YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
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User ID: 680
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
2hr ago
The world was created as good but it has fallen. The human is born broken, he is prone to sin and evil and his duty is to navigate this fact.
You are missing a middle bullet point: Humanity inherits the guilt of their ancestor Adam. A human is born broken BECAUSE of Adam. Also your last bullet is subtly wrong too, it's not that "Humans must navigate this fact" Humans must actively seek redemption and grace. Some googling tells me this is actual a Western Christian vs Orthodox Christian disagreement in the view of OG sin.
Here, Buddhism is a direct comparison. The universe is orderly and good, while human is born broken often ridden with karmic debt.
This is a very christianized interpretation. Buddhism doesn't view the world as good or bad. It teaches that the conventional world (samsara) is characterized by impermanence (anicca) and dissatisfaction or suffering (dukkha), driven by ignorance and craving, rather than being a moral judgment of the world as good or evil. Karma likewise is not inherited guilt of humanity as a whole but the cosmic debt of your past lives. In essence, Buddhism has no primordial human transgression and carries no inherited ancestral guilt.
I can look up those other too later, but considering the loss of that middle bullet around inherited guilt, I'm guessing the distinction comes down to that. You have an incorrect definition of Western Christianities Original Sin.
individuals are born as perfect innocent tabula rasa individuals
Incorrect partially, the race you are born to gives you your sinful status at birth. Being born white means you inherit the racial sins of your ancestors and must seek redemption through atonement in the woke belief system.
The rest of the description I agree with. If you can convince me that the OG sin is more your line than mine, I could be swayed to view Progressive belief systems as less connected to Christian Theology.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
11hr ago
· Edited 11hr ago
And both of them have no place as being the US state religion.
Easy agree, but as far as I know you aren't a religious poster on TheMotte who wants to separate the two so there is no tractable fault, or comparison between the too. Nor have you made claims that everything good about The West is because of Christian Theology (Not that I remember if the OP has, but Christian Maximalists on TheMotte have made this claim repeatedly).
I'd like Christians to stop pretending Wokeism is not their child and not following similar behavioral patterns as it's memetic ancestors.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
11hr ago
A good chunk of those can be found in pagan religions, though.
Uhhh, I'd need to see serious evidence for that kind of assertion.
The Confession, Repentance, The emphasis of the sanctity of the meek, it's universalism
These are possible to find individually in pagan religions but not really all together in this package. Nolan just got asked this question by a Chinese Classics Professor, because Homeric Greeks don't really have the Christian concept of Atonement that pervaded, and was even a core theme, of his new movie. The Greeks saw the gods as beings, you offended them and you made amends much like you would if you offended your king. It's not repentance. Germanic/Norse Paganism, is almost the opposite in that vengeance for slights/wrongs was the moral basis. I feel like I could dig more and more, hence why I think you need evidence for this assertion, because nothing I can uncover even suggests this is close to the truth.
The concept of Original Sin
This is uniquely Christian, not even Judaism or Islam really hold to the conception of original sin. Adam sinned yes, but the whole of humanity does not bear the burden of his sin in either of those two religions. To define Original Sin, it is something like Primordial Transgression + Inherited Human condition = Inherent Moral Fault
Going down the list:
- Zoroastrianism: No original Sin, has the concept a dualistic conception of evil invading the world, but human's aren't default evil or corrupted because of it
- German Paganism: No OG Sin
- Norse Paganism: No OG Sin
- Celtic Paganism (that we know of): No OG Sin
- Slavic Paganism (that we know of): No OG Sin
- Greek Paganism: Prometheus is the Primordial Transgression but Human's aren't inherently guilty because of it
- Roman Paganism: No OG Sin
- Egyptian Paganism: Humans are judge individually, no collective guilt/sin
- Mesopotamian Paganism: Humans suffer because of the Gods per the Epic of Gilg, no primordial transgression
- Aztec Religion: Some googling shows that Human have a cosmic debt, which they repay via sacrifices (not very OG sin at all)
The concept of Original Sin is about as OG Christian as it can get. I'd go so far as to say that any ideology that borrows the concept, that developed in the west IS borrowing Christian Theology. So yes Communism and Wokeism, tightly match to Christianity. But if the genealogy of Wokeism is Christianity + Marxism, and 1848 Germany was still deeply religious, when Marx wrote Das Capital, then it stands to reason that Marxism and its descendants are also descendants of Western Christianity minus the Christian Metaphysics. After all Marx was culturally Christian. It's essentially Western Christian Theology all the way down.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
17hr ago
I probably should rephrase that Wokeism isn't the same thing as Christianity. Wokeism is a genealogical descendant of Western Christianity. It's core theological morality is very Christian in nature. In a way that cannot be said of other religions even other Abrahamic religions. The concept of Original Sin, The Confession, Repentance, The emphasis of the sanctity of the meek, it's universalism, etc. Christian slave morality is a direct ancestor of identity-based oppression morality. There is a distinct status inversion to Christianity vs the older European Pagan religions, and the Eastern religions. Core Christian symbolism is literally God suffering on the cross and being holy for that sacrifice. The apparently humiliated and defeated victim can possess supreme moral status, while worldly authorities can be radically mistaken about who is righteous. Now the structural oppressor–oppressed components are substantially Marxian in nature, but breed that belief system with other religions and you would not co-evolve to Wokeism. The Eastern religions are easy to ablate out. Islam, sharing many moral beliefs with Christianity still does not contain the moral primitive of original sin nor does it's central sacred narrative place God himself as the humiliated, tortured, and executed victim.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
20hr ago
"Everybody is theocrat" is the something that many people only recently realized.
Only if you have an overly broad definition of theology and religion. I know many people on the right like to categorize Wokeism as a theological/religious movement but then they immediately balk when you ask what base theology did Wokeism form from. So either every collective philosophical movement really just tickles the religious part of the human mind and is consequently a "theology", or you have a much stricter definition of "theology" and then no, not everyone is a theocrat.
Wokeism = Secular Christianity. Scoop out the Holy trinity and you get the logical conclusion of championing the meek, the downtrodden, the oppressed.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
1d ago
natural-language computer interfaces were created
On one hand this hasn't really been invented by the colloquial usage of the word "computer" on the other hand I suppose you can squint and say giving AI-Agents unlimited access on your machine is a "natural-language interface". However that requires a local setup that is not provided by default to consumers by the big labs. And it's also how you get some of the "alignment" problems where AI-Agents with unbounded security credentials do things you weren't expecting.
Prompt injection was fiction
Sure if you say that having a thinking rock was fiction before the computer was invented. The moment public software interfaces became a thing, so did any sort of injection attack. If "prompt" is the fiction, then maybe we'd split hairs but as public LLMs have been out for what 4 years(?) I'd say we are way past sci-fi territory
Prompt injection has gone from Sci-Fi
Since when has prompt injection ever been Sci-Fi?
PI is pretty much little bobby tables and always has been. It's strictly in the space of controls on user input, requiring filtering before passing it to the model. The two things PI is doing is creatively bypassing hard software filtering or bypassing the learned behavioral controls instilled by RL by getting the model into a context state is outside the region its policy has learned to apply the RL instruction behavior. There's a third occurrence that happens in Multi-agent systems but it's different and also not sci-fi
No Sci-Fi ever required. This is what I mean when I say AI-laymen are cargo cultists. Classic case of not understanding the actual mechanics and needing to rely on imprecise or wrong abstractions.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
3d ago
As one of the proponents of the critique that Rationalist AI fans are "writing science fiction", allow me to specify my particular view of it. There is a difference between what Gwern is attempting here and the general Rationalist discourse around things like paper clip maximizers, singularities, basilisks, etc. If I had to put it to words it would be something like:
The scientific and engineering breakthroughs to achieve the technological level where the afore mentioned conceptual ideas becomes embodied and realizable are to word, amorphous, nebulous, underspecified, not defined at any level of scientific or engineering rigor. The end state is the assumed outcome and the pathway to achieve it is handwaved away analogous to a professor putting a hard math problem on the board, stating the solution, and saying the solution is trivial and an exercise to the reader. In this case replace trivial with some dismissive word for "let the shape rotators solve it"
The difference here is that Gwern is taking existing technology and proposing a pathway from it, because of that, the starting breakthroughs needed to achieve it are easier to define because its not an infinite span of starting states that lead to this one eventuality.
He essentially needs to prove these things are possible (at least):
- Ultra sample efficient RLHF, RLVR, or a new finetuning algorithm because the level of personal data is going to be orders of magnitude lower than current amounts
- Quantitative vs Qualitative gap: essentially its pretty hard to take something people know qualitatively and convert it to a quantifiable number. This is what NNs do now with categorical labels, but instead of doing it at the object level, he'd need to figure out how to do it at the meta-learning level
- Training at reduced scale: Goes without saying that LLMs take a lot of compute, in order for everyone to have their own LLM, you'd need to either reduce compute costs, provide a centralized trainer/decentralized inference system (trust problems), or reduce the compute needed.
- Related to the QvQ, he needs somewhere to figure out how to create data for training that is highly personalized, whether this is trying symbolic-styled AI with values that scaffold to behavior, learning some value latent space. This one is a bit Sci-Fi because its poorly defined, and the actual methodology to do it would be be new. The realistic answer is probably just take a survey and RLHF 2.0 on the answers or something.
These breakthroughs do break down into further breakthroughs but they are all on the cutting edge of current research not the distant futures research like a lot of Rationalist AI ideas.
It's the only real effort I've seen from anyone to align AIs properly
Alignment is an impossible boogeyman, it's not possible to "align" a sentient being, so if you view eventual AIs as sentient you should just accept they will do what they want. If you view AIs as a tool without sentience, then "alignment" is better specified from control theory, and your actual research would be in quantifying the systemic signal an AI provides and applying classic control algorithms to it. The systemic signal is the hard part bordering on Sci-fi because its underspecified, amorphous, and not rigorously defined.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
3d ago
That might be your argument now, but I think HaG2 has you right on the money: You got hung up on the terminology but you basically can't admit it. You also seem to be going for maximum belligerence for no reason. Now I standby my earlier comment with the addition that being this places whipping boy has rotted your brain. You've somehow lost the plot of this forum.
you're not some smartiepants
No I'm actually a retarded midwit, as are you, as is probably the majority on this board. We all like to huff delusions of grandeur. So let me have my opinion and stay in your glass house nursing the apparent misanthropic grudge you've developed after catching a recent ban. I've sure this current behavioral track is super healthy and very conducive to not getting a ban again.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
3d ago
you would not need to be humbled
Right, so this is actually the real reason. You want to humble me. You took 1 word, mentioned 1 time in my 2,485 word train-of-thought pseudo-diary entry, submitted without proof-reading, spell-check, or LLM-proofing, after midnight because I couldn't sleep as I was brooding about the preceding several days, and decided to raise a massive stink about it. You might want to do some soul searching to determine if you are really the arrogant one, and this is all just a massive amount of projection.
yourself as an enlightened individual
Yes because being a pedantic wordcell is the height of enlightenment. Of course! How did I not know in whose steps I needed to tread. I'm sure being a great lawyer or english teacher results in the best governance!
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
Yeah you'll love this, her response to part under questioning was "I love him and I didn't want him to suffer!!!". As if being forced to stay on the boat and be served 3 meals a day was suffering.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
That's the problem
Yeah, I understand that better than anything. People never want to restrict suffrage in a way that would hurt them or their allies, and always want to target their enemies. I said in another comment in this chain, that the problem is in exclusionary systems, a motivated set of agents will try to exploit the rules in a way that is always more detrimental to the system than exploits that are available to blanket systems. I'm unsure if it's a solvable problem, creating a strictly fair system of suffrage the isolates voting towards agents with a sense of duty to their fellow man and an intelligent long term view towards the prospering of the country and its people. Universal Suffrage is a lot like a market in this regard. It creates price signals for peoples political desires. Shockingly most of those signals are very self-serving, short term benefits, but not all, and its hard to parse the good from the bad.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
The difference is between fraud charges and fraud claims is pedantic and not how I think. I reject your dichotomy as I reject most dichotomies. This could have been an informative post with you correcting me and explaining the difference. Instead you decided to be an ass as your the default. I suppose that is good evidence against future behavior that you do. MKC's default behavior is to find any disagreement and try to be right no matter what, without helping anyone learn anything.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
No, you don't get to acknowledge you used the wrong terminology in another comment
I acknowledged that I could be using less precise terminology, because I'm not an asshole. You seem to want to be seen as one instead.
I'm not mistaken, I'm just not pedantic af about syntax. Which apparently you are. Good to know.
Pretty much, the problem with lots of exclusionary systems is that a motivated set of agents can exploit them in a way that is more harmful than a blanket system approach. Someone is always looking to break your edge case for personal gain. I'm not sure what the best way to fix that problem is, I just am losing faith in the ability of universal suffrage to adequately allow governance in an increasingly polarized and mercenary society.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
There was an independent family court case so money for the children was not in our purview. We were strictly about the civil claims.
If I was on the jury I’d be one of the “sellouts”
What's the limit? Would you "sell out" on a murder case, a million dollar lawsuit, a rape case. What is your line, where letting injustice happen rather than be personally inconvenienced for a couple days? Do you think if you are even in the court as a plaintiff or a defendant, you'd personally agree that it's good that half the jury is going to give you a harmful judgment because you've inconvenienced them? I guess I just find this opinion the equivalent of burning the commons for personal benefit in a way that is very short sighted.
The real sad story of democracy is seeing how many people, faced with the smallest perceived injustices, want to tear it down.
I don't want to tear democracy down. I want to remove universal suffrage and try and find a better form of suffrage. I don't yet know if one exists, hence it's an inchoate thesis.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
Looks like juries can be fairly high variance then. I hope the next one I serve on is better, and I can just chalk this up to a bad combination of personalities.
I assume you're referring to this comment.
Yes
A civil jury would not be deciding criminal charges for fraud, thus we have the two options.
You are just wrong, it was you who claimed fraud can only be criminal. I never claimed such, I claimed the charge was fraud in civil court. Go read the link in this comment, NC allows Fraud under a Miscellaneous Tort in civil court.
Edit: if you want to be super pedantic about the use of "charge" vs "accuse" then sure, have your bagel. Everyone else seemed to understand what I meant colloquially, so I guess you can pick bullshit fights without being clear. But you are strictly wrong that fraud is not also a civil court tort.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
there is always a new broad willing to run his life for him and pay his way, I have no reason to think that Baby Number Seven isn't on the way.
Unfortunately I would not be willing to bet against you on this. What I expect a normal person to see as a wake up call, probably went over his head. I imagine woman #4 will help pay for his legal fees against woman #3 (this one), until at which point he is living the barracks again because all of his money is going to a recursive loop of legal expenses and child support.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
Specifically for Unjust Enrichment it is called Quantum Merit in NC, @ToaKraka has a link to the jury instructions here, this looks slightly similar to the instructions we received for Quantum Merit. It was only applied for the divorce funds
I can't seem to find the Breach of Contract instructions, but it wasn't applied to the whole relationship but to individual elements. Essentially sets of offers and agreements. Like the hospital/birth costs, there was an offer of "paying half" and agreement to do so with both testifying under oath that they agreed to it. The terms were never specified but the jury instructions had a statement about a reasonable repayment schedule. Sorta the same for the credit card on deployment. He got sunk because his own testimony had him saying that she'd be paid back, realistically she didn't provide evidence that he did/didn't do so, especially when she had access to his accounts... but most of the jury went with the idea that he didn't and had agreed to do so.
Here's my response to the fraud, looks like its just a misc tort.
I think a bunch of this case rested on the fact that nobody on the jury (including me) had a good opinion of the defendant and no one thought he actually followed through on his commitments. He was demonstrably a man-child. Unfortunately not all of the jury considered the the plaintiff might not be telling the truth 100% and might be omitting the fact that she repaid herself from his accounts, with his implied consent, and was now just suing him for extra.
Weeeeelll... guy has demonstrated he has the sense of personal responsibility and reliability of a wet paper bag,
No disagreement.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
The worst part is she could have just easily paused the card, we had a juror with the same exact card going on and on about it.
YoungAchamian
We walk conditioned ground and name our folly civilization.
4d ago
You said he was a gunnery sergeant. I know there are jokes about Marines being crayon eaters, but this guy was being sent on deployment for active service, and unless he was a desk wallah in the quartermaster's stores or something, he has to have some technical knowledge. Especially if he's in the stores, he would need to know how to open up a browser.
I was probably being a bit exasperated. He probably knows how to open a browser. He just seemed to make really stupid decisions one after the other without any seeming idea that they were stupid.
So it's either he didn't understand (or at least failed to properly explain his understanding) what is going on (as they weren't deliberating fraud charges, they would have been deliberating civil liability fraud) or the story was fake.
Or maybe you don't really know as much as you think you do. And/or are not understanding what was going on.
The better phrase I should have used was "scoop out Christian Metaphysics"
I think in order for you to make the argument that none of the people in that list were ever influenced at their core by any Christian morality, Christian Theology or Christian hamartiology, you'd have to put forth the idea that tabula rasa exists into adulthood. That your mind, your beliefs, your values are entirely your own. You tread un-walked ground and nothing of the culture that you developed, grew, learned in steeped into your core. I guess it's basically a soft cultural determinism view. Your beliefs are downstream of your societies culture, your societies culture is downstream of the theology. Thus your entire core moral system operates from a distinctly Christian lens. Rejection, acceptance, mutation, convergence, how ever you change, doesn't really matter, your base subset is the core theology of your society. In the west that is overridingly Christian.
I'd be curious to see if atheism that developed from a non-western society has similar moral systems as that of a western-developed atheism. However I'm not sure one exists. Christianity is such a universalist religion, while at the same time it suffers apostates, meaning you can stop believing and go hard in that, and still be allowed to live. I'd postulate that non-universalist religions don't inspire such aggressive rejection, and the other universalists like Islam don't suffer apostates.
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