Top
Best
New

Posted by theletterf 5/25/2026

Magnifica Humanitas(www.vatican.va)
1650 points | 965 commentspage 12
Kuyawa 5/25/2026|
[flagged]
ziocancer 5/25/2026||
[flagged]
tomhow 5/25/2026||
Please don't post ideological/religious flamebait on HN. Also, on HN you can't have a username that is inflammatory like that, so for now I've banned the account. You're welcome to participate here if you observe the guidelines – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If you want this account unbanned you can email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and suggest a different username. Otherwise you can register a new account.

kortex 5/25/2026||
zionism != judaism
ziocancer 5/25/2026||
Zionism is one element of Jewish supremacy, but not all of it. In fact Zionism's execution was birthed from Jewish supremacy. The Rothschilds were in a unique position to receive a "state" from the British government.
factorialboy 5/25/2026||
[flagged]
henry2023 5/25/2026||
Tu quoque is a fallacy my friend.
factorialboy 5/26/2026||
Leading be example is not.

Look up Vatican land holdings across Europe, Africa and Asia.

But then, the opposition to my comment is based on religious ideology and not merit.

hooverlabs 5/25/2026||
Do you think we are even talking in the same ballpark of wealth? Elon Musk is slated to be the first trillionaire

https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/debunking-the-myth-of-va...

Curosinono 5/25/2026||
[flagged]
erelong 5/25/2026||
[flagged]
throw4847285 5/25/2026||
Look who is more Catholic than the Pope.
KaiserPro 5/25/2026|||
I do find this an interesting take.

I will skip the "just war" theory, because I simply don't know enough to make a cogent argument

But

> attacks colonialism without explaining why Christians created colonies

Speaking as an english person with a passing interest in colonialism, this is an _interesting_ take.

Which colonies are you talking about? because the ones in America and Ireland were explicitly not catholic. More complex still some of them were super anti-pope, and a lot were just C-of-E catholic but sans pope

Could you explain more about your viewpoint?

SSLy 5/25/2026||
ig it's about French and Belgians in Africa, and Spanish in America.
geremiiah 5/25/2026|||
I grew up Catholic, and I don't regonize myself or any of my Catholic upbringing in anything you wrote, at all.
moron4hire 5/25/2026|||
Who, in your mind, are "these people?" Please, don't go back and check the authorship of the document before replying. I'm extremely curious to see what you are thinking.
erelong 5/25/2026|||
While there's a singular author ("Leo"), these writings are often created in consultation with other people:

> Francis, for example, did not write Laudato si’ entirely on his own. The first draft was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, with input from other Church leaders. The document was then revised and reviewed by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

But I meant mostly those who share "Leo's" errors and write like him ("these people [like "Leo"])

triceratops 5/25/2026|||
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188156 this person is known for challenging papal authority.
defrost 5/25/2026||
If you share your prompt and model that created your summary then HN users can make their own hot take summary sub summaries.
erelong 5/25/2026||
ehhh, the model doesn't matter as much, the summary appears to be accurate (you can ctrl+f for keywords like "slavery", then see what's being said on the subject)

so for example with "Just War" we see this passage:

> it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.

This would clearly be thought to be an error from a Catholic viewpoint, because the right to wage "justified war" comes from the individual right to self-defense, as applied to a collective group of people legitimately defending against aggression (maybe lots of people here for example would argue Ukraine is legitimately justified in waging defensive war against Russia, for example).

Hence while it is good to promote peaceful resolutions of conflict, the document goes too far in condemning legitimate self-defense.

(So while the whole long document likely says correct things about AI and the dignity of work, it also adds in things like the above that Catholics would clearly reject. Typically Catholics would accept what a pope is writing so if you're getting someone who claims to be pope teaching erroneously, this points to a bigger problem for Catholics.)

hugh-avherald 5/25/2026||
I do not think that self-defense of an invading force is what just war theory is concerned with. The passage also says it is outdated, not that the doctrine is abrogated.
erelong 5/25/2026||
It's true that self-defense is not the only case where arguments have been made for justification for war but I think it's the most common:

> Catholic philosophy, therefore, concedes to the State the full natural right of war, whether defensive, as in case of another's attack in force upon it; offensive (more properly, coercive), where it finds it necessary to take the initiative in the application of force; or punitive, in the infliction of punishment for evil done against itself or, in some determined cases, against others.

"War" entry: newadvent.org/cathen/15546c.htm

By calling Catholic teaching "outdated", this sounds like the heresy of modernism (even if outright "abolition" isn't mentioned) - since for example these "older" teachings are directly applicable to current conflicts (people here might support Ukraine's right to defend against Russia, for example, under theories of justifications for war)

"Modernism": https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10415a.htm

b65e8bee43c2ed0 5/25/2026||
[flagged]
pj_mukh 5/25/2026||
I would love for the Pope to answer this question:

If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?

Before someone yells at me about this not being the current situation, I think that is the endgame of most of this AI development and in fact the endgame is even more comforting: If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.

But as a clear moral quandary, I think the Pope should consider the first situation.

nemomarx 5/25/2026||
If the technology is used to serve humanity by providing food or housing, it seems like his stance would be approving. But if it was used to increase profits and people still starved that would be bad, right?

"AI must be used for the good of humanity" isn't even an anti ai position really.

pj_mukh 5/25/2026|||
"by providing food or housing" vs "if it was used to increase profits"

Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself.

And as such, the technology seems the wrong thing to be litigating.

AvAn12 5/25/2026|||
Tech is supposed to be a tool that serves other products ends, not an end in itself.

At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us: muxk, thiel, Karp, etc.

So it should be no surprise that the rest of us are ready, willing and able to push back just as hard.

tech biz leads should just run their companies and stop trying to play president or god

pj_mukh 5/25/2026||
"At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us:"

I realize this is what's happening on the headlines, but most of the technology being "deployed" is back-office automation, robotics etc. that no one writes about and none of the tech baddies have monopolistic control over. I refuse to let muxk, thiel, Karp to run the conversation and setup the reaction either. It is exciting and dramatic but not necessarily influential.

squidbeak 5/25/2026||||
There aren't any profits with full automation - but there is instead total power for whoever owns that automation.
pj_mukh 5/25/2026||
If it’s a monopoly yes. But there are massive profits in full automation. I’m not expecting costs to go to zero but it’s the only pathway to things getting cheaper by a lot.
squidbeak 5/25/2026||
Where are these profits coming from? Remember, under full automation there aren't any workers earning salaries.

Meanwhile, costs of production fall to zero. So what will there be for these profitable companies to spend their profits on?

pj_mukh 5/25/2026||
I think we get hung up on definitions and end conditions when we are more likely to feel the effects of the asymptotic regions ala AGI or Full Automation

The exact situation I laid out: “If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.”

Is the most likely condition if we let this technology grow healthily with the exact “full automation” end condition being beyond the point of diminishing returns.

This is a lot of very wealthy workers building products for a lot of people with revenue growing but margins plateauing and therefore absolute profits growing as well. This is an exact repeat of the Industrial Revolution situation,

jdjdjxixismns 5/25/2026|||
[dead]
gbibas 5/25/2026|||
This makes me think of enlightened self interest. If the tech elite crush everyone by automating too fast then the economy collapses and people don’t have the money to pay them and their advertisers, so it will wind up hurting them directly too. Enlightened self interest SHOULD keep those same people in check finding a way to use the technology to empower advances in efficiency that empower people not just corporations. But the AI leaders don’t outwardly seem to think about these issues, and when asked just brush past them. We should not stop tech progress even if it were possible in a global competitive environment (which it is not), but there are some moral issues that should guide tech leaders in decision making, not just profit motives.
geremiiah 5/25/2026|||
The Catholic Church has at present no answer to that question. The contemporary political-economic stance of the Catholic Church is based on economic liberalism and capitalism and maintaining a just balance between capital and labour, as indeed mentioned in the encyclical itself.

I don't think anyone has an answer to that question at present, honestly.

djsamseng 5/25/2026|||
[flagged]
jdjdjxixismns 5/25/2026||
[dead]
serf 5/25/2026||
it's a shame that the vatican didn't bother asking whether or not the crusades would make humanity better before causing the death of 9 million plus people.

..or whether or not hiding all those pedophiles was the right.

and to be clear ; i'm not equating AI to those things -- i'm saying that I don't care about the opinion of a group with such a sordid history regardless of how shined up the PR is now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPmyry0yaQE

paologiacometti 5/25/2026||
Unfortunately, he did not mention the moral responsabilities of the Silicon Valley technopower in delivering and selling a technology so society-impact only for making themselves and their shareholders richier.
vermilingua 5/25/2026|
Actually, he did, extensively.
polotics 5/25/2026||
What kind of regulation is Leo the alignment expert proposing exactly? Occam's Razor says this is Anthropic trying to build a regulatory moat by leveraging some halo effect.

Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?

jeanlucas 5/25/2026|
From what you read, what do you think? All your questions are mentioned in the encíclica.
amai 5/25/2026|
Has someone done an AI generated summary ;-)
More comments...