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Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

economist.com

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Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#81

Post by erelong »

portmanteur wrote: post #49
erelong wrote: post #48

...as well as Catholic teaching...

In which ways, specifically? Or, which ways would you like to promote a discussion about?

The Second Vatican Council movement has had "popes" that seem to directly attack previous Catholic teaching; I expect this will resolve to the council being rejected as a false council like the "robber council" of Second Council of Ephesus, as well as the papal claimants being declared invalid or "not popes" since that time.

The analogy would be like if, since the world cup of soccer is going on, FIFA had a meeting and decided every goal was worth 3 points instead of 1 point. Some people might accept that this is "true soccer" and some "legitimate change to the game". Others would denounce the organization and set up their own leagues to preserve "traditional soccer", and declare the FIFA leadership has no "true authority", and that the meeting deciding on 3 goals has no "binding authority" on "true soccer fans". Something like that has happened.

Section 20 of the new "encyclical" reads:

> The Second Vatican Council expressed this principle with particular precision in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, whose sixtieth anniversary we remembered and celebrated with gratitude on 7 December 2025: “If by the autonomy of earthly affairs is meant that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values… then the demand for autonomy is perfectly in order.” [10]

I don't believe this is the former Catholic teaching on "autonomy"; man is not "autonomous" but subject to God's laws. Autonomy would be a "license to sin": you could set your own "law" that it is ok to do this or that thing contrary to Catholic teaching. This is therefore the wrong understanding of "autonomy", and they are ambiguous about what they mean by "true autonomy" (which would be a "freedom within limits"; much like in Genesis, Adam and Eve had total liberty to eat from whatever tree, except for that of the tree which yielded "forbidden fruit").

I believe the document contains more errors like this, continuing this heretical movement of modernism.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#82

Post by idiotsecant »

mijailt wrote: post #8

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1] > Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I. > But I always think that if we’re going to h…

'Antichrist' is what thiel calls anything he doesn't like. He uses it so much it's meaningless.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#83

Post by Joker_vD »

xp84 wrote: post #62
rebolek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then vote for politicians who do.

Few of those are ever running. Mostly we have just two brands of smooth-brains whose only policy aim is “preventing that other group of assholes from gaining any power, because they and their supporters are pure evil!”

Not a true democracy, then /s

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#85

Post by Joker_vD »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #44
matusp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century.

And the Luddite movement, also in the 19th century.

And the peasants' revolt of 1381, with John Ball's memorable "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

But it's a perennial question, really, and it won't go away any time soon.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#86

Post by idiotsecant »

mike_hearn wrote: post #37
mijailt wrote: post #8

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1] > Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I. > But I always think that if we’re going to h…

> The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not. You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will…

There are plenty of rules that we apply across the board. No nuclear weapons for anyone who's not already got them is an example. This doesn't take some spooky one world government to do. This post is wild. Essentially, you're saying that any attempt to regulate AI as the existential threat that it almost certainly is the antichrist. It's bonkers.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#87

Post by idiotsecant »

watwut wrote: post #57
mike_hearn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not. You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will…

I mean yes, if we twist meanings of words enough, Pope is progressive. Except he is not, he is conservative catholic pushing for old school conservative catholic doctrine. He is not far right, he is not prosperity gosphel guy, but catholic doctrine was never that. Of course you can have multilateralism and regulations. And no, AML is not an antichrist. And Thiel with his plan yo create totalitatian fascist word is on…

That's how far the global overton window has shifted. The pope is now the voice of reason.

The world is barreling toward conditions that haven't existed for a century. God help us.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#88

Post by NitpickLawyer »

anjel wrote: post #69
merelydev wrote: post #7

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused. Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's p…

I struggle to see how the 3 examples go together. Your exposition implies a connection, but I struggle to see one. The best I could do is that it has to do with rights and responsibilities?

The first example is clear. And it has pretty much carried on, as the "right to property" and "the responsibility to cover damage to other's rights".

The second example, even though you wrote it as Uber vs. the cab driver, is more about Uber vs. the municipality. By the fact that almost all over the world people wanted Uber (or the other brands) over the imposed limitation of their municipalities, shows that the deal was wrong. In places where it was artificially limited, people have showed to prefer the alternatives. It has little to do with Bob the driver, and more to do with Alice the mayor who decided unilaterally that a taxi cab should require a 100k/yr medallion. That's what's changed, and society accepted it.

The third example is weirder still. Again you pose it as AI provider vs. average Joe, but here I struggle to even see what rights / who's rights are being infringed upon. I don't see any. While we generally have a right to work, there is absolutely no right to work in a certain industry, if the industry doesn't have demand. If someone else doesn't need your output, your right to work in that particular field has absolutely no basis in reality.

Unless you want to go back to the places and regimes that decided who works where, modern society has no place for such thinking. A right to work protects you from employers choosing not to hire you because of things that you are (race, age, gender, etc.) It absolutely doesn't protect you at all against "people don't need elevator operators anymore". And I say this as someone who's worked in this industry 20+ years. If tomorrow people don't need software done by hand anymore, tough luck for me. But it's absolutely not the problem of rights. I don't have a right to demand people wanting my services. That's not the social contract at all.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#89

Post by ordinaryradical »

mike_hearn wrote: post #37
mijailt wrote: post #8

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1] > Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I. > But I always think that if we’re going to h…

> The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not. You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will…

Describing the pope’s proposals as progressive and anti-money laundering laws as the antichrist… this is like a parody of the most blinders-on kind of libertarianism.

For those of you playing at home, you can definitely have multi-lateral agreements without creating a one world government. We’ve had a chemical weapons ban for decades over which many of the multi-lateral parties were in hot and cold wars with each other. The nations are not going to magically combine over the presence of a treaty. Not how power works.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#90

Post by tptacek »

mike_hearn wrote: post #37
mijailt wrote: post #8

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1] > Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I. > But I always think that if we’re going to h…

> The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not. You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will…

I think you're not reading it in the spirit it's intended. There's a section towards the end (Chapter 5, I think) that is full of policy prescriptions. But most of the encyclical isn't "about" AI, it's "about" Catholicism, and is using AI as a lens to talk about principles the church has been building up over a century. In that sense the document is less concerned with frontier models and disinformation than it is with establishing Catholic social doctrine --- subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, etc.

As far as the church is concerned, AI as an issue will come and go, but the ordering and prioritization of human relationships is timeless, and is the important issue. The subtext of the whole thing is that if you get the principles right, the tech policy will fall into place.

You can argue with those principles, but at that point you really are just arguing with Catholicism itself, which is fine, but is besides the point.

(I'm not engaging with or disputing your takes on policy, only with your comment as a critique of the encyclical itself.)

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