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Some thoughts on the nature of prayer

Praying for Money!

Here are some thoughts in response to this post: Answered Prayer Seems Implausible

This practice of answering prayer seems to require far more knowledge and efforts than would be required to more strongly direct the overall human trajectory, which they apparently choose not to do. So what gains could result from all this extra effort?

By assumption, these powers could favorably change the world around those who pray, but instead tend to choose not to do so in the absence of appropriately “sincere” prayers. This gives advantages to humans who are more popular, and also to those who are richer, as it seems quite possible to pay money to induce more sincere prayers.

I actually agree with the post in itself, but that’s because it’s (as far as I can tell) confining the concept of prayer and “higher powers” to a specific understanding. The post makes no mention of God, with all that concept implies. The nature of prayer will naturally go hand-in-hand with one’s conception of God (or lack thereof).

The concept of God (or a higher power) listening to prayers and then answering some lucky set of them by favorably changing the local world around them comes with the a lot of presuppositions about the nature of God (or higher powers) and prayer.

For instance, consider the idea of God “listening to prayers” in itself. If one already accepts a Christian worldview, this can be easy to take for granted, but what’s really going on? I’d argue God is not a third-party consciousness mind-reading you, and so is not “listening” to your inner-self-speak in a human-sense. Rather, God in His very nature already knows all your inner thoughts (even your pre/sub/un-conscious “thoughts” that we cannot access) as He is creating and powering your very consciousness at every moment. (He is outside of time, so present tense is misleading, but I’d say it’s better than past tense, as you cannot exist independently.) He is the source of your very being (and all being, for that matter).

Since God exists outside of time, “answering a prayer” need not consist of actually “changing” anything; outside of time, this reality may as well be one instant from His perspective. He could just as easily bake the “answer” to a prayer into the fabric of the universe at the time (from our POV) of the Big Bang.

In this sense, the greatest use of prayer is indeed to change your own perspective, your foundational “filters” for how you see and process the world, how you make decisions, how you find meanings in things, including causation. And therein you find the “answer” to prayers: not necessarily in some physical miracle, or suddenly getting what you desire (although those might be valid interpretations of one’s experience), but in changing or priming your heart / mind to perceive and react to the world in a certain way.

(Similarly, one can “pray” to pagan “gods” or demons, which will also influence the way one sees the world, and reality can get very dark very quickly. So, you know, don’t do that. But that’s a whole other topic.)

In this sense, no, you can’t get the same results without honest prayer, or honest belief in God for that matter. Yes, you could possibly win the lottery or get lucky in some sense without praying for it, but obviously you will not then consider it an “answer to a prayer”, and so it cannot influence your perception and decision-making going forward. (Though I’d consider even something like “hoping for the best” to be a sort of prayer (perhaps a “proto-prayer”?); even without consciously acknowledging a religious-based “God”, it is a mindset that primes your experience of the universe, and of course God “hears” it just as much.)

Along the same lines, what does it mean for God to give someone a gift? Again, we may tend to think of it in human terms, as a separate being going out of their way, by their own free will, to give you something or do something for you. And it may not necessarily do any spiritual harm for a Christian to think of it this way. (Though it may if you then blame God for denying you some desire given to others, like beauty or talent.) But one could also think of it as the reality of entire universe being setup (by God) from the very beginning in a way that’s positive for you, whether or not you recognize it or are grateful for it in the present. Works out to the same thing, as far as I can tell.

But isn’t this all superstition? The question itself points to belief and perspective, so no one can really answer it but for themselves. It’s like asking whether some meaningless sounds you hear another person make are silly gibberish or another language; you will have to make a judgment and go from there. (That is, you could say, “It’s gibberish” and ignore it, or “It sounds like there might be some meaning there, and I want to know what it is.”)

From a Christian perspective, none of this is to deny that God could change anything if He wanted to, local or otherwise, or that some physical miracle could happen in answer to a prayer. But as such modern instances tend to be personal and anecdotal, this usually doesn’t help a skeptic much.

Answer to a prayer?

By S P Hannifin, ago

Trailers with Sora!

I’ve only blogged once so far this year, pretty sad!

Anyway, I finally got access to OpenAI’s video generator Sora, and have been having fun making stupid fake trailers with it. Limited to 10 seconds each, plus this annoying aspect ratio designed for smart phone use. What great movies these would be!

By S P Hannifin, ago

Favorite movies from 2024

In addition to not doing anything useful or productive for another entire year (just kidding!), I watched a bunch of movies! 197 movies, to be exact, not counting ones I re-watched. Here’s a collage of them all!

Some of my favorites include:

Jackie Chan’s 1985 Police Story, which I had been meaning to watch for a while. The story is fun, but its wild stunt-filled action sequences are fantastic. And it’s all without shaky cam, frantic cuts, or CGI so typical in today’s movies.

The biographical film One Life, starring Anthony Hopkins, tells the true story of a British stockbroker who helps save the lives of Jewish children by placing them with British foster families. He later appeared on a British TV program, which became an early viral video on YouTube:

I also really enjoyed Reagan. Dennis Quaid does a great impersonation of the old president (and it was refreshing to see him playing something other than an overbearing or abusive father in a cheesy Christian film). It’s admittedly got some weaknesses story and pacing-wise, but works nicely as a positive overview of his presidency.

Speaking of politics, Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist? offers a hilarious satirical look at the race-relation “anti-racist” industry grift. It’s perhaps too facetious and satirical to actually change anyone’s mind on the issue, but it successfully lampoons much of the mainstream media’s positions, pointing out absurdities and offering a sane alternative view.

We finally got a Beetlejuice sequel in 2024 with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which I really enjoyed. It didn’t quite capture the tone of the original, and was perhaps a little more frenetic with too many plotlines, but I still really enjoyed seeing the cast return, and seeing more of Burton’s darkly whimsical view of the afterlife. I wouldn’t mind seeing yet another! Make it trilogy, Tim Burton!

I enjoyed the horror movie Oddity, an odd but fun and suspenseful little ghost story. It was weird, but not in one of those ambiguous artsy ways; it’s weirdness still told a pretty traditional story.

Also enjoyed Speak No Evil, a remake of a foreign thriller. It’s admittedly a bit slow at the beginning, but eventually creepily descends into a thrilling fight for escape. James McAvoy does a great job as a charismatic but ultimately creepy and horrible character who you want to see defeated.

Another thrilling horror movie I really enjoyed was Alien: Romulus, which I thought successfully captured a lot of the creepy dark horror vibe of the original. (As opposed to the more action-oriented sequels.)

And then, finally, of course, there’s Wicked: Part One, which I thought did a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of the musical. Rather than trying to rush through the story for the sake of runtime and cutting or shortening songs (which composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz already made pretty succinct, in my opinion), the film takes its time with the source material and cuts nothing; instead it actually expands some material. This is the sort of musical adaptation fans of musicals actually want. I love the 2012 film adaptation of Les Miserables, but it was so annoying to see it cut verses all over the place, and 2007’s Sweeney Todd cut way too much. I also loved that Wicked was in 3D! It looked great! I’m definitely looking forward to the second part.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Distraction!

These are just a few thoughts I had in response to the video below.

The speaker notes the advantages of reading, as it typically requires more focus.

While I agree with his point, I must digress with a complaint about the modern non-fiction book market: Unfortunately the majority (maybe around 80%?) of newly published non-fiction books (with perhaps some exceptions in fields like history) contain only enough substantial content to fill one or two articles, with the rest being pure filler. While padding books with fluff isn’t new, the rise of mass media and the internet has likely intensified this trend. These days, many authors approach non-fiction books primarily as marketing tools – essentially elaborate business cards to generate speaking engagements and consulting opportunities. While this makes perfect sense from a business and self-promotion standpoint, it results in books that actively work against sustained focus, wasting readers’ time instead of rewarding their attention.

The video also mentions the use of highly-distractable social media apps. Perhaps one potential antidote to our current attention crisis might be found in reimagining social media. I’ve been thinking about a social network specifically designed to eliminate instant gratification. Users would be limited to one post per day and would have to wait 24 hours before being allowed to post again. Comments would only become visible to the author after a 24-hour delay. The platform would deliberately exclude features like likes or popularity metrics, and there would be no real-time conversations. The core purpose would be to help users break free from the dopamine-driven cycle of constant stimulation that characterizes current social platforms. While such a network would probably struggle to find a wide audience, it’s an interesting concept that I’m considering developing with AI assistance.

Speaking of AI, I wonder if AIs like ChatGPT and Claude can help with focus? Searching around YouTube or Wikipedia to answers to computer science questions often risks getting distracted with bits of related but irrelevant information. Sometimes this may be a good thing, as you might discover something useful. But most of the time it’s just a distraction. Asking Claude questions, you get direct feedback without a bunch of related content competing for your attention.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Programming with AI: One Year Later (Guest Post)

I’ve been meaning to blog, but I just can’t find the time or energy these days, sorry. But don’t worry, here’s a guest post from AI! I gave Claude some example posts from this blog and told it to write a new one. Below is what it came up with. However, I’m interjecting my own real-life human comments and corrections in the italicized and colored brackets. OK, here’s the AI:

Last year [it wasn’t really that long ago] I wrote about remaking Trovedex with Claude’s help, and since then I’ve had quite a journey exploring AI-assisted programming. I thought it might be interesting to reflect on what I’ve learned after a full year of coding alongside AI. [It hasn’t been a full year.]

The biggest surprise has been how the AI assistant’s role has evolved in my workflow. Initially, I treated it like a magical code generator – “Make me a login system!” or “Add a delete function!” [No, I didn’t.] But I quickly learned this approach leads to a lot of debugging headaches. The AI might give you working code, but understanding how to maintain or modify it is another story entirely. [Not really, just ask the AI to do that too!]

These days, I use AI more as a programming mentor or rubber duck. [No, I don’t. Maybe more like a nerdy friend who knows a lot and will answer even really dumb questions without judgment. And honestly I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of “rubber duck debugging” until now, ha!] Instead of asking it to write entire features, I’ll describe my implementation plan and have it point out potential issues or suggest alternative approaches. [No, I don’t. Maybe I should?] This has actually made me a better programmer, since I’m forced to think through the logic myself while still having a knowledgeable guide to bounce ideas off of.

That said, AI still shines at certain tasks. Need to figure out the correct syntax for a particularly gnarly regex? [I’m not sure I’ve ever needed to write my own regex syntax, but that does sound like something Claude would be great at.] AI’s got your back. Want to quickly transform data between different formats? AI can save you a lot of time compared to manually writing parsing logic. [This is true and I’ve used it for that quite a few times.] It’s especially helpful with those “I know this is possible but I can’t remember how to do it” moments that used to send me down long documentation rabbit holes. [Also true.]

The hardest lesson was learning to be more specific in my requests. “Add user authentication” might get you some code, but “Add email/password authentication using bcrypt for password hashing, with rate limiting on failed attempts” will get you something you can actually use. I’ve found that the more detailed I am about requirements up front, the less time I spend fixing issues later. [Actually, I’ve found the opposite. In my experience, it’s more likely to mess something up or implement something in a way I don’t want if I give it too many requirements up front. I find it better to start small.]

There have been some amusing mishaps along the way. Like the time I asked for help adding file upload functionality and got a beautiful implementation… that stored everything in memory instead of writing to disk. [Haha, what? No.] Or when I requested “mobile-friendly styling” and ended up with a UI that looked great on phones but was completely unusable on desktop. [No.] These experiences taught me to always verify the assumptions being made before implementing AI-suggested code. [Huh?]

Looking ahead, I’m excited about how AI coding assistants will evolve. [True dat.] They’re already getting better at understanding project context and maintaining consistency across multiple requests. But I hope they’ll develop better ways to explain their suggestions and help developers understand the “why” behind different implementation choices. [Sure, why not.] After all, the goal isn’t just to write working code – it’s to write code we can confidently maintain and extend. [Yeah, sure.]

For now, I’ve found my sweet spot: use AI as a collaborative tool to enhance my own programming abilities, rather than trying to outsource the actual thinking to it. [No, I’m outsourcing thinking!] It’s not quite the “AGI will make programmers obsolete” future some predicted, but it’s a pretty useful present.

Though I still occasionally catch myself asking it to “just fix all the bugs” when I’m feeling particularly frustrated. [Haha, no.] Hey, a developer can dream, right?

Thank you for that great post, AI!

By S P Hannifin, ago

AI generated podcasts from NotebookLM

I recently played around a bit with Google’s new AI-powered NotebookLM site.

When you upload the documents that are central to your projects, NotebookLM instantly becomes an expert in the information that matters most to you.

Its most interesting feature is its ability to create a 10-minute audio conversation about the material you uploaded, sort of like a podcast episode. It nicely extracts key points from your sources, but pads it with natural but annoyingly banal commentary, like SNL’s NPR parodies.

Still, as podcast lovers know, that kind of natural conversation style can be a very effective way to learn.

So here’s the AI’s audio “deep dive” into the Wikipedia article on Frances Hodgson Burnett:

(The AI apparently thought the asterisks in the text were part of the titles.)

And then here’s the AI’s conversation about an older blog post of mine, My approach to music composition:

Wow, AI bots talking about me, and pretending to be impressed! Amazing! Ha!

I may use the site for something serious in the future, but at the moment, it’s a lot of fun to experiment with.

ETA: Here’s its conversation based on a single sentence: “I don’t know why, but everything seems great!” It manages to blather for 5 minutes about this sentence. Highly amusing.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Trovedex remade

A couple weeks ago I remade my web app Trovedex from scratch. It’s private for now, only for my own use; if you go there, it’ll ask you for a password. You’ll have to settle with this impressive screenshot:

It’s now a simple document manager. You can create documents (HTML pages) and put them in folders. That’s basically it. I wanted something like a wiki, but I wanted to use HTML instead of markdown, and I wanted to see folders and files on the side for easy navigation between pages.

I created the app with the help of AI, which was a fun experience (Claude to be exact). While AI doesn’t do all the work for you, it definitely makes things a lot easier. For instance, I had trouble figuring out React before (a javascript library for building interfaces), so the AI was able to show me how it’s done. Adding some features was also breeze. I could tell the AI: “Let’s add the ability to delete documents.” And it would respond: “Sure, paste this code to your frontend and this code to your backend.” Done! Of course, that’s an easy feature to add. Some features caused a bit more trouble. Trovedex is using the Jodit Editor to edit the HTML on the documents / pages, which Claude had some trouble with now and then, forcing me to do my own debugging.

Claude also had a habit of choosing annoying tools and frameworks. It recommended I use PostgreSQL for the backend database, and Prisma to connect to it. No! I had to tell it to use MongoDB and Axios instead, which seem a lot simpler to me.

Overall though, using the AI made me much more productive.

There are still plenty of features I’d like to add to Trovedex eventually, including the ability to make pages or folders public. That way I can use it to replace “Hanniwiki”, which was a MediaWiki site containing the catalog of all my music and stuff. But the software (which was more sophisticated than I really needed) went out of date, so “Hanniwiki” has been missing for a while now.

I’ll probably open-source the project to GitHub at some point.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Mixing my own music with AI

Suno AI has an “upload audio” feature, allowing users to upload up to 60 seconds of their own content to be extended by the AI. So earlier this month I had some fun feeding it 45-60 clips of my own music and having the AI write lyrics and turn the clips into choir songs. It’s interesting to hear how the AI uses the melodies, chord progressions, and orchestrations provided in its own creations. The lyrics are a bit amateurish, but serviceable; I was too lazy to write my own. I’m calling the project Hannifin x AI. Here’s the first installment, based on my classic piece “Hour by Hour”; the first 60 seconds are from the original piece, while the rest is AI-generated.

I did the same with 18 other of my pieces. Some things I noticed:

  • The AI works best with simple 8-bar melodies, or 4-bar phrases. It doesn’t seem to “parse” weirder phrase structures very well.
  • It’s not very good at extended the input instrumentally, in my opinion; it quickly starts to sound too repetitive. Having it produce lyrics and turning the music into a song seems to work better. (Melodic repetition seems easier to bear with alternating lyrics.)
  • If you want the AI to generate the voice of a choir, feeding it music from the louder, more energetic and melodic parts of a piece seem to work better, especially if it features a prominent string section. Otherwise you’re more likely to get a soloist, and the music it generates is less likely to sound like a natural continuation of the music you provide.
  • For whatever reason, some tracks just seem to work better than others; maybe it depends on how “familiar” the AI is with the melodic and harmonic patterns? For some tracks, it gave me some pleasant results right away. Other times I had to roll the dice over and over to get something acceptable.

There were some pieces I tried for which I could not get any output that I was happy with, including The King’s Assassin, The Moon Dreamed By, and On the Edge of a Dream. And there was one track, Silver Moon Waltz, for which I got a couple songs I was pleased with. Anyway, I’m done trying for now.

As for the video above, I made it with Blender 4.2, which took a little time figuring out, mostly with various tutorials on YouTube. I’m not completely satisfied with the results. What’s supposed to be “dust” looks perhaps too much like snow and moves a bit too fast, and the text looks a bit weird. Turns out trying to create a sort of “drop shadow” effect on text in Blender is pretty much impossible; I had to sort of fake it with compositing cheats, and I’m not sure I did the best job. (I could’ve just put the text on the background picture and used an image editor to create the drop shadow, but I wanted the animated frequency bars to have it too.) Also, the text might be a bit too bright, but I blame that on the VR display I get with Immersed in the Meta Quest 3.

I’ll upload the other 19 songs I created soon!

 

By S P Hannifin, ago

My first AI music album: “The Shadow Age”

I’ve been enjoying writing songs with AI songwriting tool Suno for the past few months, and recently put together a full-length album of some of my favorite tracks so far. While AI wrote the music and provides the performance, I wrote the lyrics, which are very deep and profound. (Though two of the tracks are from old famous poems.) The symphonic metal album is free to download here (ZIP file, MP3 V0, 111.2MB) or on Bandcamp.

Don’t like AI music? Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to create even more AI albums, bwahaha!

By S P Hannifin, ago

First impressions with the Meta Quest 3 VR headset

As I’ve blogged about before, I’ve had trouble with my programming productivity lately, a major cause being my terrible sitting posture while using my desktop due to the monitors not being situated quite how I’d like, and my chair not optimally supporting my spine. I get a sharp stabbing pain in the back of my neck and between my shoulders after about an hour or so.

I thought about getting a Steam Deck to allow me to play games away from my computer, but, after seeing a few YouTube videos and Twitter posts from people finding comfort while programming in VR, thought that the Meta Quest 3, which was released near the end of last year, might be just what I needed!

So I just got one and am happily writing this post from the comfort of my bed with a wireless keyboard and some giant VR monitors hovering just in front of me.

Overall, I’m loving it, just the sort of thing I was hoping for. Here are some pros and cons I’ve found with the Meta Quest 3 during my first couple days of use.

Pros

The resolution and frame rate are great, much better than the original Oculus Rift I got 8 years ago (2016). That was fun for a bit of gaming, but the resolution was too inferior for any sort of virtual desktop work, and the VR sickness was pretty intense.

With the resolution doubled since then, and improvements made to the lenses (the field of view does not seem quite as wide now), virtual desktops are now usable. It also seems to help with VR sickness. I have explored a few virtual worlds and have experienced no VR sickness whatsoever!

Another pro is that it does not need to be connected to anything. It’s a standalone unit. It also doesn’t need an external camera for positional tracking (as the original Oculus Rift and the PSVR do), and the tracking is pretty much perfect. I can even connect it to my computer for a virtual desktop all through Wi-Fi. This is a great convenience.

The “passthrough” is excellent. The unit has cameras on the front, allowing me to basically see through the unit (albeit at a lower resolution), so I can see my hands, my keyboard, my cat, etc., with no problem. I can even walk around the house with no problem!

I have been especially impressed with VR videos on YouTube, of which I’d love to see a lot more. Not the flat 360-degree videos which just put you in a big flat sphere, but the 180-degree 3D ones, that make it look like people and places are just in front of you. In fact, I’d really love to see an entire movie or play in VR. I would definitely love to even get a VR camera and shoot some stuff at some point.

Cons

The major problem with the Quest 3 is that it is very uncomfortable for me. It comes with simple straps that sandwich your face, the main unit pressing against your eyes and cheeks. It’s made worse for me by my need for glasses. I can wear them in the VR, but, although it improves my view of the VR world, it’s just something else pressing into my face. It’s extremely annoying.

Hopefully this problem can be helped with some accessories, which I’ve purchased but which won’t be delivered for a few weeks. First, I’ve ordered some custom lenses so I’ll be able to see clearly in the VR without having to keep my glasses on. I’ve also ordered a halo strap which should, like the PSVR (which is by far the most comfortable VR headset I’ve yet tried), take the pressure off my face by transferring the weight of the unit to my head instead.

Another con is that, like the Oculus Rift, it gets a bit warm, which is annoying when it’s pressed against your face. Hopefully a halo strap will also help with that.

The unit has a short battery life, around 2 hours, which I’m sure will only get worse over time. I’ve only had my unit for a couple of days, and I’ve already drained the battery three times. I guess I could just keep it plugged in? But that’s a bit of a nuisance. The halo strap I ordered comes with a battery pack, so that should definitely help.

Another con is that the resolution could be even sharper; although it’s now good enough to use virtual monitors, text is still somewhat fuzzy, and there is still some aliasing and shimmering going on. Hopefully in another decade we’ll have even higher resolution VR sets? I still don’t think I’d watch a movie in here; even though I can experience a giant virtual theater, I enjoy the higher resolution of the real world for movies and TV. (Also, the Netflix app for this thing is terrible, it streams at too low a resolution with too much compression.1)

One last con is that the unit is kind of… smelly. It doesn’t have that new plastic computer smell, which is the stuff dreams are made of. Instead it just smells kinda weird, almost like body-odor. It’s admittedly slight, but it’s annoying. Hopefully it’ll go away eventually, but until then I guess I can always light scented candles or some dragon’s blood incense.

(Now I have to write the rest of this post outside of VR, because I drained the battery again.)

The Metaverse

I’m still not at all sold on the whole “Metaverse” concept. Perhaps I’m too much of an introvert, but I don’t see the appeal of exploring a virtual environment with a bunch of strangers’ avatars wandering around in front of me with random chatter from random voices all over. If they were people I knew outside of VR, it could be a fun and interesting experience, but I just don’t want to explore VR worlds with strangers. Sorry strangers. Sorry Mark.

Desktop Use

Right now, I’m using the “Immersed” app, which allows you to cast you computer monitors to VR, and allows you to add additional virtual monitors. With programming, it’s very useful to have at least two: one for the coding, another for seeing the running results. It should be useful to have even more screens to pull up documentation and other resources without having to shrink and hide windows.

Right now I’m just using the free version of the app. I’ll probably try the paid version when my accessories eventually arrive to see if it’s worth the upgrade, but the free version is probably all I need.

Since the visual info is streaming through Wi-Fi, there’s no need for cords, but it does drop frames every now and then, so it’s probably not great for watching videos from the desktop or playing PC games. For that, you’d probably need to physically connect your computer to the VR, which I have not yet tried.

Overall, the Meta Quest 3 gets a big thumbs up for me, despite its cons, which I hope the accessories will help with.

By S P Hannifin, ago