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Magnifica Humanitas

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Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#771

Post by nashashmi »

pizzaman1 wrote: post #663
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #650

I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power. For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the…

> In a similar vein, it looks like we may eventually (at least at some point) turn the tide on CO2 emissions, but not because anyone (at large) really sacrificed anything, or did something that was mildly painful now in the hopes for a better future, but instead because renewable and battery tech is just getting to be the economic best option. One should not forget the reason that these technologies have become so ch…

At the same time, it was a cartel of industries that felt threatened by the emerging green technology and became one of its greatest opponents. Government policy only meant the official loss of one side to the other.

We will never reverse CO2 emissions until humanity entertains itself less, spends less time in tourism, and does fewer unproductive recreational activities like drinking and drugs. Only then will waste go down significantly and utility go up. And only then will we reverse co2 emissions.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#772

Post by gordian-mind »

redwall_hp wrote: post #591
nicholsonpk wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem, generally, with this view point is that it attributes all of a societies ills to Communism and none of (or few of) societies ills to Capitalism. For example, do you believe the Capitalist system has nothing to do with the eagerness of the United States to drop bombs throughout the world for the past 100 years? Personally I see these actions as unnecessary and evil but pushed to continue by the people who…

The richest capitalist in the world unilaterally axed USAID at the behest of his cronies, and has directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children to date. Projections are 9-14 million overall deaths by starvation and disease by 2030. And that was just kicked off a few months ago. Musk and Trump are doing a Holodomor in front of the world's eyes.

Unless you donated all the money you earned this year to foreign children, you are equally to blame for this "Holodomor."

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#773

Post by VanTheBrand »

stringfood wrote: post #373
fooker wrote: post #316

This is a surprisingly nuanced and technically literate take on this topic. Kudos. I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times. (duplicating my comment from the other thread as this seems to have more traction)

[flagged]

he most certainly did not

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#774

Post by nashashmi »

jimbokun wrote: post #622
bradrn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am immediately reminded of my favourite quote from the Jewish book Pirkei Avot (‘Ethics of the Fathers’): > It is not your duty to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. [ https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.2.16?ven=english|Mishnah... ]

EVERY progressive needs to read this quote. It’s my biggest frustration with so many expressing progressive beliefs. I’ve lost count of the times a progressive expresses unwillingness to address problems at a smaller, local or personal level. Instead there is a demand to fix everything forever and at once at the highest levels, or do nothing at all.

Those people are not progressives. They are brainwashed wokes riled up using anger and cynicism; a mob in the making to counter a government; a transient missile fired at an opponent existing while it fires through and fleeting after it hits a target.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#775

Post by irthomasthomas »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #676
zb wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CFC refrigerants are the canonical example.

But I think the action regulating CFCs is kinda what I'm talking about. As a consumer in the US, I don't ever remember having to sacrifice on my refrigerator or A/C - heck, I generally remember those appliances going down a lot in price from the 80s to the early 00s. So my argument is not that we can't regulate technologies, but that we only do so when it becomes "technologically convenient". I think the comparison o…

most cfcs are from industrial freon use, not domestic.

China continued using freon until 2019. They used it make insulation. The gasses will continue leaking from these buildings for a long time.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#776

Post by jimmy76615 »

There are a lot of great aspects of the pope's writing. The most important one probably being that a spiritual leader understands that there is a large technological and societal change on the horizon. I still quite often experience the well described phenomenon of talking to "normal people" (my family in Europe for example) that seem to think that AI is gonna be roughly as important as the electric car and is not gonna change much about our world.

The major thing that Magnifica Humanitas is lacking in imo, is a vision for the machines themselves. The pope treats them exclusively as lifeless tools, and while I think that this is most likely true for current LLMs, we should think more about the limit of what is going to happen in the next 20 years than being overly focused on the current capability level. To me it seems rather likely that we will soon have machines that plausibly experience consciousness. I think there will be a long period in which we still have no better definition of consciousness than we currently have, and so the question of whether they are actually conscious will be a heavily debated one. But I think the Catholic church should start thinking about an answer to that. It seems like a very natural theological question. Can machines be baptized? Can they be proper Christians? Was Jesus really just the savior of humans, or is there something that unites all intelligent, experiencing beings?

Probably these questions sound ridiculous to some, it is very against the intuitions that we have had so far, but I think these are the most important questions right now. Job loss is a practical problem, not a spiritual one.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#777

Post by jimmy76615 »

kendallpark wrote: post #699
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in this document everything seems to be based in the concept of "human dignity", which, however useful or beautiful, has no roots in Catholic tradition: it's a purely secular idea. I'm not a philosopher or theologian, but this just seems wrong to me, at least when taken in the context of the entire encyclical and the history of Catholicism. That "God created humanity in his own image" has always been a central…

>> the concept of "human dignity", which, however useful or beautiful, has no roots in Catholic tradition: it's a purely secular idea. > I'm not a philosopher or theologian, but this just seems wrong to me Agreed, it's an ahistorical take. The Western secular concept of "human dignity" has roots in the Abrahamic religions. Not the other way around. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-1590-9_...

I think it is very important to understand how non-secular this idea is, and how much of a cultural breakthrough it was. For the better or worse, there are many cultures that don't recognize an inherent value to human life.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#778

Post by CHB0403085482 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #650

I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power. For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the…

>I'm looking for some specific examples of where we've actually consciously, as a collective society, altered the course of technological progress for the greater good

CFC banning to protect the ozone layer.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#779

Post by lumost »

The great fear of our current incarnation in AI is that it will create a permanent class divide between those who own the AI and those the AI commands. There may not be a "go to college and get a better job" option in the future if AI eats the majority of knowledge work. The traditional "invisible hand" only matters if we still live in a capitalist society.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#780

Post by jvanderbot »

jimmy76615 wrote: post #776

There are a lot of great aspects of the pope's writing. The most important one probably being that a spiritual leader understands that there is a large technological and societal change on the horizon. I still quite often experience the well described phenomenon of talking to "normal people" (my family in Europe for example) that seem to think that AI is gonna be roughly as important as the electric car and is not go…

AI should fall under husbandry, not society rules, as we are the reason they are alive, no matter how much some may disapprove of their enslavement. An animal that defies a human and becomes an unwilling tool is food or eliminated. It should be no different if the animal can mimic human speech.
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