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Magnifica Humanitas

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Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#881

Post by varnaud »

gordian-mind wrote: post #772
redwall_hp wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Are you against murder ?

An innocent man was shot and killed this year in a foreign country. Unless you did everything in your power to stop that killing, you are equally to blame for his murder.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#882

Post by basisword »

renox wrote: post #77
jfengel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians. Even atheists are strongly influenced by the patterns they set down. The Catholic Church, for all its many faults, retains a serious intellectual tradition. (In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths. It's very narrow to be atheist only about the Abrahamic deity. You end up incorporating…

> In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths. It's very narrow to be atheist only about the Abrahamic deity. Your sentence doesn't really make sense, and there is a lot of deities.. > You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option. Depends on the country, some Northen euro…

>> Depends on the country, some Northen european countries have a very high proportion of atheists, so it happens probably less there.

Christianity is so ingrained even in atheist societies that quite a lot of western and Northern European countries just recently celebrated "Ascension day" which was a public holiday in those countries. And while Christianity has decreased a significant amount in the last couple of decades a majority in most of those countries still identify as Christian even if not regularly practicing.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#883

Post by basisword »

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…

>> 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?

They don't need to think about it because the answer is unequivocally 'no'.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#884

Post by pxue »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #689
Animats wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity. Eventually, it was everywhere, used by everybody, and a background to society. Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world.

Thanks! This answer was actually the one that I found most helpful. I feel like some of the other responses to my comment were talking about how we regulate lots of other tech, but that wasn't really my point - I understand that we regulate tech, but only when it becomes "economically convenient". But your last sentence "Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world" really struck me. It's a great point, and TBH…

But companies and governments owning the natural resources that powers the utilities took over the world.

US for example owns the LNG trade right now and that’s a major choke for power production across the world, China owns the rare earth metals that goes into solar and wind.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#885

Post by severine »

nathanh4903 wrote: post #810
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…

In Christian theology/philosophy, humanity is generally not defined by our intelligence, consciousness, or the ability to act a certain way. Most theologians through out history and different theological traditions all root human value in the concept of imago dei (that humans are divine images of God, and which God has became one, thus further bringing humans into union with God). Thus, machines becoming smarter or m…

Appreciate the answer, but then I have some questions:

So, according to that theory, god could substantiate again, this time into an "imago dei computer", giving the computer "machinity"?

A computer that is god, makes divine stuff and is, for example, at one point unplugged, but comes online miraculously three days after, etc?

That would be Jesus-like, but we could posit an Eve/Adam-like computer, would that be imago dei too?

Has god become only human, or has it become other animals, plants, or things?

Not trying to be facetious, just unable to follow some thinking when it would involve observable miracles on earth.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#886

Post by tardedmeme »

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.

We're now, in 2026, currently at 1.5 degrees above baseline. This used to be the threshold at which we decided it would be too late and everything would be fucked and human civilization would inevitably collapse.

That won't happen, of course, since we kept increasing the threshold every time we approached the previous threshold. Luckily for us now, human society won't collapse until we hit 2 degrees!

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#887

Post by laichzeit0 »

panza wrote: post #799
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 can't speak for other denominations, but in Catholic philosophy, it's not so much a case of whether it attains consciousness (whatever that may mean now or in the future), but whether it has a soul. From that perspective, no, machines cannot be baptized, nor can they be Christians, and Jesus cannot save them (because they are not fallen).

Interesting. Did Neanderthals have souls? We know we interbred with them. The question is then whether earlier hominids also had souls. Was "ensoulment" a gradual phenomenon or did it arise spontaneously? If it was gradual does it mean at some point there was a "cross-over" period where we interbred with soulless hominids? Interbreeding becomes philosophically awkward if ensouled and non-ensouled beings could mate and produce offspring. I don't think it's clear at all even what has a soul and what does not.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#888

Post by epolanski »

hnlmorg wrote: post #469
epolanski wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it should be a crisis of trust in the organization, not it's credos.

I don’t really think you can lecture people on what they should or shouldn’t believe. That’s how wars start. That and control of oil. The whole point of faith is that it’s a subjective opinion that cannot be proven. Arguing that someone’s faith isn’t logical is about as sensible as arguing which shade of blue looks more wet.

I'm not arguing, I'm asking.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#889

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Findecanor wrote: post #873
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I would not take solace in IPCC retiring a scenario. Their predictions are based on conservative aggregates of existing science, and have always been considered by many in the climate science community to be underestimating climate change.

> have always been considered by many in the climate science community to be underestimating climate change.

This is exactly wrong as it relates to RCP 8.5. A number of research papers came out basically showing how 8.5 was completely implausible, and it was only after these papers were widely cited and reached consensus did the IPCC retire 8.5.

This article by some of the original authors of one of those papers explains the situation well: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/on-the-death-of-rcp85 . If you actually read their linked research paper, I don't think any unbiased observer could think 8.5 is plausible anymore (and, in fairness, 8.5 was always proposed as a worst case scenario, not a "business as usual scenario", as that climatebrink article explains very well).

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#890

Post by sambuccid »

ako wrote: post #427
vermilingua wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only builders, the greatest takeaway for me is that everyone has a responsibility in shaping the discourse, culture, and usage of transformative technology. This "the builders will do the right thing" mentality is even (in my interpretation) explicitly called out in several places: > It is the pursuit of the common good that gives life to a people, understood not as a mere collection of individuals, but as a livi…

Agreed, I think the builders are the wrong people to ask for this self reflection. Anything can be used for good and bad. A knife can be used to prepare food, or to stab someone. A drone can be used to attack a country, or to defend a country. A wooden beam can be used to build a house, or to build a cross to crucify someone. Same way AI can be used for good and bad. And it’s up to the person using the tool to act mo…

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