This guy is President of the organization. If he wanted to go to DRC, he would.
Exactly.
His filming on the East Coast needed his attention, desparately, especially during peak tourist season.
If I recall correctly, once he got here he was quite instrumental in asking online for LDS church members in the area to donate daily lunches to the onsite filming crews. So, he's needed, clearly.
We may be forgetting an important fact: Dan thinks that his cruising around the world to stare at his favorite artwork and architecture is his equivalent to a senior mission.
Dan is actually serving a mission right now. Checkmate, obsession board!
We may be forgetting an important fact: Dan thinks that his cruising around the world to stare at his favorite artwork and architecture is his equivalent to a senior mission.
Dan is actually serving a mission right now. Checkmate, obsession board!
And of course staring at this board, because the board's reaction is clearly most important to him, based on how frequently it gets mentioned.
He’ll never go to DRC simply because of the criticism that has been stated here.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
Dan is actually serving a mission right now. Checkmate, obsession board!
Being an impresario and worldwide ambassador for the Church is quite fulfilling for Dr. Peterson. If Dr. Peterson was unavailable do you imagine Kwaku and Cardon Ellis take his place?
Free markets really are a great way to make the world better, but they're not perfect. To me the market is a great servant but a poor master, and we should never forget that it's supposed to be helping us achieve human welfare efficiently, not defining our goals. On the other hand it's stupid to hamstring free markets, in ways that actually just make things worse, by legislating clumsily in the name of correcting the market's known limitations. A sound general principle about how intervention can sometimes be needed is no excuse for economic incompetence.
In the same sort of way I'd agree that a real test of how much difference religious belief really makes is to see whether it makes anyone act beyond enlightened self-interest. It doesn't make sense to me, though, to ask believers to demonstrate their faith by just acting stupidly. Knocking till my fingers bleed is one thing if it might actually bring one more convert, but if knocking loudly while people are sleeping is just going to get everyone angry against my religion, and drive more people away than it attracts, then it doesn't become an impressive demonstration of faith just because it also hurts my own hands.
The kind of altruism that impresses me is like this. We identify the best utilitarian plan, that benefits most people the most, with a measure function on "benefit" that weights needs over nice-to-haves properly, and maybe some constraints that don't let any amount of nice-to-have luxuries outweigh even one painful death. Anyway it's a plan that everybody somehow accepts as optimal, regardless of any religious commitments. Then somebody vetoes that plan, in favour of a second plan that has less total benefit, but only because it benefits them less. They take their own reward and loss off the table, or at least re-weight them significantly, and opt for a plan that gives more benefit, compared to the first plan, to everyone else but themselves.
He’ll never go to DRC simply because of the criticism that has been stated here.
And the excuse becomes even better now. If he ever goes to DRC, then it's a trap where people on this board are waiting to make serious accusations about the means of transport.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance
He spent today in Rome, in the shadow of the Catholic (by that I mean original and Universal) church. Amidst the 2,000 years of history, and the fact the church goes back to the time of Christ, I can imagine Dan had at least a small feeling that his church was rather less impressive in comparison.
Despite the claims that the Mormon church is a restoration of the original, I wouldn’t be able to take it seriously against a backdrop of the real thing. Attending sacrament meeting in a drab cultural hall would seem like a Potemkin imitation.
I can't disagree with your planning example (although a true free-market buff just needs to focus on what's best for them personally and all else falls into place, you can't outplan self-interest) as a way to show who is really invested in goodness and who isn't (although "altruism" was invented by Comte).
The issue I have is that we need something with more visibility -- not everyone understands game theory. When Saul did a 180, that was hard to miss.
I also sense you have some concerns about knocking on doors in the middle of the night and looking like a fool. But think about what we're talking about here. What if the angel visited you?
If physics guy sees an angel, and then comes on this board and admits what he saw in qualified language and tries to make it reasonable to everyone, okay, that might count for something. I mean, I'd want to give him the benefit of the doubt at least and it might come with some new arguments that are very good. But if physics guy were to bang on my door at 2:00 AM to tell me about it, pleading with me -- "no really, this is serious!" There is a good chance I'd be pissed. But, there's also a better chance that I'd believe that he really saw an angel than in the first scenario.
And if I were to become convinced, imagine the difference when I go forth to preach. Telling the story of the calm and cool physics guy who claims to have seen an angel and brought forth these two new arguments I hadn't thought about, or the calm and cool physics guy who nearly broke down my door at 2 AM because he was so filled with the spirit of God that he couldn't contain himself? I think the second story will draw the crowd.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance
