[vasco]

> I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls" because I think that's really premature and pretty obvious that AIs are not people at this point.

It really is en vogue to have this attitude that everyone in church is stupid for believing but it's a huge disservice to yourself to not understand the Vatican is full of the equivalent of the best PhDs sourced from all over the world centered around their specific topic of interest, theology.

Also for the time being you can see that the Vatican understands AI much better than you already, just have a read here: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... [0]

> ANTIQUA ET NOVA > Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence

[ryandrake]

> the Vatican is full of the equivalent of the best PhDs sourced from all over the world centered around their specific topic of interest, theology.

I’m sure there are Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings superfans who have put in a PhD level of time and research into their favorite “topic of interest” as well.

[vasco]

Yeah and if there was a global organization of Harry Potter PhDs that selected the best from all over the world for hundreds of years I'd probably think those guys were smart too and probably wouldn't have surface level takes about adjacent topics.

[lotsofpulp]

Given what we know about the origins of Harry Potter, you basically proved ryandrake’s point. Just because you put time into something does not make it worthy of attention.

Religions’ primary purpose is to facilitate tribal bonds, not experimentally seek truths and evaluate data for consistency. That is why almost all start with a set of tenets or immutable “facts”, such as the existence of an immortal component of a person (usually called a soul).

[triceratops]

No vasco is saying if Harry Potter fans put a lot of study into astronomy, would you immediately discount their expertise in astronomy because of their devotion to Potterdom?

[svieira]

> Religions’ primary purpose is to facilitate tribal bonds

That's what religion does, but so does "working in Silicon Valley for a tech company". What religion is is another matter entirely.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12748a.htm

[bjourne]

And I'm sure you have never even tried to acquire a PhD :p.

[ryandrake]

I have not! Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for people who have spent extreme time and energy into researching anything, including works of fiction. I’m sure they are not dumb and are immensely more well read and focused on their area than I am!

The joke was meant to poke a little fun at superfans and not to belittle.

[rounce]

“I hope X isn’t Y” is far from the same thing as “X is Y”. Seems like you’ve put words in their mouth so you can argue against some anti-religious straw man.

[vasco]

If I meet someone and I tell them "I hope you're not dumb", would they assume I think they are dumb or should they take it as purely whimsical? It's also funny you got stuck on that vs on the document I shared, while dissing me for pointing it out.

[rounce]

More like, if you say “I hope this movie doesn’t suck” are you preemptively implying the movie is rubbish, or are you expressing your hope that it is worth witnessing? Taken out of context you can make a case for either. Luckily we have the rest of the post for that context so surely it’d be reasonable to base one’s interpretation on that.

[dolmen]

  > ANTIQUA ET NOVA
  > Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence
  > https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html

Dated 2025-01-28

Let's see how the direction evolves with the new Pope and 1.5 years later.

[psychoslave]

Intelligence is orthogonal to the tendency to blind obedience to some dogma, or its practical indistinguishable behavioral equivalence no matter what one actually think inwardly.

It doesn’t take a high academia credential to develop a critical mindset about established institutions, and quite the opposite seems more likely.