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I’m from Belgium, traditionally a catholic country, and from that POV pretty certain that the biggest issue is that the catholic church as an institution has a pretty bad historical rep (still going on today) of abuse of power, and covering up where they see fit. So might help if they clean house, change policies and find ways to amend the victims.

Just to say that I don’t agree that it’s always about misconceptions but more often about mistrust or not feeling accepted.

That said there have been signs of a more open environment and their ceremonial texts can often be an interesting read.

Their 'apologies" are often fun to read, too.

Many people forget (or never knew) that Catholicism / Christianity basically kickstarted modern science. A large misconception is that Christianity and Science can't coexist. When in reality they amplify each other.

There is a wonderful (if lengthy) takedown of the "Brave scientist Galileo vs Catholic Church" myth here: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/9-great-ptolemaic-smackd...

They didn't do very well by Giordano Bruno though who proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets and got burned at the stake.

I'm a bit late responding to this, but I believe this is false, and that his cosmological beliefs had nothing to do with his fate:

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-truth-about-giordano-bru...

One of my favourite stories is of George Lemaître who came up with the Big Bang theory, and predicted the Higgs Boson - while Steven Hawkins bet against it, and was proved wrong.

George Lemaître was a Catholic Priest.

I agree that it's good, but I was struck by how much of it could have been written in the 1970s about the coming revolution in databases. It's probably good to have a refresher!

it is amazing how all computers do could be done in paper, but not as fast

which means that computer technology since the 70s is really just "faster paper", faster by more then a single order of magnitue... but ultimately paper-equivalent to this day

maybe LLMs, once their computational characteristics are better understood, will finally move computing beyond paper so fast it can write on itself over 2,000,000,000 times per second

‘universal control mechanism for other machines’ is not something you can do with faster paper and that’s the job of a gigantic pile of computers.

Isn't it? The universal control mechanism for other machines used to be punchcards.

a mechanical mechanism which isn’t and wasn’t particularly universal and where the use of paper is incidental and often limiting. the point is that just making computation faster (what gp was talking about) is not why computers are everywhere.

computer technology since the 70s is really just "faster paper"

Huh... "paper" is just storage, the whole point of "computer technology" is to have a tool to do computation not just storage. So no, computers are not just faster paper.

it's paper that can write into itself

> This is probably the best thing I’ve read by a world leader on AI.

> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding.

Just because the Pope released this statement doesn't change how the Catholic church got its reputation, both good and bad. The magnitude of history of the Catholic Church up to the present defines its reputation far more than a single statement about AI.

That said, it's good that they are adding their humanistic perspective to the debate. They are not the only ones saying these things - but their members, from developing country farmers to Supreme Court justices - need to be informed and aware since AI will probably affect everyone. I think it would be negligent if they didn't.

everyone else thats been accused, indicted or convicted of pedophilia and child molestation were multifaceted people that contributed to society and had love and understanding for someone else

its not a misconception to focus on the totally cancellable, ostracizable, things that institution is known for

Pedophilia is distinct from child molestation and is a mental condition, not a crime.

and an accusation doesnt need a distinction

> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics.

I’d like to know if anything else about Catholics and the Catholic church makes you sad? And what do you believe are “misconceptions”?

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, shouldn't have engaged there.

> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics.

What are these misconceptions? Catholicism uses shame to induce conformity, has had numerous priests abuse children (and protecting the offenders), has a long history of violence against non-adherents, historically deeply homophobic, and so on. All of that is factual.

Edit: Oh! And now I remember, they killed and buried hundreds of children in Canada at their "schools" for indigenous people. Graves unmarked, families never knew what happened to the kids. But it's OK! Pope here said sorry, sort of, after being pressured, for decades. Also they found graves. Canadian govt. couldn't give a rats ass because the church is as powerful as governments.

But remember! We love all of God's children.

The rate of child sexual abuse among Catholic priests is lower than that of Protestant pastors, which in turn is even lower than that of public schoolteachers.

So what??? If my neighbour murdered children would that be mitigated by a serial killer in the next town over?

Do people really have this much cognitive dissonance that they lose the ability to think? Like how much delusion do you have to be under to even say the above and think it makes it better for Catholics.

Even one priest raping a child under the protection of the church is entirely unacceptable.

Nobody is saying it is acceptable. The problem is every time the Church is brought up somebody has to talk about the abuse/cover up regardless of the topic. It is completely irrelevant to this thread.

Nobody does this with public schools. If people always brought up the abuse and cover ups by teachers and unions regardless of the topic they would be down voted and told it is not relevant to the topic.

If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up. Instead they only do it with the Church. It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions.

Check the comment this is spawned from. The comment elicited all of this by saying there are misconceptions about the church.

I still don't get what the problem is. What does the asymmetric treatment between schools and church abuse have to do with the facts?

> If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up.

So you are saying I don't actually care about the abuse coverups? You think I have another agenda? You have a sick mind.

> It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions.

It's not that, at all. Shame on you for trying to reframe it as such.

>I still don't get what the problem is. What does the asymmetric treatment between schools and church abuse have to do with the facts?

Nothing.

>So you are saying I don't actually care about the abuse coverups? You think I have another agenda? You have a sick mind

I don't know what you believe. I think if somebody is willing to randomly (completely unrelated to to the topic) bring up abuse by the Church in every thread, but is not willing to do the same thing for schools it shows they have a bias.

I have no issue accepting that abuse has happened in the Church and it is despicable. My issue is nobody seems to care about the much larger abuse problem in schools.

>It's not that, at all. Shame on you for trying to reframe it as such.

Please explain the asymmetric treatment if it is not because people on HN in general don't like the Church, while they do like public schools.

You should read the comments. The top comment I am replying to specifically opens the door on this stuff. They challenged that people have "misconceptions", I am showing how those concepts that are held about the church are actually very real and substantiated.

> Please explain the asymmetric treatment if it is not because people on HN in general don't like the Church, while they do like public schools.

When you find a post on HN that talks about public schools maybe this topic will open up there too, and you can have your day there.

> people on HN in general don't like the Church

I don't like psychopaths either, and for good reason. I don't like the Church because of what it has enabled, the lies, the hypocrisy, and so on. You are trying to frame it as HN folks have a hard on for going after the church for no good reason. Well, lots of reasons have been listed once the OP basically said "there is no good reason to object to the church, it's all misconceptions. Lol.

> My issue is nobody seems to care about the much larger abuse problem in schools.

This isn't true. You just happened to come to a comment section that is talking specifically about the church and you are mad because it's not talking about what you want to talk about. Why not go post a tech story about schools, and then find someone challenging misconceptions about schools.

These comments aren't trying to nefariously undermine the problem in schools, that's just you being frustrated, or whatever is motivating you to get mad.

The issue is that the catholic church covered up the abuse, and in some cases even moved offending priests to other parishes where they continued to abuse children.

Yes; school districts and teachers unions do this as well sometimes. It's an institutional problem, and a difficult institutional problem to solve. Just about every institution that works with children has dealt with the same problem--this famously bankrupted the Boy Scouts of America, for instance. And statistically, the Catholic Church has done a better job than most institutions.

Protestant churches also engaged in cover-ups, for example the Southern Baptists:

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/may-web-only/south...

No, the issue is it happens at all. Just because others are worse changes nothing.

How exactly are those figures arrived at, since insane amounts of abuse went on unreported for...centuries?

Is this globally? Is this just in your own experience?

In the case of Australia which had a five year long Royal Commission into Institutional Sexual Abuse of children that took in tens of thousands of interviews across schools and all religuous institutions the final report included:

    Many children have been sexually abused in religious institutions in Australia.

    Based on the information before us, the greatest number of alleged perpetrators and abused children were in Catholic institutions.

    In many religious institutions, the power afforded to people in religious ministry and the misplaced trust of parents combined with aspects of the institutional culture, practices and attitudes to create risks for children.

    Alleged perpetrators often continued to have access to children even when religious leaders knew they posed a danger. 

    We heard that alleged perpetrators were often transferred to other locations but they were rarely reported to police.

https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/f...

The Catholic Institutions in Australia with the worst behaviour were the Christian Brothers who operate globally and there was no evidence seen that as an international group dealing with the education of minors, most often orphaned minors, their behaviour in Australia was somehow better or worse than their behaviour elsewhere - they rotated bad priests in and out, dodged responsibility, and hands down "won" the prize for most children abused.

All of that is factual

You're sort of singling out Catholicism though. Islam does all those things much much worse than Catholicism ever has - in the present day too! I'm not Catholic and I don't care to defend them. Still, I don't want them singled out when Islam is demonstrably worse in every way.

> You're sort of singling out Catholicism though.

Yes, because church is the context of this post, and the OP opened the door. What does your comment have to do with the facts?

Just because some people do bad things does not mean you get to paint the whole group with those crimes. Imagine if you had said, "Black people are criminals, because a black person robbed the liquor store down the street last week." We all (hopefully) recognize the deep racism in this statement!

Unfortunately, there are parts of the country where this type of racism is acceptable and even common. There as similar attitudes towards Catholics, due to America's history as a predominately protestant country. The formula is the same both way - pick a heinous crime from a few members, blame it on the group as a whole, and feel smug about yourself.

I'm attacking an institution, not individuals.

No religious flamewar on HN please. I realize the parent more or less started it but it's quite against the HN guidelines to take the bait this vigorously.

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: yikes, you posted 16 times in this thread! That's egregious. I'm going to assume that you hadn't seen this comment before posting any of those.

A modest proposal: perhaps if you were to teach your userbase why their thinking is objectively incorrect the frequency of these spectacles would decrease over time.

That's impossible.

I don't see why. Consider the enlightenment, the rise of science subordinating religion, the fact that humans who have attended school are smarter on average than those who have not, the theory that you scolding people for violating the rules improves behavior, etc.

It certainly isn't physically impossible, but I acknowledge that it may be metaphysically impossible.

That this (a comment containing this particular content) is [flagged] is interesting.

Is Catholicism still relevant once we create a new AI god to rule over us and it kills the old god? Could Catholics utilize their expertise in worshipping omnipotent deities to appease Roko's Basilisk?