Mark Regnerus

Prof @UTAustin, Prez @ATXInstitute, helps @PublicDiscourse. Son, husband, dad, & grandpa. Wrote 4 books @OxUniPress. Skeptic w/in soc sci: the methods matter!

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

Not an optimal scenario for a survey question. Too much mixing of possible sentiments (about the speaker's opinion, about de-platforming a speaker for their opinion, about the respondent's sentiments concerning the Church as an institution, etc.) The results is that one doesn't know what to make of the table. I realize it's not your own question...

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

@jdflynn Reinforces the longstanding evidence that it's always better to be listed at or near the top of a ballot, especially when there are multiple options, than near the bottom! Here's to hoping that most of the USCCB votes will be binary in scope. Binary is good.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

@ryanburge The first question is about their current reality; the rest are speculative. Makes sense.

[Jennifer A. Frey @jennfrey]

Excellent case against providing all undergrads free access to the machine that thinks for you. Read it and weep for what is happening to a once world class institution.

https://t.co/txMuhcnqBF

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

@colmflynnire A wonderful event. And there appears (at least) three good men in a row, in the upper center/right: Kęstutis Kėvalas (+Kaunas), Georg Gänswein (Nuncio), and Gintaras Grušas (+Vilnius), the American (by birth) archbishop. God bless Lithuania.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

“In the absence of a coordinated, global slowdown, we are left with the current situation: powerful technology being developed at breakneck speed by a variety of actors in a variety of countries, locked in a competition with one another where commercial and geopolitical rivalries are drowning out the larger existential-to-the-species aspects of the technology being built”

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

WSJ article: “We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures...to keep up with the advance of the technology,” the post...says.

Worlds aren't things that have "options." And "societal structures" don't "keep up" with things.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

https://t.co/KfrIwhmLZv

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

From the WSJ article: "...model advances appear to be on a path toward 'recursive self-improvement' .... Some AI insiders have seen that threshold as a potential marker of danger and enormous societal upheaval." No...that's not disturbing at all. 😳

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

I don't see how this ends well. The best of AI's promises seem to hinge on somehow preventing the worst in one's opponents' impulses. This is not the era in which to rely on social trust and fictions about noble impulses.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

How does one "pause" a race that one's own domestic and foreign opponents seem to be waging (and without similar concern)? Disturbing stuff.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

Of course he's right. This is not a secret kept from the rest of America. The history of public education efforts was "Protestant" in nature, and intended to make Americans (hence Protestants) of immigrants. Hence the early development (but always embattled) of Catholic schooling, beginning in the 1800s.

[Jennifer A. Frey @jennfrey]

No one is ready for the amount of fraud that is coming.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

https://t.co/Bz0yG171si

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

Worker pay as a share of corporate profits is shrinking. Not good. Hardly the way to get people on board a new futuristic economy. The greed is obscene.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

@chinster202 I appreciate the sentiment. I doubt I will top it in terms of coverage and claims.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

The culture around weddings has shifted over time, as most of us can discern. Partly the SM culture is to blame, but there has been a greedy marital-industrial complex" for longer than SM. Part of the problem is due to increasing lack of clarity around who pays. There were helpful traditional distinctions in the past, but those have receded for two reasons: First, the parents may no longer be together and can't agree on the matter. Second--and more important--is the rising age at marriage, which tacitly shifted the payment onus onto the marrying couple, who tend (on average) to feel more pressure to wed "big." When parents pay--and aren't themselves seeking to keep up with the Joneses--nice weddings are ample, not bashes. Typically no borrowing, and you spare your children from doing the same. When the norms grow unclear, it's no surprise to see capitulation to a SM-saturated industry.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

https://t.co/jMmZjJQHg0

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

I welcome this encyclical and appreciate Leo XIV's words about the nature of work and earning an income. Mr. Olah's remarks here will cue discussions of a UBI future. (Ugh.) Men who are provided cash in lieu of work tend to have a more difficult time living a morally noble (and non-revolutionary) future. Free money from either gov't or blasphemously-overpaid tech bros is not the answer. I think the Holy Father understands that, as did his namesake predecessor.

[Mark Regnerus @RegnerusMark]

@CatholicHerald Interesting. Even Cardinal Fernandez couldn't mend the rift with a personal visit two years ago this month. Good to hear this, though.