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Religious Discrimination at Google

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Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#231

Post by bradlys »

thinkingemote wrote: post #24
k1ll3r wrote: post #16

But what if you really are crazy? Not a dysfunctional schizo type of crazy, but just talking to invisible deities in the sky and sincerely believing they are there type of crazy? Which is literally what the author (proudly) claims to be, no? Are we supposed to take such beliefs seriously? Being unable to tell people they're full of shit, in a respectful manner, is much more of a serious problem here. You want to hold…

History will also show you that it is religion that has formed the moral and social framework for today's values to be opposed to oppression. You might think they, human rights, good morals, fundamental truths, are innate and fundamental but then look at geography and history together and you will see that it's religion that is the origin for these beliefs. The twentieth century featured many deaths caused by 2 diffe…

Slave mentality back in the day (2000+ years ago) was converted into religious beliefs and then it got “mainstream” and all the religion that was focused on being a chad became unpopular thanks to this slave religion which made being a slave cool and being a chad uncool.

That’s the tl;dr of your argument afaict. Problem there is that religion was the problem in both contexts - so I don’t think it provided a solution so much as it caused the problem in the first place. Even then - it forced slave mentality onto the masses and that wasn’t exactly great for everyone either… Self-flagellation anyone?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#232

Post by swat535 »

teekert wrote: post #31
krisoft wrote: post #23

Quoting the most concrete example he gives: > If you start talking about your religious beliefs at a social event people treat you like you just farted in their face. They frequently will scrunch up their faces and might ask a question like “Do you REALLY believe all that stuff?” When you tell them that you do they might even go so far as to say “Sorry that’s just not the kind of thing I associate with someone as sma…

You are at a meeting with colleagues, one colleague suddenly starts to insist that Santa Claus is real. Do you take them seriously? Sure it’s freedom of speech but there will be some kind of drop in respect. I mean I get that you believe that one book trumps all of human science because you were raised that way but when you grow up your critical thinking skills should kick in. If they don’t, it’s very difficult to ke…

> Santa Claus is real.

I'm going on a tangent here but I will make a bold statement: I think one unfortunate side effect of the sciences, is the acceleration of the demise of other domains of humans knowledge, specifically philosophy.

After all, why bother reading the works of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and compare their arguments against the likes of Nietzsche, Kant and Jean Paul Sartre when we know about Evolution ? Those old ancient texts and discussions are silly and passe.. It is clear that these poor uneducated people were busy arguing over the existence of Santa Clause.

The 21st century has regrettably produced some of the most illiterate minds in _this_ area. We have incredibly bright people who can build complex systems, think logically and excel at sciences, yet they fail at expanding their minds slightly above the materialistic universe; This is where arts, philosophy and theology reside. We call it the realm of transcendence.

The side effect of such phenomena is that bleeds into today's thought process and prevents nuanced discussions regarding any topic (whether it's equality, religion, freedom, justice,..). We have completely forgotten how to form coherent arguments and this thread itself is a great example; The basis of modern discussions boils down to: I can shout the loudest, therefore I am right. The lack of humility is rampant, especially on social media and everything is black and white.

I don't care if you are an Atheist, a Theist, an Agnostic or a Marxist, but if you have the urge to start a discussion with "You think Santa Clause is real", I plead you to think twice before posting it and go read any pages of Francis Shaffer or Soren Kierkeggard and then come here and assert that these people had completely surrendered all thought and reason.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#233

Post by bradlys »

dvzk wrote: post #49
0des wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel the same way about people who believe their deity is a soul that was a person?

The inconsistency gotchas in this thread are hilarious. “What if you replace religion with race or gender?” “What if you replace AI with god?” If your answers change then you have no principles.

What if you replace religion with Tahiti?

Can you tell how stupid the question is then? You can’t just do arbitrary word replacement. Words have meaning and are context dependent.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#234

Post by dragonwriter »

wrzuteczka wrote: post #36
0des wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel the same way about people who believe their deity is a soul that was a person?

Is there any proof that the AI is anything else than a complex statistical model and actually has consciousness?

Is there any proof anything is anything but a mechanistic model and actually has consciousness?

Is there any definition of consciousness which even brings it into the realm of things for which there could in principal be evidence distinguishing it's presence from its absence?

The usual argument about intelligence usually retreats into it being a property entirely separate from the observable universe and yet still has it as something for which people demand “evidence” of it existing anywhere they don't assume without evidence that it exists before being willing to accept things equivalent in observable qualities to be actually similar.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#235

Post by hoop_the_loop »

0xy wrote: post #220
Tomte wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He goes even further. "My superiors said clearly discriminatory things, but I won't tell you what. I will tell you some other words which I believe they truly wanted to say — but didn't — and look how awful those invented utterances are. No, I really won't tell what they actually said."

Quoted post unavailable.

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Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#236

Post by hugozmith »

leeroyjenkins11 wrote: post #211
teekert wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are at a meeting with colleagues, one colleague suddenly starts to insist that Santa Claus is real. Do you take them seriously? Sure it’s freedom of speech but there will be some kind of drop in respect. I mean I get that you believe that one book trumps all of human science because you were raised that way but when you grow up your critical thinking skills should kick in. If they don’t, it’s very difficult to ke…

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#237

Post by ken47 »

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…

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, you do the latter of course. So do the events at t0 need to occur for you to observe state T?

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#238

Post by dvzk »

bradlys wrote: post #233
dvzk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inconsistency gotchas in this thread are hilarious. “What if you replace religion with race or gender?” “What if you replace AI with god?” If your answers change then you have no principles.

What if you replace religion with Tahiti? Can you tell how stupid the question is then? You can’t just do arbitrary word replacement. Words have meaning and are context dependent .

And? This just proves you lack a fundamental principle for or against discrimination. That’s fine, you do not need one. But you can’t refute a categorical opposition to discrimination by listing more subcategories of discrimination.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#239

Post by TulliusCicero »

concinds wrote: post #189
TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it sounds like they think Google's chatbot is sentient? ...okay.

He's not the only Google engineer to believe we're uncomfortably close: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/06/09/artificia... Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers. We're headed towards a dilemma where most scientists claim categorically that a given AI/robot is non-conscious…

> Given how vibrant the academic/philosophical discussions of AI and consciousness have been for decades now, it's anti-intellectual to pretend there are any obvious answers.

As a general principle, sure. Right now, though? AI's are still a looooong way away.

> If robots start behaving and talking like in Detroit: Become Human, won't people react with sympathy?

As I understand it, those are far, far more advanced than the chatbots we have.

Re: Religious Discrimination at Google

#240

Post by locopati »

l33t2328 wrote: post #99
londons_explore wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way religions spread is to violate this social etiquette. Many religions explicitly require followers to try to 'spread the word' for exactly this reason.

All the religions that don’t encourage that quickly die out from lack of new members.

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