in, in the previous judgments of their fathers in the faith, they were reasonable decisions, but they were not reasonable in the full context of the question.

01:19:39.872 --> 01:19:41.552
And that's why we're saying that they made mistakes.

01:19:41.552 --> 01:19:44.912
So we're going to go through and we're going to demonstrate that case by case.

01:19:44.912 --> 01:19:57.272
But the other reason for specifically highlighting the notion of context window, and I'm giving you the explicit directive to write down all of your objections and then set them aside, is that we're going to make you angry.

01:19:57.272 --> 01:20:10.372
If you know anything about this, you're going to get frustrated, you're going to be offended, you're going to think we're saying one thing when we're saying another, because you're going to think that as we're going along, at each step, they were picking some side.

01:20:10.372 --> 01:20:27.412
One of the obvious examples, during the Reformation itself, one of the reasons that the reformers went against the Septuagint was they wanted to get rid of the Apocrypha, and it was something the Roman Church was using against them.

01:20:27.412 --> 01:20:36.612
And so rather than debating on the merits, they chose instead to do what they believed was a reasonable thing and just go back to the Hebrew, because they thought it was older.

01:20:36.612 --> 01:20:39.612
It wasn't older, but they didn't know that at the time.

01:20:39.612 --> 01:20:50.932
They had fallen into a trap that had been laid for them a thousand years prior, and they weren't questioning those givens as they were dealing in the moment of Luther and the others versus Rome.

01:20:50.932 --> 01:20:55.112
They were having a fight, and it was a real fight where lives were on the line.

01:20:55.112 --> 01:20:56.512
They were under stress.

01:20:56.512 --> 01:20:58.372
It wasn't a stupid decision.

01:20:58.372 --> 01:21:03.372
So when we say that they were wrong, we're not saying that we're smarter or better than them.

01:21:03.372 --> 01:21:05.832
We're not saying that they were dumb or faithless.

01:21:05.832 --> 01:21:10.892
We're saying they made a small error in the moment, and it had long-term consequences.

01:21:10.892 --> 01:21:17.672
As so many errors in our lives do, you make some dumb mistake ten years ago, and it comes back to haunt you for some reason.

01:21:17.672 --> 01:21:19.732
We understand that this happens.

01:21:19.732 --> 01:21:27.252
And when you're a parent raising a child, you try to impress upon them, look, don't sweat the small stuff because you think you're making some small mistake now.

01:21:27.252 --> 01:21:29.032
It could derail things later on.

01:21:29.752 --> 01:21:32.632
This is not alien to any of us.

01:21:32.632 --> 01:21:42.512
So our claim that these men made mistakes as they went along, although it's going to be offensive and it's going to be scandalous, it's entirely reasonable.

01:21:42.512 --> 01:21:46.332
Doesn't mean we're right, but it's not an unreasonable thing to claim.

01:21:46.332 --> 01:21:51.012
And so as we make the case, again, it's going to take the entire case.

01:21:51.012 --> 01:22:09.972
When we look at the moment of Luther choosing to translate from the Hebrew rather than the Septuagint, if you hear us saying just in that one tiny vignette, forget the entire context window and just collapse that context window down to the three months that he was doing that, however long it was.

01:22:09.972 --> 01:22:25.692
If we are sitting here today and saying Luther was wrong for using the Hebrew instead of the Septuagint, the knee-jerk small context window response from the listener is going to be, well, you're siding with Rome and you're choosing the Apocrypha.

01:22:25.692 --> 01:22:26.612
None of that's the case.

01:22:27.472 --> 01:22:34.432
One of the other salient aspects of this conversation is that the canon is separate from the textual source.

01:22:34.432 --> 01:22:54.192
It's entirely possible to say that the textual source of the Septuagint is inspired by God, and also separately to say, separate but related, that the canon of Scripture that is breathed out by God includes certain books and excludes other books.

01:22:54.192 --> 01:22:55.652
That's a separate conversation.

01:22:55.652 --> 01:23:01.132
It's related, but we're not choosing sides with regard to the canon.

01:23:01.132 --> 01:23:03.532
That's not a thing I'll say here, and we'll say it again later.

01:23:03.532 --> 01:23:04.852
This isn't about the canon.

01:23:04.852 --> 01:23:07.532
This is not about which books are inspired.

01:23:07.532 --> 01:23:11.412
This is about the textual source that's used for Scripture itself.

01:23:11.412 --> 01:23:22.592
Having reduced the sources that are acceptable for Christians to the Greek corpus, then you have the discussion that went on for 1,500 years up to Luther's day, which books are canon.

01:23:22.592 --> 01:23:30.772
It wasn't until the Council of Trent that the West officially made the books, I think 73 books that the Romanists have, as their canon.

01:23:30.772 --> 01:23:37.732
There was no official canon, so when Luther was having that debate at the time, it was just a continuation of a long-standing one.

01:23:37.732 --> 01:23:41.332
And that debate was not based upon the textual source.

01:23:41.332 --> 01:23:43.512
It was a separate conversation.

01:23:43.512 --> 01:23:49.832
So the reason I'm highlighting this now is that this is a sort of fight that when you're listening in the coming weeks, you're going to want to pick the fight.

01:23:49.832 --> 01:23:52.172
Oh, he said Luther is wrong about the Septuagint.

01:23:52.172 --> 01:23:53.812
He must like the Apocrypha.

01:23:53.812 --> 01:23:55.132
We didn't say that.

01:23:55.132 --> 01:23:56.632
That's what the context window is.

01:23:56.632 --> 01:24:03.872
When you hallucinate something that we didn't say and then make a judgment based on it, you're doing what an LLM does.

01:24:03.872 --> 01:24:06.352
You're doing what one of these stupid robots does.

01:24:06.352 --> 01:24:08.652
And they're better at it than people are at this point.

01:24:08.652 --> 01:24:12.692
I've taken to having people make stupid comments on X.

01:24:12.692 --> 01:24:16.872
I feed them to an LLM and then just spit out the screenshot without explaining what they got wrong.

01:24:16.872 --> 01:24:29.212
Because a pure reason engine that actually understands English better understands the situation than someone who claims to be a Christian while he's spitting venom as someone who should be a Christian brother.

01:24:29.212 --> 01:24:36.552
This stuff is a problem in general, which is why the context window stands alone as this episode by itself apart from the Septuagint.

01:24:36.552 --> 01:24:38.072
This happens all the time.

01:24:38.072 --> 01:24:43.172
But as I said at the beginning, this would have been a much too lengthy preamble, even in the very shortened version.

01:24:43.712 --> 01:24:49.352
It would have derailed the content of the first historical Septuagint episode.

01:24:49.352 --> 01:24:57.092
If you believe us, if you trust us not to be complete liars and demoniacs, then you can take your notes of your objections.

01:24:57.092 --> 01:24:58.672
You can refer to them later.

01:24:58.672 --> 01:25:05.032
If we didn't address your objections, or if you find your objections are still relevant in your mind, we're happy to hear.

01:25:05.032 --> 01:25:08.432
We're not going to go back and edit the episode, but we'll listen.

01:25:08.432 --> 01:25:11.272
Maybe it's something we addressed down the road.

01:25:11.272 --> 01:25:24.252
The other thing I'll say again, when the book comes out that has the history of this stuff, and it's not the exact same history that we're using, we're using a more extensive set of facts, but they're not in contradiction.

01:25:24.252 --> 01:25:29.092
It's the same details that I originally got from this book that will be available soon for sale.

01:25:29.092 --> 01:25:37.952
When that's for sale, we're going to edit the audio of the next episode to specifically say, hey, now it's for sale, because when the episode is released, it won't be.

01:25:37.952 --> 01:25:42.932
I want as many of you as possible to buy this book, so you're not just taking our word for the history.

01:25:42.932 --> 01:25:49.532
As I said, the book itself is going to lay out a very mature, very modest case.

01:25:49.532 --> 01:25:50.812
This is the history of the Church.

01:25:50.812 --> 01:25:53.632
It's not controversial to say the Septuagint is important.

01:25:53.632 --> 01:25:55.872
We're going much further than his conclusions.

01:25:55.872 --> 01:25:57.672
So it's the same data.

01:25:57.672 --> 01:25:58.832
We have a bit more data.

01:25:58.832 --> 01:26:01.532
We have different conclusions, but they're not at odds.

01:26:01.532 --> 01:26:04.872
So I will encourage everyone to buy a copy of that book.

01:26:04.872 --> 01:26:09.632
The reason we held off is we were hoping we could sell a bunch of copies, but we just couldn't wait anymore.

01:26:10.692 --> 01:26:14.312
The 100th episode is going to begin the story of the Septuagint.

01:26:14.312 --> 01:26:15.672
We will update the show notes.

01:26:15.672 --> 01:26:18.132
We'll update the audio as soon as that's available.

01:26:18.132 --> 01:26:31.112
And that should be an important part of it, because we know that those episodes, and hopefully this episode as well, because of this context that we're including in the context of the Septuagint discussion, will be necessary to properly understand it.

01:26:31.112 --> 01:26:37.152
We know that these episodes are going to get passed around far beyond where most listenership is.

01:26:37.152 --> 01:26:39.092
I hope that the book will go much further than even that.

01:26:39.472 --> 01:26:45.012
There are going to be a lot of people, maybe you would never refer Stone Choir to someone who would be interested in this.

01:26:45.012 --> 01:26:46.732
You can hand them a copy of the book.

01:26:46.732 --> 01:26:47.612
It's less scandalous.

01:26:47.612 --> 01:26:52.472
They're not going to get into any weird internet fights over whose reputations or what.

01:26:52.472 --> 01:26:54.852
You can just give them a book that has the basics.

01:26:54.852 --> 01:26:57.232
That by itself is what woke me up.

01:26:57.232 --> 01:26:58.132
I didn't know this stuff.

01:26:58.132 --> 01:27:02.412
I believed what I'd heard before, just as in so many other cases.

01:27:02.412 --> 01:27:08.892
As soon as I looked at the basic facts of the timeline, like we have a problem, the church has a problem.

01:27:08.892 --> 01:27:22.312
And then when Corey and I have been researching it for the past 16 months with that book and then far beyond it, looking for our own selves, we found that it's one of the most important things that's ever happened to the church.

01:27:22.312 --> 01:27:23.832
It's a grandiose claim.

01:27:23.832 --> 01:27:27.172
Feel free to laugh or scoff or get mad at us.

01:27:27.172 --> 01:27:34.732
When we make the case, then you're really going to get mad because you're going to hear us saying things that are going to criticize your very favorite theologian.

01:27:35.212 --> 01:27:39.132
Whoever he is, he was wrong about this by some degree.

01:27:39.132 --> 01:27:40.792
We're not saying he's stupid.

01:27:40.792 --> 01:27:42.312
We're not saying he's faithless.

01:27:42.372 --> 01:27:44.112
We're not saying he's in hell.

01:27:44.112 --> 01:27:46.212
We're saying he got a detail wrong.

01:27:46.212 --> 01:27:50.372
And in some cases, we'll be able to explain exactly why he got it wrong.

01:27:50.372 --> 01:27:58.192
Because his context window was collapsed to 500 years instead of 2,000 years as it should have been 500 years ago.

01:27:58.192 --> 01:27:59.672
That's how these things work.

01:27:59.672 --> 01:28:08.472
If you don't examine your priors, if you're just marching merrily along, trusting the judgment of past generations, if they're right, you're in great shape.

01:28:08.472 --> 01:28:13.252
If they made a mistake, you're going to inherit that mistake and be stuck with the consequences.

01:28:13.252 --> 01:28:27.132
The story of the Septuagint is a story of men making mistakes piece by piece, small course deviations, culminating in the Western Church abandoning the source of scripture that God gave us.

01:28:27.132 --> 01:28:38.952
The Bible of Jesus, the Bible of the apostles, the Bible of the Council of Nicaea, the Bible of the first 400 years of the Christian Church was entirely Greek.

01:28:38.952 --> 01:28:44.512
That is the case that we're going to be making, and that has profound implications for the future of the Church.