Christian here (and very long-time lurker), of more or less the "I believe on faith" stripe. I've noticed that in addition to the uses you mention here, /Mere Christianity/ serves as a summary of doctrine. (I can't really speak to other apologetics.)
I've found that Sunday school and sermons generally incline much more to vague, feel-good platitudes than to actual, you know, positive or normative claims. You're left in this position of "OK, I have [for whatever reason] bought into the Church and its credibility---now what do these people act...
One of the things that I think many atheists misunderstand about Christian belief is the degree to which it has to do with belief in the sense of having trust for particular people, not only the sense of having credence in a proposition.
I was reminded of this a while back when talking with a young Christian boy, a relative of mine. He had said that he believed something-or-other — I think the proposition was that the Devil exists; or possibly that temptations to do bad things (like get in fights with his brothers) are caused by the Devil. I asked him why h...
Couple of thoughts re: NIST as an institution:
- FWIW NIST, both at Gaithersburg and Boulder, is very well-regarded in AMO physics and slices of condensed matter. Bill Phillips (https://www.nist.gov/people/william-d-phillips) is one big name there, but AIUI they do a whole bunch of cool stuff. Which doesn't say much one way or the other about how the AI Safety Institute will go! But NIST has a record of producing, or at least sheltering, very good work in the general vicinity of their remit.
- Don't knock metrology! It's really, really hard, subtle, and creative
... (read more)I agree metrology is cool! But I think units are mostly helpful for engineering insofar as they reflect fundamental laws of nature—see e.g. the metric units—and we don't have those yet for AI. Until we do, I expect attempts to define them will be vague, high-level descriptions more than deep scientific understanding.
(And I think the former approach has a terrible track record, at least when used to define units of risk or controllability—e.g. BSL levels, which have failed so consistently and catastrophically they've induced an EA cause area, and which for some reason AI labs are starting to emulate).