Michela A Betta

Ethics is increasingly invoked by people who struggle with what they face. But not every problem is an ethical problem. Often it’s just politics or society. But they call on ethics bc it gives a sense of gravity. link.springer.com/book/10.1007/9… onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

@paris_critical He knew what he was doing, and saying.

"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them." - Werner Heisenberg 🎈

@servingsophie She’s got natural class indeed, in all her outfits.

I love HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh in this floral tea dress by Suzannah London. #HRHTheDuchessofEdinburgh

Poor Australia… Who would have thought that a small socialist party—a political nobody, in fact—, together with the far-green, the far-left & the far-liberals would contribute to what many now see as the oppression of the biological sex? That those groups would cause troubles, surprised no one!! But that they would lead to polices which in the eyes of many are perceived as harmful to XX women, that is, persons born as females, is shocking! That’s ugly even for Aussieland!

For years, many people didn’t believe me when I said that the Australian Human Rights Commission is interpreting the law to give pregnancy protections to men while taking women only spaces, sport & lesbianism away from women. It’s too preposterous. But it is what they are doing.

Hm! Perhaps it is not that simple 👇 “Deus versus machina” sounds like too crude an antagonism, perhaps even antipathy. Back to the Romans: Imagine if if Constantine I—Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity—had retaliated to the Bible in the same way. Christianity also introduced new rules to the game. It, too, was a kind of “machine”: a force that reshaped moral & political discourse by spreading the ideal of self-sacrifice. No heroes—only victims. Just imagine if that reaction had prevailed. There might never have been any notion of transformation, renewal, or Christianity as we know it today.

It’s worth keeping the conversation going and seeing where our imagination takes us. There is imagination on both side, particularly when it comes to emotions and learning. Pope Leo might have been somehow partial on one hand, perhaps by not including enough experts. In the other hand, some experts in the field, Christopher Olaf & Co. , might not have engaged deeply with the literature on ethics & psychology, on the other. These emotions and skills are significant, whether they’re found in a machine or in human beings. But one thing seems irrefutably clear—they cannot be the same, and they cannot be expected to be the same, and for obvious reasons. I think.

I know I’ll anger some followers with this, but I find this embarrassingly juvenile. Many of these claims are mere technical problems: embodiment, sensors, continual learning. The rest are just special pleading. These systems can already discuss love, friendship, responsibility etc more lucidly than most humans, so the claim must be some sort of totally unfalsifiable human chauvinism. There is no possible set of behaviors AIs could exhibit which would put a dent in his confidence in these assertions. An embodied AI (robot) could be raised (continually learning in context) among humans, exhibiting every conceivable sign of love, compassion, responsibility, and friendship, and the Pope would still say “doesn’t count because silicon instead of meat”. It would be more respectable if he just said “I don’t care if they can exhibit these traits because humans are my tribe” but instead he makes a giant list of assertions that have either already been proven false, will be proven false soon, or are unfalsifiable.

@HenrySomersHall @IanHagues Congrats! Very true… one has to old books, especially one’s own.

It's here! They never feel real until I have a proper physical copy.

You are certainly taking a clear position. The balancing act may not be easy to accomplish, but I hope you will succeed in finding the right attitude. Faith and technology — especially AI — are two very different things, and it is not always wise to try to unite them. Like people, when they are too far apart, affection cannot flourish.

As a computer scientist working at the intersection of technology and faith, I've been waiting for this solid guidance from the Holy Father for quite some time. I have a lot of unanswered questions, particularly surrounding the nature of consciousness, which I believe, if I did enough research into the church's historical documents, I would be able to figure out on my own. However, what the encyclical does for me is provide a great deal of clarity in how I am going to engage from now on within my particular field. This is a very important foundational document for what I call computational theology and theological computing. It is a grounding work that allows me to base my work more deeply in the Catholic tradition. And so, even though a lot of people in Silicon Valley are not happy about this assertion from the Holy Father in particular, I don't take it as an opinion to be critiqued — as a devout Catholic, this is my grounding truth.

@englandinpoetry I have always liked this line: “Your eyes smile peace.” Oh such eyes….

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) in 'Silent Noon' captures the stillness of summer, deep in the English countryside, lying in the grass with the one you love.

@spectator @DouglasKMurray An easy battle? Opposition to AI is big, & we still understand little about it. Rome A.D.—the Bible might have appeared as a kind of AI: a ‘machine’ shaping thought, morality, & power. More pressing now: how can the Church restore trust & what sacrifices a priest must make.

Deus vs Machina: Michael Gove on how the Pope’s AI intervention shames our politicians 🔸 Piers Morgan: Arsenal against the world 🔸 Douglas Murray: What did Sturgeon know? 🔸 Mary Wakefield: The rise of the child-haters 🔸 Rod Liddle: Could Restore kill off Reform? spectator.co.uk

@PhysInHistory Why not? We might have reached the point where we don’t fully understand it (see the difficulty to grasp climate change, the obscure ideas of black holes, black matter, cosmic finity). Like divers reaching the ground, we can dive back, and start undoing all misunderstandings.

Do you believe humanity will ever reach a point where we fully understand the universe? ✍️

@Scruton_Quotes To me, it’s unclear if traditionalists were really that. Let’s suppose for a second that they were. The bourgeoisie was never meant to long for ‘freedom’. They knew that it would be the end of the idea of performance & rewards, meritocracy. Which is the blood of the bourgeoisie.

"The dialectical relation between traditional community and bourgeois liberty persisted into more recent times. But it depended upon the constant, self-sacrificing, and thankless labor of conservatives, who tried to shore up the old decencies, the old authorities, the old forms of education that had obedience and duty as their goal, in the face of vociferating liberals for whom individual freedom was the be-all and end-all of our existence."

@englandinpoetry “If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue”…. Great Kipling knows how things will end up if…

Kipling begins his book ‘Rewards and Fairies’ with ‘A Charm’. As we hold English earth in our hands, we pray for our dead and find healing; as we tend flowers, we are restored: our land holds treasures enough to make us all kings.

@StillHopeful05 @LadyLeo1976 Nice.

I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her real name was grief. —C.S. Lewis

@olgatuleninova @IanHagues Nice. Colourful comfort in a wintry scene.

David Hockney, b.1937, British Winter Timber (2009)

Mr Ferguson delivers a thoughtful comment and a measured assessment of current realities. Regrettably, the European Union appears to be facing significant challenges on several fronts: in the south, with sustained and irregular migration flows; in the east, with a conflict whose escalation many believe might have been mitigated through greater strategic caution in the region; and in the north, where certain member states seem increasingly disconnected from emerging geopolitical and economic realities. 👉It is one thing for societies to adapt gradually to a changing world. It is another when political leadership across twenty-seven EU-member states struggles to anticipate & prepare effectively to such change. In that case, concerns naturally arise about the Union’s capacity to perform its role effectively and to deliver on the expectations placed upon it.

🚨 TRUMP DRAWS A RED LINE OVER GREENLAND President Donald Trump just sent a chilling message to Europe. When Greenland’s premier said the island wants to remain with Denmark, Trump didn’t soften it. He flatly replied: “That’s their problem. I disagree. That’s going to be a big problem for him.” This wasn’t a gaffe. This was a strategic warning. Greenland is no longer a remote Arctic outpost — it is now one of the most important pieces of territory on Earth. It sits on: • the Arctic shipping routes • the early-warning missile grid • the rare-earth supply chain • and the northern gateway to North America Trump is telling the world something European leaders don’t want to admit: If the United States does not secure Greenland’s future, someone else will — and that someone will not be friendly. Russia is building Arctic bases. China is buying Arctic ports. Europe is divided and militarily weak. Trump is applying raw power politics where others are still pretending this is just diplomacy. This is not about Denmark. This is not about symbolism. This is about who controls the Arctic in the 21st century. And right now, Trump is making it clear: America is not stepping back.

@PhysInHistory And in his study of optics Newton came to the conclusion that white is the sum of all colors.

In 1665, Isaac Newton discovered the spectrum of light by passing a beam of sunlight through a glass prism in his room. He also experimented with his own eyes by inserting a bodkin (a blunt needle) between his eyeball and the bone as far as he could, and pressing his eye with the end of it to observe the effects on his vision.

Wrong. The role of intellectuals is neither to challenge nor to serve legitimate authority. When authority is illegitimate, challenging it is not a privilege of intellectuals but a duty of all honest persons, whenever they are able to do so. When authority is legitimate, intellectuals have no special role: they must respect it, like everyone else. But intellectuals do have one extra duty: to be extra honest and to speak the truth irrespective of their political inclination.

The role of intellectuals is to challenge authority, not serve it.

About negation and negativity and consequences for belief: Contemporary philosophers: —Bernard Williams' argument involving the concept of "negative responsibility", published in his essay "A Critique of Utilitarianism", which appears as the second part of the book Utilitarianism: For and Against. This book was published in 1973 by Cambridge University Press.  —Thomas Nagel, “The Fragmentation of Value” (Moral conflict as irreducible negation). Classics: -Plato — Sophist (Non-being as difference; negation structures intelligibility). -Aristotle — Metaphysics (Γ, Θ) (Privation (sterēsis) as a condition of form and change). -Spinoza — Ethics (Omnis determinatio est negatio (all determination is negation)). -Heidegger — “What Is Metaphysics?” (The Nothing as structurally prior to disclosure). -Hegel, Science of Logic (Being–Nothing) Well you made me wish to go back to reading about negation.

@BettaMichela Nothing is uncaused so god was caused? I don’t fully understand your argument but find it interesting. I will definitely do some reading about structured around negation. Any suggestions?

“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.” — Isaac Asimov