Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

• 1 Corinthians 1:19

And Hiram added: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who made heaven and earth! He has given King David a wise son, endowed with intelligence and discernment, who will build a temple for the Lord and a palace for himself.

• 2 Chronicles 2:12

Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”

• Isaiah 29:14

There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods. Your father, King Nebuchadnezzar, appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners. He did this because Daniel, whom the king called Belteshazzar, was found to have a keen mind and knowledge and understanding, and also the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve difficult problems. Call for Daniel, and he will tell you what the writing means.”
So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king said to him, “Are you Daniel, one of the exiles my father the king brought from Judah? I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you and that you have insight, intelligence and outstanding wisdom.

• Daniel 5:11-14

I did something that is probably a total waste of time today.  I waste a little of my time each day looking at the statistics for this website.  Whether meager or bountiful, I look over the numbers.  At the end of the month, I like looking to see which post garnered the most views.  Maybe I could write more like that one!  Nope, none of my posts from this year is number one this month.  It is a post from 2020.

What wisdom can be learned from a post that was written during a year that most people would love to forget about?  I can see that reading blog posts could artificially go up during that year.  Half the year, it seemed, was spent locked down where staring at a computer screen is how you communicated with the world.  But to have a post from 2020 as your number one post in February 2023, and a different 2020 post in the first half of March 2023…  Why?!

Okay a little data analysis might be necessary.  Where do these views come from?  For me, about half come from search engines and the other half comes from the WordPress Reader Page.  The social media links are insignificant, except in June of 2020, Facebook pushed one of my posts really hard for a week or so.  Never again.  I had warmth once from Twitter, not a pulse, but there was hope.  Yet, I do not understand Twitter, so why should I care?

So, the search engine views may come from my quirky way of entitling posts.  It meets their search engine criteria and the title is “interesting.”  Then, I can see the disgust in the reader’s eyes.  “What possessed me to open THIS!?!?!?!”  Hey, I get the stat for a visit and a view anyway.

The WordPress Reader Page stuff could be an interesting photo or again, the title, but there are three ways to have WP advertise your post.  At the end of your post, they have a couple of your posts that suggest, if you liked this, the author has written these other posts.  On the reader page, you will get suggestions randomly that suggest, considering the things from sites that you follow, you might like …  Your site might be shown, if you are lucky, good, or another thing I will get to.  This same suggestion can show up in other places.

So, how do you get a post on the suggested reader list?  That is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes in.  When I first started this site, WP had no idea what I was about, what made me tick.  A human did not read my posts, but their AI software did.  As an example, I was into “People”, “Openness”, “Religion”, and “Nostalgia.”  The AI software thought about those four words and then mashed them together, using their first letters and they suggested that what might interest me the most was PORN!  Okay, WP does not publish that stuff, but I was suggested things quite close to it.  It took a few months before the AI computers figured out I liked Christian stuff.

Oddly, my one time of having Facebook advertise my post was when I wrote a review of a documentary that exposed the “Faith in Faith” industry as not being in line with Christian doctrine.  I truly think that the Facebook AI saw that I was writing things against Christianity (as the AI could not distinguish that subtlety) and I soon had my most viewed post.  What I have gotten since then is a note from Facebook on occasion that if I want my brand to grow, I should not neglect posting something for a week as I just did.  I post 10-11 posts each week, and Facebook was censoring my posts, and then taunting me by saying I had not posted anything.  Oops, I should have not said anything.  I will soon be in Facebook jail over that last comment.

But all of that on Facebook was not done by people.  It was done by AI that was programmed by people.  And those people have their own agenda.  When you consider that and the way the world is going these days, maybe it is a miracle that any of these posts get out for the world to see.

I do not see that WP censors Christian thought.  I read a multitude of stuff from other writers each day.  And to be honest, when I slide by those “If you liked that, then try …” because I am at the limit, and maybe beyond, of the posts I can read.

But back to the year 2020.  There is no special wisdom from that year.  There is no special spirituality from that year.  I had no great insights …  Okay, maybe, but no more than the years before or since…

But, each year since 2020, over half of the top ten posts for 2021 and 2022 are posts written in 2020, with maybe one or two posts from the current year.

The reason I have ten posts and one page from 2020 that have ten times more views, spread out over the past three year plus, than the other posts from that year is that the Artificial intelligence says, “When we advertised this one the last time, it got a few views.  Let’s do it again.”

So, I could have a wonderfully written post written a week after the “popular” one and the AI ignores it, unless people start looking for it in search engines, then it suddenly becomes “popular.”

So, if you wonder why one post flops and another has staying power that lasts years, do not worry about it at all.  It is just a computer, that only knows what it is programmed to know, by a programmer that may not know what the subject of your post really is…. Note: Computers are dumber than dumb.  If you do not have the capacity to save information on a computer, when you return to the computer the next day, it knows nothing.  I mean nothing!!  It’s “knowledge” is what is programmed into it by humans and what is stored and accessible to it, stuff you saved.  Otherwise, it is an expensive frisbee.

NOTE: Do not use your computer as a frisbee.  It may never work again!!

But as for me, the stats are God’s department.  I trust that those who He wants to read this are reading this.  As always …

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.