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Pope Francis has died

reuters.com

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Re: Pope Francis has died

#731

Post by skissane »

lupusreal wrote: post #590
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I sincerely hope that at some point we can develop artificial wombs and use them to render this whole debate moot. Instead of abortion we can take the fetus out, put it into an artificial womb then let it be raised as an orphan or whatever. It should make both sides happy, IF they are both being honest about their motives.

> Instead of abortion we can take the fetus out, put it into an artificial womb then let it be raised as an orphan or whatever. It should make both sides happy, IF they are both being honest about their motives.

I think very few people who have religious opposition to abortion would actually be happy about the advent of "artificial wombs". They might view it as a lesser evil, but not as a good thing. Because, while belief in the wrongfulness of deliberately killing an unborn child is an important motivator, it generally isn't the sole motivator – another important motivator is the belief that God has a plan for the process of human reproduction, and wandering too far off script is wrong in itself, with artificial wombs likely to be seen as going quite a long way off – at best maybe tolerable as a lesser evil in some cases.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#732

Post by ta20240528 »

skissane wrote: post #731
lupusreal wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely hope that at some point we can develop artificial wombs and use them to render this whole debate moot. Instead of abortion we can take the fetus out, put it into an artificial womb then let it be raised as an orphan or whatever. It should make both sides happy, IF they are both being honest about their motives.

> Instead of abortion we can take the fetus out, put it into an artificial womb then let it be raised as an orphan or whatever. It should make both sides happy, IF they are both being honest about their motives. I think very few people who have religious opposition to abortion would actually be happy about the advent of "artificial wombs". They might view it as a lesser evil, but not as a good thing. Because, while b…

I think the money would be better spent in curing adults from believing in iron-age superstitions.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#733

Post by rpigab »

moffkalast wrote: post #534
jimmcslim wrote: post #237

The Vatican published an interesting document on AI [1], which attributes a number of quotes to Pope Francis: * As Pope Francis noted, the machine “makes a technical choice among several possibilities based either on well-defined criteria or on statistical inferences. Human beings, however, not only choose, but in their hearts are capable of deciding." * In light of this, the use of AI, as Pope Francis said, must be…

* As Pope Francis observes, the wave function collapses.

Related: Vatican hosts quantum science workshop to spread benefits of technology

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2023-12/vati...

Re: Pope Francis has died

#734

Post by exe34 »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #627
exe34 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but in their hearts are capable of deciding I question both the organ and the action.

He’s speaking to a popular audience in a poetic fashion. No one believes a pump in your chest is the seat of intellgence, even if it may be involved in some extended and removed manner with the expression of intelligence. If Francis held Thomistic views on the subject, then even the brain, while needed for human intelligence, does not suffice for its operation, as functions like abstraction require the intellect, whi…

> He’s speaking to a popular audience in a poetic fashion. No one believes a pump in your chest is the seat of intellgence, even if it may be involved in some extended and removed manner with the expression of intelligence.

others on this very thread are proposing this exact extension.

I'll ignore the supernatural suggestion.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#735

Post by rglullis »

larkost wrote: post #635
rglullis wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s that one line. And centuries of liberal democracies where the church was just one institution that had no direct rule over its subjects?

The word "direct" is carrying an awful lot of weight in that sentence. The Catholic Church (as well as the Protestant and others) are very responsible for, or at least implicated in, many horrible things in the last few hundred years alone: - signed off on the slave trade for hundreds of years (even gave excuses about how that was God's will) - during World War II they promised to hide many Jewish children, only to s…

> So they may not be "direct" rulers, they are major power players.

So are all the other countless media companies, tech corporations, Hollywood, labor unions, pharma companies, academia...

From this list, which one do you think is more intertwined with Government affairs? The Catholic Church or Amazon? The Mormons or Blueshield? Seventh Day Adventists or Disney? The Baptists or General Motors? The Anglicans or FOX News?

Re: Pope Francis has died

#736

Post by froidpink »

andrepd wrote: post #184
salviati wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His global appeal was real, but his decision to give Opus Dei and similar conservative Catholic networks special status under the Vatican had serious consequences. Elevating Escrivá to sainthood and creating a personal prelature for Opus Dei handed them unmatched moral authority—authority they used to push back on women’s autonomy, justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and quietly influence politics from Spai…

Even in Europe Opus Dei has immense influence in certain circles. I've seen first-hand the nefarious effects of that.

can you elaborate?

Re: Pope Francis has died

#737

Post by wwweston »

hylaride wrote: post #323
kergonath wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He riled many of his flock and hierarchy when he said that "even atheists can be redeemed". Which is "interesting", considering how much of the New Testament is about redemption and reaching out to outsiders. Aren’t we all supposed to be God’s creation, and wasn’t Jesus supposed to teach us about salvation, redemption and forgiveness? (And by "interesting", I mean that it is yet another of example cognitive dissona…

> Which is "interesting", considering how much of the New Testament is about redemption and reaching out to outsiders. Aren’t we all supposed to be God’s creation, and wasn’t Jesus supposed to teach us about salvation, redemption and forgiveness? As religion has shrunk in participation in most of the west, it has become hugely susceptible to manipulation. My wife (now atheist, but grew up evangelical) often has to co…

> As religion has shrunk in participation in most of the west, it has become hugely susceptible to manipulation

That’s an interesting correlation. Do you have any ideas about the dynamics associated with it?

I do seem to remember experiencing my tradition as less manipulative when I was young, but have never been sure if that was me not seeing it. And if true, I’m not sure whether to attribute it to size, or the internet, or political influence, or something else.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#738

Post by code_for_monkey »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #346
code_for_monkey wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Where do you live? How much of your money and land are you willing to surrender to me? I think there's a real argument that it's the right thing to do.

thinkingtoilet more like shit for brains

Re: Pope Francis has died

#739

Post by lo_zamoyski »

bmicraft wrote: post #657
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even knowledge. Knowledge requires intentionality and belief as well as justification. LLMs don’t have any of these. We ought to avoid anthropomorphizing LLMs. It is muddle headed.

I'd add that knowledge usually implies a claim to truth, while llms can only offer information with varying likelihood of being true.

This is what intentionality is about. No intentionality, no truth.

An LLM doesn't deal with propositions, and it is propositions that are the subjects of truth claims. LLMs produce strings of characters that, when interpreted by a human reader, can look like propositions and result in propositions in the human mind, and it is those propositions that have intentionality and truth value. But what the LLMs produce are not the direct expression of propositional content, only the recombination of a large number of expressions of propositional content authored by many human authors.

People are projecting subjective convention onto the objective. The objective truth about LLMs is far poorer in substance than the conventional readings we give to what LLMs generate. There is a good deal of superstition and magical thinking that surrounds LLMs.

Re: Pope Francis has died

#740

Post by tptacek »

skissane wrote: post #728
tptacek wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated. Few people in the church, including the priests themselves, are fluent in Latin (there's a story told, I think by Francis himself, about an diocese in England that required priests to pass an exam to give a Traditional Latin Mass, and almost none of the requesting priests could pass). The TLM obscures what the mass is about, which creates space for practitioners to substitute in their own things, wh…

> Few people in the church, including the priests themselves, are fluent in Latin (there's a story told, I think by Francis himself, about an diocese in England that required priests to pass an exam to give a Traditional Latin Mass, and almost none of the requesting priests could pass). Strictly speaking, as well as the Tridentine Mass, one can also have the current Mass in Latin. From what I've heard (never been to…

TLM participants are a tiny fraction of people who routinely attend mass. In fact, something you hear from TLM advocates is that TLM attendees tend to be younger.
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