Reflections on faith, culture and current affairs from a conservative contrarian desperately seeking to recover a sense of sacred enchantment
New Zealand
Joined January 2016
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Left Foot Media retweeted
A chi gli chiese perché non abbandonasse la Chiesa cattolica per passare all Riforma, Erasmo da Rotterdam rispose:
“Sopporto questa Chiesa, in attesa che divenga migliore, dal momento che anch'essa per prima è costretta a sopportare me, in attesa che io divenga migliore."
Left Foot Media retweeted
That's what Plato warned democracy tends to collapse into, except it won't be never-ending but rather climaxes in tyranny when a sufficiently ruthless demagogue and his following take advantage of the chaos.
Could be that American politics for the rest of our lives will be parties switching power, engaging in ever more flagrant corruption and grifting, then prosecuting the other side for crimes and non-crimes, in just a never ending cycle - all while the intelligent people we want to steer politics are so bored with the Jerry Springer quality of things that they just check out.
Left Foot Media retweeted
Welcoming immigrants, providing health care and shelter, feeding the hungry and visiting prisoners are the worthy and necessary tasks of Christians, but they are not equivalent to, nor are they substitutes for evangelization.
Left Foot Media retweeted
“I have often said during my 20 years as a bishop that I am not interested in a private education for the privileged as an apostolate of the Church. The Archdiocese of Portland should not be operating schools whose institutional priorities and plans are dominated by a secular, utilitarian vision of academic excellence and great sports programs, while remaining inaccessible to so many of our families because of high tuition costs. To do so would be wholly inconsistent with the history and purpose of Catholic education. Our first job is not to prepare children eventually to get into a great college or university, but to help them get into heaven!”
Portland Archbishop Alexander King Sample
Left Foot Media retweeted
No, AI is not a neural network, for those are made of neurons and there are no neurons in data centers.The statistical probability calculations that AI uses to generate content--all borrowed from human created content--is absolutely nothing like what the human brain does when it thinks. Claiming that it's a "neural network" is another clever bit of propaganda.
Left Foot Media retweeted
Because they both come off badly, Carlson because of his crackpot flippancy regarding the gravity of the threat posed by Hitler and Rees-Mogg because of his smug advocacy of the wicked policy of deliberately killing civilians as a means of terrorizing an enemy into submission.
I have been trying to work out why the Carlson—Rees-Mogg interview is going viral. I think it’s because because it represents the moment when traditional conservatism, defined by courtesy, self-restraint and truth, visibly overcomes the feverish, conspiracist and bellicose post-liberal Right.
Sir @Jacob_Rees_Mogg was the perfect instrument of destruction. He is a man of unquestioned sincerity, intellect and courtliness. He was one of only two Ali G interviewees to emerge with his reputation enhanced, the other being Tony Benn, and for the same reason: utter sincerity. With Tucker, as with the brilliant Baron-Cohen, he bats away feverish, crackpot claims in a calm, measured and devastatingly gracious way.
What ended McCarthyism was the dignified put down delivered by the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, on live TV in June 1954: “Senator, you have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?” Joe McCarthy died three years later at the age of 48, broken and disgraced.
As Welch to McCarthy, so Mogg to Tucker.
Left Foot Media retweeted
This is like saying that one is puzzled as to why someone would be adamant that the probability that computer weather simulations are actual real-world weather events is 0% rather than 0.001%. The adamance might simply reflect a refusal to cater to manifest conceptual confusion.
I am puzzled as to why my fellow theologically orthodox Christians are *adamant* that the probability of AI consciousness is 0% rather than 0.001%. What is the big deal if we admit that AI is potentially but almost certainly not conscious, rather than impossibly conscious? What do we lose? Ants are conscious, for goodness' sake. That doesn't diminish our dignity in any way.
Left Foot Media retweeted
The Church, led by @Pontifex, has assumed a central role in these debates in part because it is the only prominent global institution that has worked out a deeply considered anthropology. Ideas end up mattering more than the number of divisions.
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.
Left Foot Media retweeted
I would humbly recommend Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature, especially for anyone who would like to become familiar with the classical (Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomistic) critique of materialism rather than the more familiar but flawed Cartesian approach.
Left Foot Media retweeted
The only institution responding thoughtfully to AI is the 2000 year old Roman Imperial Church.
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.
Left Foot Media retweeted
Hard to take seriously the philosophers who deny personhood to unborn babies but apply it to AIs.
Left Foot Media retweeted
ON @NZStuff right NOW the three main lead stories all have a pic of Q Wong in them.
Tell me again how TOP isn't a media-manufactured political brand.
Left Foot Media retweeted
Qiulae Wong and Opportunity have delivered an absolute masterclass in selling out.
Their bottom lines included none of the pillars they have been relentlessly pushing for the last six months: no land value tax, no Citizen’s Income, no citizens’ assemblies, no long-term energy strategy, no Treaty of Waitangi policy, and no tax reset or even tax discussions - the things you could easily argue define Opportunity.
This reeks of desperation.
The bottom lines:
- Give the Commerce Commission stronger powers and greater independence to tackle excessive market power in supermarkets and other uncompetitive sectors.
- Regulate lobbying and cap political donations.
- Develop a 10-year health plan alongside health professionals, with clear commitments on funding, workforce and infrastructure.
- Immediately begin phasing out bottom trawling.
- Recommit to our Paris Agreement obligations and protect the independence of the Climate Change Commission.
Left Foot Media retweeted
They never go to the Louvre, the MET, or the Uffizi and smugly say, “they should sell it all”
Left Foot Media retweeted
Phrases like “super intelligence” also tend to reinforce the serious error of thinking that AI really is a kind of intelligence – which it is not, any more than artificial grass is a kind of grass.
Left Foot Media retweeted
I do wonder where Hager gets his information. A few people have sent me what he wrote about me and the claims are simply untrue and made up.
I’ve never been inside the TPU office, and I’ve never donated to them. But I’m going to now.
You can’t just make this stuff up. If he’s got the small section about me this wrong how much confidence can anyone have in the rest of his book ? Perhaps a response is needed.
Left Foot Media retweeted
I bet Gerwig thought of casting Tilda Swinton as Aslan, but decided that was too blatant so settled for Streep instead
Left Foot Media retweeted
CS Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man about what Netflix would do to CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia
🚨WORLD-EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK 🚨
Greta Gerwig opens the doors to Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew in the new issue of Empire – detailing her revolutionary rock’n’roll adaptation.
Here’s your first look at Aslan – and he’s voiced by the legendary Meryl Streep.
On sale Thurs September 24.
Read more: empireonline.com/movies/news…
