The Vatican-Anthropic relationship that's reshaping the AI ethics debate | Hacker News Reader

The Vatican-Anthropic relationship that's reshaping the AI ethics debate

religionnews.com

21 pointscdrnsf20 comments

Culture Hacks (2019) compares Eastern and Western cultures, the mode of thinking about the world and general perspectives.

Religion, truth, and time are interpreted differently between them. Western thinking considers absolutes, right & wrong, black & white. Eastern thinking considers truth relative and time cyclical.

Of all the books that could be scraped, wonder if any translations from other philosophies or sources could have (or had) an impact (or not) on the process.

Will certain flavors or profiles of ethics exist, or a kind of poly-ethics?

> Western thinking considers absolutes, right & wrong, black & white. Eastern thinking considers truth relative and time cyclical.

Western culture is more direct and straightforward, while Eastern is the opposite. "Face saving, excuses, bs, white lies, hypocrisy, beating around the bush, etc." are all under the umbrella of lies in the West, not in the East.

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes" - Mark Twain

Extrapolated resources:

[1] https://www.bible.com/bible/105/MAT.5.37.NCV

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrEZwe1nbBU&t=226s

[3] https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYePOH_ypzb/

[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14142060/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_...

which is funny because I learned the worst kind of "subtle lie" from the west: establishing a favorable interpretation as fact before others have the time to think about an event or circumstance critically and from multiple angles. Because a lot of people don't ask followup questions if you give them An Answer right away.

That is just lazy thinking, exploiting a cognitive bias.

> "Face saving, excuses, bs, white lies, hypocrisy, beating around the bush, etc." are all under the umbrella of lies in the West, not in the East.

Maybe they are in the umbrella of lies in real of philosophy, but western culture does not see them as a bad thing. West goes out of its way to defend outright lies as long as they are made to help business get money or get more power in politics.

West lives in post-truth world where truth does not matter at all and ability to lie is rewarded. And those who made it happen are getting more powerful, riches, even winning elections and are praised for their ability to convince people that lies are true.

Yes, the fabric of society is breaking down, with technology accelerating it: https://medium.com/@trendguardian/why-we-are-dispensable-7a5...

As it relates to religion, the West prays and the East meditates. Praying is to look outside of oneself, meditating is to look inside. This might explain the difference in source of truth.

This is too pat a description. While Buddhism began as a religion of meditation, for centuries Buddhist practice in various parts of Asia has been to pray to an outside figure like Amitabha in the Pure Land or Avalokitesvara. Buddhist teachers who have suggested reviving meditation have faced some resistance from their societies.

And of course Japan's indigenous religion(s) have always been about venerating spirits, not looking within.

Thank you, for the clarification.

They didn’t single out Buddhism.

Buddhism is the largest religion in the continent they mentioned alongside Hinduism. And Hinduism, too, is majoritywise a religion of prayer to deities treated as external, while its contemplative traditions are the domain of a relative few.

Wikipedia tells me that Hinduism is about 40% larger than Buddhism. Also associated with meditation, and predating Buddhism.

> Buddhism is the largest religion in the continent

It also says that Islam is the largest religion in Asia.

On this North American-dominated forum, "Asia" is rarely used in the expansive definition that encompasses also the Middle East which is necessary for Islam to be called the majority religion. Even Pakistan rarely gets included. The OP presumably wasn't thinking of Islam in his definition of Asia, as Islam is obviously an external-directed religion.

If your source of knowledge of these religons is visiting Wikipedia in search of a pedantic gotcha quotation, I don't think you have any qualifications for contributing to this subthread. Try at least reading a substantial book about Hindu popular devotion, which doesn't involve meditation, and spend some time in India watching it. Hinduism is a million and one things, but most of them are (as I said) the domain of a few.

> On this North American-dominated forum,

It’s hard to not notice.

> "Asia" is rarely used in the expansive definition that encompasses also the Middle East which is necessary for Islam to be called the majority religion. Even Pakistan rarely gets included. The OP presumably wasn't thinking of Islam in his definition of Asia, as Islam is obviously an external-directed religion.

That’s fair. But you’re the one who said the continent.

> If your source of knowledge of these religons is visiting Wikipedia in search of a pedantic gotcha quotation, I don't think you have any qualifications for contributing to this subthread. Try at least reading a substantial book about Hindu popular devotion, which doesn't involve meditation, and spend some time in India watching it. Hinduism is a million and one things, but most of them are (as I said) the domain of a few.

Now the framing has completely moved. Your motivation for replying was because of these assumptions around Buddhism. Yeah? Well the same goes for Hinduism or whatever religion is far-enough-to-the-East. (That someone initially characterized The West and The East with this dichotomous thinking wasn’t a problem for anyone here so that’s presumably fine.) So when I mention Hinduism it’s not because I know anything about Hinduism, compared to your venerable self. It’s exactly because Buddhism and Hinduism are closely associated in the typical, dumb, brutish brains of Westerners like me; meditation, yoga (associated with Hinduism, associated with meditation), yogis, “mysticism”.

Hence why Buddhism? Not because we KNOW Hinduism better than we know Lipton Tea. But because the associations are similar.

But it’s about size across the continent one minute, even though the previous minute indigenous religion in the archipelago nation of Japan was an important a question as answering the question about Asia with Buddhism.

The idea that church - and the Catholic Church at that - has any sort of special relationship to ethics is fucking weird.

It’s such a weird idea it feels like pure theater.

In fact it is such a strange concept that it indicates that Anthropic has not the slightest genuine internal concept of what ethics is really about.

“We need ethics, let’s partner with the church” is cartoonish in its foolishness.

Did you read the encyclical? It's quite the grounded take on AI and the ethics around it.

If you advance any ethical propositions at all it will be very easy to prove that they are mediated by Christian history in its orthodox forms. This holds even of ethics under Islam which is latently derived from orthodox Christianity in its origin matrix. It cannot be escaped without spectacular 'antimoral' radicalism, as Nietzsche spent his life proving in a hundred ways. It is different in the civilizations of the 'dharmic traditions', as people sometimes frame the distinction.

An easy way of seeing part way into this is to note that the ethical complaints we make against the church as institution are all founded on principles explicitly taught by the same church.

How are Islam's ethics derived from orthodox Christianity specifically? Muhammad's only likely encounter with Christianity was with Nestorianism, i.e. not orthodox.

If you mean that the Church has incorporated ethical systems into its teachings, then I'd agree, but it would also be true of any other religion.

But if you mean that ethics came from orthodox Christianity, or is predicated on the existence of Christ, I'd have to ask to elaborate, though I'm sure I misunderstand.

Virtue ethics were developed by Plato, arguably Kantian and utilitarian systems attenpt to come to ethics through reason and don't mention religion.

Anthropic needs to turn to religion to make it back into the good graces of the pentagon. Hahaha. Hurry pass around the donation tray, Dario must need it.

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