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Posted by theletterf 10 hours ago

Magnifica Humanitas(www.vatican.va)
993 points | 433 commentspage 3
wald3n 3 hours ago|
Love this: building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected. Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited “upgrades,” in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people’s wounds. As a result, while some pursue the illusion of unlimited self-assertion, many are deprived of basic necessities.
ZetaRicky 9 hours ago||
Interestingly, the Latin version of the encyclica is yet to be released at the moment
qsort 8 hours ago||
Modern encyclicals aren't written in Latin anymore. They're drafted in Italian and the title is the Latin translation of the incipit.

Indeed, the beginning of the Italian text is: "La magnifica umanità creata da Dio si trova oggi..." from which, Magnifica Humanitas.

wl 6 hours ago|||
For those who don't know why that's interesting: The tradional practice for creating these kinds of texts is to first write an editio typica in Latin. This Latin text is then the basis for translations into vernacular languages.
stavros 8 hours ago||
Yeah, I don't know how they expect the people of Latin America to read this.
loloquwowndueo 8 hours ago||||
Well because it’s Latin America, not the US, the vast majority of people are at least bilingual anyway :)
brunoarueira 8 hours ago|||
Although, it's called Latin America many countries speak variations of spanish and Brazil speak portuguese, just because those languages derived from latin and not because there the people speak it
stavros 8 hours ago||
That was the joke :(
KaiserPro 7 hours ago|||
If it helps, I got your joke
stavros 7 hours ago||
<3
brunoarueira 7 hours ago||||
Haha don't worry, next time I'll take care :'D
whizzter 8 hours ago|||
The net is too infused with dumb takes that the joke becomes indistinguishable to reality.
stavros 8 hours ago||
This is true, but we also can't go around adding /s to everything. Ah well, I guess it's a risk I have to take.
mercacona 4 hours ago||
NUMBERED PARAGRAPHS, YESSSS! Seriously, once page numbers have become optional, electronic editions of books (monographs, essays, and academic texts) need to number the paragraphs so we can keep references working. I’m fed up with referencing the entire text or specific chapters.
skrebbel 3 hours ago|
I love how excited you are about this and it's rubbing off on me.
lynndotpy 3 hours ago||
I love numbered paragraphs, but this is the standard for religious texts, no? Famously so for centuries?

I love it when old stuffy institutions are on the cutting-edge of clarity of communication as much as anyone else. (The SEC with its "HOW EQUIFAX NEGLECTED CYBERSECURITY AND SUFFERED A DEVASTATING DATA BREACH" report where nearly each section title was a complete sentence, making the Table of Contents also serve as a summary, got me very very excited).

I would welcome, numbered paragraphs _and_, an HTML standard, and full-sentence-section-titles in the world of academia.

skrebbel 1 hour ago||
Wow I had to Google that and it's amazing indeed!

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/do... check that TOC, this is amazing and it should totally be a much more widespread thing.

In fact tbh I tried to get through this here Encyclical 3 times already but just didn't manage (knowing absolutely nothing about Catholicism except what's in the Dogma movie didn't help), and I can't help but think now that if it had a TOC like the Equifax report it'd be spectacular.

phtrivier 8 hours ago||
Cue Pieter Thiel explaining how this message of compassion is actually the word of the ant-christ while setting his software (maybe "built in Rust !) to all the earthly empires.
cucho 4 hours ago||
Here is an easier to read version, in clean markdown: https://github.com/cucho/magnifica-humanitas/blob/master/mar...
mentalgear 5 hours ago||
> “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon”

This is very on-point: capitalism-driven AI development as we have it today will always turn against the common good due to it's singular profit-motive.

What a time: the pope having a much clearer picture of the risks & dangers of 'AI' than most people, many 'tech leaders' and certainly most politicians.

gchamonlive 4 hours ago|
I think while it's a very lucid comment, it's still too much reconciliatory for the position that the pope occupies. He should be advocating from a sustainable transition from the current capitalist/consumerist economic doctrine to one more centered on welfare and the care for the other, following his religious doctrine's moral values.
iamacyborg 3 hours ago|||
I don’t know that the Papacy has ever been about that though
gchamonlive 2 hours ago||
That the papacy isn't about speaking out when the world in the eyes of the pope is taking a turn away from the catholic moral principles?
iamacyborg 2 hours ago||
Given how those virtues have changed over time and how badly behaved a large number of popes have been, yeah, no. The more cynical read is that the Papacy has for a very extensive period been about increasing the personal worldly power of the Pope and his close associates.
gchamonlive 2 hours ago||
> Given how those virtues have changed over time

Virtues change over time. You can't judge 16th century morals with our current view of virtues.

> how badly behaved a large number of popes have been

This is from our point of view. I think there should be legal guardrails so that gov and church don't mix, but this kind of moral separation is the kind of thing that created the conditions for the holocaust.

Of course the other extreme is to have a theocracy, so everything in balance.

> The more cynical read is that the Papacy has for a very extensive period been about increasing the personal worldly power of the Pope and his close associates.

This is a problem in every institution, it needs power and power corrupts absolutely. But the pope dedicates his life for a doctrine that if correctly applied presents a really important counterweight for the current system of morals that reduces the individual to what it can produce. This is why I think this is an important period to listen to our religious leaders, not because they have the answers, but because first they are deserving of some level or respect and second just because they have incentives that are different from our political leaders.

iamacyborg 1 hour ago||
> first they are deserving of some level or respect

Are they?

> because they have incentives that are different from our political leaders

Do they?

gchamonlive 1 minute ago||
[delayed]
vintagedave 4 hours ago||||
Yes. I was slightly disappointed by the commentary on welfare itself:

> This principle encourages us to move beyond any form of paternalistic or welfare-based management of societal life, but instead to promote a culture of shared responsibility in a State that values citizens’ initiative, and a civil society capable of forging bonds and mobilizing energies in the service of the common good.

The section above on the universal destination of goods was far more encouraging.

He did also write,

> The idea of “social justice” helps us recognize that injustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically.

logicchains 3 hours ago|||
The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful. If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution.
gchamonlive 2 hours ago||
This smuggles in so many assumptions and misconceptions I find it hard to decide where to start. Maybe from the beginning:

> The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful.

This might be true in the context of the original sin, but philosophically speaking you can't make this assertion, since there is no consensus on what the human nature is, or even if there is an essential human nature.

> If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working

That's incorrect because it assumes the only reason for working is profit, in which case art for instance in many forms wouldn't exist.

> they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution

This is just a wrong impression what communism is. What creates these conditions are autocracies and oligarchies, not communism. In either case, even if this were true, this statement isn't falsifiable so can't really be taken into account.

jbrun 4 hours ago||
Interestingly, the invention of the printing press, a clear analogous technology to AI, was directly linked to the schism and creation of the protestant and reformation movement and bloody religious wars. So the Catholic church knows what it is talking about here!
ZacnyLos 9 hours ago||
AI must be “disarmed” in order to free it from the mentality of military, economic, and cognitive competition. “To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” he says. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity” (110). He devotes ample space to a critique of transhumanism and posthumanism, which interpret progress as the overcoming of human limits. Instead, limitations are not defects to be eliminated, but a constitutive dimension of the human person, because it is in fragility and finitude that relationship and openness to God and to others mature. He says we must remember that “humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them” (118).

Pursuing technological innovation at the expense of eliminating human limitations, he says, would cause an anthropological regression. “Humanity—in all its grandeur and woundedness—must never be replaced or surpassed,” he says. Technology can alleviate humanity’s sufferings and open new possibilities, but it must not deny the essence of humanity, which is our “capacity for relationship and love” (126). In the face of AI, says the Pope, “the true alternative is not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that subjects them to the mentality of power” (129).

satvikpendem 5 hours ago||
I wonder how many people read and heed the words of the Pope. I've seen letters like these for years now which sound good but I don't see any change in people after having read them.
tete 5 hours ago||
Really rather unfortunate. I wished religious people took their stuff seriously and not so often end up concluding that the bible wants them to harm people or something.

I guess it must be the same that make people think they must deliver freedom in form of bombs all the time.

9087653545 3 hours ago||
"Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"

"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves."

"...And there is also with you Shimei the son of Gera... He came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by the Lord, saying, ‘I will not put you to death with the sword.’ Now therefore do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man. You will know what you ought to do to him, and you shall bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol."

whatshisface 2 hours ago||
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."

"Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus and took him. And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me."

mbo 4 hours ago|||
I just messaged a few of my friends who I know are devoutly Catholic (and also happen to work in AI): 3 out of 4 are currently reading it this morning for their Memorial Day.
chrsw 5 hours ago||
Almost nobody.
bix6 3 hours ago|
This is a magnificent work. The thoughts and words are so precise and beautiful.
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