[orochimaaru]

Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing.

Post-industrial world needed human capital. Hence, the need for human value. If you notice most of this "need" has arisen out of then need for industrial expansion.

Post-AI will be interesting. Will we go back to pre-industrial or get something better.

[atq2119]

I don't think this is factually accurate. What it really boils down is a question of scale of societies.

Most of us humans inherently value each other. There are exceptions, and small communities can get nasty. But for the most part, small human communities tend to be supportive and valuing each other.

This really only stops being the case when you get large-scale societies that allow humans to view others through an overly abstract lens. Combine that with an unchecked accumulation of power, and you have the potential for those in power to view the rest as without value.

[HDBaseT]

I agree with you. I recently watched a bunch of videos from a YouTuber 'Mike Okay' and he visits some random, obscure and non-standard countries to travel.

Most of the people he encounters are super friendly, welcoming and willing to bend over backwards to help him out. It's genuine human connection and willingness. He will speak to people from every possible background, including people in the Taliban and honestly at the end of the day, we're all humans and most people respect that.

Things have become blurred with social media, digital life, closed and private nature of the modern world but if you take a step back, you can realize humans are typically, very helpful, friendly and unique characters.

[swatcoder]

It's telling how blithely you're missing the point of what the pope(s) mean by human value. Their intended meaning is that far gone from modern consciousness, even among people who meant to champion some kind of human value themselves.

They're not talking about the economic value of humans or even the psychological value of humans as subjects with experiences and a right to liberty or care or something. The idea they're trying to recall and reinvigorate is a sense of human value that transcends that temporal, material noise altogether and that is truly universal. It's the human value that welcomed slaves, prostitutes, wretches, merchants and kings as peers in something grander than economy or state or lineage or tribe or creed.

Now, you can make a well-developed case that that's hogwash and that the human value that matters is the one that alleviates suffering or grants liberty or even the one that grants material reward for some virtue or bloodline or whatever, but that's not what these guys are talking about. They mean a human nature that is always there and always worthy, just as much when it's experiencing temporal poverty/suffering/abuse as when it's basking in temporal wealth/success/freedom.

The idea is that Christian or not, Catholic or not, it does good for everyone to think of human value that way and the critique -- for a long time now -- is that for all the flash and glimmer of technology and its material benefits, it sometimes makes it very very easy to forget.

[analog31]

>>> It's the human value that welcomed slaves, prostitutes, wretches, merchants and kings as peers in something grander than economy or state or lineage or tribe or creed.

This sounds a lot like an appeal to democracy, yet it often seems that religion is at odds with democracy in our world. And given the choice between living in a religious society or a democratic one, I'd choose the democracy any day of the week. Not just for my own prosperity, but for the overall welfare of everybody.

The one thing that has heartened me about the new Pope is that he has spoken favorably about democracy.

[graemep]

Modern democracy developed in societies dominated by religious values and at least partly because of those values.

What you describe as an appeal to democracy could also be described as a statement of Christian values. The idea that every individual matters and is loved by God is a core belief. There are some quotes in my other comments, but I think this is worth adding. https://biblehub.com/galatians/3-28.htm

[analog31]

This is indeed the paradox. I call it a paradox because it seems like religions value those things on paper but religious societies counteract them. I'm as puzzled as anybody as to the root cause.

The development of democracy may have been a reaction of religious people towards their own religions.

[graemep]

It depends on what you mean by a religious society. Do you mean theocracies ? Democracies with a religious electorate? Countries with an established religion?

[analog31]

Yes. ;-)

Granted there are only so many countries, so it would be hard to see a clear statistical picture. And it's complicated by the fact that religion may be secondary to democracy as a predictor of well-being. But I don't know of a country right now (or a region in the US) where the influence of religion on governance is a cause for optimism about the future of democracy.

[RetroTechie]

I prefer a more general version: (and keep <deity> out of the discussion)

= All life is precious =

For "life", you can read: any creature that potentially could be perceived as an individual that deserves a minimum of respect, a fair share of space/raw materials, not hurting, torturing or kill it without good reason, etc.

No need to go to extremes, but the above is imho a good starting point when considering the ethics on how to treat other creatures. Note that the question of whether something has a 'soul' or not, is not relevant there.

I'd be willing to consider including AI entities in that "life" category, if/when they cross that line between machine/tool and "creature with own personality, hopes, dreams, fears etc". Regardless of physical form.

[orochimaaru]

What rot. Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved. Tell that to people in the inquisition. Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers. Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools.

Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.

[swatcoder]

There's really no argument against the institutional and historical hypocisy. There's no shortage of people and groups that have done or currently do horrible violence against others, sometimes even in the name of these ideas.

But I don't know if that takes away from the idea itself and what fruitful counterpoint it might play in modern discourse.

[bigstrat2003]

So your argument is that if some people who claim allegiance to an idea do evil things, that renders all who claim such allegiance, and even the idea itself, evil? That is a pretty poor argument. It's also one that I don't think you would actually accept in another context. I bet you anything that I can find some ideal you uphold which was espoused by some vile people at some point, and I also bet that you wouldn't go "ok, I guess I have to give that ideal up now".

[andrepd]

If a group of people claim to be "divinely inspired" but then they do the same evil more or less as other groups, that leads me to conclude that they are not uniquely favoured by a god.

[graemep]

> Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved.

Tell that to those were were protects by the influence of the Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_of_the_Indians

> Tell that to people in the inquisition.

Which inquisition? Do you by any chance mean the Spanish Inquisition? An agency of the Spanish government.

> Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers

Which people. There were Christians in India for 2,000 years. Some of my ancestors probably converted before the English did.

> Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools.

AFAIK these are mostly allegations that have never ben substantiated.

[mamala_mamachan]

> > Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers

> Which people. There were Christians in India for 2,000 years. Some of my ancestors probably converted before the English did.

These Christians in India, who have been there for 2,000 years, are only the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis that follow eastern rite liturgies(syriac rites to be specific), and they all happen to be from the state of kerala or the malabar region only. The state itself has latin rite catholics as well as protestants which all started only since European colonial arrivals, though the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis are the majority of christians from that state. I am not trying to argue that all these people in India from european christianity(latin rite catholic and protestant) are forced converts or anything. Still, anytime this argument comes up, the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis are used as a shield, still, at the same time, in other cases, the community is also ridiculed as wrong christianity and the history of community as fake by the same people who use it as shield (the event of terming as wrong literally happened when portuguese came in the 15th century and force converted all to latin rite through synod of diamper which led to coonan cross oath leading to restoration of syriac litrugy but unfortunately permanently splitting the community into eastern catholics and orthodox denominations; even the british later came and tried to protestantise creating a small protestant faction also out the orthodox ones).

[graemep]

> Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing.

Not true. Serfs had rights that varied a lot between societies and over time. Religions mostly teach a value of human life, and Christianity teaches equal value: "when Adam devlved and Eve span who was then the gentleman", or "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" or "it is easier for a rich map to pass through the eye of the needle".

There were all sorts of people in between. Free people who were not serfs. Skilled people who were members of guilds.

[IAmBroom]

In fact, the value of those lives - in terms of their souls - was quite explicitly equal. Numerous pieces of Momento Mori and Apocalyptic artwork reinforced the notion that beggars, nobles, and even popes would appear equally before Jesus for a moral judgment, with the same chance to be found worthy or damnable.

And "the Conqueror Worm" would make sure all of them faced the same afterlife treatment, whether they were buried in silks or naked in a pauper's grave.

[watwut]

People really should stop making up history from childrens books. People were valuing people to various degrees and tool seriously the human value question in every single period we have records from.

And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands.

[psychoslave]

>And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands.

Ho, certainly they did.

The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of.

Nothing specific to nazis, look at Rwandan genocide. Hutu extremists systematically referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches" and "snakes" in propaganda. Or even closer on a timeline perspective, Israeli leaders and media have used terms like "human animals" and described Gaza as a "city of evil" or a "nation of barbarians," while some Palestinian factions have used similar language against Israelis.

Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.

[watwut]

Nazi seen cruelty, violence and lack of empathy as manliness and virtue. Openly and specifically. You as a young man wanting to prove yourself would be beating and killing people, knowing they are humans and that violence toward humans is what made you manly in your peer group. They were not saying "it does not count". They were saying "I am great for doing it".

> The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of.

It was not a disagreement about who is human. Nazi did not killed just Jews and foreigners. They killed and tortured plenty of fellow Aryans, because those were their political opponents or to create fear in others. When a nazi tortured Aryan German to get names out of him, he knew full well he is torturing a human. It was not about whether they are human or not, it was simply that human life had less value.

Using animals and insects as insults does not mean there was any confusion about whether those being mistreated are humans.

> Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.

Actually believing they are not human is super rare and found only in some cults. Insults and degradations are how you work others to a rage, but they are not meant to be factual statements. And they are not interpreted as factual statements.

Happily, nazi left enough writing behind them, we know what they thought about human value.

[wahern]

The concept of fundamental human rights is certainly new, but our notion of intrinsic human value (and intrinsic value of other life and things) arises from our empathy, which at least in its degree is perhaps our most important defining trait as a species. (Our empathy may have been a prerequisite for the emergence of our intelligence.)

Conflating the two is why some people have trouble understanding why religions like Buddhism and Christianity seemed to tolerate so much inequality and violence; or more generally just assumed people writ large were historically more callous and uncaring than today.

Arguably one of the downsides, though, to a focus on rights vs intrinsic value is that rights are typically couched in materialist terms. Most of the time that's probably for the better, but sometimes maybe not.

[IAmBroom]

Dogs show empathy towards not only dogs and humans, but even baby birds and rabbits - animals which one would expect to be viewed as pure caloric units, sans empathy.

Whales show empathy towards their young, and towards humans.

Male "loner" lions have been known to show empathic protection toward human and antelope young in the bush.

It's increasingly hard to define a clear difference between Humans and "mere Animals"; empathy is emphatically not a clear difference.

To date, fear of vacuum cleaners may well be the only known difference.

[wahern]

Sure, just like many other animals exhibit analytical intelligence and complex communication. The seeds are there. The distinction is by degree, but the gap is pretty wide in all three cases.

No other species has been shown to systematically display non-kin, non-mating-system altruism (for which empathy is probably an integral component). It seems likely you need systematic non-kin altruism to achieve the ubiquitous, complex cooperation humans exhibit. And that complex cooperation is probably a prerequisite to make our degree of intelligence evolutionarily profitable. Otherwise human-level intelligence should be more common than our immediate lineage. (Some cousin species may very well have been smarter or more cooperative than us; relatively speaking it could be homo sapiens found a more effective equilibrium. Nonetheless our immediate lineage seems to be the only one to break through the selfish gene bottleneck that restricts other species along these axes.)

[pryce]

If my definition of 'value' was something that was totally contingent on both post-industrial society and an ultracapitalist approach to production, and it made me deduce that human being's lives over thousands of years or in other societies were worth "nothing", I think I would interpret this as a 'reductio-ad-absurdum'. That is, by deducing an absurd conclusion from the premise, that makes a strong argument that my definition of 'value' must be so narrow as to be effectively broken. I would respond by looking for a different, more wide definition of value, among the various ones that have been proposed.

[westmeal]

Then you wouldn't like Ayn Rands novels.

[GalaxyNova]

Serfs were of value to the lord, and they were usually not treated that badly compared to many workplaces today.

[bombcar]

Arguably from very early on the Church has been at the forefront of "Serfs are of value to the Lord" if you will (St Lawrence, et al).

So far none of the AI stuff I've seen has really been about "the computer has no soul" and more around the danger that dehumanization can bring (which has been a refrain since the previous Leo, mind you).

[mrcwinn]

I also wonder if it’s just harder to rule a much larger population in the modern world than in those times. Any jackass can show up and say that he was chosen to lead by some higher power. But you must still convince enough people that that is the case or at least have a military large enough that you can control.

[pasquinelli]

what do you know about the pre-industrial world, really?