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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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