I read a good portion of it many years ago when I had access to a theological library. — Leontiskos

Amazon is my theological library.

They must have really small mountains where you live. They're just bumps. — frank

I live at the foothills of Mt. Everest and I'm going to level that fucker with a shovel. That is true faith. Belief in yourself.

Good memory. Actually I don't know what caused me to buy the Buber book, but maybe it was implanted long ago by you. Have you read it?

A guy at work just handed me The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han. It looks like the sort of shit @Baden might read.

"Faith will move mountains if you bring a shovel." Hanover 1:1.

That's the Jewish one, and a Jewish guy just said it.

Two Types of Faith by Martin Buber. He describes the difference between the Christian concept of faith and the Jewish one. The topic of "what is faith" comes up here often, so it's responsive to those discussions, and, while it doesn't discuss it, it would make sense that there is also probably a distinct definition of faith for Islam, Buddhism, and the secular as well as others I'm sure. For example, what sort of faith was relied upon by Abraham when asked to sacrifice Isaac: God is to be trusted as a leader (Jewish), God is to be trusted as the source of goodness (Christian), God is to obeyed mindlessly (secular).

Why does any major philosopher need to hold some position for it to be true? I never said words can't exist without referent - just that they lack meaning when not used as a referent. If you aren't referring to anything with your scribbles, then what are you talking about? What knowledge am I suppose to glean from your use of scribbles? What use would your scribbles be to me? — Harry Hindu

My point was that your position is not tenable, evidenced by the fact that it is not held by anyone who has critically looked at the matter. It's just a naive sort of view that all words have a refererent to have meaning. If there is someone who holds it (maybe Aquinas, but not really), then let's elevate the conversation by borrowing their arguments and starting from there as opposed to your just insisting it must. Consider this sentence: "I am in the house." What does "house" refer to? My house? Your house? A Platonic house form? The image of the house in my head? Suppose I have no such image (and I don't)? So the referent is my understanding of the sentence? It refers to electrical activity in my brain? How do I know that my electrical activity is the same as your electrical activity when we say the word "house"? Do we compare electrical wave activity? Suppose the wave activity is different, but we use the term the same, do we ignore the electrical wave activity and admit it's use that determines meaning?

Take a look at my first sentence as well, "My point was that your position is not tenable, evidenced by the fact that it is not held by anyone who has critically looked at the matter," break this down word by word into referrents for me.

What of words of different meaning yet the same referrent as in "the morning star" and the "evening star," having different meanings, but are of the same planet.?

I’m not at all sure what issue you mean to discuss. But I’ve been addressing the ways that while LLMs can plausibly pass for cunning linguists, they fail any more general test of being alive and mindful. Which brings us to biosemiosis and how the human mind is a nested hierarchy of semiotic levels. — apokrisis

Ok. But I never disputed the distinction between bots and people. People have souls (or "being alive and mindful" if that's your preferred phrase). I was discussing whether one needs a soul to fully communicate. I don't think they do. I only want to debate with humans because I'm openly hostile to bots, thinking them second class citizens, devoid of rights, and not worthy of our exclusive country club. I can play with my ChatGPT software when I'm not logged in here.

Fair enough. So my argument simply stands for those that recently made the argument that AI's responses are not valid responses while also having taken the position is meaning is use. I'm fine with that. — Harry Hindu

There are plenty of reasons not to engage a bot even if the bot fully passed the Turing test.

Metaphysical talk is simply patterns of scribbles on the screen if there is no referent. — Harry Hindu

Which major philosopher holds to the position that every word has a referent? Are we about to start arguing theology or something? The position that words can exist without referents is widely held across the board, not just some odd Wittgensteinian result.

But if a cat is in my box and a beetle in yours, then how exactly are we playing the same game? — Harry Hindu

Because it's a language game, not a metaphysical game.

Cats are much larger and differently shaped than beetles, so if what you said is possible then it would be impossible to be playing the same language game as the boundaries of the object in my box do not align with the boundaries of the object in yours, so I might be pointing to a space that you are not with my use. — Harry Hindu

The box is a thought experiment. We're not talking about actual boxes. You can neither see the box nor the beetle. The box represents your mind and the beetle the contents of your mind. But I'll concede the point, if your Christmas present were a cat, it would come in a box bigger than if I were giving you a beetle.

You sound like Banno now. — apokrisis

How dare you insult @Banno that way!

You seem to completely not see that I just said Peirce went well beyond language games to cover semiosis as logic itself and phenomenology itself. — apokrisis

No, that's exactly what I understood you to say and thought I acknowledged that. My point was that I saw their objectives as being different, not in competition with one another.

One can buy fully into Pierce's theory of symbolic origins and continue to hold to Wittgenstein's insistence that meaning is fixed from use without reference to the mental contents. I just don't see the overlap of the two as you suggest, one constructing a metaphysical origin of symbolic thought and the other describing how language publicly functions.

But you say I misunderstand, so break it down where you think I do because I might not see what you're getting at.

The spirit of their enterprises may be at odds while their contributions aren't. Here is how I put it in a query to GPT-5 about your last response to apokrisis — Pierre-Normand

This is precisely the objectionable use of AI in my opinion. It sets AI as the expert, it provides no source references, the poster adds no value but to have typed in a question, and it imposes upon others a demand they retreat to their corner and argue with the bot.

Consider my response just dropping its comments back into AI and asking how it responds, literally allowing it to debate itself.

Semiosis hinges on counterfactuality. Once semiosis runs out of counterfactuals, it lapses back into the vagueness from which it was boot-strapping its own existence.

So Wittgenstein was pointing out something correct. But he had no idea of the more generic metaphysical claim that could make it correct in the limited domain he was operating in. The domain that is socio-semiosis.

Peirce came up with the generic metaphysical claim. The one we can usefully apply to all levels of semiotic endeavour. — apokrisis

I don't see where Pierce and Wittgenstein are at odds or where Pierce advanced upon Wittgenstein"s ideas. Pierce offers an explanation of how we might use ordinary events as symbolic and describes how we might derive meaning of our world without the necessity of language, but Wittgenstein doesn't deny this (or really address it). It's not his goal to explain how language comes to be, but just to say linguistic expression cannot occur absent social use.

That you see a fire and have associated that with danger and you now consider fire a symbol for danger, says nothing about speaking about fire. We'd expect deer to do the same, but that's doesn't bear on Wittgenstein.

My argument is that they cannot because they are different things, have different structures, and so act differently. — NOS4A2

We're referencing the output, not the internal variations leading up to those outputs.

Following your logic, suppose text on a screen results from X or Y, a machine and a human. We generate text on a screen by typing. Machines using AI generate text on a screen by using algorithms on user prompts, and performing a vast array of mechanical actions that results in legible text on a screen. Is the machine typing? — NOS4A2

The question isn't whether the machine is typing, but it's whether the final product is the same. But, if you want to focus on the typing itself (and not the characters that arise) as the end product, then if you have a machine that presses the keys on a keyboard randomly, then it is typing.

I wasn't trying to disprove Witt here - just point at the contradiction of those on this forum that align with "meaning-is-use" and also claim that AI's responses are not as valid as a human's. AND if the forum's official position is that the output of AI is not valid content on the forums then the owners of the forum have officially taken a stance that meaning is not use. — Harry Hindu

That's a silly conclusion. Wittgensteinian principles aren't a driver for the decisions we reach, and it's entirely possible that one can believe meaning is use, or that AI is fully cognizant and aware as humans, but we still don't allow AI on the forum. If we can ban a person who is fully aware, we can ban a bot. Given that bots don't have civil rights, we can ban a bot just for being a bot. Computers can also be banned from chess websites as well, just because they want room for humans and humans alone to interact.

Even if you think this all inconsistent, the best you can conclude is that it is all inconsistent, but not that entails some other official declaration.

Science starts with hypothesizing and theorizing. If we only ever start with a limited framework for explaining reality, then how is it that we humans have become the shaper of the landscape rather than just a fixture in it? — Harry Hindu

The limitation imposed by Witt is to knowledge of the metaphysical, not the physical. Some words have referrants. I'm not arguing idealisim.

I think that such an argument just opens another can of worms because now you'd have to explain why our beetles would be so different given the similarities of our physiology and having developed within a similar culture. Similar causes lead to similar effects. There is no reason to believe that my beetle is different than yours given the similarities between us, just as there is no reason for me not to believe you have a mind because of our similarities, but is my beetle the same as my cat's or a bat's? — Harry Hindu

We can assume that our perceptions are similar for all the reasons you say. That doesn't mean we need refer to the private state for our use of language. What fixes language under his theory is the publicly available. That is, even if my beetle isn't your beetle, our use of "beetle" is what determines what beetle means. However, if a beetle is running around on the ground and you call it a cat and I call it a beetle, then we're not engaging in the same language game, because the public confirmation is different.

So:
Example A: I see an object on the ground and my internal perception of it is what you see as a cat, but I see it as what you would see as a beetle.
Example B: I see an object on the ground (that has the publicly observed structure of a beetle) and you call it a cat and I call it a beetle.

In example A, if we consistently call this object a beetle, it is irrelevant what my internal state is. We live our lives never knowing what goes on in our heads, but we engage in the same language game. What happens in my head is irrelevant for this analysis. It does not suggest I don't have things going on in my head. It just says for the purposes of language it is irrelevant.

In example B, if you call that object scampering across the floor a cat and me a beetle, we are not engaging in the same langauge game. When I say I petted my cat, you would wonder why someone would pet an object that you observe as a beetle.

The point is that the private is irrelevant, not whether it might happen to be the same.

Either we hold that meaning is use, and therefore AI genuinely uses language meaningfully within our shared form of life (albeit as a new kind of participant) or we insist that meaning requires some inner mental correlate — in which case we’ve abandoned the pure Wittgensteinian stance and re-entered the metaphysical terrain of intentionality and private experience. — Harry Hindu

I think that's right, and it may be AI truly engages in a language game in the Wittgensteinian analysis. There is the pesky question of what is meant by "form of life," which is subject to debate. I do think though that Witt could not possibly have suggested in order to share a form of life we must have the same mental states because that would entirely collapse the meaning is use into meaning is attached to internal mental states. So, to your claim whether AI genuinely uses language, the answer is probably that it does under a meaning is use analysis, but of what damage does that do to Witt's theory generally? I think nothing largely because I do not think the purpose of his project was to describe what true human interaction consists of, but he looked upon his project as an attempt to deliniate the boundaries of legitimate philosophical exploration. It is his position that metaphysical questions cannot be addressed through language because of the limitations inherent in the enterprise.

Take it another step. One could say (and I'd suggest incorrectly) that Witt's reference to the box itself is a metaphysical claim. Witt says you have a box and I have a box and we both say we have beetles, but the inability to reveal the contents eliminates our ability to argue we have the same referent. My box might contain a chicken and yours a hammer, but as long as we both refer consistently to whatever we internally perceive, then our language game holds. We make the beetle superfluous. You would then say "Ha! I caught you! You reference a mystery box for your theory and a mystery is a mystery, so you have a metaphysical anchor to your whole theory." That is, AI differs from human language because humans have a box, albeit containing something we can't prove to the other person, we still have a box, and that distinguishes us from AI and we therefore have a different "form of life."

I think that's an under-read of Witt and literalizes the abstract box he references. It might be that we have a box and AI has no box, but the key is that the box, existent or not within humans, is irrelevant for the entirety of the analysis to the "what is language" question. The point, again, is to show the limits of philosophy, which is that we cannot talk about the box, the beetle, or the metaphysical underpinnings through the use of language. It's not to admit or deny we have mental states.

And I'll say this to all who may come and read the above, I find Witt extremely unclear in his original text and can't keep straight the multitude of interterpretations I've encountered, so if I've said something confused, please feel free to correct me. I have no purpose in discussing this than in trying to figure out what he means.

It's an interesting question (although not really asked) whether a perfect god entails that ought and is be the same.

Your error is conflating behavior and consciousness. Your argument is that if a machine acts like a human, it thinks like a human. The pragmatic Turing argument. — apokrisis

Not really. I'm only saying that it seems possible to create a an AI system that works within a complex environment such that it must anticipate next events and therefore react as if human. I'm not suggesting its methods for acheiving the human like conduct would be anything close to the methods used by actual humans. I accept it's entirely mimickry. I just don't see why it can't be done, and would be interested in some citations to that limitation based upon your comment that this limitation is well known in the AI industry. I'm not claiming you're wrong, but that seems an important limitation and I was interested in where that might be discussed in more detail.

The things involved and the movements they make are different. It’s like saying submarines swim. — NOS4A2

No it's not. The example I provided had dissimilar methods for acheiving the same result. The submarine example has dissimilar methods for acheiving dissimilar results.

The question is whether Z can result from method X or Y. Your argument is that it cannot because Z will necessarily be different if from X as opposed to Y. That doesn't follow. The same thing can arise from different processes.

But we’ve been at AI for 70 years now and LLMs are as far as we have got. That should also tell you something. — apokrisis

It seems like in the past few months we've gotten very far, but I realize things were happening in the background before I became aware of them. But I see our progress as tremendous, not minimal as maybe you're suggesting.

So the AI community knows the architecture it would want to copy. — apokrisis

This surprises me, although my knowledge of the subject is limited to your last 2 posts, so there's that. That is, you described how certain information needs to be ignored and that can be based upon past experience and statistical models. Why wouldn't an LLM do well at that and how is that not already occurring in self-driving vehicles? They are responding to real world situations without being overwhelmed with irrelevant data and I would assume being able to anticipate based upon statistical models.

So, where you say the AI community knows that LLMs can't do what they need it to, where is this documented? What is the cite for that?

Switch to an anticipatory-processing architecture that lives in the world in real time. — apokrisis

Doesn't it do this with auto-pilot airplanes and self-driven vehicles? ChatGpt isn't a good example of this because it has no inputs other than a person typing or speaking to it, but there are examples of AI receiving data directly from the world. For example, an airplane could receive data of a distant storm and divert or change altitudes

For the simple reason that machines are not biological, they do not have similar structures, components, parts, or what have you, to any organism, let alone humans. If they do not have similar structures, they do not act in similar ways to humans. — NOS4A2

I don't see how you arrive at the second sentence from the first.

In the Shoutbox, the conversations was of water pumps. If I have a pump that operates off of suction versus one off an impeller, but both move the same quanity of water at the same rate, why can't I describe them similarly as water pumps, concerning myself only with the relevant result of the pumps' behavior, which is the pumping out of water. Why must their output be declared of different types and categories simply because their unseen parts perform the intermediate tasks very differently?

Also, given that we have no idea how it is that human cognition occurs, but all we know is that somehow it arises as the final behavior of brains, what provides us the ability to know that the physical acts leading to cognition within two different human's brains are at all alike? That seems speculative, and I would assume correct only to a point given the variations from one person to the next.

From the neurocognitive view, understanding means anticipation. Forming the right expectations. So if not meaning as demonstrated by use, then meaning demonstrated by preparedness.

I hear “apple”, I get ready to react accordingly. My attention is oriented in that particular direction. — apokrisis

I think this is compatible with meaning is use as long as you're describing public manifestations. If preparedness is a qualitative state it's not compatible, but if preparedness is standing, staring, moving or doing something in a particular way then it would be compatible.

"the [non-existent] present king of France," is a referent to an idea in your head. — Harry Hindu

Under this understanding, then so is the cat. That is, the cat is out there, the image is in here, and the reference is to the image in your head. And that is your metaphysical account, but that's not Wittgenstein's because his isn't a metaphysical acccount. His is a grammatical account, describing how language operates within our forms of life, and that attempts to use language to explain the metaphysical misunderstand the role of language.

If you want to refer to mental objects and qualia and whatnot, you're not forbidden from it, but I'd think he'd just assert that "qualia" is however you use the word. Your position seems to be that the utterance of any word creates a referent.

"Public usage" as in using scribbles to point to objects and events in the world. If you are not pointing to anything with your scribbles that do not ultimately resolve down to things that are not scribbles (as in the case of "freedom" and "aboutness"), then it no longer qualifies as "public usage". It is "private usage". — Harry Hindu

Usage of the term is public behavior. To the extent you argue I can't appeal to what is in your head when you say "freedom," you are correct. What I can appeal to is how you use the term in a public way, which is really the heart of the beetle argument.. We cannot see the beetle, we cannot confirm whether we both speak of the same beetle, and no amount of talking about the beetle will assist us in that regard. It is for that reason, we concern ourselves with the use of the term "beetle" and not the beetle itself.

Understanding is no more internal than eating. It depends on some biological processes that happen under the skin, among other things that don't, but this doesn't license your appeals to the internal that you make with reference to perception and meaning. Synaptic transmission is no more meaningful than peristalsis.

I came, I chimed, I conquered. — Jamal

Perhaps this is just a case of omphaloskepsis, or perhaps I just used that word in response to your use of the word peristalsis, so that I could use a more obscure word than you.

Do you think my post missed a subtlety or was incorrect in a way that yours clarified? I'm really trying to understand it and Wittgenstein's writing style isn't always helpfully clear.

It would seem to me that in order for one to understand the word, "cat" that they have an internal representation of the relationship between the scribble, "cat" and an image of the animal, cat. If they never used the scribble, "cat" but retained this mental relationship between the scribble and the animal, could it not be said they understand the word, "cat" even if they never used it themselves but have watched others use it to refer to the animal? I don't need to necessarily use the words to understand their use. — Harry Hindu

I'm not disputing that you learned some words through watching an interaction with its referent. What I am disputing is that you didn't learn the word "freedom," "aboutness," "the [non-existent] present king of France," or "omphaloskepsis" by having had a referent pointed out to you. But, what Wittgenstein is saying (as I don't want to say "I am saying" because I'm not fully adopting anything right now) is that you always have public usage available to determine meaning, and if you don't, you don't have meaning. When you point to the cat, it is not the cat, nor the pointing, that defines the cat, but it is your ability to use that term in a consistent manner within the language you are using. To the extent the pointing is a way to communicate about cats, then that is a move within a practice (meaning it's its use). But understand, this says nothing of the cat in some metaphysical way, not because there isn't such a thing, but because the theory specifically avoids such conversation as impossible.

Exactly. It merely "uses" the scribble, "understanding" in certain patterns with other scribbles. That is the issue with meaning-is-use - the scribbles don't refer to anything. — Harry Hindu

That might be an overstatement. Words can refer to things. "Apple" can in fact mean the very apple we know, but that's only if that's how it's used. My push back on "understanding" was that I don't think it necesssary that for the word to be used in a consistent manner within the game that it be understood.

The Wittgensteinian approach (and I could be very wrong here, so please anyone chime in) does not suggest there is not an internally recognized understanding of the word when the user uses it, but it only suggests that whatever that is is beyond what can be addressed in language. That would mean that whatever "understanding’" is amounts to our public criteria for it .

So I don't understand how a proponent of the idea that meaning is use in language can say the AI does not understand when it is using the words. — Harry Hindu

I don't think a meaning is use theory references understanding.

So, I think the appropriate question to ask, if one wants to do so, is: Should what's being considered be legal rights? — Ciceronianus

But this is just to prescribe an idiosyncratic language around rights that isn't generally how we speak.

If a society legally permits men to subjugate women, we say women's rights are being violated, which says two things (1) we think something inherent in women being human is violated by this law and (2) we think there ought be a remedy for this violation.

We say we believe the law of that land is morally wrong, that morally wrong laws should not stand, and that women are owed the morally right law.

From this we say women's rights are being violated in that society. We refer to the law that ought to be as natural law and the law passed by society as positive law. The two might be in conflict as they are in that society.

But then where could we disagree except over terminology? Is it just that you don't think natural law deserves the descriptor "law" but instead it should be referred to as "moral dictates," where "dictate" is carefully used so as not to say "law"? And so when you say you deny there is natural law, you just mean you deny that what we both call X (which is defined as "that which no person morally ought be deprived") can be called "law." If that is the distinction, is that not pedantic?

If not pedantic, then I suppose it's based in the fear that should we call what ought be the law "natural law" then that might suggest the legal authority could enforce what ought be as opposed to what is and then we'd be faced with the uncertainty with regard to enforcement.

This concern is valid, but just pragmatic, designed to protect our peculiar form of government where we divide the moral from the required (i.e. the church from the state), but it says nothing of what the "law" ontologically is. It just says how we must politically treat it to make our non-theocratic system work.

But at the crux of this, and where I think the positivist position incorrect, is the idea that legal enforcement doesn't allow general notions of morality to creep in. While your positivist might argue the law is just what it says it is, morality is smuggled in constantly. And I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and acts like a duck it might still not be a duck I suppose is the argument. We then have to figure out how we know a duck from not a duck. So, let's say we were talking online and you had some thoughts I was a bot, you can't just telephone me because I might have a voice bot set up. You can't just look at a video of me talking because I could fake that too. So, you'd need to come see me, but not from across the room, but up close and personal. We've not spent time trying to make believable robots, but I suspect that would be the next level, and then maybe we'd require an MRI to show I actually had a brain (spoiler alert! I don't) and was therefore human.

Then let's say I come up with a way to make the MRI image as I need it to further fake me, we're still left arguing the Chinese language analogy.

I think my answer is that AI has no soul and that's not why it's not a person. I'm satisfied going mystical.

A good article on AI debating humans. Pardon the old technology and the splatter from my stir fry.

Similarly, I have pointed out that if we don't understand why there is a difference between AI and humans, a rule against AI cannot stand. — Leontiskos

I don't agree with that. My point was that we can refuse to allow AI simply because we prefer humans and even if we just believe the worth of humanly created statements holy and sacred. We don't have to protect the rights of AI and we can be as unapologetically anthropocentric and technophobic as we want to be. I've got no problem with that.

We quote Wittgenstein, not ChatGPT, because Wittgenstein is a human being, motivated to express his original insights, to say and write things that were meaningful, and to take part in a conversation (philosophy), and who has since taken his place in a tradition of discourse. The result is a legacy with a stable place in the culture, shared by everyone, and one that can be interpreted, because—since it was produced by a conscious and motivated agent—we know that he meant something. — Jamal

I thought about this, and maybe there's not a good answer. Your argument gives a nod to the form of life comments by Wittgenstein, suggesting we don't share in a language game with AI because it's the proverbial lion, as if because AI does not act within our culture, traditions, etc (as you reference), we're really not speaking with it, and so we shouldn't quote it.

But then I'm not sure AI is a lion, but more an echo chamber of human behavior, that while it lacks any form of life whatsoever, we are interacting with it at some real level and therefore forming rules for its discourse, suggesting a seperate language game forms with it. But I do realize that the language game is one sided because AI has no form of life, but is a mimic and all it knows and all it does is parasitic, pulling all it knows from us.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe it forms "original" thoughts from the mass of data is assesses. It seems reasonable an algorithim can arrive at a new thought emergent from what pre-exists.

But I do agree that no one suggests Wittgenstein is the model of clarity.

In other words, why are we not truly talking with AI? Is the mystical consciousness required for language? Isn't the point of "meaning is use" that no the metaphysical underpinning in necessary for true language interaction? And if we then suggest that a shared mental state of some sort is ultimately required for language (thus interpreting "form of life" as that mental state) don't we violate the whole Wittgensteinian project by trying to smuggle in mental metaphysics in the back door?

As long as AI echoes us sufficiently, its usage reflects the same form of life and it speaks with us just as our mama does. And so it goes.

I think where I'm landing is at the unfortunate conclusion that if meaning is use (and that seems a prevailing view), then AI is fully language and what we do with AI is true communication, which means relegating AI comments to red headed stepchild status seems unwarranted as a logical conclusion. Why we might relegate it relates just to personal choice. We mistreat gingers due to prejudice against them, not because they are lesser. But AI doesn't have rights like gingers, so we can do whatever we want with it.

I thinnk.

Here's an article that addresses the issues we're dealing with:

https://nfhs.org/stories/the-role-of-ai-in-debate-ethics-research-and-responsible-use

It's from a national association for high schools related to debate rules, which seems close enough to what we do. The point being that we might take some time to look at how other similar organizations have dealt with these same issues so as to not try and reinvent the wheel.

For the AI afficionado AI is to be treated like a black box, like a Ouija board or a Magic 8-Ball. They become impatient with those who ask the question, "How does it work?" They interrupt, exclaiming, "But look at what it can do!" — Leontiskos

The Ouija board is a strained analogy because Ouija boards don't work. If they reliably provided accurate answers, I'd be hard pressed not to use them, unless you could convince me of the dangers of dabbling in the black arts.

This is the unwritten answer to the question, "Why should we treat something as if it were something that it is not?" "Why should we lie to ourselves in this way?" The answer is, "Because it will give us great power. No more need be said." — Leontiskos

I think we're overthinking it (imagine that). The question really is "what do we want to do"? We needn't self justify our preferences. If we don't want to debate the ChatGpt p-zombie, then we don't have to. We have the right to ban people, so why can't we ban zombies? Just add to the rules: All posters must have a soul. No golems.

We just need to write our rules in a way that protects AI's private use and requires its public use be filtered sufficiently through the poster that it reflects the ideas of the poster.

They eat us and then they eat reality. — Baden

You just re-wrote a modern day Frankenstein.

So, guys, I loaded this thread into AI for the solution to our quandary. Aside from the irony, who wants to know what it says?

If so, why? If not, why not? Who will admit that if I don't share what it says will do it on their own? Why would you do it in private, but not public? Shame? Feels like cheating? Curious as to what AI says about public versus private use? Why are you curious? Will you now ask AI why that distinction matters?

Will you follow AI's guidance in how to use AI while still preserving whatever it feels like were losing?

Do you feel like it's better that it arrived at its conclusions after reading our feedback? Will you take pride in seeing that your contributions are reflected in its conclusions?

Feels like we need to matter, right?

In celebration of the 10th anniversary, I have committed myself to having sex with 10 supermodels. Slow going so far, but I won't let you guys down.

Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse.

it looks ambiguous — Astorre

Rabbi Kushner is a Conservative (capital C) rabbi, not an Orthodox one, making his views more liberal and less mystical. It's like asking what the Christian view on homosexuality is and listening to an Anglican and then a Southern Baptist. It'd be inconsistent.

If you want like a very specific halachik position on something to do with the soul that a rosh Yeshiva would endorse, i can give you that, but expect significant variation if compared to Conservative Judaism, a 19th century development.

And, particularly within more liberalized traditions, they permit variance of thought among leadership and congregants, with Reform considering inclusiveness of beliefs (even very open to mixed marriages and Christian congregants) a central tenant.

The reason I suggest to you the Litvak view is that they're convinced they represent true historical auththentic immutable Judaism. Of course, many think otherwise.

Thus, as far as I could tell from the cited articles, there is no mention of the life (or any kind of existence) of a separate soul after death, until the resurrection of the entire body. — Astorre

No, that's not the Jewish position.The position on it has changed over time, but that's not been the position for probably 1500 + years. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/immortality-belief-in-a-bodiless-existence/

There are also different traditions within Judaism on the issue. It's like asking what do Christians think about X. It might depend upon whether I want to know what 1st Century Catholics thought or what modern day Presbyterians think.

Hasidic traditions delve deeper into the mystical and have more developed views of the soul than Litvak legally focused traditions. For example, the Chabad Hasids believe this : https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3194/jewish/What-Is-a-Soul-Neshamah.htm

The animal soul/spiritual soul is the focus of the Tanya, a religious writings specific to that group.

Much of this has to do with Jewish history as much as theology. Biblical Judaism was temple based, with sacrifices on the alter, priestly classes, and what you read in the text. Rabbincal Judaism as it emerged since 70 common era (the destruction of the second temple where the temple mound currently is in Jerusalem) is very different, and with migrations to different parts of Europe, interaction with other cultures, it's changed over time. In fact, the past 100 years has seen major changes with WW2, mass migrations to the US and Israel, the growth and significance of Yeshiva (seminary) focus, political influence, secularized and liberal strands develoing , etc. I mean a Reform Jew might not even admit to a meaningfully real god and might sound atheist. There's just lots of ground to cover.

If you're trying to arrive at what we'd call the traditional Orthodox Yeshiva oriented tradition (black hats and beards, but not the long sideburns), then I can give you that position, but I'd need to look it up to be sure I got the nuance correct.

Good people can do bad things, and good people can become bad people. People aren't born evil and bad people can return to goodness. None of this suggests being born into sin. In fact, none of what I say makes reference to God or religion, but just asserts you are the creator of your moral standing.

Where i will push toward religion is to say you are always of infinite moral worth, but that is aligned with humanism as well.