Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 330 posts

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#121

Post by huhkerrf »

SilverElfin wrote: post #117
sealeck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The technologists who create it believe they should control it I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers.

> a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) What the hell is a “cum-captain”? Search isn’t helping.

Probably this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum

I.e. finance man as well as captain of industry

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#122

Post by KPGv2 »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #76
anjel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused. Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's p…

> 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem. Why is this Uber's problem? Do you realize how ridiculously dumb, inefficient, and corrupt a 6 figure taxi license is? It is not Uber's job to compensate for that ridiculousness. They provided a better and more cash efficien…

"B-but my philosophical argument was aesthetically pleasing," he shouted over the sound of eight billion people starving to death.

Setting aside your implicit assumption that what nigh-unregulated AI is set to do to humanity is "progress," having a sound argument is pretty pointless if it leads to tremendous human suffering.

Reminds me of the paradox of intolerance, where bad faith actors say "it's intolerant to be intolerant of intolerance" (i.e., argue for zero exceptions to a maxim) when it's much more preferable to say "you should be tolerant, except in the case where tolerance leads to tremendous suffering [as in the case of allowing the rise of fascism because you have to be tolerant of it]."

See also libertarianism, where simple rules are preferable to good outcomes.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#123

Post by tptacek »

erelong wrote: post #81
portmanteur wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which ways, specifically? Or, which ways would you like to promote a discussion about?

The Second Vatican Council movement has had "popes" that seem to directly attack previous Catholic teaching; I expect this will resolve to the council being rejected as a false council like the "robber council" of Second Council of Ephesus, as well as the papal claimants being declared invalid or "not popes" since that time. The analogy would be like if, since the world cup of soccer is going on, FIFA had a meeting a…

I think the thing here is that if you're simply declaring yourself to be in a different religion than Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV, there's not much to be gained arguing with them. Like, a Zaidi Shia Muslim would also disagree with Vatican II. There's nothing wrong with that. They're just, you know, in a different religion.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#124

Post by bittercynic »

arjie wrote: post #93
anjel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused. Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's p…

Amusing. By yoking taxicab drivers to the other two, the argument attempts to make them seem like victims. However, most people’s direct experience with taxicab drivers and the resulting improvement under Uber directly contradicts that sentiment. This probably has the opposite effect and makes it seem like the AI companies aren’t so bad if they’re akin to the guys who freed us from cabs.

I've only used cabs a few times, but it seemed to be the operators were both. They were squeezed deep into the economic margins, and they were also often terrible to their passengers.

Same for Uber/Lyft, but they really tried to earn a good review while still providing a pretty unpleasant experience.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#125

Post by thewebguyd »

erelong wrote: post #81
portmanteur wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which ways, specifically? Or, which ways would you like to promote a discussion about?

The Second Vatican Council movement has had "popes" that seem to directly attack previous Catholic teaching; I expect this will resolve to the council being rejected as a false council like the "robber council" of Second Council of Ephesus, as well as the papal claimants being declared invalid or "not popes" since that time. The analogy would be like if, since the world cup of soccer is going on, FIFA had a meeting a…

GS 36 is just reaffirming Aquinas and his doctrine of primary and secondary causality. Primary cause being God is the source of all being and sustains everything, secondary cause being that God created a universe where created things have real, intrinsic causal powers. A fire burns because it has the natural property to, not because God is directly performing an action to burn the wood.

"enjoy their own laws and values" is affirming that the natural world has an objective structure that can be studied on its own terms. Denying that autonomy is occasionalism, which is a heretical view that created things have no real power or nature of their own.

Genisis supports the statement about autonomy. Adam is given the task to subdue the earth, name the animals. To name them means to understand their specific natures. God did not dictate the names, he left that to Adam's human intellect. That's exactly what Gaudium et Spec refers to. Humans utilize their reason to discover the laws of creation and organize human society. We have genuine liberty within the overreaching metaphysical boundries.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#126

Post by ahepp »

anjel wrote: post #107
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle to see how the 3 examples go together. Your exposition implies a connection, but I struggle to see one. The best I could do is that it has to do with rights and responsibilities? The first example is clear. And it has pretty much carried on, as the "right to property" and "the responsibility to cover damage to other's rights". The second example, even though you wrote it as Uber vs. the cab driver, is more…

1st example was the progenitor of what eveolved into strict liability. (If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages. 2nd example is an illustration of that longheld legal precedent's being curiously ignored (nevermind the cost savings was a bum rush and livery costs are now higher than before the innovative advent) 3rd is a call to…

> If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages

So if you’re a business offering poor quality services, and I come along and start offering higher quality services, I owe you damages for the impact I have on your business?

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#127

Post by pstuart »

steveBK123 wrote: post #35
merelydev wrote: post #7

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

> The technologists who create it believe they should control it I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk. They truly think society will be re-ordered by this technology... and they should be in control of that re-ordering rather than democratically elected governments.

> I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk.

This needs to be shouted from the rooftops!

All the Web3 edgelords talk about how democracy is inefficient and how their magic blockchains will fix things but don't actually back up their claims with anything.

Sure, it could be applied and might work, but the only thing blockchain brings is a distributed immutable ledger -- but all the trust actions happen outside that ledger. And that's not what slows us down, it's the people, ideas, power and process that makes it inefficient.

Money is a hell of a drug.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#128

Post by skybrian »

merelydev wrote: post #7

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

The logic of an arms race is that nobody controls the technology. For a literal example, Ukraine and Russia are locked in a drone arms race. Ukraine needs improve drones as fast as they can. There’s no getting off that train until the war is over.

This is starting to be true for AI and security bugs. Writing secure Internet-facing software will depend on AI security review. Anthropic can hold Mythos back for a while to buy some time, but the competition isn’t going to stop.

It’s also not always true that technologists think they should control AI. Some companies support legislation. But there’s not a lot of progress, so they end up making their own decisions in the meantime.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#129

Post by mike_hearn »

idiotsecant wrote: post #86
mike_hearn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not. You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will…

There are plenty of rules that we apply across the board. No nuclear weapons for anyone who's not already got them is an example. This doesn't take some spooky one world government to do. This post is wild. Essentially, you're saying that any attempt to regulate AI as the existential threat that it almost certainly is the antichrist. It's bonkers.

That specific rule is enforced by assassinating the leaders and scientists of governments that don't agree to it. See: Iran. I don't think that's what anyone means when they say multilateralism. It's effectively an ad hoc global government defined by the reach of air power.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#130

Post by conorbergin »

tptacek wrote: post #116
conorbergin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found your previous comment chain on the matter, in which you conflated Catholicism and Conservatism, the second of which I'm sure you have your own personal definition, as there is no Conservative church that decides on doctrine. Catholic social teaching, which this encyclical is grounded on, has it's roots in Rerum novarum (1891) by Leo XIII (the Pope's namesake) and it dealt with the changing conditions of peopl…

I mean, the commenter you're responding to has assumed the position of sedevacantism, so I don't think you're going to be able to justify Vatican 2 to them from first principles. :)

A lot of this thinking still predates the Vatican 2 significantly, I think this person has made their mind up and is working backwards.
Post reply on HN