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Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

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Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#101

Post by pear01 »

david_shi wrote: post #60
levocardia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intentional parallels are hard to miss: - Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum; current Pope Leo XIV chose his name as an explicit gesture to his nominative predecessor - This encyclical is a return to the earlier tradition of latin names (Magnifica Humanitas) for encyclicals, as opposed to many of Pope Francis' which used Italian (Laudato si') - The official date it was signed was 135 years to the day since Rerum N…

It's interesting how natural historic mimesis seems to be in these vaunted roles. Presidents have their favorite past counterparts, so did emperors, and clearly the Pope does as well. Does this kind of imitation prevent truly creative action taking? Did Akhenaten have someone in mind when he declared his own religion?

Whatever he had in mind there is surely a warning in how rapidly his efforts were reversed once he passed from the scene.

This is not merely a matter of "favorites" or "imitation" but one of legitimacy. Rome was not built in a day and so forth. Often the most successful paradigm-shifting leaders are ones who can deftly command the legitimacy of the past while adapting their society to a new future. But attempting the latter while disposing of the former usually fails, as in the case of Akhenaten.

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#102

Post by aidenn0 »

Abh1Works wrote: post #82

Can someone explain to me what encyclical is, and what is it significance in the history of the Catholic Church?

It's an open letter from the pope. An encyclical will often clarify Church doctrine on a topic, or set of topics. See e.g. Humanae Vitae[1] for an example of one that has resulted in, essentially, a lay rebellion — at the time it was issued many clergy, including Bishops opposed it, but the Church itself has gradually become far more conservative (perhaps as a reaction to Vatican II) in the intervening years.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanae_vitae

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#103

Post by aidenn0 »

8bitsrule wrote: post #78

We don't need popes or effing machines to tell us what we're doing wrong. We all already know that. What we do need is a lot more ordinary people to do something about it.

"Ordinary people" can be moved to action by moving statements from people they look to for leadership.

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#104

Post by mrkeen »

jdkoeck wrote: post #90
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"UM ACTUALLY THOSE SWEATSHOP WORKERS ARE LUCKY TO BE WORKING FOR PENNIES AN HOUR TO MAKE MY OVERPRICED CONSUMER ELECTRONICS AND THESE FLY-ASS Js"

I suggest a look at the recent economic development of Bangladesh, if you want something less abstract to illustrate the point that the reduction in poverty is very noticeable. You would think that a great reduction in extreme poverty would give people pause, but it is almost always barely acknowledged. The strange conclusion is that people who tell you they care the most about poverty do not actually care about it i…

My last impression of Bangladesh was the fire accord stuff, i.e. build emergency exits and get garment factory owners to stop locking their workers inside since they keep going up in flames.

Maybe they've grown. Is Bangladesh at the stage where they outsource labour to other countries yet?

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#105

Post by Izikiel43 »

akkartik wrote: post #36
Izikiel43 wrote: post #11

This reminds me of the second half of the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons

You mean the Endymion books, or Fall of Hyperion? I'm rereading the latter right now..

For the religion bits, if I remember correctly, it was a bit of Hyperion but mostly the Endymion books, which are the latter half of the cantos.

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#106

Post by krige »

xdennis wrote: post #94
ilaksh wrote: post #18

I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice. Also, even though I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity, I think that much of the world has long since lost a proper sense of intrinsic human value. It's really gone from overt exploitation to slightly more mild exploitation where we pretend the system is really merit base…

[flagged]

It's been over 12 years since gamergate. 10 years since it was co-opted by parasites. You've got to let it go.

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#107

Post by pryce »

orochimaaru wrote: post #30
ilaksh wrote: post #18

I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice. Also, even though I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity, I think that much of the world has long since lost a proper sense of intrinsic human value. It's really gone from overt exploitation to slightly more mild exploitation where we pretend the system is really merit base…

Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing. Post-industrial world needed human capital. Hence, the need for human value. If you notice most of this "need" has arisen out of then need for industrial expansion. Post-AI will be interesting. Will we go back to pre-industri…

If my definition of 'value' was something that was totally contingent on both post-industrial society and an ultracapitalist approach to production, and it made me deduce that human being's lives over thousands of years or in other societies were worth "nothing", I think I would interpret this as a 'reductio-ad-absurdum'. That is, by deducing an absurd conclusion from the premise, that makes a strong argument that my definition of 'value' must be so narrow as to be effectively broken. I would respond by looking for a different, more wide definition of value, among the various ones that have been proposed.

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#108

Post by nvader »

cucho wrote: post #86
nvader wrote: post #62

This article needs to be retitled, as it stands it's misleading. Papal Encyclicals[0] are solely authored by the Pope, even if there has been secular scholarship involved in the writing. It is never "presented" by anyone else, and to frame it as presented primarily by Christopher Olah "alongside" the pope is to betray an ignorance of what's officially going on. Not sure how we arrived at the present title, "Anthropic…

> Not sure how we arrived at the present title It was me. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Chris Olah co-authored the encyclical with the Pope. I just found it noteworthy that there was someone from the “industry” at the encyclical presentation on May 25, which I think is a first. Usually, they are all clergy or academics.

Ah, I appreciate that. I agree with you that Chris Olah's presence might be noteworthy for this audience. It's just phrased a little unfortunately.

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#109

Post by wahern »

orochimaaru wrote: post #30
ilaksh wrote: post #18

I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice. Also, even though I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity, I think that much of the world has long since lost a proper sense of intrinsic human value. It's really gone from overt exploitation to slightly more mild exploitation where we pretend the system is really merit base…

Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing. Post-industrial world needed human capital. Hence, the need for human value. If you notice most of this "need" has arisen out of then need for industrial expansion. Post-AI will be interesting. Will we go back to pre-industri…

The concept of fundamental human rights is certainly new, but our notion of intrinsic human value (and intrinsic value of other life and things) arises from our empathy, which at least in its degree is perhaps our most important defining trait as a species. (Our empathy may have been a prerequisite for the emergence of our intelligence.)

Conflating the two is why some people have trouble understanding why religions like Buddhism and Christianity seemed to tolerate so much inequality and violence; or more generally just assumed people writ large were historically more callous and uncaring than today.

Arguably one of the downsides, though, to a focus on rights vs intrinsic value is that rights are typically couched in materialist terms. Most of the time that's probably for the better, but sometimes maybe not.

Re: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

#110

Post by vasco »

ilaksh wrote: post #18

I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice. Also, even though I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity, I think that much of the world has long since lost a proper sense of intrinsic human value. It's really gone from overt exploitation to slightly more mild exploitation where we pretend the system is really merit base…

> I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls" because I think that's really premature and pretty obvious that AIs are not people at this point.

It really is en vogue to have this attitude that everyone in church is stupid for believing but it's a huge disservice to yourself to not understand the Vatican is full of the equivalent of the best PhDs sourced from all over the world centered around their specific topic of interest, theology.

Also for the time being you can see that the Vatican understands AI much better than you already, just have a read here: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... [0]

> ANTIQUA ET NOVA > Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence

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