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Magnifica Humanitas

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Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#451

Post by fuzzfactor »

Curosinono wrote: post #240
brookst wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean that nothing of value can come from the church, and we should ignore all ideas they put forth out of some kind of spite?

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

Well, I do have to give the Pope some credit.

This weekend I upgraded the PC of a church lady who has about a 10-year old mini-PC, so now it has the latest Windows 11. This was not easy, it was a shambles of Windows 10 combined literally with amounts of older Windows 11. From which auto-updates would take it no further. OTOH on the bright side autoupdates could do no further damage.

I attribute all success to a miracle, considering there is only 32GB of soldered-in drive space and 4GB memory :\

I don't think it would have come to pass if it weren't for the Pope's smiling face appearing with delight each time I rebooted, when her PC's everyday desktop background picture came into view. This is where he is joining in with the tribal rhythms while visiting Africa, honoring their traditional culture while they honor his visit in their colorful regalia.

When you're dealing with anything that challenging, or more so, you need all the blessings and prayers you can get :)

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#453

Post by theflyinghorse »

bzmrgonz wrote: post #436

I am confused with the church's stand on this. If it is a genuine moment in time that the created begin to create on their own accord, then why not promote the distribution of these ai creations to us, so we can boost our productivity and carry on for another millenia or two. Or is it that this creation truly gives us independence from church, state, and consumerism? and that frightens them? Remember that there are 3…

Why should you posses a homestead? What value do you produce that droid can't that would make you deserving of anything at all? Why should corporations that design, manufacture and program the droid not own the land instead?

We need to very rapidly decouple human worth from the economic lens otherwise the economic argument is against humans.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#454

Post by wilg »

I'm as happy we have a non-crazy pope as the next liberal, but as someone who isn't religious I think it's very important to be skeptical of any opinion given by a religious leader. As such, they've declared they are rejecting the best tools for understanding humanity, culture, and the physical world, and have deeply compromised judgement.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#455

Post by oersted »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #272
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #127

This quote is from 1903. Times haven't changed that much: > Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people.

The truly interesting question, and the crux of the matter, also hasn't changed much since 1903: How?

It did absolutely change, a lot, it was one of the main themes of the 20th century: revolution. In the old sense of the word, turning the social order upside down.

It took many forms: capitalist social democracy, communism, fascism, feminism... Left or right, without making a value judgement, they were all revolutions seeking to empower the working masses.

Of course, when you get rid of kings, it's really really hard to make sure the vacuum is not filled by something even worse. Credit where credit's due, as a European, I do believe that the US is one of the few cases that was somewhat successful in not completely bungling this opportunity (although there's the detail of slave labour, and the conquest of natives...).

And after many-many horribly failed attempts, much of the world did end up in a relatively healthy state around the second half of the 20th century. Fukuyama's end of history and all.

Now we seem to be regressing again. Perhaps it's part of the eternal cycle and it was always coming. Perhaps it's not actually regressing all that much, and it just looks like it to our coddled selves, or we have become more ambitious on what we think is right. Perhaps people have found new loopholes (tech) on how to get ahead and dominate the rest of us, and we just need to catch up and get it under control again.

Perhaps that quote from 1903 is relevant now, but it doesn't mean that it was relevant the whole time since. Perhaps it was, I wasn't there.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#456

Post by gchamonlive »

logicchains wrote: post #361
gchamonlive wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think while it's a very lucid comment, it's still too much reconciliatory for the position that the pope occupies. He should be advocating from a sustainable transition from the current capitalist/consumerist economic doctrine to one more centered on welfare and the care for the other, following his religious doctrine's moral values.

The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful. If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution.

This smuggles in so many assumptions and misconceptions I find it hard to decide where to start. Maybe from the beginning:

> The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful.

This might be true in the context of the original sin, but philosophically speaking you can't make this assertion, since there is no consensus on what the human nature is, or even if there is an essential human nature.

> If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working

That's incorrect because it assumes the only reason for working is profit, in which case art for instance in many forms wouldn't exist.

> they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution

This is just a wrong impression what communism is. What creates these conditions are autocracies and oligarchies, not communism. In either case, even if this were true, this statement isn't falsifiable so can't really be taken into account.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#457

Post by gchamonlive »

iamacyborg wrote: post #385
gchamonlive wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think while it's a very lucid comment, it's still too much reconciliatory for the position that the pope occupies. He should be advocating from a sustainable transition from the current capitalist/consumerist economic doctrine to one more centered on welfare and the care for the other, following his religious doctrine's moral values.

I don’t know that the Papacy has ever been about that though

That the papacy isn't about speaking out when the world in the eyes of the pope is taking a turn away from the catholic moral principles?

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#458

Post by thayne »

stavros wrote: post #319
daheza wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if there were any solution to the lack of jobs due to AI implementation then people would be fine. There isn’t any solution from either party in the US so people are naturally attacking the thing that is causing the problem.

The solution to the lack of jobs should be a strong social safety net, but Americans don't want this because socialism, so what can you do? You can't really halt progress, and taxing the rich (or corporations) is very unpalatable there, so everyone is kind of stuck.

You need more than just a strong social safety net. If people are losing well-paying jobs, even if the safety net covers their basic needs, their quality of living goes down, and they are potentially also losing something that gives them purpose and something to do with their time, not to mention losing a sense of independence.

Let's suppose that we did get UBI, and AI replaced most jobs. Then we'll basically just have the wealthy elite who control the resources and the AIs, and everyone else who live off of the basic income, with no real way to increase their wealth. That still sounds dystopian to me.

And to be clear, I am not at all opposed to a better safety net, but it should be a safety net, not a replacement for employment for most of the population.

Also, I don't think it is very likely that AI will replace everyone's job. But I am worried that it will result in shrinking the middle class, and increasing wealth disparity.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#459

Post by lobocinza »

komali2 wrote: post #281
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truly interesting question, and the crux of the matter, also hasn't changed much since 1903: How?

There's been plenty of examples of workers seizing the means of production and establishing sustained non-capitalist organization (State or otherwise). We have any number of strategies to choose from: The PRC, Soviet Union, Syndicalized Spain (my favorite, seems the least likely to lead to police state), Vietnam, Cuba. The question thus isn't "how," but more specifically a couple other questions: "How do we prevent c…

All of the examples you gave caused much more tragedy than the system they meant to replace.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#460

Post by gymbeaux »

opsnooperfax wrote: post #419
hnthrow0287345 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be more meaningful if, perhaps, we had to swear an oath to it before being able to practice. And practitioners would be treated more seriously if everyone knew we swore that oath. And the legal utility as accountability and defense would also be useful. Of course people are going to ignore it if there's no force behind it.

Professional liability and licensure would create assurances with some teeth, but there are some major drawbacks.

Enlighten us to these drawbacks. On the surface I am inclined to say the pros would outweigh the cons. Compared to other professions, software engineering seems to struggle the most with H-1B/Green Card abuse and interview processes. Job interviews are absurdly different (easier) for doctors, lawyers, et al. than for software engineers, and that I believe is because of the licensure. I do think licensure adds overhead to an industry (e.g., malpractice insurance, governing bodies, license management) and that probably discourages anyone with real power (like FAANG) to pursue it and try to set it as an industry-wide standard. Most software engineers in the U.S. are making around $130-140k, but lawyers and medical doctors usually make significantly more (perhaps because of the licensure overhead - I'm not sure if malpractice insurance is included in a medical doctor's salary- I would imagine it's not and is taken out of each paycheck like any other industry's health insurance benefits).
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