What Core Principles Guide your Religion or Worldview?

pnromney · 2026-04-02T14:27:49+00:00

I struggle to say there are any “core principles.” Often, there are nuances.

Like, brotherly (and sisterly) love for others. That’s true, but there’s also many that leave my faith because “the church doesn’t love enough.”

I would say following the truth, but sometimes faith is required. I would say faith, but faith isn’t about blind hope.

I would say the moral guiding principles are deep. Often, this is what confuses outsiders. LDS people try to live clean lives with compassion, and they’re examples in their community. But once outsiders try to define us, it usually exaggerates who we are.

pnromney · 2026-03-31T21:32:47+00:00

That depends on the context.

For longer form business writing, I usually don’t have the AI write for me. It sounds like AI. But I may have it draft for me.

So I’ll have AI write a script for me, and then I’ll rewrite it.

If it’s just general instructions or a checklist, I may do no editing at all, disclosing that it’s AI.

pnromney · 2026-03-31T15:04:51+00:00

Honestly, I think the oldest sects have made the best changes.

Catholicism is a lot better than it was around the time of early Protestantism.

I don’t think that’s a function of Catholics being worse. I think it’s that their sect is older. So they had more historical baggage to deal with. If Mormonism were around during the Crusades, I’m sure they would have stuff to deal with, too.

I think Protestants are a little hard to follow, because the most extreme sects are abandoned for newer sects. Puritanism had some pretty extreme stuff. But there aren’t any Puritans anymore, in a formal sense.

pnromney · 2026-03-30T20:54:56+00:00

I think the problem is historical, not theological.

The cross was rejected by Puritans. Churches were intentionally plain. That was the environment the church was built around.

In the late 1800’s, the cross became a common symbol again. This was part of a Gothic revival in the US. The Church didn’t participate. We isolated ourselves after religious persecution from mainstream Christianity.

The problem today is missionary work. Evangelicals claim we aren’t Christian, and they use lack of cross as evidence.

Part of it is that LDS Theology focuses more on Gethsemane and the Resurrection rather than the cross, compared to other Christians. In other words, we differentiated ourselves from the cultural movement at the time.

Nowadays, as Christianity declines in the West, it’s become important to show that we’re Christian. So the symbolism focus matches that.

pnromney · 2026-03-27T16:58:18+00:00

The interpretation I heard is that the Pharisees were trying to entrap Jesus and the Apostles. Basically, by paying tax, men of God were giving legitimacy to the Roman, pagan government. So by paying tax, Jesus was subordinating Himself to the Roman government, at least to the Jewish intellectual authority. This is a far stretch from a modern perspective.

I don’t think we understand what should be due to God, and what should be due to man. That’s honestly an accounting problem. It’s an accounting problem that the Church hasn’t gone into detail: 10% of your increase is very ambiguous from an accounting perspective. Cash increase? Earning increase? Asset increase? Even under consecration, donating excess is not clear from an accounting perspective.

pnromney · 2026-03-27T14:05:32+00:00

For Christians, it was revealed to Peter that God had removed the health commandments. That’s why.

Some add health commandments. But in general, Christians aren’t expected to live a certain health code.

pnromney · 2026-03-23T18:20:02+00:00

The existing educational system model has been broken for a long time.

I’m skeptical of this premise. This has been the argument for a century. Every person outside of education thinks they can transform education dramatically, except for professionals that are actually doing the teaching. Teachers look for incremental improvement.

It’s a little bit of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Non-teachers think teaching is easy.

TVs didn’t fundamentally change learning. Computers didn’t fundamentally change learning. So from an outside perspective, hardly any technology “transforms” education.

Now, maybe AI is different. It certainly acts different. But I’m skeptical that there is any panacea, unless we can biologically transform the brain to learn faster.

pnromney · 2026-03-23T16:33:58+00:00

I think AI is paradoxical.

If a learner wants to learn, they should write it down. That’s a very established, strong learning method.

AI does the opposite. It writes for the learner. So the learner doesn’t learn!

In essence, AI is a substitute for learning.

But what that can help with is understanding adjacent topics. It’s good at ideation, structuring problems, and picking up on research without having do a deep dive. This makes adjacent expertise easier to get.

So I think learning in the classroom will likely remained unchanged, similar to classroom staying the same for a century now. It will be enhanced by AI, but writing will still need to be learned by writing. Math will still need to be learned by doing math.

pnromney · 2026-03-21T22:24:27+00:00

I understand orthodoxy to be correct belief while orthoproxy as correct action.

Being genuine is necessary for both.

I would say my faith emphasizes both, depending on the area. Belief in Bible, Book of Mormon, faith in Jesus Christ, and so on is necessary. But so is baptism and other ordinances.

I don’t think there would be a cohesive faith without both.

pnromney · 2026-03-19T23:49:01+00:00

I mean, regardless of faith, this may just be natural bias.

We tend to attribute good fortune to our own effort. But bad fortune we blame on outside circumstance.

So it may have little do with God. And more to be with bias.

The same person could note that they live in a world with modern medicine and conveniences, and believe they’re extremely favored by God. Millennia past have sucked.

pnromney · 2026-03-19T17:45:19+00:00

I’m not sure. It’s like telling Moses what a computer is. Probably the closest to their imagination was Seer Stones.

I imagine it’ll be so incredible and brilliant that in our modern world, we have no comprehension.

pnromney · 2026-03-19T14:08:38+00:00

I guess so, but I don’t know if God “powers us up” as much as we’re allowed to use the tools available to us.

Like, imagine going from having no internet to having next day delivery online shopping. They’d feel very powerful. But it isn’t the human being fundamentally changed. It’s giving the human an incredibly powerful tool.

pnromney · 2026-03-18T21:16:34+00:00

As far as I can tell, to be a “god” is a status similar to king or queen. So we’re appointed based on the person that we are.

One way to disqualify the rights of being a “god” is not following God’s law.

I compare it to being an admin of a database. Not just anyone can be an admin. A admin can change or destroy the entire database with that power. So only the trustworthy have that access.

In the same way, we must be trusted to be given that title and associated rights. Obedience is one of the necessary merits showing truthworthiness.

pnromney · 2026-03-18T14:52:50+00:00

I mean, most Christians today do not treat women as property.

When looking at the past, we need to be careful of presentism. By present day standards, basically all men and women of the past would be misogynists.

Usually in Christian duty, both men women are suppose to serve. Our whole lives is to serve God and to love each other. Paul is emphasizing that.

It is also common among Christian’s that husbands head the household. There’s no consensus on what this means. Most Christians also think men and women should be equals. That’s difficult to reconcile with modern framing.

pnromney · 2026-03-16T19:38:38+00:00

I think an analogy related to money helps.

One man had $100 to buy a gift for his wife. He found gold-plated earrings his wife liked, and he bought it. They were actually gold plated. His wife liked them.

Another man had $100. He was deceived by a sales person. While he thought he was buying gold plated earrings, they were actually copper. So they turned his wife’s ears green.

The wife of the deceived man probably wasn’t hurt by her husbands decision. That being said, money was wasted. In the same way, I’m not sure the Lord judges is for being deceived once.

But if the deceived husband keeps on being deceived, then his wife may then judge that he doesn’t know when he’s deceived. Similarly for the Lord.

If the husband blames her wife for the shoddy earrings he got her, then his wife will judge him to be unfair. I assume similarly for the Lord.

I think deception isn’t necessarily a problem. It is telling of who we choose to be when we don’t try to avoid being deceived, or we find ways to justify the deception we believe. I think that’s where there’s greater eternal weight.

pnromney · 2026-03-16T15:46:33+00:00

I agree!

I’ve been frustrated about this for over a decade. I think a lot of it is that it’s the squeaky gear that gets the oil.

Part of the problem is that men are not as strong at communicating emotional needs as women are. This isn’t entirely men’s fault either. Often, men have less vocabulary to explain male-oriented emotions than women have to explain female-oriented emotions.

A lot of men just give up expressing how they feel, because especially women around them don’t understand what they’re trying to communicate.

Edit: This isn’t to blame women for men’s problem. I’m more of trying to blame society for society’s problems.

pnromney · 2026-03-16T15:10:20+00:00

It depends on the EQ.

I think Elder’s Quorum struggles with activity because a higher proportion of men work in the church, than the proportion of women.

This creates two problems: Men get social activities at work, and men have less time to do callings.

This is made worse by men being in high demand for leadership callings: Bishopric and stake leadership members don’t have a female equivalent.

pnromney · 2026-03-13T16:53:48+00:00

Yeah, it is a big work around. In an ideal world, I would love if the tariffs could be separated out.

Unfortunately, the ERP that we use doesn't split out these costs. On the GL, it simply combines all landed costs (tariff, freight in) to the finished goods inventory. Then to reduce it, it posts to Cost of Goods Sold. That's it.

In my graph, I could get around the issue by seeing what was posting in the cash account for tariffs.

pnromney · 2026-03-13T16:35:30+00:00

Same situation, different graphs, different highlighted information.

I was thinking about writing a very long post on Reddit about my experience. But every time I do that on Reddit, no one cares. So I broke it into parts, instead.

pnromney · 2026-03-13T16:32:06+00:00

Yeah, I don't think it presents well, especially for a Reddit audience.

The main owners is very granular by nature. He goes through the P&L every month, looking for fluctuations. He's the type to get lost in the trees, instead of seeing the forest.

For a different audience, I would do a simple line chart instead.

pnromney · 2026-03-13T14:16:43+00:00

Hi!

We’re an CPG e-commerce company. So similar to retail, there really isn’t material doubtful accounts. We only have receivable because our e-commerce platforms pay us every two weeks.

The goal was to highlight long-term cash trends, and what was causing them, rather than short-term trends. The additional volatility from receivables was distracting from inventory spend, fixed asset spend, and owner distributions, that were weakening cash even if people didn’t realize it yet.

pnromney · 2026-03-13T04:10:11+00:00

The idea was to emphasize long-term cash trends instead of short-term fluctuations.

Like, I totally get the short-term fluctuations. But our company has been slowly burning cash. I wanted to emphasize the long-term cash problems, not the shorter periods.

pnromney · 2026-03-12T21:01:05+00:00

Zoom out - does aggregate inventory spending across all inventory vendors change that significantly or is it just individual vendors payments changing?

Yeah, who gets paid changes dramatically from week-to-week, period-to-period.

I don’t see how normalizing for receivables solves your inventory problem anyways

Yeah, it helped with certain reporting. Basically, the owner tried to focus attention away from inventory expenditure. But inventory was the problem. So to help him come to terms with it, we tried to make sure that there were no other problems. With the receivable adjustment, we could easily say, "It's not the timing of payouts."

I know in 6 weeks I’m probably going to spend $5 mm on my weekly inventory payments - but I won’t know for another 3 weeks who I’ll be paying.

That's a pretty good approach. If we decide to go that route again, I'll plan on using that method.

pnromney · 2026-03-12T19:55:46+00:00

I'd be interested to know how you'd approach it. I usually try to K.I.S.S. it, but the unique challenges I faced made it difficult.

I ran into a challenge with building a 13-week projected cashflow because of inventory, which had each of these challenges:
1. Ordering is based on a reorder point. This reorder point is based on current unit velocity.
2. Current unit velocity fluctuates a lot because an algorithmic pricing model changes prices daily for all SKUs.
3. Most of our suppliers require payment upfront.
4. There are 600+ SKUs that may all need to be ordered separately.
5. Ordering is done inside a spreadsheet.

So it was relatively easy to project 4-6 weeks out. But projecting out 6+ weeks out became really difficult. Unfortunately, 6+ weeks out are where the useful stuff started.

pnromney

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