[HN Gopher] Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to w...
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Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
Author : josephcsible
Score : 516 points
Date : 2026-02-23 07:33 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ewtnnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ewtnnews.com)
| verdverm wrote:
| What does it mean to search yourself for words, even if they fall
| short of the eleganance that Ai can produce?
|
| "What to do when Ai says 'I love you'?" discusses this conundrum
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/g-s1177-78041/what-to-do-when...
|
| I've been paying attention to Sherry Turkle since I caught this
| show over the summer. She was on a panel at Davos titled "Swipe
| Left on Reality" which was the first time I heard her use the
| phrase "frictionless relationships" to describe what interacting
| with Ai is like.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C9Gb3rVMTg
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| > phrase "frictionless relationships"
|
| Peak post-modern world, where everything is more real than
| real, yet doesn't have any friction of the real.
| verdverm wrote:
| The Matrix has it wrong, the people went willingly, even
| excitedly
| kombookcha wrote:
| Guarding your heart with elegant nonsense you don't really mean
| is a classic defensive posture, and probably is directly impeding
| their ability to be present in emotionally intense (and often
| difficult) situations. It reminded me of this:
|
| >There is a scene in the opening of Into the Abyss. Werner Herzog
| is interviewing a Reverend who in fifteen minutes will go in to
| be with a boy as the boy is led to the gurney to be executed by
| injection.
|
| >The Reverend is talking about how the Lord works in mysterious
| ways, and so on--it is exactly the type of conversation you want
| to avoid. It is very ChatGPT. It is the Reverend repeating things
| he's said before--words that protect him, that allow him to
| perform the role of Reverend, instead of being what he is: a man
| named Lopez, who will soon have to watch a boy die.
|
| >At one point, the Reverend, as a part of a monologue about the
| beauty of God's creation, mentions that he sometimes meditates on
| the beauty of the squirrels he sees on the golf course. Herzog,
| standing in a graveyard with nameless crosses, says, with mad
| Bavarian seriousness, "Please describe an encounter with a
| squirrel."
|
| >Lopez is a bit surprised by the question, but he takes it in a
| playful spirit--his voice lifts, joyously. He starts to talk
| faster. (This is where the conversation shifts into the type you
| want.) He is no longer saying versions of things he has said
| before, he's not protecting himself, he's just there.
|
| >From that point on, it takes about ten seconds before he's
| crying.
|
| >In interviews, Herzog likes to mention this conversation to
| explain his craft. "But how on earth did you know to say that?"
| says the interviewer. "Were you just trying to say something
| unexpected to unbalance him?" "No, it was not random", Herzog
| says. "I knew I had to say those exact words. Because I know the
| heart of men."
|
| https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/looking-for-alice
| brna-2 wrote:
| When you stop to think of it, historically people have told their
| secrets to the church, now they also tell them to AI. There is
| some kind of relation there, the power that people willingly give
| to an organization. The Ads are coming so I guess people will
| start to think about it a bit more.
| raphman wrote:
| To the best of my knowledge, traditional confessions have
| always been processed locally, not sent upstream1.
|
| AFAICT, it is much harder to get a priest to reveal your
| confession than it is to get a log of your ChatGPT sessions.
|
| 1) I first wrote "not sent to the cloud", but if God is all-
| knowing, records of all sins are already in the cloud, just not
| accessible by support staff.
| devsda wrote:
| > first wrote "not sent to the cloud", but if God is all-
| knowing, records of all sins are already in the cloud, just
| not accessible by support staff.
|
| I heard there is a GDPR'esque Right of access(SAR) to see
| your records if you ask for it nicely in person.
| Sharlin wrote:
| "The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by
| God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-
| mining algorithms."
|
| "God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment and
| punishment. Other sentiments towards them were secondary."
|
| "The human organism always worships. First it was the gods,
| then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next
| it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize
| truly omnipresent observation and judgment."
|
| "The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the
| cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization."
|
| --Morpheus, _Deus Ex_
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Contrary to prevailing fetish, not everything is about "power".
| Framing everything in terms of it is not only self-refuting,
| but it impoverishes the range of human relations and warps
| understanding.
|
| Confession is not about some kind of organizational power. The
| whole point is that it liberates the penitent. It is protected
| by absolute secrecy in order to, among other reasons, remove
| the element of power. A priest who breaks the seal of
| confession incurs automatic excommunication and faces further
| penalties, like removal from public ministery and from the
| clerical state. In short, a priest is expected to endure
| torture and even death to preserve the seal. There is no
| admissible exception. Not much of a "power move".
|
| In the case of big tech and AI, profit and power do enter the
| picture. Secrecy is the last thing big tech wants.
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| Btw pope is a math phd.
| OtomotO wrote:
| Imagine the pope being a man of science a couple of hundred
| years back... How much better the world could be.
| usrnm wrote:
| A lot of very bad things were historically done by men of
| science
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| How much better?
|
| Every honest description of Catholic Church, as any
| institution of this size and history, needs to be very
| nuanced. One of such nuances is a fact that it was one of the
| main, and sometimes strictly main, supporters and drivers of
| education and scientific progress. Other such nuance is that
| it very often punished and persecuted attempts to bring
| education and scientific progress.
|
| Both views of the Church are true. That's what nuance is.
| graemep wrote:
| > Other such nuance is that it very often punished and
| persecuted attempts to bring education and scientific
| progress.
|
| Often? Very rarely, and the motive was never to stop
| progress - it was side effect of something else.
| numbers_guy wrote:
| You mean during the Napoleonic wars? Science was already
| fully embraced by then. Or do you think the Austrians and the
| French were casting spells against each other instead of
| firing cannon?
| somenameforme wrote:
| They often were. A lot of history has been retold more in a
| way to fit contemporary narrative than to maintain historical
| accuracy. For instance Galileo. The typical tale is something
| like Galileo dared claim the Earth is not the center of the
| universe, the Church freaked out at the violation of dogma,
| shunned him, and he was lucky to escape with his life. In
| reality the Pope was one of Galileo's biggest supporters and
| patrons. But they disagreed on heliocentrism vs
| geocentricism.
|
| The Pope encouraged Galileo to write a book about the issue
| and cover both sides in neutrality. Galileo did write a book,
| but was rather on the Asperger's side of social behavior, and
| decided to frame the geocentric position (which aligned with
| the Pope) as idiotic, defended by an idiot - named Simplicio
| no less, and presented weak and easily dismantled arguments.
| The Pope took it as a personal insult, which it was, and the
| rest is history.
|
| And notably Galileo's theory was, in general, weak. Amongst
| many other issues he continued to assume perfectly circular
| orbits which threw everything else off and required endless
| epicycles and the like. So his theory was still very much in
| the domain of philosophy rather than observable/provable
| science or even a clear improvement, so he was just generally
| acting like an antagonistic ass to a person who had supported
| him endlessly. And as it turns out even the Pope is quite
| human.
| grey-area wrote:
| Cover both sides in neutrality???!!!
|
| The geocentric position is silly and wrong. There are no
| two sides here.
| zdragnar wrote:
| There were definitely two sides at the time _in people 's
| minds_. He could have presented the geocentric position
| as being based on theories that were justified only by
| inductive reasoning, and contrasted that with his own
| observations and why they provide a more accurate view of
| the universe.
|
| Neutral writing only means that it is not overtly
| prejudiced, and the weight of the evidence speaks for
| itself. That's definitely not what Galileo wrote. He was
| eventually widely considered to be right, but that didn't
| help him any.
| graemep wrote:
| There were two sides on the evidence available at the
| time.
|
| The Tychonic model was probably the one best supported by
| evidence.
|
| its worth bearing in mind that the Copernican model is
| also badly wrong - the sun is not the centre of the
| universe, just the solar system.
| somenameforme wrote:
| If you step outside and watch the stars, and map them,
| you'd also come to the conclusion of a geocentric
| universe yourself. The nature of the sky makes it appear
| that everything is regularly revolving around us. And
| incidentally you can even create astronomical predictions
| based upon this assumption that are highly accurate. You
| end up needing to assume epicycle upon epicycle, but
| Galileo's theory was no better there since the same is
| true when you assume circular orbits.
|
| So what made Galileo decide otherwise was not any
| particular flaw with geocentricism, but rather he thought
| that he'd discovered that the tides of the ocean were
| caused by the Sun. That is incorrect and also led to
| false predictions (like places only having one high
| tide), so the basis for his theory was incorrect, as were
| many assumptions made around it. But it was still
| interesting and worth debating. Had he treated 'the other
| side' with dignity and respect, it's entirely possible
| that we would have adopted a heliocentric view far faster
| than we ultimately did.
| accidentallfact wrote:
| The thing that made him question geocentrism was that
| Venus quite visibly orbits the Sun.
|
| It has always been known that the tides are caused by the
| Moon. The hard part is to predict the tides in detail, as
| they depend on the geography as well. Some of the first
| computers were invented to predict the tides.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Galileo not only actively rejected lunar explanations for
| the tides, but felt that they were driven purely by the
| kinetic motion of the Earth - rotation about its own axis
| + revolution around the Sun. He dismissed the concept of
| invisible action at a distance -- Newton would be born in
| the same year that Galileo would die. You can read more
| about Galileo and his views on the tides here. [1] He
| felt that this was his most compelling argument for
| heliocentricism.
|
| [1] - https://galileo.library.rice.edu/sci/observations/t
| ides.html
| josefx wrote:
| > ... position is silly and wrong.
|
| Both positions were build on top of aether, quintesence
| and Celestial Spheres. The result was silly and wrong no
| matter which one you picked.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| Based on data and evidence that we now have? Yes.
|
| Back then Galileo's theory wasn't exactly provable and
| while he did get the core idea right he was still wrong
| on quite a few important things.
|
| e.g. Tycho's model solved quite a few questions that
| Galileo couldn't at the time.
|
| e.g. Stellar parallax was a big issue that was
| conclusively solved until the 1800s
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| The Catholic Church was funding a lot of research for a long
| time. E.g the Elon Musk of his time, Galileo, was famously
| sponsored by it and when asked to contrast his theories
| against the established view, sperged out so hard against the
| people tasked with reviewing his publications, they tossed
| him under the carriage.
| watwut wrote:
| Galileo was fascist and liar like Musk?
| DeepSeaTortoise wrote:
| Guess what, he wasn't South African or in the Oval
| Office, either.
| riffraff wrote:
| the catholic church has traditionally been pro-science, the
| contrast with science is a modern development. There's a ton
| of Catholic clergy who were scientists[0], many of those well
| known (Mersenne, Mendel, Copernicus, Venturi etc).
|
| Even the epitome of the science-church conflict, the Galileo
| story, started from a scientific disagreement before the
| religious one[1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_Mersenne
|
| [0] https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-
| sma...
| oersted wrote:
| I don't know about popes, but many prominent mathematicians,
| philosophers and early scientists were priests or monks:
| Mendel, Copernicus, Bayes, Ockham, Bolzano... It was pretty
| much the only way to get the kind of education, intellectual
| culture, time and focus required for hundreds of years (at
| least in Europe), until the upper-middle class widened around
| the enlightenment and industrial revolution.
|
| The friction between the church and science is a relatively
| new phenomenon, at least at the current scale. There are
| always exceptions like Galileo, but it took science a long
| time to start answering (and contradicting) some of the key
| questions about our world and where we come from that
| religion addresses.
| graemep wrote:
| > The friction between the church and science is a
| relatively new phenomenon, at least at the current scale
|
| Current scale? What current friction do you have in mind. I
| honestly cannot think of anything with the Catholic church.
| Lots of friction with evangelical Biblical literalists, of
| course, but the Catholic Church is not literalist.
|
| > There are always exceptions like Galileo
|
| The Galileo case is more about personalities and politics.
| it is a very good example of why religious authority should
| be in the same hands as secular power, but it is not really
| about his beliefs - no one else (including Copernicus)
| faced opposition for the same ideas.
| fluoridation wrote:
| >it is a very good example of why religious authority
| should be in the same hands as secular power
|
| Did you forget a "not"?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| > There are always exceptions like Galileo
|
| Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Comapring the assassination of a president by a pro-
| slaver to a scholarly and political dispute that ended up
| with house arrest in a villa, where he wrote and
| published his most important work, is a bit wild. The
| Church has done much, much worse things than the dispute
| with Galileo.
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| > There are always exceptions like Galileo
|
| Well, considering that Galileo basically called Pope a
| fool, and the punishment he received was home arrest, this
| affair is not really the best evidence of Church prejudice,
| backwardness and cruelty.
|
| And if we agree with Feyerabend, Galileo of today would
| probably has as much difficulty as the original one, for
| the initial evidence he provided wasn't strong enough to
| discard knowledge of that time.
| zaik wrote:
| He did earn a BS degree in mathematics, but his dissertation
| was a religious one.
| vasco wrote:
| The Vatican has really smart people in there, regardless of how
| you feel about the whole thing. I recommend anyone interested
| in the topic to give a read to:
| https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...
|
| "ANTIQUA ET NOVA
|
| Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and
| Human Intelligence"
|
| I was quite impressed at how much they "get it".
| whatever1 wrote:
| I read the other day that the Roman Empire never fell. Its
| emperor is the Pope.
|
| Which is an exaggeration, but makes you thinking. This
| institution still has a ton of power.
| JV00 wrote:
| The pope does hold a title, "pontifex maximus", that is
| older than Christianity itself and goes back to the
| foundation of Rome. For a while it was unified with the
| emperor seat.
| accidentallfact wrote:
| It fell, (quite violently, in fact) in the third century.
| The rest was pretense.
| seanw444 wrote:
| The western half, sure. You're ignoring the eastern half
| which carried the mantle for another thousand years. And
| the concurrent existence of the Holy Roman Empire, which
| was also intertwined with the Roman Catholic church.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| The Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth
| century but the Eastern half continued for another thousand
| years until the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in
| 1453.
|
| A sibling commentator points out that the Catholic church
| still uses the term "Pontifex Maximus" to refer to their
| pope. However, this was a title used by the dominant high
| priest of pre-Christian Rome and the Catholic church only
| started doing this after Constantine XI (last Roman
| emperor) died when Constantinople fell to the Turks.
|
| The Catholic church was just one of many entities that
| appropriated the titles and symbols of classical Rome as a
| way to confer themselves with the prestige and historical
| legacy of the Roman Empire. For example, the words "Tsar"
| (Slavic), "Kaiser" (German) and "Keizer" (Dutch) are all
| derivations of Caesar (as a synonym for emperor). Western
| European rulers adopted the Roman eagle for their royal and
| national coat of arms; Eastern Europeans tend to prefer the
| double-headed variant. The most egregious example is the
| Holy Roman Empire which famously was neither holy nor
| Roman. Arguably, in its latter days, it was more a
| federation than an empire.
| bonesss wrote:
| As a massive hedge fund with insane holdings managed by
| complex legal nuances & historical treaties, juggling
| critically withheld information, and having an outsize
| political presence as an independent state ( _thanks Benito
| Mussolini!_ ), The Vatican has great financial incentive to
| have smart quants, historians, lawyers, and others on the
| payroll.
|
| Based on their balance sheets I think they get it very, very,
| well.
|
| Steve Jobs took a vow of poverty at Apple, too... somehow,
| some way, the dividends and stocks and private planes and
| fancy business dinners and everyone kissing his ass made a $1
| salary survivable. Poor guy.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| There must be something missing if they are religious though.
|
| Like some sort of critical thinking isnt there.
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| Selective reasoning is a hell of a drug.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| If I was in my early 20s, this would be mad respect.
|
| Now that I'm in my 30s and I know PhDs.... They are basically
| nepo babies who were not good enough for industry.
| tclancy wrote:
| That is a scorching hot take right out of the gate on a
| Monday morning! Username really nails the thing.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I think you're mistaken where he earned a
| Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in mathematics in 1977
|
| and later His doctoral thesis was a legal study
| of the role of Augustinian local priors.[64]
|
| source:wikipedia
| midtake wrote:
| The article seems to be overreacting to a small part of Pope
| Leo's talk. It seems to me his real point was that using AI to
| hasten writing homilies leads priests to treat this work as busy
| work instead of thoughtful, focused work.
| emil-lp wrote:
| Priests who use generative AI to craft their homilies should
| openly share the prompts they rely on, because those prompts
| shape the theology, tone, and pastoral direction of what is
| proclaimed from the pulpit. In a community rooted in trust and
| accountability--especially within the Catholic Church--
| transparency about AI use is not optional but a moral
| obligation.
|
| -- ChatGPT.
| veggieroll wrote:
| > overreacting to a small part of [a Pope]'s talk
|
| As is Catholic tradition in the US
| allovertheworld wrote:
| The mind virus will not stop spreading, making corporations do
| your critical thinking is not a good path. People will become
| dependent on a subscription service for everyday life.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Well ... isn't organized religion a subscription service for
| everyday life?
| graemep wrote:
| You do not have to pay anything.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Where does the money come from? Religious services are
| generally funded by donations, and these donations are
| usually done in the open, whereby (from what I saw)
| regularly attending and not donating the expected amount
| would put you in a socially uncomfortable situation.
| graemep wrote:
| No reason anyone would would feel social discomfort in my
| experience, which is mostly in Catholic and Anglican
| churches, and AFAIK money comes mostly from donations not
| made in public. I have not felt the least worried about
| what people would think when I have not had cash on me or
| about how much I put in.
|
| Depending on the definition of services you are using
| (e.g. you only mean masses in a Catholic Church, or
| everything else churches do) lots of things are done
| without a link to donating: prayers and meditation of
| other kinds/formats, confession, pastoral care, food
| banks, religious education and discussion.... In poor
| countries often things like medical services.
|
| Done the traditional way, no one can really see how much
| you put in the box and there is no reaction at all from
| anyone if you put nothing in. Only people right next to
| you can see anything at all.
|
| Now churches in the UK offer envelopes on which you can
| write your name and postcode for tax reasons (they can
| reclaim part of the tax paid on the donation if you are a
| UK tax payer) so no one can see how much you put in if
| its in such an envelope.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The definition of a donation is that you don't have to
| give it.
|
| If you have to pay then it's either a purchase or a tax.
|
| But you know this of course.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I do know that, but I also know how donations can become
| an expectation.
|
| Also, it's worth noting in the context of this thread,
| that people can use AI inference for free on many
| services, with payment only need for higher usage, and
| even then, if you don't care about expectations or
| inconvenience, it's trivial to abuse the free tier.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There's over a thousand years of empirical evidence that
| a symbolic donation of a coin is accepted.
| falcor84 wrote:
| A thousand years? What made you go with that number?
|
| The protestant reformation was only about 500 years ago,
| and I'm pretty sure that Martin Luther wouldn't have
| bothered that much if the expected "donations" were
| really cheap. And even if you do go with "a coin", which
| was apparently the price of an annual indulgence for a
| regular peasant, that was about the same price as a whole
| pig, or on the order of $1k in today's money, so
| definitely not symbolic.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I know that hackers here need to always be right and go
| to great lengths to try to distort reality when they are
| wrong. You're not even fooling yourself by saying that
| every coin in history is worth a thousand dollars, much
| less fooling anybody else.
|
| If you make it a habit to always lie in order to always
| be right, you start building castles of lies that hinder
| you in life. Just because of pride.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I'm sorry if you don't like pedantry, but this is what
| I'm in HN for.
|
| To be clear, I definitely didn't mean to imply that every
| coin in history is worth a thousand dollars, and
| suggesting that this is what I meant is clearly not the
| "strongest plausible interpretation"[0] of my message. I
| was referring specifically to the Florin/Gulden/Guilder
| coins being used across Europe in Martin Luther's time,
| which contained about 3.5g gold, which at today's gold
| price would be worth over $500 just as bullion, but it
| was apparently worth about twice that in terms of
| purchasing power. From my searches, it seems that the
| poorest of the poor would need to pay a quarter of a coin
| annually, the typical commoner would pay 1 per year, and
| merchants/middle-class would pay 3 or more per year, to
| eliminate/reduce their afterlife punishment.
|
| You can argue that my focus on indulgences is not
| relevant for some reason, and I'd be happy to discuss
| other examples of expectations of monetary payments to
| the church, but would appreciate if you refrain from
| accusing me of lying.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| [1] https://www.biblelightinfo.com/instruc.htm
|
| [2] https://famous-trials.com/luther/295-indulgences
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I just don't understand the purpose?
|
| Churches have directly taxed their followers on their
| income. Some of them still do, like the government
| churches in Scandinavia. That's a tax.
|
| Churches have also sold the redemptions of your sins.
| Sometimes a bit cloaked as donations, like what you
| mention.
|
| And churches have accepted donations, with expectations
| so low that everybody can donate. Who can't donate a
| kopek, or a bowl of rice? People who are too poor to
| donate anything are not shunned by any church, on the
| contrary they will be on the receiving end of donations
| if they wish to.
|
| I would also like to quote the definite authority on this
| subject, Mark 12:41-44:
|
| "Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings
| were put and watched the crowd putting their money into
| the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large
| amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very
| small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
|
| 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "Truly I
| tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury
| than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their
| wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--
| all she had to live on."
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Back when my parents made me go to church, I remember
| observing that a lot of the donations being made were in
| envelopes that the church provided.
|
| That's pretty private, I think, in that one's fellow
| churchgoers can't discern much but the thickness of the
| envelope. It'd look the same if the donation consisted of
| 5 singles, or 5 hundreds.
|
| (I have no idea if that's standard accepted practice
| everywhere, though I might imagine that someone would be
| getting pretty uptight at some level if people weren't
| giving enough to put another layer of gold on the roof of
| a Catholic church -- envelope or not.)
| vultour wrote:
| Right, that's why they have massive churches adorned with
| gold and intricate sculptures. Just because it technically
| isn't required to pay does not mean that years of
| brainwashing won't condition you to give your money away.
| I've only been a few times, but seeing old people queue up
| to give a sizable part of their pension to the church just
| made me sad.
| mlrtime wrote:
| And your world view is very jaded and myopic if that is
| all you see. There are plenty (majority) where your
| anecdote is not true.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| A majority of the bible is not true.
| graemep wrote:
| Evidence for that statement? Can you give some examples?
|
| Mostly when people say "the Bible is not true" its
| usually a result of misunderstanding it (e.g. adopting
| Biblical literalism, not understanding the culture and
| context, not understanding nuance).
| falcor84 wrote:
| If you don't adopt biblical literalism, then isn't the
| Bible just true in the same way that Star Wars is true?
| graemep wrote:
| No. You interpret each document in context and in
| culture.
|
| For example, you interpret Genesis as a story that makes
| a point and tell you something - it is like Jesus's
| parables (no one same says they are literal!). For
| example, that all human beings are made in the image of
| God - as we all look different that is clearly not
| literal. That we are all related and of one ancestry.
|
| On the other hand you interpret the gospels as
| deliberately written biographies of Jesus. You interpret
| the epistles as letter written by their author to a
| particular person or group of people. You interpret the
| psalms as lyrics.
|
| It is the traditional way of interpreting the Bible and
| few people had a problem with it until modern times.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I think their point was that Star Wars also has
| metaphorical lessons to be learned if you're not
| interpreting it as a literal history lesson.
| graemep wrote:
| Yes, that is the point of fiction. its not unfair to
| compare Genesis to Star Wars to an extent, but, to a
| Christian, what you learn from Genesis is a lot more
| important (the "word of God" rather than the "word of
| George Lucas").
|
| However, much of the rest of the Bible should be read
| differently - the letters, biographies etc. Each document
| ("book") needs to be read appropriately and in context.
| Again, each can be compared to others in its genre, but
| its inclusion in "the Bible" (but there are lots of
| Biblical canons) gives it that extreme importance.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > It is the traditional way of interpreting the Bible and
| few people had a problem with it until modern times.
|
| Sorry to nitpick, but there were quite a lot of
| "heathens" and "witches" who had faced some problems with
| the traditional interpretations of the Bible before
| modern times.
| mjmas wrote:
| What is wrong with taking the Bible as literal statement
| of fact?
| graemep wrote:
| Its a departure from Christian tradition (including early
| Christians), and it leads to demonstrably false
| conclusions, and its silly to treat many works of many
| different genres (myth, chronicles, personal accounts,
| poetry and lyrics, biographies, and letters) as all being
| interpreted the same way.
| steve1977 wrote:
| And that's exactly the plan I guess.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Yesterday I when I was googling something it hit me: I wouldn't
| know how to find anything without a search engine.
|
| We're already reliant on big tech regarding what information is
| presented to us and LLMs are just the next step in that
| direction.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| When I was a kid, we had a long shelf dedicated to storing a
| voluminous encyclopedia in the family room, and subscribed to
| periodic (annual?) updates.
|
| This was expensive.
|
| IIRC, these books were purchased one small stack at a time
| from a locally-owned grocery store, which spread the expense
| over a longer period. One week, they'd have the books 1-5 on
| display and for sale, say. And the next week, it'd be books
| 6-10. After a time, a family could have the whole set.
|
| Anyway, we had that. So when I wanted to find general
| information about a topic back then, before Google or
| Altavista or Webcrawler or whatever, I'd look in the
| encyclopedia first and get some background.
|
| If it was something I really wanted to dig deeper on, I'd go
| to the library. If I couldn't find what I needed, I asked for
| help. Sometimes, this meant that they'd order appropriate
| material (for free) using inter-library loan for me to
| peruse.
|
| If I already had enough background but needed a very specific
| fact, then I'd call the library's reference desk and they'd
| find it for me and call back. They'd then read the relevant
| information over the phone.
|
| And if I wanted a reference to have and keep, then: We had
| book stores.
|
| ---
|
| Nowadays: Encyclopedias are basically dead, but we can carry
| an offline copy of Wikipedia in our pocket supercomputer if
| we choose. Books still get published. Libraries are still
| present, and as far as I can tell they broadly still find
| answers with a phone call.
|
| It's not all lost, yet. The old ways still work OK if a
| person wants them to work. (Of course, Googling the thing or
| chatting with the bot is often much, much faster. We choose
| our own poison.)
| anthonypasq wrote:
| i dont remember a world without google but surely the answer
| is just walk into a library?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Or just look into your own encyclopedia.
| Tade0 wrote:
| What if you need up to date, niche information?
|
| It's a given that a book on programming is already out of
| date when it goes to print.
|
| My main gripe with paper sources is that sometimes an
| important piece of information is only mentioned in passing
| when the author clearly knew more about it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Religious claptrap is the OPPOSITE of critical thinking.
| palmotea wrote:
| > The mind virus will not stop spreading, making corporations
| do your critical thinking is not a good path. People will
| become dependent on a subscription service for everyday life.
|
| Doesn't matter. Even if civilization collapses and we're all
| miserable, if it means more money is flowing into OpenAI's
| coffers, it's all good.
| solatic wrote:
| No priest will feed sufficient context about their community into
| the context window - even if they were skilled enough to do so,
| unless the model was locally hosted, doing so would be a
| violation of their vows of silence.
|
| Good homilies are written with the particular community in mind.
| If it were more effective to write a homily for a generic public,
| the Vatican would have started publishing standard homilies long
| ago.
| Meekro wrote:
| This priest agrees with you, and has expressed concerns about
| mediocre homilies that don't speak to the concerns of the
| particular community:
| https://youtu.be/pgZXCPCATmc?si=FM4uj2owYBVK_8Mh
| onion2k wrote:
| _No priest will feed sufficient context about their community
| into the context window_
|
| But they will try, and they'll share a lot of potentially
| private information in the process.
| graemep wrote:
| Not to write homilies though. The real danger of risking
| exposing private information would be pastoral work.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Nit: you're confusing the vow of silence with the confessional
| seal.
| graemep wrote:
| Its more than a nit. It only applies to confession so putting
| in other private information would not break a vow, but it
| would still be a very bad thing to do.
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| There are resources that publish homilies for priests to give.
| Here is an example for English speakers.
|
| https://associationofcatholicpriests.ie/liturgy/sunday-resou...
| h33t-l4x0r wrote:
| Well maybe they just need to start recording confessionals.
| Just imagine what Gemini 3.1 could do with 1M tokens of that
| stuff.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been three
| minutes since I shit posted on HN, and my greentext stories
| are famous on 4chan. Also, after lunch today I send 300
| emails to Jeffrey Epstein using my work email and signed with
| my real name. What a great guy!
| fainpul wrote:
| Gemini 3.1 - I don't remember that verse. Is that from the
| old testament?
| rubslopes wrote:
| It's from the Orange Catholic Bible, I think.
|
| "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human
| mind."
| RobotToaster wrote:
| iam tempus pariendi venerat et ecce gemini in utero
| repperti sunt - Gen 25:24
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is how you get Grok.
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| You're absolutely right! You can repent on your deathbed and
| skip years of church attendance!
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Bro as a kid I used to go to church every Sunday and I
| guarantee that not a single person from my entire village
| understood what the priest was saying, including the priest
| himself, who was simply reading whatever higher-ups had given
| him. It was perfect slop because literally nobody cared about
| the content, it was all form - it needed to sound important and
| complicated enough to be able to be used in religious rituals.
| This is an excellent use case for LLMs because they excel at
| exactly that.
|
| Imagine a bunch of bushmen trying to perform the spell of rain.
| It doesn't matter what they sing, as long as it sounds like
| something that could pass as the spell of rain, because the
| goal here isn't to make rain happen, it's to strengthen the
| community through shared rituals. 99% of religious activities
| are exactly this.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Bro as a kid I used to go to church every Sunday
|
| I mean, not to dismiss your experience, but in my weekly
| Sunday going to church in Poland the priest would write an
| actual homily that felt relevant to the community. But then
| our small town had 3 churches, and each one had a different
| style - people would talk about preferring one over the other
| because they had more interesting "content".
|
| But yeah, there was the message from the regional Bishop or
| the Archbishop of Poland or sometimes directly from the
| Vatican, then the reading from the old testament, then the
| homily which I'm 99% was written by the priest giving the
| mass.
|
| >> I guarantee that not a single person from my entire
| village understood what the priest was saying
|
| Well, I wouldn't say not a single person did, but yeah, we
| had those 3 churches, probably 10k seats each, every one was
| rammed on the sunday, but I'd say 90% of people there were
| only there to tick it off and snoozed through the whole
| thing. But it's not because the homily was boring, it's
| because going to church on sunday was(maybe still is?) a
| thing you have to do or people will make fun out of you.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Your village had proper healthy capitalist market. In mine,
| there was complete religious monopoly.
| Layogtima wrote:
| Healthy capitalist market is one helluva oxymoron
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's not an oxymoron: just a cryptid. Read _The Wealth of
| Nations_.
| Layogtima wrote:
| Thus, oxymoron, no?
| adrianN wrote:
| You have a lot of faith in the qualities of average priests.
| soderfoo wrote:
| To be fair, faith is the crux of Catholicism.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I assume this was intended as a joke, even if it is one
| that doesn't land? Because it's not clear what this could
| mean otherwise.
| Lapsa wrote:
| I find it funny
| Brendinooo wrote:
| No, "faith" is actually an integral component of "the
| Christian faith".
|
| Go read the first part of Acts 4, where a section closes
| with: "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John,
| and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they
| were astonished. And they recognized that they had been
| with Jesus." So...yes! We do believe in a God that can
| empower average people to speak in above-average ways.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| use of "crux" is a little punny here too
|
| but yeah faiths are into faith
|
| shrug
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The conversation was as follows:
|
| > You have a lot of faith in the qualities of average
| priests. >> To be fair, faith is the crux of Catholicism.
|
| So, _in context_ (which the downvoters seem to have
| missed), "faith" is being used equivocally here. There a
| difference between having faith in Christ and his
| promises and faith in his claims of divinity on the one
| hand, and having "faith" in a priest or whatever else on
| the other. Hence, my question whether this was some kind
| of a bad attempt at humor or whether something was meant
| by it.
|
| (FWIW, authentic Christian faith is not an arbitrary
| faith in anything you please. This is blind faith which
| is irrational. This is why we can speak of _preambula
| fidei_. There must be reasons for faith. When a friend
| tells you something about his inner life that you cannot
| know directly, you may believe him given an ensemble of
| evidence and reasons that cannot prove his claim
| definitively, but are nonetheless very supportive of it.
| Furthermore, the claim makes sense of what you _do_ know
| about him.)
| achierius wrote:
| > authentic Christian faith is not an arbitrary faith in
| anything you please
|
| But he's not talking about an arbitrary faith. He's
| talking about faith in _the capacity of priests_ --
| clearly a relevant subject. And there are, indeed,
| _preambula fidei_ here: that the priest was taught in
| seminary, that the priest was approved by the Church,
| that the priest (through the bishop who ordained them)
| participates in a line of apostolic succession going back
| to Jesus, etc.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| What? He already admitted that it was a bad joke.
|
| What you've written is simply an intellectual jumble.
| What does faith (the theological virtue) and acceptance
| of the apostolic succession have to do with "faith" in
| the capacity of priests, here, as competent homilists?
| lambda wrote:
| But part of the faith is faith that God can communicate
| through imperfect mortal vessels.
|
| > Moses said to the Lord, "Pardon your servant, Lord. I
| have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since
| you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and
| tongue."
|
| > The Lord said to him, "Who gave human beings their
| mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight
| or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I
| will help you speak and will teach you what to say."
|
| Like, that's the whole deal about all of the prophets,
| popes, priesthood in general. They are all mortal and
| imperfect, but God still speaks through them.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It landed for me...
| soderfoo wrote:
| 99% of the jokes I've made throughout my life don't land.
| For better or worse, if I find something amusing I
| impulsively share it.
|
| In this case, I thought it should be obvious that OP must
| have faith in priests, given that they're Catholic, which
| requires faith as a prereq.
|
| If you read my comment as a slight against Catholicism, I
| can understand, but I wouldn't feel comfortable
| _publicly_ joking about any religion other than my own.
| If that 's the case, you're in good company, with the
| multitude of nuns who've admonished me for similar
| offhand comments spanning 20 years of Catholic education
| from pre-k to college, this is old hat for me.
|
| God willing, I'll mature or start telling better jokes
| some day.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| The crux of all religions. The only comparatevely harmless
| religions are the ones who don't claim that gods demand
| absolute obedience, but their orders are spoken through a
| chosen few; otherwise they're just a form of primitive
| government.
| swat535 wrote:
| Which religion doesn't demand obedience?
| altmanaltman wrote:
| we have vibe coding priests before GTA VI
| portmanteur wrote:
| Not sure what this is implying, but aspiring priests are
| required to have a Bachelor's degree before entering
| Seminary, or it tacks at least two years onto a very rigorous
| six-year seminary program. The seminary program is on par
| with getting a Master's degree in Philosophy and Theology.
| Further, only 30-50% of seminarians ultimately become
| ordained as priests, due to the rigorous vetting program and
| "discerning out."
| adrianN wrote:
| I know little about theology and philosophy but I've
| interviewed enough people with master's degrees to be able
| to say that there a very large differences between skilled
| degree holders and average degree holders, at least in my
| field.
| stratocumulus0 wrote:
| I was raised Catholic and even though the last time I've been
| to a church could have been in 2019, I don't remember any
| priest who wouldn't just gloss over the religious content for
| the day (copied from an online source), itching to share his
| politics and the most recent ragebait he's got from Facebook at
| the end.
| aubanel wrote:
| That's a bit harsh! I go to mass every Sunday (in France) and
| rarely have political stuff. When there, it's most often
| about abortion or euthanasia (of course in a pro-life (or
| anti-choice) direction, "you shall not kill")
|
| But dull, empty homilies are (alas) very frequent.
| stratocumulus0 wrote:
| Catholicism is different in every country, I would imagine
| that a church in a secular place such as France would
| contain itself a bit, because there's no societal
| expectation that anyone should follow its religion, and
| therefore the priests have to put in effort into making
| people stay. In Poland, where I grew up, the Church still
| holds a lot of power and prestige, and priests consider
| themselves to have authority over people's lives. Leaving
| the church is seen as more of a childish rebellion, and I
| would often hear mocking remarks about non-believers in
| homilies.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| It also varies inside countries. Some priests are simply
| more demure than others. The church as an institution
| certainly prefers the more radical conservatives as you
| go higher up the chain, but many low level employees that
| still talk to commoners do realize that these views are
| going to put off more people than they attract in
| developed countries. So in the long term they will only
| be left with a bunch of crazy radicalists and a silent
| majority that wants absolutely nothing to do with them.
| stbede wrote:
| > The church as an institution certainly prefers the more
| radical conservatives as you go higher up the chain
|
| I think right now it's the exact opposite.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I mean what exactly do you expect them to talk about week
| after week in what amounts logistically to a book club that
| only reads one book?
|
| Doubly-so since people are now apparently criticizing
| Christian pastors for quoting Christ.
| watwut wrote:
| Catholics have more then just one book. They have whole
| libraries of theology and tradition way larger then just
| a bible. And large lists of saints to refer to.
|
| Evangelical would be closer to one book thing, altrought
| it would still ve a stretch.
| mountainb wrote:
| I have heard phoned in homilies from some priests but this is
| not accurate in the United States based on my travels and
| weekly local attendance. Sorry that you had a bad experience.
| cafard wrote:
| This is in the US? I have rarely heard political homilies.
| mcv wrote:
| Religion has been far more politicised in the US than
| elsewhere. And not exactly in a direction that makes sense
| to me (a European protestant).
| stbede wrote:
| European Protestantism and American Protestantism differ
| in substantial ways. Crudely, European Protestantism went
| the way of Hegelian dialectics and evolving beyond the
| Christianity of the Bible. American (conservative)
| Protestantism largely reacted against that. I think both
| groups are largely held together by politics today though
| their politics differ in the expected ways.
| refsys wrote:
| "We value your privacy! Do you consent to sharing the contents
| of your confession with our 2137 partners? [ACCEPT ALL] [MAYBE
| LATER]"
| Tenemo wrote:
| Was the number of partners you picked random or you chose
| 2137 on purpose? As it's actually somewhat related to the
| topic...
| refsys wrote:
| Entirely random of course. I would never reference unsavory
| memes about past Popes or anything like that.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > the Vatican would have started publishing standard homilies
| long ago.
|
| There actually are, but they are famous homilies from famous
| Church Fathers rather then explicitly produced to be standard
| homilies.
| dharmatech wrote:
| Yeah, the Liturgy of the Hours includes many of them. (Four
| volume prayer set.)
| viraptor wrote:
| I'm glad that priests are well known for always obeying rules
| and never abusing their position. /s
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't understand why you're downvoted. "No priest would
| ever break rules" is such a strong and ridiculous claim that
| I thought solatic was trolling.
| rationalist wrote:
| It's alluding to something off-topic, with a hint of "edgy-
| ness"
| viraptor wrote:
| Let me be more clear then. Not only will there be many
| priests sharing private information about their local
| congregation, there will also be priests who continue to
| directly abuse people in their communities. Sharing
| private information is extremely mild in comparison.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How is it off topic? The entire basis of solatic's
| comment is the assumption that priests would not break
| the rules. A track record of breaking the rules is reason
| to not make that assumption.
| andrepd wrote:
| We have been further away from OMM 0000 than we are today,
| that's for sure.
| bibleguided wrote:
| You're right that a priest can't (and shouldn't) dump private
| pastoral context into a prompt. But context doesn't have to
| mean identifiable confession details.
|
| I'm building BibleGuided, and one thing we're adding is a
| church feature where congregants can opt in to sharing prayer
| themes, and leaders can see aggregated and anonymized trends
| over time rather than identities. That's enough to shape a
| homily toward what people are actually struggling with, without
| violating confidentiality.
|
| If anyone has experience with privacy thresholds (minimum group
| sizes, differential privacy), I'd love pointers.
| superb_dev wrote:
| How are you dealing with the Pope saying priests shouldn't
| use your product?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| To be fair ignoring and occasionally kidnapping the pope is
| a time honoured Catholic tradition.
| i80and wrote:
| Not the parent, but products like it are strongly
| Protestant Evangelical-coded, so that could actually be a
| selling point for the intended audience
| crazygringo wrote:
| If they're Protestant, that might be a point in its favor
| :)
| bibleguided wrote:
| I agree with the Pope's point. Priests should not hand
| pastoral judgment to a model. BibleGuided has church
| management tools plus optional AI help for drafting and
| organizing, with the priest making the final call.
|
| For community context, we avoid confessional and private
| pastoral data. It is opt-in from congregants, then
| aggregated and anonymized into themes and trends.
|
| We think AI can be a helpful tool across many areas,
| including faith, and over time many church leaders (of many
| denominations) will get comfortable using it in bounded,
| and responsible ways. If a church does not want AI used for
| homilies, those features can be toggled off and the rest of
| our tools still work.
| amrocha wrote:
| The pope, ostensibly the person you believe to be the
| representative of god on earth, has said that your
| product is garbage and here you are rationalizing it.
|
| Are you sure you have faith?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| A priest could use AI for a homily dealing with drug
| addiction, without specifying "Bob in row 3 is a methhead"
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Pretty sure there are books of homilies.
| chasd00 wrote:
| all the homilies i've heard were pre-written but ended with
| current events... like telling the congregation to not vote for
| Obama heh. My wife was Catholic until that moment, she never
| went back after that. This was St. Rita's in Dallas TX.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| American religions are supposed to stay out of politics, or
| they risk their tax-exempt status.
|
| For me, the disturbing event was shortly before the 2016
| event when a Catholic Church in Lowell MA had posters urging
| people to vote no on marijuana legalization.
|
| (In my case, I smelt the politization when I was a teenager
| so I never continued being Catholic as an adult.)
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The separation of church and state in the US was for the
| state to stay out of religion.
|
| (the US was founded by religious exiles from a state which
| didn't stay out)
|
| Religions are explicitly political but politics shouldn't
| interfere with religions. To follow your religion means
| interacting with the outside world. It's not some
| personally private thing like a harmless badge you wear
| (although there are American faith communities that
| advocate for that).
|
| The cases in the past where political have interfered with
| religions are often, ironically enough, by other religious
| politicians. Hence the good idea to separate church and
| state.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| From the horse's mouth:
|
| https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/charities-churches-and-
| politics
|
| > In 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon
| Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which
| includes charities and churches, from engaging in any
| political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has
| revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact
| strengthened the ban. The most recent change came in 1987
| when Congress amended the language to clarify that the
| prohibition also applies to statements opposing
| candidates.
|
| > Currently, the law prohibits political campaign
| activity by charities and churches by defining a
| 501(c)(3) organization as one "which does not participate
| in, or intervene in (including the publishing or
| distributing of statements), any political campaign on
| behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public
| office."
| whatshisface wrote:
| Religion is a powerful tool for politicians in sheep's
| clothing, but God's kingdom is "explicitly" (i.e. stated
| in the Bible to be) not of this earth.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| When my state was debating creating a state-run lottery to
| fund education projects, my preacher gave a sermon on the
| evils of gambling. Religions can't realistically stay out
| of politics because every law can be reinterpreted as a
| moral argument.
| nonford150 wrote:
| I think that was the previous posters point - any
| teaching on a moral issue will ultimately have overlap
| with real world issues.
|
| A homily about gambling would be right in line with
| religious teachings - the timing is really what is at the
| apex of your post.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| That's fine. It's different when it's telling people how
| to vote.
|
| Some people buy lottery tickets specifically because of
| who they benefit, which is very different than going to
| Vegas or certain forms of investment. (IE, uneducated
| investment is often just gambling.)
| slfnflctd wrote:
| Unfortunately, those laws are not currently enforced.
|
| I see another reply is arguing that religion is inherently
| political. I disagree. Modern politics did not exist at the
| time the world's major religions were being formed.
| Attempting to twist them to fit with a particular party or
| candidate is a terrible idea all around in my book, for
| many reasons.
|
| The state can cause a lot of damage by endorsing religion,
| the historical record is overflowing with examples. I'd
| argue that a religious body endorsing a state is every bit
| as potentially destructive. The government is at its best
| when it is neutral on the subject of faith and crafts
| policy in evidence-based ways that people of all (or at
| least most) faiths can agree upon. In this situation, there
| is no reason for a religious organization to promote such a
| government because their interests are orthogonal. They can
| _cooperate_ , but there is a clear line between that and
| acting subservient, or declaring some sort of 'divine
| mandate' has been bequeathed upon a government institution
| or official.
| anon291 wrote:
| This is incorrect.
|
| (1) Religions are treated no differently than any other
| non-profit.
|
| (2) No non-profit may endorse a particular candidate. They
| are free to comment on particular issues and policies and
| referenda.
|
| A priest can say 'vote no on marijuana'. They cannot say
| 'vote yes to Mary Sue because she doesn't like marijuana'.
| stbede wrote:
| American religions are more like American Indian tribal
| nations. They have independent jurisdiction and their
| income is not subject to taxation. Whether or not they
| engage in politics is completely their prerogative and has
| no bearing on their tax exempt status. It's like saying the
| Navajo nation can't engage in politics or else they would
| lose their tax exemption.
|
| Further, the core reason for freedom of speech in a
| democracy is to have freedom for political speech. The need
| is to have different factions discuss ideas related to the
| governing of society. Any legal regime that restricts the
| rights of religion to engage in political speech is one
| that rejects the separation of church and state. The
| purpose of the separation is to prevent the government from
| interfering with the rights of disfavored religious groups
| or granting special privileges to favored religions. If an
| individual has a right to political speech, then an
| association of individuals also has that right whether or
| not it is religious in nature.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| If I heard that, I would be upset too.
|
| Honestly she should have changed parishes. St Rita's is in an
| affluent part of Dallas. One of the priests is a former
| Anglican(?) with wife and children who obtained a special
| dispensation.
|
| I heard a lot of bad phone it in homilies too. Today one of
| my favorite priests is from Benin. He serves the Francophone
| community but also celebrates mass in English and Spanish. He
| is at Mary Immaculate in Farmers Branch. He is more
| traditional and gives the Catholic interpretation of the
| day's readings and how it applies today.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Not to mention a massive violation of privacy, which they are
| subject to as much or more as every other entity that processes
| privacy sensitive data.
| sigbottle wrote:
| Side note, but I've definitely gotten annoyed with "context".
|
| There's context in the strict technical sense - the AI is
| stateless, you need to get the right tokens to it in the right
| way, allow it to use tooling calls, etc. I get that. That, is
| cool. I use agentic coding a lot.
|
| Then there's the sense of what you're saying - you have to feed
| the AI "enough context". In your case it's critical, but I've
| seen way too many pro-AI people just dismiss everything and say
| "context context you didn't give it proper context, have you
| tried this prompt etc." as a justification for the "lack" of
| intelligence.
|
| At some point you have to wonder when it becomes unfalsifiable.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| At some point, at least if businesses want to have AI
| "Agents" act as employees, then it needs to cease being
| stateless.
|
| There's a lot of hidden context in day to day work that a
| human often times wouldn't even know to explain to the AI or
| even think that they'd have to include it, things that are
| just "known" by default of working somewhere for a long time.
|
| With coding, there's at least the entire codebase as context.
| With more creative tasks, it becomes murky. Even something as
| "simple" as sending a price increase notification to
| customers. There's a lot of nuance in that, and customer
| relationship history you'd have to feed to the AI as context
| to get it right, yet a good CSR would just factor that
| context into their writing without a second thought.
|
| There is a point, and it is reached very early, where it's
| more costly and less productive to feed the AI as much
| context as you can try to imagine you'd need to give it vs.
| just doing it yourself. If I'm at the point of writing an
| entire document of history and context, into what's
| effectively a full page prompt, then why bother with AI at
| that point.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Best to skip the priest and feed context directly
| snowhale wrote:
| the context-specificity problem you're describing is exactly
| why the draft/execute divide is so persistent across AI use
| cases.
|
| it's not a model capability problem. it's an architecture
| problem: the relevant context is distributed across systems
| (the priest's knowledge of their parish, history,
| relationships) that nobody has wired into the workflow. a
| homily generator without that context produces generic output.
| a priest who knows their community produces something
| unreplicable.
|
| same pattern shows up in ops work. every ops request looks like
| a generic task -- 'update contract status,' 'respond to renewal
| question' -- but the context required to do it well is
| scattered across CRM, email threads, slack history, billing
| records. automate the task without the context and you get
| confident, generic output that's often wrong. the hard problem
| isn't drafting, it's knowing which context matters for this
| specific request before you act on it.
| jquinby wrote:
| When I was in formation a couple of years ago, I showed our
| homiletics instructor a ChatGPT-generated homily for our
| assigned text. He read through it and put his head on the desk.
| Then he handed it back to me and said it was as good as good as
| anything you'd hear from the ambo that Sunday.
|
| By this, he meant that it was ok-but-not-great, and there's a
| lot of weak preaching out there. And your point is dead on: the
| text and the assembly are the primary considerations. I preach
| on the same readings to 4 different masses, but the 4:30
| Saturday Vigil folks are a different group than the 11:30
| Sunday Morning crowd, so the message is tuned accordingly.
| Different emphases, different touchstones, differing
| exhortations, etc.
| hluska wrote:
| Very few priests take vows of silence. The standard vows are
| chastity, obedience and poverty. Even highly contemplative
| orders like Trappists don't make a vow of silence - they
| practice something called monastic silence but it's not a vow.
|
| The closest thing is that a priest cannot share anything told
| during the sacrament of reconciliation. But that's not so much
| a vow as just the other side of what Catholics believe is a
| direct connection to god.
| wahern wrote:
| Confession was originally often made in public. Confessional
| secrecy is more about making it easier for people to freely
| confess their sins, free of the fear of retribution or shame,
| very much like why we have doctor-patient confidentiality
| enshrined in law today. I would imagine confessional secrecy
| arose very quickly, even if the norm wasn't private
| confession.
|
| The first reference I could find for confessional secrecy was
| from a 4th century book written by the 3rd/4th century
| Persian bishop, Aphraates. In Demonstration VII, On Penance,
| he councils priests to keep a penitent's confessions secret,
| "lest he be exposed by his enemies and those who know him.
| .... If they reveal them to anyone, the whole army will
| suffer an adverse reputation."
|
| Source: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Sy0vAAAAMAAJ/page/
| n251/mo... That's a Syriac to Latin translation. I used
| Google Translate for Latin to English. There's at least one
| partial English translation of that book online, but I found
| their translation more confusing.
| grogers wrote:
| Take a homily written by someone 2000 miles away and it will
| likely feel just as relevant to me. Most humans deal with
| similar issues.
| b3ing wrote:
| Homilies are not the core of Catholic mass, the Eucharist is.
| Protestant churches put more emphasis on the sermon, not sure
| if it's all Protestant churches or just "Evangelical" ones
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Sermon manuals were popular among Catholic priests from the
| time the printing press started to spread in Europe, and
| remained so into the middle of the 20th Century.
|
| A parish priest might not deliver a "canned sermon" verbatim,
| but still rely on one/more sermon manuals heavily when
| preparing his words for Sunday.
|
| The Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent),
| published by the Vatican and ordered for use in seminaries for
| core formation of candidates for the priesthood, included a
| list of specific topics to address for each Sunday of the year.
| While not a sermon manual as such, those "bullet points"
| informed Catholic sermons around the world for 300+ years.
| achairapart wrote:
| Nothing new. I'm sure something similar was said about Google
| before...
|
| https://encourageandteach.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
| dakolli wrote:
| Google was designed to give you access to knowledge, not think
| for you and atrophy your brain..
|
| LLMs will melt your brain, and that's by design. You will have
| no bargaining power , you will be inadequate without access to
| the Thinking for me SaaS that you allow your brain to become
| addicted too. You will become a technocratic feudal slave, a
| serf reliant on the whichever tech-oligarch lets you use their
| thinking machine. They will pay you pennies.
| CodeCompost wrote:
| Too bad Terry A. Davis is not around anymore. He would have been
| literally enraptured by LLMs.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I was thinking about this the other day. My take is that he
| would definitely have a few choice words for some types of vibe
| coders.
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| The Pope will change his mind with Claude Opus 5.2
| rain_iwakura wrote:
| lol
| tokenless wrote:
| If the Pope doesn't start spending every waking minute in a CC
| terminal he will be left behind and lose his job. /s
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| Stephen Wolfram is the Antichrist -
| https://youtu.be/-yzdjziS-bo
| tempodox wrote:
| You forgot the "/s".
| mindwok wrote:
| LLMs are amazing, I love them, but he is right. When it comes to
| interacting with your fellow humans, using AI just sucks the
| point and meaning out of life. If we wanted to know what Claude
| thought, we'd ask him. Don't be a mouthpiece for AI.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >If we wanted to know what Claude thought, we'd ask him.
|
| You would be surprised how many people don't do this. It's very
| common for people to ask others questions that could be easily
| googled or clauded.
| harvey9 wrote:
| This is true but seems to be orthogonal to the post you
| replied to. At a further tangent, I encounter people saying
| "well it's on Google" as they seem to think Google has some
| authority or quality threshold.
| vermilingua wrote:
| What an absolutely awful take. Asking people questions, even
| if it's less efficient or has the chance to be misleading, is
| the absolute number one way to a) learn, and b) make
| connection. Even if you're just asking a stranger the time,
| you don't know what you might learn.
| Lyrkan wrote:
| Except that nowadays it feels more like people asking you
| for the time every 2 minutes while standing just in front
| of Big Ben.
|
| I see it everyday on forums/Discord servers where some
| users will treat you like their personal search engine
| simply because they are too lazy to spend 10s reading the
| results themselves.
| Gander5739 wrote:
| Big Ben, the bell?
| Lyrkan wrote:
| You know what I was referring to, no need to be pedantic.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > It's very common for people to ask others questions that
| could be easily googled or clauded.
|
| I'll admit I do this, asking people questions that could be
| answered by Google, and sometimes even if I know the answer
| myself, sometimes to make conversation, sometimes because I
| want to hear the person's perspective on it.
|
| If I'd never ask questions I could find the answers to myself
| in some other way, I think I'd never ask any person any
| question, which sounds kind of boring.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Not defending the use of AI, but plenty of people who grew up
| going to Mass on Sunday know that priests often recycle old
| homilies, deliver lazily written homilies or homilies that were
| clearly pulled from the internet, or just skip them if they
| couldn't think of anything that week or are running late for
| something.
|
| Absolute worst was when an intelligent priest put in incredible
| effort, only for it to go over the heads of the yokels in their
| parish who want a simpler homily.
| szszrk wrote:
| How are bad human-written homilies worse than AI written ones?
|
| But if you like the idea: you don't need a priest for that at
| all! A QR code with a prompt will do just fine in this case.
|
| There is no person in the world that is capable of weekly
| delivery of meaningful insight into your life. Or any topic, to
| be honest. AI won't solve that, it just "recycles old
| homilies".
| rgblambda wrote:
| Again, not defending the use of AI. My comment was more as a
| general response to people who maybe don't have a real life
| experience of listening to Catholic homilies and have
| unrealistic ideas of how much effort priests would normally
| put into them pre-ChatGPT.
|
| In retrospect, I probably should have replied to a specific
| comment.
| AdamN wrote:
| Yeah I think that happened to me yesterday. We had a new priest
| (actually retired and visiting) and the homily was 10x more
| engaging than the normal ones. I fear that the rest of the
| congregation didn't like that he wasn't using cheap techniques
| like constant repetition and that the content was more elevated
| about what was really meant by the authors of part of Genesis.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Why do you _fear_ this? Did you consider discussing this with
| some of the congregation to _know for sure_?
|
| I don't mean to pick on you personally, but your comment and
| the parent comment (among others here) both project feelings
| across wide groups of people in a hasty generalization. Their
| feelings could be easily confirmed with human connection. I
| think the article makes it clear the Pope charges priests
| with knowing their community. This is good advice for all of
| us though! So, not just you, but you, the parent poster,
| anyone else, if you have these fears, if you don't like your
| priest's homily, please, talk to the proper people about them
| instead of (or at least in addition to) complaining online to
| others! This is way outside _our_ sphere of influence.
| AdamN wrote:
| I'm an outsider (not Catholic, raised Methodist) who just
| happens to be attending church this year; I'm not a member.
| The church is interesting because it's an immigrant church
| which is truly global (in Berlin with English speaking
| people from all over the place).
|
| 'Fear' is a strong word but I mean it in the same way as I
| do when talking about reading comments in the Wall Street
| Journal- I'm afraid by the realization of who I'm
| surrounded by in the world. With that said I really, really
| appreciate the social justice statements I hear from the
| pulpit and from the congregants.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _I 'm an outsider_
|
| The Catholic church is _universal_ , so you are not seen
| that way :). Setting that aside, my comments weren't
| really about a particular religion, but about not making
| hasty generalizations.
|
| That said, you don't have to be a member of the same
| church to discuss things with the people in your
| community. Again, a large part of what the pope is saying
| is to be present in your community, which requires
| maintaining that human to human interaction.
|
| Also, your meaning of "fear" was clear.
| gwd wrote:
| > only for it to go over the heads
|
| If it actually went over their heads, then the effort was
| wasted. I've heard the goal of preaching described thus:
| "Address the mind to move the heart to change the will." If you
| haven't addressed the minds of the people you're speaking to,
| your preaching was a failure.
|
| NB if the people in the parish don't want to change their will,
| and so close up their minds, that's a different issue.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Indeed. As one priest in graduate school said to me (and with
| which I agree), one should generally keep homilies short,
| simple, clear, and to the point. In most cases, it isn't the
| proper place for an extended theological meditation.
|
| Of course, people ought to realize that the purpose of the
| mass is not the homily, but the sacrifice of the eucharist,
| which is the "source and summit of the Christian life".
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > If it actually went over their heads, then the effort was
| wasted. I've heard the goal of preaching described thus:
| "Address the mind to move the heart to change the will." If
| you haven't addressed the minds of the people you're speaking
| to, your preaching was a failure.
|
| Reminds me of Pauls retort about speaking in tongues with no
| translator. ;)
|
| The idea being, that if it serves nobody but the person
| themselves, they should keep it to themselves, if you're
| going to "share" with the whole congregation, then it should
| edify the congregation.
|
| 1 Corinthians 14:27-28 (KJV)
|
| "27 If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two,
| or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one
| interpret.
|
| 28 But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in
| the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God."
| tokenless wrote:
| Yokels! lol
| palmotea wrote:
| > people who grew up going to Mass on Sunday know that priests
| often recycle old homilies
|
| That doesn't seem bad? You'd think a lot of the topics would be
| evergreen, and not everyone would be there for every service.
| So after an appropriately long time, why not recycle one that
| worked well?
| rgblambda wrote:
| The keyword is "often". As in, it's repeated throughout the
| year. The homily is supposed to be, but isn't always, an
| explanation of the Gospel story that was told just before it.
| So there really shouldn't be homily repeats within the
| liturgical calendar.
|
| You are supposed to attend Mass every Sunday, so I don't
| think the priest is intentionally accomodating infrequent
| churchgoers at the expense of the regulars. And it's usually
| not a sermon that worked well, just a long meandering story,
| typically about a pilgrimage or retreat the priest went on 10
| years ago, that doesn't really have a point to it.
| hackersk wrote:
| There's an interesting parallel here with code generation. The
| best code written with AI assistance still requires someone who
| deeply understands what they're building. The AI is a tool for
| expression, not a replacement for thought.
|
| A homily written by someone who spent the week reflecting on
| their community's struggles will always be more meaningful than a
| polished AI-generated one, even if the grammar is worse. The
| value of a sermon isn't in the prose quality -- it's in the
| authenticity of someone who actually cares about the people
| listening.
|
| Francis is basically saying: the medium is the message. If you
| outsource the thinking, you're outsourcing the caring.
| h33t-l4x0r wrote:
| The flip side of that is, if you care about your community you
| want to deliver engaging homilies. And that may not be your
| personal strength.
|
| Also I believe we're talking about Leo not Francis.
| pjbk wrote:
| Well, for 'The Nine Billion Names of God' the monks finally ended
| up renting a computer. ;-)
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, because the AI might educate them :)
| gverrilla wrote:
| How long until the church publishes their official SOUL.md?
|
| create-homily skill?
|
| jesus mcp?
|
| /request-transfer-to-Servants-of-the-Paraclete
| amelius wrote:
| The same pope who declared an influencer boy a saint?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/07/pope-leo-xiv-d...
|
| Let's be honest, the entire concept depends on advertising like
| nothing else.
| mpeg wrote:
| Died at 15 of leukemia... I don't see how this is the church
| jumping the shark, it seems like a nice gesture considering he
| spent his short life promoting the church.
|
| I do think the whole parading a wax replica of his body is a
| bit creepy, but I am not religious, people who are appreciate
| these things.
| junaru wrote:
| > London-born Italian, who died in 2006, built websites to
| spread Catholic teaching and is credited with two miracles
|
| In 2006.
|
| I'll be honest calling him an "influencer" is disgrace and
| comparing the works of dying kid with leukaemia to ai is even
| more so.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| A saint is someone whom the church believes (based on criteria
| that aren't worth getting sidetracked on) is in heaven. That's
| it. It isn't a declaration that the person was perfect, or even
| better than the rest of us in some way. The goal of the church
| is that _everyone_ will be a saint some day.
| b800h wrote:
| Tom Tugendhat had to stand up in the House of Commons and tell
| MPs not the use AI to write their speeches.
|
| "I rise to speak. I rise to speak. I rise to speak. ChatGPT knows
| you're there, but that is an Americanism that we don't use, but
| still, keep using it, because it makes it clear that this place
| has become absurd."
| nickd2001 wrote:
| If they're struggling for ideas to put in homilies, they could
| always ask for some input from people that are one or both of (a)
| female or (b) married. Might get a fresh perspective ;)
| rochak wrote:
| Based
| alansaber wrote:
| Corporations vs organised religion on artificial intelligence?
| This is way cooler than the cold war.
| impish9208 wrote:
| There's a Paul Theroux short story about a defrocked priest who
| makes a living writing sermons for other priests. They would mail
| their chosen topic or occasion and include the payment, and he'd
| send them a beautifully written sermon that'd make them popular
| in their parishes. Now AI is coming for the correspondent-
| priest's job!
| SirFatty wrote:
| The bible could have been written by a hallucinating AI.
| JamesTRexx wrote:
| The point is they don't want their job spreading fantasies to
| be taken away, just like every other entertainer. ;-)
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Forget homilies.
|
| AI can be the entire church experience. There isn't any aspect of
| the church that couldn't be automated.
|
| Way back in "THX 1138" there were AI confessions.
|
| Now, pretty sure it would be simple to have an AI priest,
| speaking in a real voice, with a hologram, and with current
| context for the audience.
| throwatdem12311 wrote:
| If the priest is using AI to write homilies what is even the
| point of going to Church I could just get an AI to be my priest
| and stay home.
|
| Using AI generated text to interact with a human that is
| expecting a human touch is gross.
|
| Even AI generated corpo-slop emails give me the ick. To me, it
| shows a deep lack of respect for the other person. I would rather
| something in broken English than bot vomit.
|
| I've ended friendships people that can't help themselves from
| pulling out their phones to ask their AI about something we're
| talking about in-person. Like come on I want to know what YOU
| think.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| In Catholicism the homily is not the main point of Mass, it
| takes a far secondary role to the Eucharist. Bad homilies
| definitely show up, but from the Catholic perspective that does
| not diminish or detract from the purpose of the Mass as a
| whole.
| nottorp wrote:
| ... but will they be able to compete with religions that have
| embraced AI, or will they be hopelessly left behind?
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "AI" seems like a religion
|
| It requires "belief"
|
| "AI" believers claim to know the future
|
| Relentless prognostication and effort to gain followers
| jacquesm wrote:
| Well, it was hallucinations any way so in this particular case it
| hardly matters. But I can see how the Pope has identified AI as a
| competing religion.
| piker wrote:
| The article barely touches on this subject, but the sentiment is
| nonetheless correct.
|
| The problem with using an AI to write something so intimate and
| context-specific is that it cannot perform as the priest's
| highest and best abstraction. Instead, it will slavishly follow
| instructions and risk tunnelling the priest into a worldview and
| message that subtly betrays his congregation.
|
| I recently wrote about how modern legal tech stacks can do the
| same using the infamous Digital Research / IBM non-disclosure
| agreement as an example: https://tritium.legal/blog/redline
|
| If we habitually reduce our context to the lowest-common window
| ingestible by an AI, yes we may lose a bit of humanity, but more
| importantly we'll just do a worse job.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related previously:
|
| _Message from Pope Leo XIV on the 60th World Day of Social
| Communications_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46850067
| tempodox wrote:
| The "AI" believers will be soo disappointed. Does the holy spirit
| not inhabit the GPU that computes their slop? Then again, why
| believe in any god from a classical religion when you can believe
| in "AI" instead?
| barfiure wrote:
| It's a tough sell considering for many in the West the only
| idol of worship is money. And the Catholic Church has already
| rotted itself from the inside when it allowed the mentally
| unwell homosexuals to continuously abuse children and get away
| with it.
| randusername wrote:
| My old-school protestant pastor started with an AI disclaimer in
| the sermon yesterday. What a time to be alive!
|
| I don't know what to do with my double standard here.
|
| It seems totally normal and expected that I would outsource
| aspects of my job solving business software problems to AI, but
| the idea of my spirituality and cultural experience (music,
| movies, art, etc) being someone else's business problem to be
| outsourced and optimized by AI is so gross.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I don't think that's a double standard. Computers telling
| computers what to do feels reasonable. Computers telling humans
| what to feel seems not.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Every single person who utilizes a navigation application to
| traverse a place that they have no previous independently
| verified experience, is taking existential risk based on a
| computer telling them what to do
|
| There are literally thousands of cases of people dying or
| being injured because they did what a computer navigation
| application told them to do
|
| This is also literally what the Target stock scheduling
| system does for target employees for restocking shelves
|
| The vast majority of peoples lives are run by someone else's
| computer
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's fundamentally different, and I think you know that.
|
| It's one thing to ask an algorithm how to build an A*
| driving map from point A to point B. It's another to ask
| one how to be a better person and go to Heaven.
|
| I'm not religious, and I'm not arguing this from a pro-
| religion POV. I happily work in AI, and I'm not arguing
| this from an anti-AI POV. I am highly technical. I love
| computers. I'm excited about the future. I rely on
| deterministic algorithms to make my days better. And yet, I
| do not want to trust the words of an LLM to counsel me on
| how to be a better husband or father. At this stage, the AI
| does not know me in the way a counselor or advisor, or even
| pastor or priest would. And yes, I think that's a crucial
| difference.
| ben_w wrote:
| 3/4-agree; LLM advice is only one step up from an Agony
| Aunt column in a newspaper.
|
| And I'd expect "Target stock scheduling system does for
| target employees for restocking shelves" to be an A* or
| similar.
|
| But also, Google maps has directed people to their
| deaths: https://gizmodo.com/three-men-die-after-google-
| maps-reported... isn't even what I was originally looking
| for, which was: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-sued-
| negligence-maps-dri...
| kstrauser wrote:
| Sure, people die from regular programming. Mistakes
| happen. That's not good or ok, but it seems unavoidable
| given today's technologies and tools.
|
| However, I think that's in a different category than
| giving life advice. How is an LLM to know that God
| forgives Joe for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his
| children, but doesn't forgive Tom for doing the same
| thing because Tom had money but was saving up to buy
| cooler shoes and didn't want to spend it? A priest's
| advice might be "Joe, don't make a habit of it, but you
| didn't hurt anyone and you children were hungry. Tom,
| would you freaking knock it off already?" An LLM might
| reply "that's a wonderful idea!" to both.
|
| Again, I'm firmly _not_ anti-AI. I use it every day. I
| absolutely to not want to hear its advice on how to
| navigate the complexities of life as a human being.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| It's not fundamentally different it's people who are
| taking physical actions in the real world based on trust
| in some system
|
| whether it's a human or not they're trusting the system
| with their existential outcomes
|
| That is literally exactly the same thing.
|
| The fact that you think that the rules of you being a
| father are somehow different than the rules of you
| driving to a appointment indicate that you have a
| completely incoherent world view based on two
| incompatible models of epistemology
|
| As usual dualists will come up with a incoherent model
| and then try and act like it's valid
| gitonup wrote:
| Disclaimer: raised Catholic, now Atheist, married to
| devout Catholic.
|
| The Church as defined by the institution is a community.
| I do not see it as a contradiction that the head of the
| institution is instructing the leaders to not add more
| layers of abstraction between them and the community,
| especially when those messages are on the subject of what
| it means to be human.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > The fact that you think that the rules of you being a
| father are somehow different than the rules of you
| driving to a appointment indicate that you have a
| completely incoherent world view based on two
| incompatible models of epistemology
|
| lol
| jonahx wrote:
| > The fact that you think that the rules of you being a
| father are somehow different than the rules of you
| driving to a appointment indicate that you have a
| completely incoherent world view based on two
| incompatible models of epistemology
|
| Two ways to look at this, both of which are coherent:
|
| 1. Current AI is better at some stuff than others. Saying
| "I'm okay driving in a waymo, but not taking spiritual
| advice from an AI" makes sense if you think it has not
| advanced to a near-human level in the spritual advice
| domain.
|
| 2. Even if you don't think that's true, it's reasonable
| to just want a human for certain activities, because
| communion with other humans in the same existential boat
| you're in _can be_ the whole point an activity. I 'd
| argue it is a significant reason for a majority of social
| activities.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| Talk about a self-aware wolves moment. Why is your use of AI
| okay but theirs isn't?
| nxobject wrote:
| That's exactly the question OP is asking.
| wat10000 wrote:
| There are some jobs where the outcome is the point, and
| others where having a person actually do a thing is the
| point. Priest is very much the latter sort of job.
|
| Forget about AI for a moment and let's consider a more
| mundane tool, like an industrial robot. Is it OK to use a
| robot to perform some step in assembling a car? Certainly.
| How about programming that robot to perform Communion? Not so
| much. Not because using a robot to do things is inherently
| immoral, but because the human priest is supposed to be an
| integral component of Communion, it's not just a matter of
| transporting a cracker and some liquid into people's mouths
| by whatever means you choose.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| It's not like they work a lot, why would a religious leader
| need to outsource spiritual advice to a chatbot? It only shows
| that all humans are lazy, no matter how virtuous they want to
| be seen as. IMO this counts as sloth.
|
| Hopefully this discredits religions even more with the younger
| generations. Claiming that an immensely powerful being demands
| obedience of you, and keeps tabs on you all the time, but his
| orders only go through a chosen few, was a hard proposition to
| begin with.
| edgyquant wrote:
| You're seething hatred is so obvious from this comment that
| no one should consider your opinion as anything close to
| valid
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I don't think so. I didn't use hateful language, and while
| I see religion, especially for-profit religion, as a net
| societal loss, I don't think I worded my argument as
| seething hatred.
|
| I can see how a strong disagreement can be dismissed as
| hate, though. It preserves the cognitive dissonance between
| reality and belief.
| butterbomb wrote:
| > Claiming that an immensely powerful being demands obedience
| of you, and keeps tabs on you all the time, but his orders
| only go through a chosen few, was a hard proposition to begin
| with.
|
| You just described what Silicon Valley wants to build lol
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I think it's even more pernicious. Religious leaders want
| to tell you what to think, but since it usually benefits
| them, it takes constant reinforcement to be effective.
|
| On the contrary, we willingly use (and even pay for)
| chatbots so they increasingly think for us, and it would
| take a monumental effort to take them away from us now.
|
| People would even make their own if needed, but at least in
| that case, it won't be a megacorp telling the chatbot what
| to think in the first place.
| fritzo wrote:
| This is how you get token laundering
| MontagFTB wrote:
| Before preaching it to others, the writing of a homily or sermon
| first needs to affect the heart of the one delivering it. Such
| heart-work is exceedingly difficult if not impossible with AI.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| PaaS - priest as a service
|
| Latest and greatest finetuned AI model built for your zip code.
| Uses location, and all the PII to generate an accurate model for
| your community needs.
|
| Special addons available - turn real world events into gaslighted
| conversations(tm)
| serial_dev wrote:
| This kind of headline is something we could have only imagined as
| a joke 5 years ago.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Priests using AI to deliver homilies feels like we are getting
| closer to having a blessed LLM with divine weights that speaks
| the direct word of God.
| kraf wrote:
| Love the headline and curious what the pope actually believes
| that brains do.
| daxfohl wrote:
| > But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and
| put together in all possible relationships.
|
| > A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
|
| > And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the
| direction of entropy.
|
| > But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of
| the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration --
| would take care of that, too.
|
| > For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this.
| Carefully, AC organized the program.
|
| > The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a
| Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it
| must be done.
|
| > And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
|
| > And there was light
|
| -- Father Isaac Asimov
| yuchi wrote:
| Got goose bumps, exactly as the first time reading this. Thanks
| for sharing
| overgard wrote:
| IMO, any (important) writing you expect other humans to consume
| should be your own writing. I think it's kind of disrespectful to
| outsource your voice to AI but expect people to read it like it's
| yours. Why should I put in time to read if you're not putting in
| time to write?
| therobots927 wrote:
| That's exactly right. The second I determine something was
| written by AI is the second I close the tab / scroll past. It's
| beyond disrespectful to expect others to read wordslop that you
| only barely created via prompt.
| rebolek wrote:
| I write stories and tech docs. I'll happily outsource writing
| tech docs to AI. It would be better than anything I would
| write. I won't let AI to touch my stories. Their input is
| boring and cringy. So both things can be true at same time.
| kovek wrote:
| For the tech docs writing, just give me the bullet points and
| I'll send them to the AI and discuss the bullet points with
| it.
| nxobject wrote:
| Honestly, I'd rather just read the bullet points,
| especially if it gives people more opportunities to lay out
| hierarchical structure.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I feel like these tech docs you're writing might not need to
| be written in the first place.
| roarcher wrote:
| The AI doesn't know anything about the thing you're
| documenting except what you tell it, so what value does it
| add?
| HellDunkel wrote:
| well said! especially like the fact you chose IMO in favor
| IMHO.
| hippo22 wrote:
| I disagree. The purpose of writing is to convey ideas. If
| written language had just been invented, I'm sure you'd be
| saying "IMO any important stories you expect others to know
| should be communicated orally. It's kind of disrespectful to
| convey stories as if they were hearing you speak."
| gedy wrote:
| If you can't articulate an idea yourself, it's not worth
| conveying imho
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| Your conflating the medium with the source of the message in
| this analogy.
|
| Writing and oration are two different media, the question of
| which is preferable in which context is completely unrelated
| to LLM authorship.
|
| If "the purpose of writing is to convey ideas" (which I
| largely agree with), which ideas are being added between
| whatever you prompt the model to convey and what the model
| conveys? Are you proposing that an LLM can extract some
| meaning from your initial prompt that a human being _couldn
| 't_?
| flpm wrote:
| I think it is okay to use AI to help you express your ideas
| better. I think the idea of AI acting as an "editor" reviewing my
| work and pointing out potential clarity issues is very helpful.
|
| In this scenario AI does not rewrite the text, but prompts the
| human to rewrite and then review again. It's a short and strong
| feedback loop that can be a very powerful learning tool if the
| learner uses it correctly.
| kgwxd wrote:
| The results are probably too logical, and morally consistent.
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