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Magnifica Humanitas

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Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#901

Post by deaton »

jfengel wrote: post #26
qsort wrote: post #15

I have only skimmed it, will definitely read carefully as soon as I have time. I will say, as an atheist, that regarding technology the Vatican has some of the best takes of any institution/government I have ever seen.

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…

Generally speaking, a lot of western values are built on top of Christian ethics. Particularly, most of what we value regarding freedom and individual choice and whatnot comes from the englightenment, which is a direct result of the protestant reformation.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#902

Post by deaton »

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 don't think the Church really needs to consider those questions at all, because Church tradition very much holds that:

- No, machines cannot have a soul, as the soul is something we receive as beings made in the image of God. We cannot create in the same way. Therefore, machines cannot be baptized. - The machine can't be Christian because it can't receive sacraments, including baptism. - Jesus was unequivocally a savior only for humans.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#903

Post by ai_slop_hater »

alecco wrote: post #719
ai_slop_hater wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a lot to do. How can I contribute?

Join some Discord servers of open source projects/startups. Hang out and make friends. Figure out where and how you can fit best.

> Hang out and make friends.

Oh no

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#904

Post by jjfoooo4 »

overfeed wrote: post #786
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…

> 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…

But there's not an everyday use case for firearms and explosives for the average person. There's civilian, everyday task that would be easier were better firearms and explosives available

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#905

Post by joshdick »

iNic wrote: post #853
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…

- Human Cloning - Human DNA editing (though we'll have to see) - CFCs - Various agrochemical products - Geneva convention (mostly) - Radio, television & newspaper all had much stricter rules around what could be said on them

I think new forms of media, like radio and television, are worthwhile comparisons to AI. They were hugely influential technologies in the 20th century, making a small number of media companies hugely powerful. That sounds a lot like AI.

The difference to AI is that we regulated the heck out of radio and television companies. I think this is evidence in favor of heavily regulating AI.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#906

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#907

Post by jackbravo »

Animats wrote: post #658
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…

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

Nice answer! And thinking about it, isn't the telephone and maybe also the internet in the same category. In México the telephone company was first a public company and then a private one that made our biggest billionare (Carlos Slim), so maybe not so much here :-p, but you can argue that both have been a net benefit for the whole world.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#908

Post by CptFribble »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #894
tardedmeme wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> 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. Man, reading these comments is making me realize how crazy the messaging on climate alarmism actually got. No, 1.5 C was literally never the threshold where "everything would be fucked and human civilization would inevitably collapse." Where are people getting this…

its science journalism tbh, the realities of climate change's impact is so spread out and complicated that it's difficult to communicate to a largely scientifically-illiterate audience. see the perennial confusion over cold heavy snow winters being an artifact of global warming due to increased energy in the weather systems causing more volatility instead of just a simple "everything is warmer now."

so journalists focus on Number, because Number is simple and understandable. even when Number is mostly or completely bogus.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#909

Post by bluefirebrand »

GoToRO wrote: post #654
bluefirebrand wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't like putting the blame on the builders Like it or not if you knowingly build stuff that is used for evil purposes you are complicit You can't build an orphan mulching machine and get away with just a shrug. "I don't really agree with mulching orphans but someone else paid me to build that. If I didn't build it someone else would have" just does not absolve you of your involvement in mulching orphans

In reality things are much more mundane. You build a custom blog framework, it can be used for good or bad. You build a better app framework, it can be used for good or bad. There's nothing you can build that will not be used by bad people. Canned food and radar came from war. Depending on which side you were, it was used to do good or to do bad. Technology is just that, technology. People are still under the marketi…

All I'm saying is you don't get a pass if you helped design a missile guidance system that your government winds up using to bomb children

Or if you're involved in building out mass surveillance that male policemen use to stalk their exes

Yeah, technology is just technology but most of us aren't just working on pure tech for techs sake. We're working on products that have a purpose.

Re: Magnifica Humanitas

#910

Post by threethirtytwo »

jimbokun wrote: post #823
threethirtytwo wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We know the LLM can be similar because we train it on data from us as well. We also know the LLM can be different, but we also know humans are different too.

Examples like psychopaths tells us how different humans can be. It’s all black boxes.

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