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Magnifica Humanitas
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Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#782[dead]
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#783Earlier quoted context omitted.
The truly interesting question, and the crux of the matter, also hasn't changed much since 1903: How?
If you ignore everything that happened in between 1903 and today, it might seem like we've never made any progress on this, but at least in the US wealth inequality was demonstrably not as much as an issue for some of the time in between. For a time in the 20th century, it was possible for someone solidly middle class in the US to be able to save up a bit of money and afford a down payment on a house within a decade…
It was not only in the USA. Even in developing countries like Brasil, the post-war was an era of great material improvement for the worker class. Industrial employment was coveted, and blue collar work definitelly landed you in the middle class.
The biggest difference between the US and other countries was the scale. Proportionally more workers benefited, and they benefited more in the US in the post war, as the US was by far the more advanced industrial power.
But, removing the scaling factors, the history is the same. Home ownership was once in the realm of possbilities for most workers, at least industrial workers, and this is no longer the case, and now even most white-collar professions are having issues with that.
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#784I'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…
chemical engineering answers that in the small.. There are endless systems of testing within the chemical engineering discipline.. it has a bad name to the lay population, probably for real reasons, but the actual rigor is real also.. much worse scenarios from large scale industrial and agricultural applications could have happened..
one of many caveats to that is lead additives to gasoline, which is a wound to the living Earth to this day.. there are others.. RoundUp comes to mind in a similar way
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#785Earlier quoted context omitted.
When he quoted Tolkien, my heart stopped. This passage might provide you with a suggestion on how to live a virtuous life: "The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the e…
I wondered if that was the Pope's way of throwing shade at Palantir and Peter Thiel.
It totally is. That was the first thought that went through my head when I got to the JRRT quote.
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#786I'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…
> So I guess 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, because I honestly can't think of any.
Firearms and explosives are not abused nearly as much as one would have imagined before their invention (or soon after). I don't think it's because we stunted the explosives tech-tree, but the social contract and general stability have kept large-scale antisocial behaviors at bay.
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#787Earlier quoted context omitted.
In theory only and all Catholics recognize the authority of the pope. In practice it’s a mess as far as I understand, with a bunch of American catholic groups who rejected church reforms that happened during the 20th century, resulting in people calling themselves catholic who do not actually believe that the Catholic Church has authority over their religion. Add to that the fact that the pope has a cultural influenc…
I'm not aware of any Protestants that see the Pope as important except in a very negative way - that's practically the defining feature of Protestantism and one of the few things all the Protestant denominations have in common, whether "low church" or "high church". Heck, it's a struggle to convince many of them that Catholics are Christian at all, and "the Pope is the antichrist" used to be a normal, mainstream comm…
This is not very common in Continental European protestants, it is more something American protestants inherited from British protestants, that had some peculiar reasons to turn the dial on papal hate to the 11.
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#788Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up Jewish. I have lost my faith, but that quote is still fundamental to how I see my place in the world.
I'm not Muslim (an agnostic Catholic if anything) but I love the Hadith | If the final hour comes while one of you has a seed in his hand, if he can plant it before it takes place, let him do so. I take it to mean it is never too late to do something good, even (or especially) something you will never benefit from.
To me that never made sense. If the world is really ending, there is no point in planting a tree.
It only made sense as in, you never know if the world is really ending. So assume it is not and do the right thing, even if things seem dark. Everything we do matters. Always.
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#789Earlier quoted context omitted.
(I'm not a Catholic though most people around me are.) I have a similar perspective. Plus, I'll be frank: in the last few years, these occasional keynote publications from Vaticans are pretty much the most sane, deep, balanced and humane perspectives on AI anyone is writing. Reading this is a better use of one's time than reading the current batch of "tech thought leaders" articles or HBRs or Gartner magic square upd…
I'm a fedora wearing akshually agnostic and just too cool for bible school, but I never felt reading these "keynotes" wasted my time. They're not "just" humane but also very intelligent and direct. I would even go so far as to call them intellectually honest, and less religious that way than slogans like "you cannot stop progress, so just adapt", or something about toothpaste.
ahahaha man, rofl with your self description.
Re: Magnifica Humanitas
#790> 111. I wish to address a special appeal to those who develop artificial intelligence.
He addresses the Catholics, appeals to their faith, but how many of those behind AI have any faith? Many, maybe most of them, are proudly atheists and even nihilists, and they can't be reasoned with on the grounds of faith. The Pope says that God created man in his image, and warns that the technocratic paradigm sees humans as machines to be optimized, but isn't it what the crowd behind AI truly believes in?