{"id":66183,"date":"2023-04-11T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T10:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=66183"},"modified":"2023-04-07T15:42:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T19:42:38","slug":"an-easter-puzzle-what-chatgbt-is-good-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2023\/04\/an-easter-puzzle-what-chatgbt-is-good-for\/","title":{"rendered":"An Easter Puzzle & What ChatGBT Is Good For"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Easter is a \u201cmovable feast,\u201d meaning it jumps around the calendar every year.\u00a0 Calculating what that date will be in any given year gets complicated.\u00a0 Easter has to be on a Sunday.\u00a0 It also needs to correlate somehow with the Jewish Passsover, which is determined by a lunar calendar (based on the phases of the moon), whereas we use a solar calendar (based on our planet\u2019s position in relation to the sun).<\/p>\n

As the Wikipedia article<\/a> on the subject explains, \u201cEaster is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which is the first\u00a0full moon\u00a0on or after 21\u00a0March (a fixed approximation of the\u00a0March equinox). Determining this date in advance requires a correlation between the\u00a0lunar months\u00a0and the\u00a0solar year, while also accounting for the month, date, and weekday of the\u00a0Julian\u00a0or\u00a0Gregorian calendar.\u201d\u00a0 The article goes on to discuss \u201cthe complexity of the algorithm,\u201d giving different formulas and ways of calculating Easter math.<\/p>\n

\n

I bring this up because an item from\u00a0Christianity Today<\/em>\u2018s Daily Briefing <\/a>e-mail newsletter, 4\/4\/2023 (I can\u2019t find the issue online), had this from the magazine\u2019s news editor Daniel Silliman:<\/p>\n

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As I prepare for Easter this week, a fragment<\/a> of a 14th- or 15th-century Latin poem has been rattling around my brain: \u201cQuaerit amor Christi multos dum regnat iniquus.\u201d In English: \u201cThe love of Christ seeks many while injustice reigns.\u201d. . .<\/p>\n

The history of the Easter equations is fascinating\u2014and if you want to buy pages of a medieval prayer book that include this poem\/cipher, they are\u00a0for sale<\/a>\u2014but I\u2019m thankful for the not-cryptic part of this poem that reminds me that something is happening behind the scenes \u201cwhile injustice reigns.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s a great quotation, encouraging us that in evil times (like ours), Jesus is especially active in bringing people to Himself.\u00a0 \u00a0But Silliman doesn\u2019t explain how it helps us calculate the date of Easter.\u00a0 While I found the quotation online, nothing told me anything about the embedded math.<\/p>\n

Now I was going to use this as a brief item of interest in my Monday Miscellany.\u00a0 But then I had an idea:\u00a0 Maybe ChatGPT, the internet-scouring, artificial intelligence-driven chatbot that we\u2019ve been playing around with could help me.<\/p>\n

So I went to the site and asked it this:\u00a0 \u201cQuaerit amor Christi multos dum regnat iniquus\u201d contains a cipher used to calculate the date of Easter. Could you explain what the cipher is?<\/p>\n

Here is the answer:<\/p>\n

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\u201cQuaerit amor Christi multos dum regnat iniquus\u201d is a Latin sentence that means \u201cThe love of Christ seeks many while injustice reigns.\u201d This sentence contains a cipher that was traditionally used to calculate the date of Easter in the Western Christian tradition.<\/p>\n

The cipher is based on the number of letters between the first letter \u201cQ\u201d and the last letter \u201cS\u201d in the sentence, which is 23. This number is then added to the number of days in March, which is the month in which the Spring Equinox occurs. In the Western Christian tradition, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the Spring Equinox.<\/p>\n

Therefore, to calculate the date of Easter using this cipher, you would add 23 to the number of days in March and then find the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after that date. This is known as the \u201cecclesiastical full moon,\u201d which is slightly different from the astronomical full moon.<\/p>\n

While this cipher was used in the past to calculate the date of Easter, it is important to note that it is no longer used in modern times. Today, the date of Easter is determined by a set of complex rules and calculations that are based on the Gregorian calendar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK!\u00a0 The answer is a little mixed up:\u00a0 March has 31 days, so if you add 23 to that, you\u2019d get 54.\u00a0 So \u201cthe first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after\u201d March 54 doesn\u2019t make much sense, there being no such date as March 54.\u00a0 I think the chatbot means that we should go to that number of days in March\u2013that is, March 23\u2013and start counting from that.<\/p>\n

And it isn\u2019t clear why folks in the Middle Ages needed a Latin quotation if the answer is always 23.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it easier to remember a single number than to remember a seven-word line of Latin poetry.\u00a0 I suspect there may be other aspects to the cipher, such as clues to finding the \u201cecclesiastical full moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, ChatGPT did find the basic explanation.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t find anything online about it, but something obviously exists somewhere.\u00a0 ChatGPT was able to sort through the whole internet very quickly, retrieve the information, and present it to me in plain English.<\/p>\n

Which shows the true use of this technology:\u00a0 Not to replace human thinking as alarmists about Artificial Intelligence are worried about, but to serve as a really good search engine.\u00a0 ChatGPT won\u2019t replace human beings, but it might replace Google.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo:\u00a0 A calendar of the dates of Easter, for the years 532\u2013632, marble, in the Museum of Ravenna Cathedral<\/a>, Italy.Photo b<\/span>y Apatak \u2013 Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=55916988<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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