So you can’t oppose outsourcing your brain power to a megacorp that will take zero responsibility for any consequence of its spicy autocorrect…
but you can oppose outsourcing your brain power to “the machine” because it’s against your beliefs.
I mean, if it works, yeah sure, call it a religion.
Humanism is a religion.
I mean it’s literally not, it’s a philosophy, even the American Humanist Society states so
Yeah but they’re all dorks so whatever.
True and real
Lol, as if religion is anything different.
There’s no objective difference between religion and philosophy.
There’s a “rule of thumb” loose categorisation though, but blurry on the edges
There is.
Philosophy is structured and rational thought.
Religion is the opposite. Easy.
It is impossible to construct ethics from first principles. A study of philosophy would tell you that. Logic can take you from one step to another, but at the end of your chain of reason will always lie some pure belief, an act of faith.
For example, many ethical systems can be traced to a few basic axioms, like “human suffering is bad.” Or “humans deserve to live.” Or “all lives have value.” But these are statements that cannot be produced through mathematics. There’s no equation that can tell you it’s a good thing for a child not to die of hunger. At some point, every moral system traces back to certain basic axioms that are pure beliefs, not rationally derived from any logic or mathematical equation.
It is impossible to construct ethics from first principles.
You’ve never read Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals? That’s pretty basic stuff, like Ethics 101 basic.
And I’m not even a huge Kant fan let alone a deontologist, in fact I’m more of a situationist, but you should at least be familiar with the Categorical Imperative before you make a nebulous claim like “A study of philosophy would tell you that.”
Sometimes abstraction is good and necessary, but a statement like “There’s no equation that can tell you it’s a good thing for a child not to die of hunger” is an over-abstraction. There’s no need to abstract it further, because the situation is already concrete. Anyone who has experienced grief can tell you that, and an ivory tower that’s too sterile to taste grief has nothing to offer the world in the way of ethics.
Only a sociopath would have to wrestle with the question of whether there’s anything objectively bad about children dying. Do you expect anyone to try to prove it mathematically? Because that would be entirely the wrong approach.
If you can’t state “living is a good thing, and therefore premature loss of an innocent life is a bad thing” as a first principle, then there could be no point in debating ethics with you because you’re already amoral.
I’m not accusing you of thinking that way, I understand you’re presenting a line of reasoning in the abstract as a thought experiment. I’m simply telling you what my response would be to someone who tried actually arguing along that line.
Perfectly said, thank you!
One is a way of thinking, the other is an interpretation of reality.
“an interpretation of reality”… so it’s just a re-occurring thought lmao?
No it’s a set of fundamental assumptions about the nature of the universe and reality.
Where a christian would draw faith from their spiritual deity, a humanist might draw faith from the fact that they’re alive because of the human spirit, no? A “spirit” which only exists because an absurdly bizarre amount of coincidences happened… so many in fact, that it honestly makes total sense that even the most intelligent people among us could believe (or in my perspective: fall for) that it was actually instead the doing of a being who is in a completely different realm of existence from our own.
I promise I’m not just being pedantic or whatever, I’m truly trying to understand how there’s any difference between a philosophy effectively based on some santa-clause-tier shit and one simply based on the (actually phenomenal) evidence we have available.
Hell, I even grew up as a christian before I gained full consciousness and wondered why the fuck god would torture me with a life that is so comically filled with absolute horrors that go beyond anything I would comprehend on my own.
The other one is bullshit *
And philosophy isn’t bullshit for sure.
I dunno, some philosophy is bullshit
Yeah, but just because all then all philosophy is bullshit. Some movies are bullshit but not for that the cinema and all the movies are bullshit too.
Anyways, every statement, even stating that philosophy is bullshit or isn’t knowledge, is a philosophic statement to some degree or another.
Tenets and beliefs
Or at the very least an “article of faith” protected by the US Government. Idk about humanism tax status.
Gotta be a religion to get privileged in USA. Reason and rationality get thrown out the window.
I mean, prompt writing is like wishes with Djinns.
I don’t know, Jewish tradition has golems. They’re basically human-shaped machines that are powered by the words written by their creators.
Though golems are supposed to be mute, and LLM are anything but. Maybe that’s why AI is bad.
I’m sure we can find something written millennia ago that describes precisely why we shouldn’t use gen AI now, we just have to look for it.
Evil genies
I used that bullshit to get out of beard length requirements at a job once. They dont like to question it to much, and if they do, you just have to get offended lol.
One Butlerian Jihad comming right up, Sir!
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
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They’re referencing Dune. In the lore AI tried to kill humanity, the war was called the Butlerian Jihad. As a result, AI was banned across the galaxy. I don’t know why you’re being downvoted just for not knowing
IIRC, the war didn’t start because AI started killing humans. It started because humans opposed AI replacing them. There was a religious sect (Butlarians) who opposed this, and they eventually rose up to fight the machines. They weren’t directly attacked first.
I think the downvotes are from the “lol” where the question mark normally goes.
As is praxis.
Bah! It shall not stand that a man of such impervious ignorance should discomfort our cultured company!
It’s in the Orange Catholic Bible
If you read the bible upside down, it makes much more sense.
Trump was trying to tell us that but money got in the way.
I see what you did there, but in the Dune universe, the Orange Catholics are a religious sect, not a jab at bad makeup and trump.
What a strong work of art Dune is, after all
The book probably has nothing to do with Christian Catholicism, and is not a religious sect but a book. That’s a common mistake people make. Catholic is a word outside of that particular sect of Christianity. It means “universal.” In the context of Dune, the Orange Catholic Bible refers to a universal Bible that covers many religions.
It was produced after the Butlerian Jihad to be a basis for everyone to use. There are not “Orange Catholics” as far as I’m aware. Orange and catholic are just descriptions of this essentially encyclopedia of religious texts for people to form their new understanding with after learning to think for themselves once again.
Got it, thank you!
The Bibble, page 241.
I suddenly just became religious.
Praise be to whatever gets me exemption!
You’re gonna love this article
I praise the Flying Spaggheti Monster, it’ll count?
You should have seen me getting out of jury duty. Legendary sermon. They dismissed our whole group.
I would have preferred to talk about rational reasons to oppose the torture/gulag system, but unfortunately this enslaver state only privileges religious ideology.
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
Big no-no for the followers of the God Emperor of Dune or 40k.
So uh how do I make kids
Don’t make kids that are machines
Oh man you’re gonna like this part
While humanism is often a non-religious philosophy or a worldview, federal courts have ruled that it qualifies as a religion.
Best part of the story
There’s no greater validation for an ideology than the state endorsing it as a religion. smh…
Probably won’t stand up in the Supreme Court which only recognizes the religious rights of Christians to be bigots.
The very first sentence mentions that this takes place in the UK
Edit: actually, I think I’m wrong on that. It sounds like this is a US story
University of Kentucky (UK). No worries, mate.
TIL there are more than zero universities in Kentucky.
There’s at least zero.
With how both the UK and the US are going, soon if not already the lower bound will be lower than that.
Uneducation camps
LOL when I read it my first impression was: Oh wow, I didn’t know UK also had a city called Kentucky, good that they pointed out it is not in US.
If there was a Kentucky in the UK then the one in the US would be called New Kentucky?
No, we have tons of direct names from the UK, and many other places. We have Londons, Norfolks, Portsmouths, and probably any other major city or region in Britain.
I’m from Connecticut, the town names of which* fall roughly into three categories: Native American names, biblical place names, and English names. Under the latter category, we have new Britain and new London (arguably the only two which fit that pattern, though maybe New Haven is referencing an older British city I don’t know about), but we also have Manchester, Bolton, and Glastonbury, and of course just English language words or last names, like Plainville, Plainfield, and Putnam.
*This is also true for most other New England states and probably most of the east coast, with substitution for French or Spanish (and a little Dutch) for English/British as appropriate. Actually, I could see this being mostly true everywhere in the US, with the relevant settling nationality taking over for British town names and last names, but I could also see biblical place names being less popular in some states, maybe superseded by other religious references.
There’s also a New Boston in MA right over the border from Colebrook, CT
The normal Boston in Massachusetts was originally named after the Lincolnshire village town of Saint botolph, iirc, so new Boston probably refers to a new offshoot of Boston, MA, like CT’s new Milford/new Hartford, but I’d be lying if I said I knew.
Like New Boston, right?
good that they pointed out it is not in US.
Huh? It is in the USA.
They wrote: “at the University of Kentucky (UK)”, they could write “at the University of Kentucky (a.k.a. UK)” or “at the UK (University of Kentucky)” any of those would be less ambiguous.
Countries are offset with a comma, not put in parentheses, so maybe University of Kentucky (UK), USA?
David Durman, a research administrator at the University of Kentucky (UK)
I’m with you - why abbreviate the university like that? I immediately thought the UK (United Kingdom) too. Something like “University of Kentucky (aka UK)” would’ve been helpful.
UK is University of Kentucky.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a US act. https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-1964
It’s a funny mistake though. I think intially I also thought it was UK, the Briton.
… I’m not sure if this is a joke or not.
That only matters if it goes to court that high.
I am in no way religious, but every retail job I’ve had that pushes credit cards I break out the Bible verses to inform management I can’t push a credit card on any American, because there’s a verse about not charging your own people interest, and since every credit card does that, It goes against my “religious beliefs”. No manager has ever pushed back against it.
This is honestly one of the greatest uses of religious exemptions. It’s not like the store is really making that much from every individual cashier they ask to hawk credit cards. But if they did make an issue of it, and you did sue them for violating your religious rights, then they would have to pay legal fees. And even a simple legal case would likely cost them more in legal fees than they would make from many years of you hawking credit cards.
You would get more pushback if you were requesting something that required serious accommodations on the part of the company. But simply letting you not sell credit cards? That’s an easy one to get approved.
You usually don’t have any reason to go that far anyhow, corpos don’t want to have to mount a defence and just roll over about it instead
There’s more than a few Christianist corpos out there willing to go to court to bring about their theocracy–Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-a being two commonly cited examples.
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
One religious exemption, please!
Yep, a society based on privileging religion will support almost any wacky ideology that doesn’t oppose the state.
This is a large part of how we got here.
So they want me to use an AI to do my job. But at the same time they haven’t fired me so presumably they understand that the AI can’t be used exclusively to do the job. So doesn’t that mean that they accept that I have better judgment than an AI and therefore my decision not to use said AI shouldn’t be a problem for them.
I would love to see them actually try articulate exactly why the above is not true in an employment tribunal.
Employment tribunal?
You must not be American.
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Not everyone is
For sure, it’s just nice seeing non USian perspectives in comments. There’s dozens of us.
How dare you use logic! Go, be ashamed of yourself!
Freedom from religion is more important than freedom of religion.
Time to apply this to financial economics.
If Scientology can get a tax exception as a religious institution, then this guy can get title 9 coverage to not use AI at work as far as I am concerned.
If it was anywhere but a university I would have also expected him to be on the short list for layoffs next round for such a choice as well.
Religion is a federally protected class. Are we not even pretending our laws work anymore?
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While I think most religious exemptions are stupidly and bullshit (looking at you, vaccine dodgers), this one can be considered to have actual theological merit. No graven images or creations. Also the fact the there are already cults of the AI. It’s still fighting bullshit with bullshit, but sometimes that’s all you have.
Oh FUUUUCK YES!
This reminds me of a quote from Star Trek Insurrection- “We Believe that when you build a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man.”
When I first saw the film, I rejected that. Seemed like backwards thinking, ignorant Luddite ideology ignoring the reality that when the machine does the man’s work, you free up the man to do other things. When a man doesn’t have to plow the field, he can focus on art and science and philosophy and music and poetry and otherwise taking his mind to the next level. At least that sounded good in my head.
Then I look at what we have now. We have built machines to create art and science and music and poetry, so the man is left to keep taking out the garbage. This is not an improvement. The Baku may not have been totally wrong.
I like Cory Doctorow’s take on it differentiating the two different classes of machine:
In automation theory, a “centaur” is a person who is assisted by a machine. You’re a human head being carried around on a tireless robot body. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete.
And obviously, a reverse centaur is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine.
Obviously, it’s nice to be a centaur, and it’s horrible to be a reverse centaur.
The AI trend has been pushing all of us to be reverse centaurs which is the problem with machines you’re talking about.
The problem is that you start thinking the robot tentacles are a neat tool and that you’re a centaur.
But before long the tentacles take over and you haven’t even realized you’ve become a reverse centaur.
Source : the ancient wisdom of Spider-Man 2 (2004).
I don’t think that in that case the tentacles made Doc Ock a reverse centaur necessarily, but I see the similarities. The tentacles weren’t doing the thinking, and IIRC the neural link increased Otto’s rage and aggression, and suppressed his emotions and compassion (plus his wife died so he had little to care about). Maybe there needs to be a third term where using the machine as a centaur changes the behavior and brain of the operator?
Maybe there needs to be a third term where using the machine as a centaur changes the behavior and brain of the operator?
Over in the fuck cars communities we call it carbrain when driving does this to people but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a more general term.
That’s Insurrection, not First Contact.
I don’t want to be a statue!
THAT is First Contact.
Also, 😭…
Nice catch. Fixed
I think the older I get and the more I see all of us being alienated from the fruits of our labors, the more I realize that there is/was value in the reproductive labor of food production, clothing production, etc. I don’t mean that we should all go back to being serfs (though, there are studies that show they worked less than we do), but I think that there’s something lost when most people don’t have anything of value they can point to and say “I made that” or “I had a hand in that.” Most people have bullshit jobs that have very little to do with human thriving/surviving and at the same time, don’t see more people doing science or art or poetry. IDK what the solution is, but it sure feels like we’ve been collectively sold a bill of goods in a lot of ways.
Those “they worked less” articles often twist and lose the truth. They worked less on the specific work for their masters maybe, but they had to because they had to work at home; everything and I mean everything took longer back then. They needed more time to prepare food and darn their socks and split firewood for the winter and whatnot. They couldn’t just run to the nearest store if they needed a loaf of bread. They had to actually make it. So yes, they “worked less” but they also worked a lot more doing their house chores just to survive.
laundry was a total bitch too
Any functional spin laundry machine is saving more time than anything else in the house.
I remember helping my grandmother with the wring washer: the tub would swish only but not spin, so you had to pull out each item and run it through the wringer assembly above the tub, like a giant set of pasta rollers just waiting to eat your hand. Barely faster than beating them on rocks.
I still hang laundry on the line to dry when weather and clean air allow.
You’ll note that I actively disclaimed a desire to go back to serfdom. My broader point is about the alienation of labor and the sole focus on product rather than process.
Also if we’re talking serfs specifically they actually had to work the lands of their lord and didn’t get anything in return, all of it went to the lord. Then also they had to work to sustain themselves and their family. It’s like if they made you today to work 3 weeks for your boss, without pay, then you can work one week for pay to earn your living.
That’s literally how employment works. You produce $50 worth of value to your company, and they pay you $20 for your efforts.
Work with hands good. Need place, purpose
I think the distinction is what we consider “the work of a man”. I don’t consider man’s work to be just physical labor. A lot of things can do that. I think the true work of humanity is to use our ingenuity and critical thinking to do more. I’m not saying physical labor is not important, but there are several jobs that require physical labor and take thought and troubleshooting. I don’t need a human being to screw in the same screw on an assembly line a hundred times a day, but a human being may be needed to determine why that screw ends up being a failure point in the final product.
There is of course lots to be said about the value of a hard days work and the toil and effort of physical labor, but I think we are all capable of so much more. It need not just be that.
I don’t consider man’s work to be just physical labor.
The key here is that the English language currently does a piss-poor job of creating a destinction between meaningfull, avocational, enriching “work”, and meaningless, necessity-driven “labour.” Anthropologists have found pre-agrarian cultures tended to do far less labour, but had plenty of activity. I blame pretestant “work ethic” for equating taking out the trash and all that with meaningful work that makes a person.
Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
I get the reference, but that’s not really related to what I said. I don’t want to just ignore your comment if it’s a serious point, but at no point did I suggest otherwise.
I was being a little tongue-in-cheek.
I just don’t super agree with your premise that the “real” work of man is to do more, is all. I like to think it’s more to accomplish something with intention, craft, and rigor. We’ve disconnected ourselves from our “real” work.
My verbiage may differ slightly from yours, but I believe we agree. “Intention, craft” would indicate something similar to ingenuity to me. Obviously, totally OK for you to disagree, or think I did not explain appropriately, but my point was that we are not just beasts of burden, we can think and analyze and have opinions therefore allowing us to do things with “Intention” and to not just create things but to “craft” them.
The thing is that not everyone wants to do art, science or philosophy. Some people want to plow their field, they’re happy with that. Who are we to take that away from them?
Reasonable compromises must be made. I won’t lie to you, being someone that spent the better part of their career performing manual labor I would find it hard to believe you have spent any extended amount of time working a farm.
The share of people that want to perform, very specifically, back breaking labor is small compared to the number of people that would prefer to do literally anything else. We can make accommodations for that small number bit automating plowing but not science is a reasonable compromise.
First of its kind
Pretty sure it isn’t.
She won a religious exemption from using AI at work. The Pope’s remarks could fuel similar appeals.
Yeah. Why isn’t this higher. Or is it somehow different?
