26 Jun Intelligence, Human and Otherwise

I’ve been away this spring and early summer. My wife and I spent two weeks in Scotland, following our heritage, Outlander tours, and spiritual thin spaces. Then our newest granddaughter was born in Tucson, and we just had to be there for her birth and first week. Please excuse my absence.

Now, I’m thinking about intelligence, the human kind and the artificial kind (AI). Not in depth like many people. I don’t really need another idea rattling around my brain that both confuses me and, to be truthful, scares me a bit. Too much of that already encased in there.

Did you read recently about the “dire wolf”? This is a species that has been extinct on Earth for about 10,000 years. (I don’t really know how the experts know that. Maybe carbon dating but it’s been so long since I studied that.) This company, Colossal Biosciences (just the name sounds bizarre), decided that that could find preserved DNA of this species, rewrite the genetic code with bioengineering, and using domestic dogs as surrogates, they brought three dire wolfs to life this spring. They call it “de-extinction.”

My first question: didn’t they see all those movies? Jurassic Park? It doesn’t go well and that’s a vast understatement. Now they’re working on woolly mammoths, dodo birds, and Tasmanian tigers. And I repeat: didn’t they see the movies?! Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Now, this. Scientists have isolated a gene pattern in reptiles that can regrow body parts. Like a salamander can regrow a tail or limb. They think eventually they’ll be able to help humans regrow…well, I’m not sure. Maybe they aren’t either. But it’s a better use of intelligence that recreating a woolly mammoth, I should think. Maybe I could have regrown my hips rather than have them replaced with titanium ones. Although, thank you very much, my new hips are working wonderfully.

And now, another this. I’m writing a new novel. The only thing I can say is that in its initial stage (50,000 words of a rough draft), it’s a political love story. More to come. When I write, I use Microsoft Word to move it from scattered notes in a notebook to the computer, first as a skimpy outline, then prose. Just recently, in an upgrade, Microsoft offered me “Co-pilot.” It’s a form of AI that will rewrite a sentence or phrase. I’ve tried it and found it really doesn’t enhance my writing. And I read last week of an author who has published 150 novels and placed them for sale on Amazon—all since April 2025.  You can probably deduce without much effort that they were all generated using AI.  The co-pilot is steering that fellow’s plane.

Which begs the question: how do we know what to believe? In the near future, maybe like tomorrow, we’re going to have to become much more diligent on how we decide what to believe. We may need trusted and true “proof sources”—those sources of information that we know that we trust and for the most part is true. What will yours be? That’s rhetorical, but if you’d like to email me back, I’m interested. Because we all need more of them.

Two things I’ve done to combat misinformation:

1. About 4 years ago, I stopped watching the news on TV. I still get news, mostly online, but I never watch it anymore. It’s all so biased, how can I tell what is true

and what isn’t?

2. I gave us social media. Dropped off Facebook many moons ago. I still surf X (formally Twitter) because I find it so funny. But I don’t believe anything I read there, and I never post or comment.

Book Recommendations

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

                  One reader who read my novel of Haiti, Anyone But Me, commented that my depiction of the Haitian characters could have been better written with Caribbean accents. I really don’t know if I could have done that well enough to pull it off. In Mudbound, Jordan recreates the deep South of post WWII in realistic language and accents as she weaves her story of Black (Negro and other N words in her language) and the Southern whites that are farmers and landowners. She also creates a wonderful story as you visualize a key moment in our country’s history where social change is ripe for redemption and renewal. I really enjoyed the book.

I recently watched the film adaptation of this book, and although much was left out or glossed over, it was a solid interpretation. I found it on Netflix.

Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa TerKeurst

                  A Christian writer whose husband had an affair, TerKeurst bares her soul in emphatic ways to find a path to forgiveness. Her honesty and willingness to blame her husband, God, and even friends who didn’t see her side, reveals a remarkable ability to know her own feelings, finally trust God, and eventually find a way. A remarkable read, with practical prayers and pathways. Maybe the most heart-wrenching and yet hopeful book I’ve read in a long, long time. A must-read if you’re holding on to grudges, suffering displacement with a loved one, or just need to reconcile a relationship that seems lost and abandoned.

Why don’t you send me a couple of your recent books that you’ve enjoyed, and I’ll share them with my audience?