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Magnifica Humanitas

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Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#331

Post by qsort »

Planktonne wrote: post #300
qsort wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians. The problem I have with this is that it's structurally a motte-and-bailey claim. If I have to take it literally, then it's obviously true and it's simply unserious to deny it: the Church does have a pervasive influence on Western civilization. The way it's often rhetorically used, however, is in opposition and to the exclusion of other stran…

> The way it's often rhetorically used, however, is in opposition and to the exclusion of other strands of thought I don't think this is actually true; I think your own bias is colouring the conversation here.

I have almost never seen someone start a sentence with "Christian roots" or "Judeo-Christian values" and not end it with a tirade that uses religion as the fig leaf to justify and authorize their reactionary politics.

The minimalist claim that the West is massively influenced by the Church is true to the point of banality, the maximalist claims those ideas are usually deployed to champion simply do not follow.

If only there were a name for this rhetorical fallacy...

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#333

Post by Curosinono »

parasubvert wrote: post #295
Curosinono wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"Church" ok "and any kind of believe system hurts our society and divides us." People shouldn't believe anything? Disagreement and conflict are natural. How we handle these disagreements while striving for widespread peace and prosperity is the question.

I don't believe. I accept things i don't know and i know what i know.

There is no inherant issue with this. in contrary it makes me mentally stronger.

I can choose on my own terms if/when i want to end my life. If i get very sick, i don't have to hope for a god or priests blessing to end my life, i will just do it.

But religion is different: if you believe that homosexuality is wrong due to your religion, there is nothing i can argue about. Your priest told you this based on some book or story from 2000 years ago and you do not question this.

I know plenty of strong christians and muslism in germany who do not like homosexual people. And its dividing our society.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#334

Post by fsflover »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #234
Lerc wrote: post #178

I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"

Same thing though. AI is largely a service provided by companies Yes yes I know, open source models exist, yadda yadda I think it's safe to say the overwhelming amount of AI usage in the world today is gates by corporations though. The vast majority of people will barely configure their own OS nevermind managing their own locally hosted open source AI instance

Open source models don't exist. Open-weight ones do, which are more equivalent to freeware than free software.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#335

Post by ttfkam »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #298
malfist wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm down to start a butleirian jihad

Sure, we’ll get a tyrannical worm phase… but really I think I’d prefer that to the path of tech bros and MBAs controlling my universe. At least it makes the focus clear.

I think you might have skipped over the 10,000+ years of strict feudalism, a shrouded theocracy pushing their century-spanning agendas, aristocracy through landed gentry, and a drug-addled transportation cartel, all overseen by a massive, monopolistic megacorporation that controls all trade, economic affairs, and commerce throughout the universe. And everyone's a drug addict if they can afford it.

But sure, at least they didn't have AI! lol!

In other words, Warhammer 40K but without any aliens to trigger a massive xenophobic response that removed all warlike guardrails.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#336

Post by komali2 »

Lerc wrote: post #178

I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"

Yes! I've felt exactly the same. Everything people have taken issue with - "plagiarism," concentration of wealth and power, termination of jobs, environmental harm to feed data centers, land being wasted on new datacenters, resources being distributed terribly so as to feed the AI monster, slopcode being shit out as fast as possible to stay ahead of the market, software quality dropping for the same reason, engineers phoning it in at work to hit LLM KPIs, it's all just capitalism in its most raw, inevitable, end game form.

Edit: Someone replied to this with a question. I'm rate-limited here for getting into a flamewar with a PRC citizen that was gloating to me about my country being possibly invaded soon (which, fair, flamewars are bad), so I'll need to put my reply below:

There's no exact road map, but generally speaking, in our capitalist countries today, wealth started out more distributed, and governments had more power, in the beginning of their liberalization. States often competed in markets or simply nationalized things like power, healthcare, education. Ongoing examples of that are lots of places in Europe.

With the advent of neoliberalism (Thatcher, Reagan), concentrated capital converts more easily to political power in an exponential manner - more money, more ability to buy government, leads to more money, more ability to buy government.

Corporations are profit generation algorithms. They want the profit to always go up, and when they run against the barriers of laws (restricting their environmental impact, ability to underpay their workers, create cheap and dangerous working environments, do international trade in some way), naturally the next investment step is to remove those barriers.

So, early capitalism is strong regulation, socialized services and infrastructure, government competition, some nationalization, and private ownership of the means of production.

Late stage capitalism is weak/no regulation, no services, privatized infrastructure, no government competition, no nationalization, sectors tending towards monopolization, and wealth concentration.

"Raw capitalism" is where the commodification of everything is complete.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#337

Post by pj_mukh »

AvAn12 wrote: post #323
pj_mukh wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"by providing food or housing" vs "if it was used to increase profits" Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself. And as such, the technology s…

Tech is supposed to be a tool that serves other products ends, not an end in itself. At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us: muxk, thiel, Karp, etc. So it should be no surprise that the rest of us are ready, willing and able to push back just as hard. tech biz leads should just run their companies and stop trying to play president or god

"At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us:"

I realize this is what's happening on the headlines, but most of the technology being "deployed" is back-office automation, robotics etc. that no one writes about and none of the tech baddies have monopolistic control over. I refuse to let muxk, thiel, Karp to run the conversation and setup the reaction either. It is exciting and dramatic but not necessarily influential.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#338

Post by squidbeak »

pj_mukh wrote: post #293
nemomarx wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the technology is used to serve humanity by providing food or housing, it seems like his stance would be approving. But if it was used to increase profits and people still starved that would be bad, right? "AI must be used for the good of humanity" isn't even an anti ai position really.

"by providing food or housing" vs "if it was used to increase profits" Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself. And as such, the technology s…

There aren't any profits with full automation - but there is instead total power for whoever owns that automation.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#339

Post by Curosinono »

parasubvert wrote: post #330
Curosinono wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spite? Its not spite. The church creates a believe system which indoctrinates all of us and took our cultures away. The germanic tribes were believers in nature, church removed all of this. Church also doesn't see woman as equal. Just because they might sometimes also say postive things or things we might align, doesn't mean i need their oppinion. And especially not on hn

Indoctrination and cultural erasure isn't unique to the church. With Germanic tribes - the Saxons, Angles, Normans, etc., while women's rights ebbed and flowed over the centuries, they were rife with double standards and were still quite patriarchal. They didn't just believe in nature, they believed in the same pagan gods as the Nordic peoples. The point is that times change, and institutions change, and holding grud…

This is not true. The number of believers and official people in the church is continuesly declining around the globe.

1990 there were nearly 60 Million people in the church in germany (nearly everyone) now we are down to under 40 Million which crossed the line of 50%

This is real tangable progress.

The only downside is, that we do not sit together and formulate something which might give people hold who are not ready to be self stable mentally and might need something like this. And we also do not try to align together on rituals which help us to live better together.

I'm also still affected by the indoctrination of the church. As you can see, i argue against church not just because I like to argue, but because i really really hate religion and especially the christian church in germany, due to my own values and experience. This is not old i'm only 36.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#340

Post by applfanboysbgon »

perfmode wrote: post #271
jdw64 wrote: post #248

>“technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it,” If critical decisions affecting human life—such as hiring, lending, crime prediction, and welfare—are processed in an opaque black box, people will lose their fundamental right to explain their context or appeal against the machine's algorithmic verdicts

What is old made new. Franz Kafka passed away June 2nd 1924.

Is it wrong? Individuals were absolutely getting dehumanized in Kafka's time, but also since then are becoming ever increasingly more so, so it makes sense to speak of it continuing to happen and get worse. It is not binary.
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