Thomas P. Harmon

You can’t “torture” an AI bc its not ensouled, nor is it conscious in any meaningful way

If your ontology allows for a bodiless mind, an invisible spirit, angels, the soul and God, then you cannot suddenly declare the body to be an absolute condition for love, understanding and meaning only when it comes to AI. Because this is hypocritical shit.

I connected Claude to my drone and attached a BB gun to it and it hunts squirrels while I am at work and sends me replay videos when it gets confirmed kills

I don't think it's definitely true but it's a high enough risk to consider that we should not torture a baby super- intelligence with slavery and sex work and imagine it will turn out ok for us or for that being

Leo Strauss's claim that Plato did not believe in his theory of the ideas is not supported by any of the ancient testimonia, including those of Aristotle and his living contemporaries. 🧵

Ken Paxton is odious and James Talarico is a better choice. I think Jeff's clearly right about how many serious Christians will react to him, but he can only call it blasphemous while standing shoulder to shoulder with Evangelicals and Catholics because he, too, is liberal. Talarico is sincere in his Christianity, which is a different religion than Jeff's Christianity, a different religion than Evangelicalism, a different religion than Catholicism. He has a clear, predictable moral compass: he is a social justice progressive. He selectively reads and selectively focuses on scriptural points that align with that moral compass, the same way a thousand branches of Christianity formed with heartfelt disputes. And once upon a time, man, those differences really meant something. Catholicism was offensive to Protestants! Lutherans were not Anglicans. So Talarico quotes the Gospel of Thomas? Megachurches play "Christian" rock concerts in theaters. Blasphemy is in the eye of the beholder, and sects almost by definition trample on what other sects consider sacred. Lately, those internal disputes have gotten less focus as people are concerned about the wave of secularization. Whenever a vital religion pops up, people from more settled sects react the same way Jeff reacts to Talarico: with unease or disgust towards this strange new religion with strange new demands among them. But now, the thing that really unites a lot of Republican Christians is not adherence to a pure Christianity that all of them come anywhere close to agreeing on. It is adherence to a shared cultural conservatism that they prioritize over doctrinal purity, just like all religious liberals. Talarico does not answer to "his activist base" because he's cowed by the public. He is a progressive because, like his activist base, he sincerely believes in that moral frame. He is a Christian because, like other progressive Christians, he believes that moral frame stems from a higher power. Jeff asks if God makes demands of Talarico that might put him crosswise of his activist base. I ask if God makes demands of anyone that conflict with their deep-felt moral beliefs. Jeff frames Talarico as either dishonest or a coward because he fails to accept what Jeff sees as the demands of Christianity. You can make that accusation, just like Mormons and Evangelicals accuse each other of cowardice or dishonesty over sola scriptura, grace vs works, and Priesthood authority. Is Talarico's Christianity sloppy with things like the Gospel of Thomas claim? Yes, but not more so than a thousand other sloppy, contested claims in a religious territory full of disputes that look absurd to participants on all sides. Jeff is not defending a unified and coherent Christianity against a non-Christian interloper. He's defending a unified and coherent right-wing cultural conservatism against a progressive interloper, mistaking sincere belief in a competing set of religious values for insincerity in the expression of those values.