This is one of the more helpful synopses/commentaries on Magnifica Humanitas that I have seen. Thank you! And a second “Thank you!” for including the English text of the original document.
Leo XIV’s argument is fundamentally anthropological: it’s a claim about what human beings are, and what no machine can reduce them to. This argument, reminiscent of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa in fourth-century Cappadocia, carries significant policy implications without being merely a policy statement. Looking forward to the discussion.
I will add what I found encouraging: what Leo wrote was a core concern back in the late 1980s and 1990s, as we were getting closer to machine language being more than analytical and moving towards decision-making for the user. This may have had more to do with the environment of "silicon valley" back then compared to today. Back then, you had a significant number of individuals with humanities backgrounds who provided a perspective that is missing today as the industry has evolved. The "silcon valley" today lacks that perspective, a concern Marvin Minsky often expressed
"Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas – of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks....The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all other things we know." ~ Marvin Minsky
Thank you for your excellent article on Pope Leo’s encyclical. I’ve asked chatGPT if the common good is the best measure of human worth. It instantly replied, of course; with some vacillation. “Human worth” and “the common good,” it said, “point to two different kinds of value, so whether one should measure the other depends on the moral framework you adopt.” I would suggest if human worth is intrinsic, and the common good is not measured simply by utilitarian productivity, it might be prudent for those in the Christian faith tradition to recall that mythic tale of a hard-laboring carpenter whose son became an itinerant peasant sage (Mt.13:55-57).
This is one of the more helpful synopses/commentaries on Magnifica Humanitas that I have seen. Thank you! And a second “Thank you!” for including the English text of the original document.
Leo XIV’s argument is fundamentally anthropological: it’s a claim about what human beings are, and what no machine can reduce them to. This argument, reminiscent of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa in fourth-century Cappadocia, carries significant policy implications without being merely a policy statement. Looking forward to the discussion.
I will add what I found encouraging: what Leo wrote was a core concern back in the late 1980s and 1990s, as we were getting closer to machine language being more than analytical and moving towards decision-making for the user. This may have had more to do with the environment of "silicon valley" back then compared to today. Back then, you had a significant number of individuals with humanities backgrounds who provided a perspective that is missing today as the industry has evolved. The "silcon valley" today lacks that perspective, a concern Marvin Minsky often expressed
"Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas – of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks....The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all other things we know." ~ Marvin Minsky
Thank you for your excellent article on Pope Leo’s encyclical. I’ve asked chatGPT if the common good is the best measure of human worth. It instantly replied, of course; with some vacillation. “Human worth” and “the common good,” it said, “point to two different kinds of value, so whether one should measure the other depends on the moral framework you adopt.” I would suggest if human worth is intrinsic, and the common good is not measured simply by utilitarian productivity, it might be prudent for those in the Christian faith tradition to recall that mythic tale of a hard-laboring carpenter whose son became an itinerant peasant sage (Mt.13:55-57).