Cody Hall

What I'm reading, writing, and thinking about.

What I’m Crunching — August 31, 2025

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Books I’m Reading

Dark Age (Red Rising #5)

I’ve nearly finished this audiobook and I’ll continue on to #6 after this one. Pierce Brown writes so well, constructs and maintains an excellent narrative, and makes the world of the story seem real.

The narrative follows multiple perspectives, giving a panoramic view of the escalating conflict. There’s relentless action, political intrigue, and moral dilemmas that keep you questioning who’s right or wrong. Dark Age is not for the faint-hearted; it’s darker and more intense than the prior books, living up to its title.

On AI

I lead our AI Taskforce at SonSet Solutions and last week a coworker sent me some links for reading.

There’s some good writing here from The Gospel Coalition and a blogger belonging to the International Conference on Computing in Mission (ICCM):

On the TGC article, here’s the link to the referenced Peter Thiel / Ross Douthat podcast:

If I could add a few pieces of unsolicited commentary…

  1. Chris Watkin at TGC doesn’t adequately address Peter Thiel’s full thinking and response on Douthat’s podcast. Watkin implies that Thiel’s hesitancy in answering the question, “Should the human race endure?” means that Thiel believes it shouldn’t and that AI models and superintelligence that allows us to transcend humanity would be preferable. This isn’t a fair representation of Thiel’s response. For all of Thiel’s sin issues, lifestyle choices, etc., he is a nuanced thinker and has been correct about many of our current societal issues. His full answer is rooted in a proper understanding (at least intellectually) of Judea-Christian morals and communicates a few points that I agree with:
    • Pure, AI-loving transhumanists miss that humans are not just bodies. We are embodied souls. A human is a supernatural combination of body and soul. Thiel rightly points that current transhumanist goals (like gender surgeries or body modification) are pathetically little and don’t go far enough in transformation.
    • He points out that an orthodox (Biblical) Christian critique of transhumanism isn’t necessarily that it’s “weird and unnatural” but that it doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t address the soul. Biblical Christianity would say the primary issue of the “natural” state of humanity is a sinful fallenness that’ll never be adequately addressed by any technology.
    • Genuine, complete transhumanism would be able to address the problems within both the bodies and souls of humans, which it clearly cannot.
  2. Thiel appears to be properly understanding the true nature of humanity as sinful, fallen creatures with a spiritual need: rescue from sin. Combining other interviews of Thiel that I’ve watched over the years, he is torn between wanting human survival and wanting radical human transformation. He views the current human condition as insufficient, but rightly questions whether purely technological solutions (without spiritual transformation) are adequate or even genuinely transhumanist. He understands what Biblical Christians view as the solution, the gospel of Jesus Christ, but he clearly hasn’t humbled himself and submitted to it yet. We can pray that God opens his eyes and rescues him using the same grace with which He’s rescued us.

Food for thought.

Tweets I’m Reading

If you have feedback for me, if something resonates and you want to see more of it, reply in the comments below. You can also tweet at me on Twitter @the_cody_hall.

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