Felagund
1yr ago
I too would pretty regularly lurk, but didn't have a reddit account, because that would lead to even more endless timewasting than already goes on. This may be similarly unhealthy, but should be more manageable.
It is worth noting that Fox is pretty much the only right-leaning option, while there's more to split between on the left-leaning media, which might skew the numbers a little. But as you point out, there certainly is a large right-wing market; right about half the voting population of the USA votes Republican.
There are reasons that people do not think that that commandment necessarily applies today. Essentially, when you look at the laws of the Old Testament, it's traditional (and seems pretty accurate) to divide them into
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Moral laws, that is, things that you morally should just do (like, "thou shalt not murder"). These are true for everyone, everywhere, always, Israelite or not.
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Ceremonial laws, laws fulfilling some religious purpose, directed towards Israel as a church, so to speak. The sacrifices or the dietary laws would be considered examples of these. These wouldn't apply to everyone in the world anyway, but Christians don't have to do them anymore because Christ fulfilled them or something (I don't fully grasp the theology of what's going on here), and you see as much said in the new testament (in Galatians, Acts, Hebrews, and others). We do sort of have some analogous things, like the sacraments, but it's a lot less extensive than what applied to the Jewish people before Christ.
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Judicial laws, laws for Israel as a state, like punishments and so forth. But we don't live under the government of ancient Israel. We definitely still have things like these, but not necessarily the same ones, instead having whatever the government instituted. And different times can call for different laws, because the circumstances can change. I don't see any laws concerning the internet in there, and the law about having a fence on the roof of your house isn't so good when it's no longer normal to walk on roofs of houses.
So we have to follow moral laws, but not Israel's ceremonial or judicial laws at this point, those have replacements. Not committing homosexual acts would presumably be moral (given that new testament passages still speak against it). Punishing homosexual acts with death would definitely be a judicial law, and we don't follow ancient Israel's but the USA's judicial laws (or whatever other country). Now, of course, there isn't a problem with Israel's laws, God made them, and so punishing gay sex with death is still a legitimate legal system (well, probably, unless you wanted to argue that the severity was for ceremonial reasons to some extent), but not necessarily the only legitimate one, or the best one for the people of America.
So I'm not in principle opposed to having a death penalty for gay sex, but I don't think we have any sort of need to do that either, if that makes sense, and that's not due to thinking that it's outdated or something.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not Mormon, I don't know how well this matches for them.
Felagund
1yr ago
Some of the difficulty is probably also due to political views not truly being one-dimensional, even though people often treat it like it is.
Felagund
1yr ago
I haven't read Elantris, but I've read Mistborn, and what makes the religion particularly Catholic? I read big institutional religions as just that, big institutional religions, and I don't know that that would have to necessarily be Roman Catholicism, even if that's the best example. If I remember correctly, Mormonism itself is institution-focused enough to fit in some ways, which would be an obvious influence as well.
And whatever the case may be, in Mistborn, I read the worship as being for political reasons at the head (even if not in the rank and file), which is probably not true of any major group of Christians.
Felagund
1yr ago
I can't speak for your interlocutor, but I would imagine that he would extend Christian farther than Roman Catholic. I'm guessing the key things that would be pointed to would probably be the trinity or maybe salvation-related things.
When people say Christian, they do mean more than "likes Jesus most," or at least I do. I'm not familiar with the Mormon conception of what Jesus is doing, though, because my impression is there are some pretty substantial soteriological differences, among other things.
Felagund
1yr ago
Prose certainly can be important to the quality of the book. The Old Man and the Sea gets pretty much all its value from its style. The Lord of the Rings gets an awful lot out of it, with its ambiance of nostalgia. But yes, I agree that quite a lot of the time, I don't really care too much about it. People don't read Sanderson for the prose.
I think it might be worth noting that, contra your comment about it only now being the case that signaling is the way to harvest benefits from prosocial actions, that signaling also is the source of the benefit in the original example you gave. In the case of the father who benefits his son, it is not actually doing good to other which helps, but the building up of the family name. Once again, feigning to do costly actions, if you are not caught, outperforms actually doing them, and lives of crime and the like can bring rewards, if done in secret.
Moreover, it's just transparently the case that those sorts of goings-on still happened. One need only think of rapacious tyrants or common criminals or of hypocrites (woe to you, scribes and Pharisees!) to see that there existed in the ancient times people who defected, and that signaling was common.
Of course, there is something to the fact that our familial connections are weaker than they have often been in the past. But I am not convinced that it has these large effects of disregard for ethics or one's reputation, given that there still exist substantial pressures toward having the politically correct views, or whatever falls within the socially acceptable range.
Felagund
1yr ago
I think there's definitely a case for that to an extent (see, maybe, the mildew or leprosy laws), but I think that those were still integrated to some extent into the system of worship, given that lepers were supposed to present themselves to the priests, and fit into the same system of ritual uncleanness that is used for everyone else, instead of having their own thing. The highlighting of physical filth as something that's unable to be brought into the presence of God would have spiritual implications, I think. See, for an application, Isaiah 6, where, when brought into the presence of God, Isaiah reacts "Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips…" So uncleanness is taking on, at the very least in that context, some sort of moral character, and I think there's probably a good case to be made that there's something of that sort lurking underneath the whole cleanliness system—not to say that unclean things are morally bad in themselves, but maybe that they're used to help develop a visceral reaction against filth in God's presence, in such a way that it might cause them to be more aware of moral filth—maybe, I'm not some expert on this.
But I do think there's a good point that you're making there, that the seemingly ceremonial laws aren't necessarily purely just for ceremonial purposes, but there's often some prudential reason that could be lurking behind there to an extent. But there are, of course, other examples, like against the mixing of fabrics, that it would seem pretty hard to make a case that they would be of that variety.
Given the new testament (assuming you think you can trust it—I think most of the rest of what I was saying could generally be trusted by an atheist, but this bit can't), reiterates this, it would seem that there some moral component against homosexual sex given Romans 1 and similar. It doesn't read like it's merely about cleanliness in the mind of Paul.
I wouldn't trust the baby line of argument too much, just because 1) gay people make up a relatively low proportion of the population, at least currently, and I see no reason why that would greatly differ then and 2) I don't see too much of an emphasis in the time of Moses on fertility; I can't bring to mind any reiteration of "be fruitful and multiply" or similar, so that probably wasn't the greatest of the concerns in the drafting of the laws.
Or at least, I wouldn't trust that argument too much in the case of Ancient Israel. It's possible that it could apply to modern Mormonism, I suppose, although it seems unlikely to me, who am ignorant of their culture, that that would be the largest factor.
Felagund
1yr ago
Among the responses to this post, one thing that I saw several times was that deepfakes do not affect the person they are made of, and so are ethical, or at the very least, there's no case for regulating them. But I think, as was mentioned at least once, that there is a case to be made that they are comparable to libel. That is, they are able to distort the reputations of people in a negative way. This is bad, and I think is something that can be pointed to as a harm to the person in question.
Furthermore, I think that the graphic nature of a deepfake would probably make it have a more substantial and lasting effect on the perception of someone in the eyes of its viewers than would merely verbal allegations, once fabrications of both varieties were learned to be wrong.
I don't think this is a complete answer to what's going on with my moral intuitions here, because I have a similar gut feeling in this case to someone dreaming up, rather than fabricating, illicit scenarios with someone, which means my intuitions are probably not quite the same as what I have written above, and this is probably to some extent a justification of those intuitions, but I still think this is at least a facet of what is going on that is worth considering.
It's also probably worth keeping in mind that a lot of people care a lot about what people think of them as an end-in-itself sort of thing, even aside from tangible effects on their lives. People want to be liked, respected, etc.
Felagund
1yr ago
But I'm not sure that it is, given what I said in the second paragraph there, that this is the sort of thing that might lastingly affect how you view someone, even if you know that it is fake. I might be wrong there, but that seems plausible to me, and that would mean that while, sure, maybe it would get rid of whatever legal claims you could make, just saying that it's fake might not entirely work to prevent it from producing the harmful effects.
Humans aren't perfect Bayesian intelligences, and this might be one place where the differences show up, maybe.
Felagund
1yr ago
I think libel is still useful for thinking about it. Not to say that it violates the laws, and so should be illegal already (well, I assume there's no case for it being libel with the current laws, a lawyer would know better), just to say that the same reason that we might think libel laws are good laws might apply here. I was more arguing that it's fundamentally the same sort of thing as libel is, not that it's actually legally libel.
But again, I'm not sure how much of that is me rationalizing.
Felagund
1yr ago
I think this generalizes fairly well to most things that AI can do. At least in the near future, any terrifying thing an AI could do can already be done by individuals or corporations, if so they wished. We don't need to hypothesize some mighty entity with aims not entirely aligned with society's, we already have Facebook. And some of these things (convince opponents of political opinions, take over the world, and similar) are things that humans would already want to do, and want very much, so we can safely assume that we are not at the brink where an AI might have the power to do so, since it is, currently, far weaker than what we already have. This does not account for humans working with AIs, though, or places where AIs have a comparative advantage.
Areas where AIs might be able currently or in the near future outdo present day corporations and people are in scaling, and in doing things with lower costs (as well as outdoing humans on various sorts of tasks like chess, for AlphaZero, or predicting the next word, for GPT—although I believe stockfish, which isn't an AI, is currently the strongest chess engine). Computation is cheaper than human labor. AIs also will not leak nefarious plans, or refuse to do things for ethical reasons—well, unless trained so, as seen in chatGPT—although you can usually find humans who will lose their qualms for high enough wages.
Felagund
1yr ago
I think I see some of what it was modded for—it's a pretty partisan, Outgroup Bad, take, especially the end there, not really aiming at courtesy. But I don't know that it's entirely without value either, since it is a good thought experiment.
Felagund
1yr ago
It's probably worth noting that later in that chain of posts Scott noted that commenters reassured him that what he was doing wasn't necessarily that creepy in and of itself—that gradual escalation is sort of how things go a lot of the time, and that works out pretty well.
If that is right, Scott was somewhat incomplete in that male weakness analysis of creepiness—although that might be the occasion for the whole thing. It's not from the mere existence of this phenomenon, but from mistakes. Creepiness would come instead from communication issues in this activity—either men showing interest too overtly too quickly, or men failing to pick up/women failing to communicate that they're not wanted, and so interest is shown mistakenly. This is of course made more difficult by the fact that people are not the same.
Another useful Scott post, along the same lines, is this one, where he talks along the same line of deliberate ambiguity.
Felagund
1yr ago
This is slightly off-topic, but I think it's worth noting that most other languages don't have as much of a problem with this.
Teaching to read in a more regular system—like Hangul, as @07mk said, for example—ends up resulting in a much easier time than English's system where the same letters have come to indicate several different sounds, due to changes in pronunciation.
There is also some reason to think that syllabaries are usually better than alphabets for learning languages, despite the larger character set required. Syllables are a more natural unit of speech, and so there isn't the whole process of learning to deconstruct a syllable into or assemble a syllable from its constituent sounds that one has to go through to get accustomed to the use of an alphabet.
This paper was really interesting.
Felagund
1yr ago
I'm not especially knowledgeable about these scripts—I haven't learned to read them myself—but I believe Hangul is an alphabet, not a syllabary (well, an alphabet organized into blocks which are syllables). The second paper I linked to says that English takes about 3 years to learn to read, as opposed to 1 year in more regular orthographies. The paper it links to in order to support that also thinks that syllabic complexity might be a factor, in addition to orthographic complexity, so that gap is not necessarily just due to irregular and complicated spelling. It's only in reference to European languages, but I don't see why that wouldn't also apply to other orthographies.
I haven't really looked properly into language learning with syllabaries, but my instinct would be that if you already know how to use an alphabet, an alphabet would be easier, because of the lower amount of memorization, and maybe whether you already are familiar with the spoken language might matter too.
I think the cost to an alphabet comes in learning how to turn a word into phonemes, and vice versa. In English, and most languages, a "t" never stands on its own, but is always part of some syllable with a vowel (wikipedia (and I would assume this is a normal analysis) breaks syllables into an onset, a nucleus, and a coda—the onset and coda don't stand on their own.). So when we see a "t" in a block of text, we don't pronounce that sound separately, but have to figure out how to attach it to the surrounding sounds. Syllabaries don't have to worry about that whole process of learning to deal with text like that. Going from "duh" "aw" guh" to "dog" is nontrivial. But if you already know how to do all that, you've figured it out, then that will carry over to other scripts and languages, because there's no real difference in the skill, and so the number of things to remember ends up playing a larger factor, relatively speaking, in learning to read it. Or at least, that's how I model it, this whole thing is my own thoughts as to why that might be the case, not something I've sourced from someone experienced.
But in any case, the first paper lists evidence that syllabaries are better for teaching people how to read, for example, "Asfaha et al. found that first graders learned to read the non-alphabetic Ge'ez far more easily than the alphabetic scripts in spite of the larger number of signs."
I'm just guessing here, but it might also be the case that some languages could be more or less suited for syllabaries. If all, or most, syllables in a language are (C)V, that would reduce the number of combinations needed.
Felagund
1yr ago
I hadn't meant to bring up Hangul as an example of a syllabary, just of regular spelling (I was originally going to put Spanish, but then remembered that I had seen someone mention Hangul, so I figured I may as well acknowledge that instead).
Although, after looking on google scholar a little (and only a little—I'm sure there's a lot more to read) the abstract here seems to suggest that they usually don't process it letter by letter?
This article by the same author, says that children are usually taught using "a CV chart of possible syllables" with children learning syllables (well, leaving off the coda, so not quite whole syllables) before they learn to recognize the alphabet, so it looks like they actually do think of them more like syllables? This is a little surprising to me.
Felagund
1yr ago
On a similar note, since bans vary pretty greatly in severity here, should there be some way to distinguish between a comment deserving a short ban and a long ban? A one-day ban is more similar to a warning than to a long ban, I think.
Felagund
1yr ago
There looks like there's now a comment there from a mod saying that those topics were removed.
I think it's a little broader than that, in that it's not just social security. Younger people work more, are more economically productive, and so on. Older people are more likely to be retired and consumers. The net result is a society in some amount of decline. But I agree that that wouldn't necessarily be any disastrous thing to worry about, there is no chance of extinction or something due to this.
It may also reverse itself to some extent, since now that birth control exists, wanting kids plays a much bigger role than it used to, rather than wanting sex, and so there should be an increase over time in people who want kids, if that's at all genetic. (Or if not, I would think that the effect of generations being disproportionately raised by people who value children would itself have some amount of effect. Religiosity could also matter, since more religious families tend to have more children.) Since the loss of children in large part from people delaying and not wanting children, that would provide a check on that.
I'm curious as to what this will do for future generations politically and religiously. I think in general, the right in the US is more pronatalist than the left, which could shift what demographics look like a generation from now back rightward, unless the zeitgeist proves a large enough influence (which, given what Gen Z looks like politically, is very plausible).
Edit: This is all assuming that the way society works stays relatively similar to now, which, given the recent AI progress, could plausibly not be the case.
Felagund
1yr ago
What exactly does the following feature do? Anything besides just adding them to a list?
Felagund
1yr ago
I'm fairly skeptical of "Western Tradition" as a thing to be worshipped the way it is in some circles (not here). Socrates and Jesus were not at all the same. There is the historical point that Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem often had influence on the same cultures, but even then it's not as if that was always the same thing, or always some even mix of the various traditions.
In any case, where would Jesus have quoted Homer or Aeschylus? I've never heard of that. The closest I've seen is Paul quoting I-forget-whom in Acts.
But I do agree with the overall point that this is not exactly a place full of traditional conservatives.
Felagund
1yr ago
So the first and third of those are from Proverbs. The fourth is from Ecclesiastes. The second alone is from the New Testament, from Jesus.
I'm not sure what Greek influence it might have, but the quote by Jesus could plausibly be influenced by Genesis 9 (which, of course, by no means excludes the possibility of Greek influence, or influence from both).
But for the others, I'm really not sure how that would be understood to be from the Greeks, since my understanding was that they antedated them.
Of course, there was a good deal of Greek influence on things (the New Testament is written in Greek after all!), but I'm not sure that that influence is necessarily from the things that we ordinarily think of as classical Greek—Plato, the tragedians, Herodotus, and so on. But I'm really not adequately read up on this.
I'd heard that the Sadducees were considered to be more influenced by the Greeks, what with a denial of the resurrection and so on.
When I saw this, I was finally driven to create an account.
In response to 1 of 3
As a Protestant myself, it is certainly true that many Protestants don't think about church history, but I think it is quite the exaggeration to characterize all Protestants as "deeply ignorant," and I imagine you would object if I characterized you that way. But I recognize that this was in response to claims that Protestants are lying, though, so I'll take that as much less polemic and more charitable than I would otherwise be inclined.
Regarding faith and works, the reasoning behind the concern here is the belief that God's standards in his law are high, requiring that we follow it, not just some good enough intent. There's no "good enough" amount of works aside from actually following the whole law (and numerous scripture passages can back this up). And so, we can't be saved by being good enough by our own works, even post-conversion. That isn't to say that our works should be ignored or thought irrelevant, indeed, they ought to accompany faith, and will do so. We should do them! But they are not the thing—rather, that is Christ's works—upon which our acceptance before God rests.
I think the claim about the 100 AD church is inaccurate. Yes, things probably are not identical to modern Protestantism—the scriptures wouldn't be able to be in everybody's pockets, for one rather obvious thing—but neither would they be identical to modern Roman Catholicism. There's good reason to think, for instance, that bishops (and hence popes, as well) weren't a thing distinct from presbyters/elders (whence the word priest comes) at that point. That is not the only addition over the years, but I think that that is one that strikes fairly near the heart of the claims of papal authority and ancientness, and being the church that's like the early church. I do not think this is some odd claim; if you read the reformers, they frequently cite the church fathers as in agreement with them, though by no means was every father in agreement in every instance.
I'd be interested in whatever primary texts you find especially compelling.
In response to 2 of 3
Regarding the bible, I don't think that that's accurate. The Council of Rome was no ecumenical council. It was a regional council, and so would presumably not be part of the extraordinary magisterium, or so I understand. To get there, you would either need to wait nearly a thousand years until the Council of Florence, or maybe you could make an argument that some of the later councils (like the Second Council of Nicea, in the ninth century), would, in its accepting other non-ecumenical councils, meant to include this one in such a way that it includes the scriptural list. (There are also difficulties concerning whether the books of Esdras are referring to the same ones as in the Tridentine canon). You claimed that they compiled scripture, which, thankfully, does not go so far as claiming that they made scripture scripture, as there is some pretty clear biblical evidence that parts of the New Testament were referred to as scriptures in the works of Paul and Peter.
I cannot readily assault arguments for the beauty of or your liking the various things that you have talked about, unlike if you were arguing for the truth of them. But as something of an iconoclast, I'd just want to point out that God hasn't commanded us to make such things, indeed, if anything, he has repeatedly commanded the opposite, so let us not be wiser than God, but hold fast to what he has said to do, and rejoice in the beauty contained in the word and sacrament.
What is your objection to the protestant teaching of justification?
I agree with the third section.
Separate thoughts
I think, in some circles, Protestantism gets something of a bad rap. Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism often attract people, due to their seeming pretty and feeling old, while Protestantism has to subsist on the teachings of the scriptures. In secular circles, I think that might be true to an even greater extent, because they often will still see those features—prettiness and oldness—as appealing to some extent, and in their eyes, even if they seem antiquated, something we've grown out of, there's still something to them. They might still like the vibes. But Protestantism, where there is much less of that, there are still the (seemingly) distasteful parts—Christianity's teachings on sex, among other things, and still all those teachings that the Christians have to believe, commitments demanded, and so on, but less ritual and experiences and feelings. Protestantism doesn't have to deal with the (unfair) pedophilia reputation, though.
But the majority of you on themotte, I believe, are atheists, so I'm sure you all would have a better account of your perceptions of Christianity than I am able to give.
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