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Magnifica Humanitas

vatican.va

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Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#821

Post by jimbokun »

elmomle wrote: post #801
Aeolun wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you call them progressives hints at a more general frustration that I doubt has anything to do with the problem. There is nothing wrong with some people working on a regional or global fix while others work on a local one. The important thing is that they’re working for it.

I think there's more nuance to it. The big failing of progressive movements is that they seek, often from a position of disadvantage, to impose power over society too, but in the ways they feel are more just. The vast majority of progressives I know aren't very interested in listening to the other side, or implicitly believe that the other side is wrong and it's just a matter of making them see that. But this ignores…

Even if you do think the other side is evil in many of their beliefs and actions, you still may need to work with them on issues where you find agreement.

Like diplomacy with regimes you find reprehensible may still be preferable to war.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#822

Post by jimbokun »

nashashmi wrote: post #774
jimbokun wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m just using the term those people use to identify themselves.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#823

Post by jimbokun »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #656
jimbokun wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a black box in the sense that we know the process used by LLMs to “reason” is very different than how humans reason and make decisions. The whole point of “jury of your peers” is that your guilt or innocence is being decided by people with common life experience to you and thus the possibility of empathy and judging you fairly.

We only know it’s different. But we don’t know how it reasons or how humans reason. Just because it is different doesn’t make his black box argument valid. It remains invalid despite your new irrelevant point. Ignore the fluff. Focus on the logic and stay rational. The black box argument is not at all valid.

We know other humans reason something like us because we know how we ourselves reason through the most direct experience possible and know that our fellow humans are very similar to us.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#824

Post by [deleted] »

mulr00ney wrote: post #118
velcrovan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like you don’t have much exposure to actual professional engineering disciplines. I’m sure civil, electrical, structural and mechanical PEs would be quite surprised to hear there are no guardrails on their professions.

Engineers versus "engineers". I have fond memories of a boss who was an actual, licensed engineer while the rest of us were very much normal software devs. Boss was pretty chill except when someone someone suggested we should be called "engineers" rather than "developers", at which point they said "if you guys were building bridges, people would be dead." (I don't think all software needs to be built to rigorous engi…

[deleted]

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#825

Post by alok-g »

ctoth wrote: post #288
sethbannon wrote: post #22

The overarching message is that builders should deeply consider the impact of what they're building on civilization. "Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it." Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." The questions shouldn't just be 'can we buil…

The strange part is how moral responsibility somehow always lands on the builders... the people with the least leverage... while the funders get to ask the ethical questions. Weird!

Who do you consider to be by-and-large, overall, more intelligent? Who then is more capable of exercising intelligence towards figuring out what's actually good?

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#826

Post by alok-g »

dubcanada wrote: post #657
sethbannon wrote: post #22

The overarching message is that builders should deeply consider the impact of what they're building on civilization. "Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it." Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." The questions shouldn't just be 'can we buil…

I frankly disagree, how do you know "will this make humanity better?" until the product is done? AI wasn't what it is today because of a specific companies innovations. It stemmed from decades of research built on top of other research. How did any of those builders know what they were getting into? Every technology should be done to the fullest potential, how are we ever supposed to explore the stars or cure cancer…

Just like we can incrementally innovate, we should be able to incrementally figure too.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#827

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ndrh wrote: post #807
pizzaman1 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Kind of terrifying that "we may" turn the tide on CO2 is an acceptable level of optimism. If we don't, we all die. it isn't something to leave up to mindless market mechanics.

> If we don't, we all die.

No, we don't. Even in the worse case scenarios, a runaway greenhouse effect a la Venus was never remotely part of the scientific consensus. Heck, the IPCC just retired the worst case RCP 8.5 scenario saying it is now scientifically implausible. Now a big reason it was deemed implausible is the transition to renewable energy is happening. But even if RCP 8.5 did happen, it was not a humanity ending scenario.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#828

Post by ziotom78 »

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…

I believe that what we can reasonably expect in the future is machines that act as if they experience consciousness. But the fact that this is true consciousness is highly debatable, as the thought experiment of the Chinese room [1] explains.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#829

Post by scrivna »

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…

Fixing the hole in the ozone layer is kinda like what you’re asking. Everyone around the world got together to ban the newly invented chemicals and…. It worked.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#830

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

jvanderbot wrote: post #780
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.

You are the reason your children are alive, do they fall under husbandry?

> An animal that defies a human and becomes an unwilling tool is food or eliminated

Some animals are protected legally. Animal welfare in general is an important topic. (But it's irrelevant because LLMs do not provide food that's key to human survival.)

Your logic sounds like the logic of slaveowners back then. Remember how it turned out?

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