Posted by theletterf 11 hours ago
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are they?
> because they have incentives that are different from our political leaders
Do they?
> 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.
> 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.
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).
> Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people.
How?
The delta between 1903 and today in this regard might be small, but the line between them isn't flat, and that makes it even more tragic and frustrating to have this questioned as if it's an impossible problem.
It took many forms: capitalist social democracy, communism, fascism... Left or right, without making a value judgement, they were all revolutions seeking to empower the working masses.
Of course, when you get rid of kings, it's really really hard to make sure the vacuum is not filled by something even worse. Credit where credit's due, as a European, I do believe that the US is one of the few cases that was somewhat successful in not completely bungling this opportunity (although there's the detail of slave labour, and the conquest of natives...).
And after many-many horribly failed attempts, much of the world did end up in a relatively healthy state around the second half of the 20th century. Fukuyama's end of history and all.
Now we seem to be regressing again. Perhaps it's part of the eternal cycle and it was always coming. Perhaps it's not actually regressing all that much, and it just looks like it to our coddled selves, or we have become more ambitious on what we think is right. Perhaps people have found new loopholes on how to get ahead and dominate the rest of us, and we just need to catch up and get it under control again.
Perhaps that quote from 1903 is relevant now, but it doesn't mean that it was relevant the whole time since. Perhaps it was, I wasn't there.
Well, it's rather patronising of of me to call that "the hard part", after all the terrible struggles workers have gone through to earn a seat at the table, but you know what I mean.
That's an important point. It's so hard to think of a better system, if you take the task seriously and actually think through all the consequences of each option.
As a result, as usual, the loud people that ignore all the details end up capturing everyone's imagination with a good story, and we stumble upon yet another century of nightmares.
Do you actually have a answer for something that is actually substantially better? Because I really don't if I'm being honest with myself, and I am yet to hear one.
That's one way to put it. Another perspective (mine) is that capitalism enables anyone to try and make things better, and if you make things better for the right user, they will reward you.
Fun techcentric utopian speculation about this: Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" and Ruthanna Emry's "A Half-Built Garden."
Essentially, can we leverage our current post-scarcity society to expropriate everything people need in a sustainable way that cuts capitalism and the State out of the loop? For example, why would people buy food if they can get it for free from farming syndicates or similar? (see: Global Village Construction Kit, Food Not Bombs, Food Not Lawns) Why would people buy medicine if they can print it for free from pirated recipes? (see: Four Thieves Vinegar Collective)
I see the Right to Repair and FOSS movements as a foundation to build upon for this. Anarchism (or at least, anti-capitalism) exists right under everyone's noses, in all the FOSS software installed on their computers. Existent example of people laboring without profit motive and contributing to the commons.
My personal life goal is to figure out how to capture that same energy to tackle the bottom layers of Maslow's hierarchy.
I'm not entirely cynical, people generally are very open to be generous with one another and collaborate for a common good, but up to a point.
Currently people spend the majority of their hours doing relatively hard work for the collective's benefit (kinda). Exactly because capitalism makes selfishness into selflessness (very kinda). Also people are relatively civilized to one another thanks to the considerable latent force of the state's monopoly on violence.
People will be nice to each other when it doesn't cost them much and/or when the opposite costs them dearly. But will they work as hard as now for each other just to be nice? Will they not harm each other when there are no significant consequences?
I suppose that's the post-scarcity idea: that people neither need to work hard, nor have significant reasons to harm, if they have everything they want. Sure, let's talk if we ever get there, but until then we have other problems to deal with.
PS: Don't forget that people are able to do FOSS because they have well paid jobs that don't completely drain them of their energy. For others, getting the reputation for a better job is the incentive. There's a very different social infrastructure making that work, FOSS doesn't sustain itself, not even close. But yes, it does prove that when people's needs are covered, some of them will do great things for everyone without much incentive, but usually not enough to cover everyone's wants.
What I am weary of is that such experimentation, and the energy it generates, will eventually be overtaken by the next iteration of people who want to stop nibbling at the margins and break a few eggs already, some sort of anarchist revolutionary vanguard. Much like with communism, skilful opportunists with a thirst for power will be all too happy to take over this energy and direct it toward building the next totalitarian regime, one which will of course claim to be rendering the State obsolete, but will be about as anarchist as North Korea is a people's democratic republic.
Marx and Engels had originally envisioned a liberal democratic society with lots of high ideals but they had allowed the transition to it to be tough. Every self-proclaimed "Communist" state never got through that transition: the people in charge never let it (often never intended to) and instead cemented their authoritarian dictatorships. So let's call those what they were.
Being anti-communism is good not only for the individual's health but for their society as a whole.
For example, do you believe the Capitalist system has nothing to do with the eagerness of the United States to drop bombs throughout the world for the past 100 years? Personally I see these actions as unnecessary and evil but pushed to continue by the people who stand to gain the most wealth and influence from them.
I ask because if we can take a country with a communist economy, or striving for one, and blame all its evils on communism itself, I have a few things I'd like to point out as being the horrors of capitalism:
1. Atlantic slave trade - millions dead (many on the ships), millions enslaved
2. Settler colonialism and indigenous genocide - British empire, all over the world
3. Congo Free State, Leopold II - 1 to 5 million dead via colonial extraction regime
4. British India famines - 3 million dead
5. Irish Famine - 1 million dead
6. Opium wars - directly caused by British using the military to defend market access. 100k dead, devastating to Qing China for a century
7. Indonesian anti-communist massacres - 500k-1mil alleged "communists" killed after the USA, UK, and Australian intelligence agencies propagandized against them
And I attribute them to communism because that's literally how history attributes them, though obviously pro-Communism thinkers would disagree.
The 1956 student massacres in Hungary, where my grandma was almost killed. The Holodomor, the various "Russianization" campaigns, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, The Great Leap Forward, etc.
B) Fine, drop communism altogether -- it's evil and disgusting and bit my finger and should never be tried again. Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?
I guess it must be the same that make people think they must deliver freedom in form of bombs all the time.
"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."
"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."