Faith Hacker

by James "Jim" Wilcox

There's no escaping this something is broken.
Is the platform updated? Does a restart fix it? Can we attach a debugger? Does the hot fix apply? Is it the architecture? Did any of the DevOps pipeline steps fail? Who does "blame" say touched it last? Are the cognitive models trained with the right set? Is that a best practice or an antipattern? Is there a performance bottleneck that's not scaling?
At the risk of heresy (0.0132% probability), the author, a well-seasoned software architect, approaches biblical Scripture in terms of troubleshooting a modern software system.
Along the way, the journey touches on topics like the following with a nod to Isaac Asimov and C. S. Lewis thrown in for good
Artificial intelligence (such as OpenAI, ChatGPT and Copilot),
social media,
social injustice,
virtual reality,
gaming,
geek culture,
rock and roll, and
the singularity.
(Yes, this blurb is wordy. It's search-engine optimized.)
#JailbreakingLife

152 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2021

Reviews

[Elisa Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book. It orients everything about our lives, spirituality and even technology in the context of love for our neighbors and I think that’s a message everyone can get behind. It challenged me and inspired me and made me think deeply about my beliefs and my actions. Plus it was just interesting and GOOD! Totally worth reading.

[James Wilcox]

Faith Hacker
Reviews from Amazon (link) as of May 10th, 2022
www.faithhackerbook.com/reviews



David Morris
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ of 5 stars
A Beautiful Analogy of Humanity And the Singularity
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2022
Verified Purchase
The "singularity," aka the birth of truly self-aware artificial intelligence that can think, feel, and make their own decisions. Such has been a subject of deep philosophy since the dawn of the modern information age.

Given all the potential both good and evil for machines that can truly think, this book is a beautiful thought-piece on the ethical responsibilities humanity would have over thinking machines.

How does one responsibly give rise to a self-aware entity? Can lessons from scripture can present a solution to the singularity? Could we be the AIs?

The answers are uplifting and inspired.


EmDel
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ of 5 stars
Love thy neighbor
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2022
The overarching message keeps tying back to the greatest commandment, love your neighbor as yourself (which, as the author points out, does come with "the clear implication [that]... one must love oneself" page 29).

Don't underestimate the power of that message.

Some of my favorite parts were
• the concept of our bodies being "avatars" for our souls (page 90) —
• the reminder about the greatest commandment, that it's "much harder to actively love our neighbor ... than it is to simply avoid hating our neighbor" (page 71)
• the discussion about the placebo effect and faith (page 113) (yes, there's are a wide variety of illustrations in this book, and they all tie back to the central theme!)

I loved the parallel analogy of Asherah as well, the artificial intelligence that the developers in the story are creating and training — that was quite clever.

Overall, there are a lot of good nuggets of info and perspectives that make you go, "hmmmm" when you least expect it.

Well done!



crowcoder
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ of 5 stars
Thoughtful, insightful
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2021
This book gets you thinking. The author has incredible insight and masterfully weaves the subject matter into a relatable, modern technological narrative.



Santa Claus
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ of 5 stars
Fascinating
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2021
The author introduces a new way to look at faith and what it means to have faith. Worth your time to give this a try and learn what it looks like to believe.


Chris M
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ of 5 stars
This book is a treasure
Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2021
Verified Purchase
What a beautiful and well-written book! I enjoyed every page of Faith Hacker. It was intriguing, inspiring, heart-warming and thought-provoking. Highly recommended!