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Religious Discrimination at Google

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Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#261

Post by astrange »

wrzuteczka wrote: post #198
astrange wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complex statistical models can be conscious. The reason AIs aren’t conscious is they’re not embodied beings and don’t have any need to develop it to stay alive.

So how being embodied helps consciousness emerge? If it’s just the statistical model that underpins the consciousness, then it doesn’t matter if it’s embodied or not. It doesn’t matter to the algorithm what hardware it runs on.

If you're not embodied you can't die and there's no particular need to be anything.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#262

Post by teekert »

HuwFulcher wrote: post #185
tasuki wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people. The person you're replying to never equated Santa Claus with any kind god. It was just a question. Would you take an adult insisting Santa Claus is real seriously? Do you think people are entitled to their beliefs, whatever they may be?

They didn’t explicitly state it but it’s heavily implied based on the context. No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them. The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.

The fact that you say “a Devine entity” suggests you are a monotheist. As such you are atheistic wrt many many gods. Do you take all believers in all of them equally seriously?

Moreover, what is stopping me from defining Santa Claus as a Devine being?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#263

Post by ken47 »

quantified wrote: post #254
ken47 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that evidence is the state of the cosmos today? Are you a software developer? Imagine that, for testing purposes, you want to test a particular state T in a simulation app that you believe can only occur organically after a large period of time. Do you start the test simulation at a hypothetical t0 and wait to reach the desired state? Or do you simply bootstrap the simulation so that it starts in state T. Well, y…

And I can verify the software to some degree there, or (more usually) find the bugs. So this is the bug-free simulation? It's easier to run the simulation and see what happens, so much state to initialize. Without evidence, that's why it's called faith. There are thousands of unfalsifiable possible starting points, the Judeo-Christian one is laughable.

I have no desire to discuss particular religions. As I said elsewhere, some religions provide explanations which are provably false.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#264

Post by OrderlyTiamat »

anonymous_sorry wrote: post #125
HuwFulcher wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people. As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians. It would be wrong of me to deny that there is an anti-intellectual strain in Christianity but it is not the dominant trend that American media would like to espouse. Whether you think Christianity is sensible or n…

> As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians. Given that Christianity was the social norm in Europe and many European colonies for centuries, this statement is nearly equivalent to saying that many great scientific discoveries were made by Europeans. It's true, but only slightly interesting.

I respectfully disagree, given that the topic is antiscientific thinking within christianity. The fact that many contributions were made by that group is evidence regardless of the size of the group.

If this is not intuitive, consider the hypothetical world where no serious scientific contributions were made by christian europeans at all: would we then be free to dismiss that fact as uninteresting as well?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#265

Post by Gibbon1 »

quantified wrote: post #217
ekianjo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Big Bang is the best available explanation of observed facts. Best available is not proof. The sun rotating around the Earth was also the best explanation for a long time in Human history. Traditional physics theory was the best until we started to observe things at the atomic level. Certitudes in Science don't age well, and should teach humility more than absurd dogma.

Big bang has a lot more supporting evidence than a magical seven-day wishing-into-existence spree 6400 years ago. Closer to home, it makes a lot more sense that animals lived, died and were fossilized over millions of years than that they were added as hidden sculpture during the creation. Come on. And that particular god is very good at being useless since the Enlightenment. One thing religions don't do is give up t…

I disagree with the point about giving up certitudes. Really there are two sorts of religious sects.

1. Politically useful sects which demand followers and everyone else accept certitudes based on pure authority.

2. Politically useless to troublesome sects that don't.

The overton window is set such that the second group can't be acknowledged.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#266

Post by azth »

teekert wrote: post #158
kaba0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a bad take, and I'm not even religious. This is the utmost lack of respect for another person that we should strive to stray very very far away from. Also, if you would know anything at all about religion (from context, I assume you mean Christianity), they don't believe that one book trumps all of human science at all -- taking the text literally is a relatively modern take done by very few branches of i…

I feel that everyone should be free to believe what they want. It’s just that if you start talking to me like Jaweh, Zeus, Allah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are real, you loose some credibility with me. I can think of many things on the spot that have the same level of evidence as you have for your $GOD but such a conversation just doesn’t make sense to me. I prefer to spend my time otherwise.

The arrogance displayed in some of these comments is astounding. Never mind the fact that our very existence is evidence of the existence of a Creator.

It can be easily put the other way around: to a believer, if someone starts talking that we came into existence from nothingness, then they lose credibility to the former.

Point is, this is not the way to have a discussion.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#267

Post by azth »

teekert wrote: post #262
HuwFulcher wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t explicitly state it but it’s heavily implied based on the context. No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them. The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.

The fact that you say “a Devine entity” suggests you are a monotheist. As such you are atheistic wrt many many gods. Do you take all believers in all of them equally seriously? Moreover, what is stopping me from defining Santa Claus as a Devine being?

> Moreover, what is stopping me from defining Santa Claus as a Devine being?

Show me evidence that Santa Clause sent a message to us.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#268

Post by azth »

InfamousRece wrote: post #196
HuwFulcher wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t explicitly state it but it’s heavily implied based on the context. No, I wouldn’t take an adult believing in Santa Claus seriously. They’re entitled to their beliefs and if they do their job well then I have no reason to have an issue with them. The issue I take is with the equivocation they have made. Believing in Santa Claus and believing in a divine entity are two drastically different things.

In what way are they different? There is no evidence any divine entities are real just like there is no evidence that Santa is real.

The fact that you and I exist is sufficient evidence that the Creator exists.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#269

Post by azth »

igetspam wrote: post #204
HuwFulcher wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your equation of Santa Claus with God reveals your prejudice and stereotyping of religious people. As another commenter has said, many great scientific discoveries over history have been made by Christians. It would be wrong of me to deny that there is an anti-intellectual strain in Christianity but it is not the dominant trend that American media would like to espouse. Whether you think Christianity is sensible or n…

Hah! Because one worked/works at Google they must inherently be smart? If those walls could speak... No. There are stupid people at Google too. It's a company and the hiring bar is high but it's also very specific. You can be an idiot in most things but still be very good at one. I've know a few. At Google. There have also been hires that were "good demographics." (That's a quote from one of my senior leadership at t…

The very fact that you're implying that being smart and believing in God are somehow contradictory reeks of condescension. Not to mention that you're grouping all religious doctrine for all religions into a "fairy tale" bucket shows that you did not spend time or effort understanding at least the existing major religions on Earth.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#270

Post by azth »

lamontcg wrote: post #249
ken47 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you prove the Big Bang occurred? If so, can you prove that nothing preceded a Big Bang? If you are as rational as you arrogantly imply, then the obvious answers to these are no. Are you equally appalled when you come across average people talking about these theories as if they are facts? I wonder.

Uh yes on the first one. The Big Bang definitely happened and all the details of the study of the CMBR (for one thing -- there's many others like the Lyman Alpha Forest) show that it did. The universe was once much, much smaller and the density was higher and the temperature was a plasma. You can try to hide being "did you actually see it happen?" kind of arguments, but there's a massive amount of actual evidence beh…

What happened before the Big Bang, and who or what initiated it?
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