nick

[nick @scriptivist]

@hf_222222 It just seems like sideways crabbing toward a desired result by waving around general words while not really engaging specifically with what’s going on in contemporary war.

[nick @scriptivist]

@hf_222222 I’m confused by the references to destructiveness or no one being able to imagine humanity’s capacity for destruction. I imagine medieval and ancients were perfectly aware of how destructive man could be.

[nick @scriptivist]

@OVTweetmarck

[nick @scriptivist]

People on this app will tell you with a straight face that SSPX can’t ordain their own bishops because of a self proclaimed emergency, and also that in necessity one has a positive duty to immigrate illegally.

[Dean W. Ball @deanwball]

“Thinking” really need not necessitate ensoulment. In my mind, and in my understanding of Catholic theology, the soul arises out of embodiment, not neural activity per se. If you made a perfect physical replica of my brain, kept that brain “alive,” and hooked it up to an interface, I am sure it would perform useful computations; it could play video games, write and read, etc. Ditto if you made a perfect digital replica of my brain and emulated it on a computer. It would “think”; it would still write like me, it would know my iPhone passcode, it would play my favorite video games and know my favorite spots to visit in them.

But would that disembodied neural network be possessed of a soul? My distinct moral and spiritual intuition is no. And I would be disinclined to call that brain replica “me.”

That doesn’t change the fact that there may exist other disembodied neural networks that will be “smarter” than most or all humans in cognitive domains over which humans have heretofore enjoyed the intellectual monopoly. And that is obviously going to happen, obviously going to shake the world, and obviously merits spiritual guidance from religious leaders.

I think it’s fair to argue that Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular has already said a great deal about intrinsic human worth versus intellectual achievement. But my sense is that these teachings probably need translation for contemporary ears, at the very least, if not meaningful substantive updates (I will let the theologians be the judge).

What I would say, however, is that, updated or not, these teachings did not really make their way into the encyclical, and if anything the encyclical implied there is no problem here at all. The machines can’t reason, so no threat to the human intellectual monopoly exists, the encyclical seems to argue. Instead, it suggests, the real problems relate to algorithmic bias, antitrust policy, labor market issues, and other sorts of technocratic areas of policymaking. You can agree or disagree with that to varying degrees, but the point is that *a lot* of people weigh in on those topics, and it isn’t clear to me that the world needs to hear from the Church that European technocrats need more status points, while American industrialists need fewer. Lots of people think that.

[nick @scriptivist]

@allgarbled The children yearn for the Mayans.

[nick @scriptivist]

@FeserEdward Just war theory suffers greatly from its champions.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

Of course the Japanese did not do anything between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[nick @scriptivist]

@AndrewPetiprin In terms of conversion.

[nick @scriptivist]

@cath_menarion effective immediately has the advantage of not burning parishioner money to reach a conclusion the bishop wanted from the start.

[nick @scriptivist]

@holysmoke Genuinely, by what metric? Recent-ish reports suggest around 12k Ordinariate members, against 6k 10 years ago. It’s a darling among some Catholics but it doesn’t seem particularly impressive.

[nick @scriptivist]

@hradzka The Enoch Powell special

[nick @scriptivist]

Truly a mystery why the CDF in the 90s would become more resistant toward liberal attitudes on homosexuality.

[Jeremy Zipple, SJ @jzipple]

Hard to think of an issue that has brought greater tension to the Church than homosexuality. I recall seeing data awhile back that it was the Church's vocal stance against homosexuality, more than the abuse crisis, that fueled exodus of young folks in the 90s-00s.

[nick @scriptivist]

@Recursion_Agent “*I saw my first, second, and third dead bodies”

Did that take one loop around Lake Merritt or two?

[nick @scriptivist]

Will you stand with E. Michael Jones, Sohrab Ahmari and Carrie Prejean Boller or will you tuck your kids in and have a beer at the end of the night?

[Sohrab Ahmari @SohrabAhmari]

Pope Leo has forced a choice on conservative Catholics:

Do they stand with the successors of Peter, who’ve imposed increasingly stringent moral limits on war?

Or do they stick with a GOP that can’t do without pointless wars in the Middle East?

https://t.co/zJXV4qehlq

[nick @scriptivist]

As long as we’re all discussing what the bishops choose to talk about, remember the USCCB had no comment on racism against Asians in higher ed admissions and only hoped universities could maintain the same system under a legal framework.

[nick @scriptivist]

Tremendous energy among the pacifists right now. They are going to force the Salamancans to do one hundred years of penance. The annual Nagasaki posting is going to be lit.

[nick @scriptivist]

@bpdflores Respectfully, were the bishops obliged to follow Pope Francis when he taught it was irresponsible of a woman to have 7 children? Not every word that comes from the pope’s lips is an exercise of his teaching office. He does the best he can and the Holy Spirit protects the church.

[nick @scriptivist]

I’m calling for a complete and total shutdown of prooftexting until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

[Charlie Camosy @CCamosy]

For much of the Church's history, even soldiers returning from a just war had to engage in public pennance. And some of the strongest supporters of this idea? Soldiers who actually fight wars.
https://t.co/RjeKulE1lB?