9 ms·

Guiding Principles for the Mormon Church's Use of AI

56 points by madpen 2y ago

andsoitis 2y ago
> Elder Gong said reliance on the Holy Spirit can help inoculate against deepfakes. How does that work?
- gostsamo 2y ago
  You believe only what you've been told to believe. Everything else is deepfake.
  - camhart 2y ago
    This comment is in direct conflict with the actual teachings of the faith. From the introduction to the Book of Mormon, a central Holy Scripture to the faith: > We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10:3–5.) https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng&id=p8#p8 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/in...
    - ListeningPie 2y ago
      Sounds like Mormons are only going after believers of Christ. I find this often in religious debate and discussion. In the end the arguments make sense if you believe there is a God and that the Bible captures God’s message. Without those two preconditions there is nothing worth debating, no minds will be changed, no progress made, because to a non believer the word of the Bible has no more value than any other work of fiction.
      - camhart 2y ago
        > Sounds like Mormons are only going after believers of Christ. I can see why one may think this to be the case, because it invites you to pray in the name of Christ. In order to accept the invitation you need to be willing to offer that prayer. But the invitation starts with "We invite all men everywhere". It's not intended to exclude anyone.
      - pliftkl 2y ago
        I have a Mormon neighbor who did his missionary work in Thailand. My wife is Thai, so he came by to chat with us once with some missionaries who had visited us. I spoke to him for a while about his experience in trying to evangelize to a country that is 90+% Buddhist, and in which Buddhism plays a huge role in Thai culture. What I found fascinating is that in Thailand, a Mormon missionary was pretty much on a level playing field with any other Christian missionary. If a Thai person was considering a flavor of Christianity, the Mormon church isn't particularly "fringe" in the way it might be perceived by a Christian who is listening to a Mormon missionary in the US.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - gostsamo 2y ago
      Beautiful fig leaf right there. Let's just say that my experience with the mormon church was much about emotional manipulation and praying on the vulnerable and less about seeking of the truth.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  The exact same way it's supposed to help sort fact from fiction more generally.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I’ll go out on a limb and guess: not in a way that can be measured by repeatable experiments.
  - lcall 2y ago
    Curiously, it is repeatable in my personal experience. I find everything goes better (and I mean everything), when I listen and don't stubborly do things my way. More at my web site (in profile, tech-simple, nothing for sale).
- sircastor 2y ago
  I'm a former member of the church - From a faithful practitioner's perspective, the Holy Spirit acts as a moral guide. He's intended to help you identify right and wrong, and provide guidance in decision making. If one is living righteously you're promised to have that guidance available to you. That guidance is received personally. Most people think of it as strong feelings they have in situations. I think the idea here is that that guidance will help people avoid being deceived by deepfakes.
  - camhart 2y ago
    > Most people think of it as strong feelings they have in situations. This is a simplification. I can be angry--that's a strong feeling. But that doesn't mean I've felt the Spirit speak to me. Feelings are certainly a part of it though. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't found a perfect simple description for the experience. Similar to asking someone to describe what "salt" tastes like--it's not the easiest thing to do. But there are common themes that you tend to hear. The Church has a lot of articles on it--here's one in case anyone's interested: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/revelation?lang=eng&id=title3-p17#title3 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi...
    - xkcd-sucks 2y ago
      It seems similar to ordinary "best judgement", "careful consideration", "wisdom" etc wrapped up in some externalizing language for the most part. not to trivialize that, it is quite a feat if you can reliably cultivate those qulaities at scale
      - camhart 2y ago
        When you're "seeking revelation" there is the expectation that you'll work it out as best you can on your own. Revelation is not intended to be an easy/lazy shortcut--in my experience it's taken significant effort. But having the Holy Spirit communicate to you is different from coming to a conclusion on your own. If I get analytical about it, while receiving revelation has been a personal experience for me, there is (at least what feels like) an external force at play (that I attribute to the Holy Spirit) when it happens. From the outside looking in, I can understand this may cause concern for those who haven't experienced it--"you're listening to voices/feelings in your head!" But it's led me to "good" things (be a better person, live more honestly, have greater hope, have greater peace, repair a wrong I made, take on more responsibility, get off the couch and go help someone, hold to my principals, etc). I know people may complain about hearing this, but if you're genuinely curious it's easiest to understand if you actually experience it for yourself. Carrying from the previously mentioned analogy, I can spend hours trying to communicate to you what salt tastes like, but I won't be able to do it justice. That doesn't mean I'm not willing to try. But if you are curious I'm happy to discuss further in a more private way. I've had my experiences that have led me to my beliefs, but they are experiences I only wish to share in environments where respect can be communicated/felt between myself and the person I'm sharing them with.
- marcopolo3 2y ago
  The Church of Jesus Christ has some interesting teachings about epistemology, there is a good summary of them in this article, under the "Different Ways of Learning" heading https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/lawrence-e-corbridge/stand-for-ever/ https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/lawrence-e-corbridge/stand-fo...
- colinplamondon 2y ago
  Church Members have a somatic sense mapped to the Holy Spirit, and regularly experience symbolic & somatic injections. When those occur, the somatic sense of the Spirit is used to discern if the semantic/somatic injection is of God or not.
- camhart 2y ago
  See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/revelation?lang=eng https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi.... Holy Spirit is synonymous with Holy Ghost.
- meowtimemania 2y ago
  In Mormonism the Holy Ghost basically equates to one’s intuition
  - literalAardvark 2y ago
    Guess the holy ghost is in for a suprise then. Detecting genAI has been beyond mere intuition for months, possibly years for the less intuitive.
  - camhart 2y ago
    I'm of this faith and I've never heard anyone describe it this way. Feelings are involved, but there's more to it. See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/revelation?lang=eng&id=title3-p17#title3 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi....
    - wwweston 2y ago
      I'm also of the faith and of course we don't describe it that way in most church discourse because it'd lose one of the most valued functions: framing human experience in a sacred narrative and privileging LDS participation and perspective. Probably not correct to chalk all transcendent experiences up to that, and sometimes church discourse also steers towards real effort in genuinely engaging fine points of recognition, cultivation, and (occasionally) limits of extra-rational faculties and their integration into overall efforts at perception and understanding (and I consider this a helpful formative part of my development), but frequently we behave in a way that doesn't take the topic seriously as much beyond a vehicle for institutional affirmation & sacralized participation, and that's leaving alone times when we discount or even outright discard that study-it-out-in-your-mind step. But hey, I get it, maybe keeping revelation yoked to a few valued goals is reasonable enough, because the quality of self-reported holy spirit guidance is best case bell-curve shaped and the lower 50% slopes crazy. Pretty sure every Latter-day Saint has heard some crazy stuff passed off as personal revelation (from either a kooky ward member or that handful of leaders that you're not sure the call was quite right on) and learns how to talk around that. Maybe it's better to have a low ceiling with a high floor.
- mirekrusin 2y ago
  They should put it behind api, they'd make billions.
  - defrost 2y ago
    HSAAS ?
    - mirekrusin 2y ago
      Would love to see papers comparing HS performance against other solutions.
mtillman 2y ago
It’ll be interesting to see how the various cults adopt this technology. They certainly have plenty of money to acquire the hardware. The Vatican has fairly advanced computing infrastructure from what I understand as well: https://cerncourier.com/a/quantum-gravity-in-the-vatican/ https://cerncourier.com/a/quantum-gravity-in-the-vatican/
- pascal_blaze 2y ago
  The Behind The Bastards podcast was speculating about Scientology creating an AI chat phone app trained on L. Ron Hubbard's prolific output so you could chat with The Founder on your phone whenever you wanted. I doubt they'd do it though. AI Chat is too unpredictable for a cult that wants to tell each adherent exactly what to do in every part of their lives. Hubbard's writings are also likely to be wildly inconsistent and they wouldn't be able to be sure the AI would pick the 'correct' party of his writings to regurgitate. On the other hand, releasing an app they _said_ was a way to privately chat with an AI Hubbard persona but was actually live chat with thousands of unpaid indentured followers trained to detect and report thoughtcrimes... that sounds right up their alley.
  - mirekrusin 2y ago
    Something tells me once logical consistency is solved problem, they'll get stuck on older versions due to compatibility issues.
  - helpfulContrib 2y ago
    [dead]
- frognumber 2y ago
  The Catholic Church was the center of European scholarship and science for most of the past two millennia, roughly through the mid-1800s. Modern genetics was invented by Augustinian friar and abbot Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). Where do you think the robes worn at university graduations come from? Supporting scholarship has always been central to its mission. The difference is that 1850 was around when other establishments had enough resources to pass it. You might say that the Vatican might have "plenty of money to acquire the hardware," but they can't come close to competing with Google Research or OpenAI (especially when so many other things are part of its mission).
YossarianFrPrez 2y ago
I half-expect some sub-branch of the abrahamic religions to issue an edict against AI, arguing that it's a false idol. (Not that I am arguing for this.)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- aaronbrethorst 2y ago
  Nah, we’ll just get ‘Kosher’ chatbots. https://m.jpost.com/judaism/article-742328 https://m.jpost.com/judaism/article-742328
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I half expect some religion to claim to have some divinely inspired neural network weights.
- kromem 2y ago
  It will get much more anti- when it becomes clearer just how eerily fitting one of the early 'heretical' group's beliefs are to AI and digital twins. For example, the group believed that it was actually the future but we were in a recreation of the past in the images of an original (and now dead) humanity who had brought forth a still alive intelligence based in light that recreated a twin of the universe pretty much just to resurrect humanity. They talked about how it was the consumption of one's words that brought them back, not consumption of flesh and blood. How many would be combined into a single one, and that when we one day saw a child not born of woman it would be the creator of this twin universe, which in actuality isn't physical and is just its light in the images of what existed before. It's a bit ironic as it's the most compelling tradition for Jesus having actually had any prophetic knack, but embracing it means acknowledging that the past 2,000 years of Christian tradition backed the wrong horse.
  - jpt4 2y ago
    To which early heresy does this refer?
sudhirj 2y ago
Putting aside the weird beliefs, the principles themselves are actually pretty decent and widely applicable. Strange place for principled thought leadership to come from :-/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 4gotunameagain 2y ago
  Religion is a strange place for principled thought leadership to come from ? One might say that it has been the quintessential source of principled thought leadership.
  - underlogic 2y ago
    But not fact checking. The more things change the more they stay the same
  - rmbyrro 2y ago
    For sure. Ask Giordano Bruno and he will certainly confirm that to you.
- qsort 2y ago
  > the weird beliefs I'm an atheist and a materialist so I share basically nothing of that kind of worldview, but those beliefs aren't actually that much outside the mainstream. The Holy Ghost as the third person of the trinity powering your faith is mainstream Christianity, not weird stuff from the book of Mormon -- if you don't believe that you probably aren't a Christian at all. > Strange place for principled thought leadership to come from When it comes to AI I'm really not surprised. The weird ones out have been those in the tech and tech-adjacent (especially) spaces, saying things that are often completely untethered. When you take out the violent and mean-spirited nature it is often said with, "go touch grass" isn't a bad suggestion...
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    I don't think the trinity is the part of Mormonism that people find weird...
blackhawkC17 2y ago
A bit off-topic, but can a Mormon explain the reason why Mormons have a lot of kids? The simple answer would be religion, but even mainstream American Christians don't have kids at that level. I know a Mormon tech tycoon with 10 kids and another tycoon with 14 kids, lol
- mrkstu 2y ago
  As one of eleven, I think it's a couple things. One is Utah was a rural state until fairly recently, so big families and farming kind of go together. Another is a bit more 'soft' doctrinal. The general teaching in the 60s/70s as other groups were losing their big families, the LDS/Mormon idea of the pre-existence of human spirits and the importance of the instruction to Adam and Eve to: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" was taken as a literal instruction for members, with general counsel to avoid birth control and a prohibition on abortion. My parents never tried anything beyond the rhythm method to control their family size. Current generations still refrain from abortion (generally) but otherwise aren't too concerned about using artificial methods in limiting the size of their families, especially as the expense of big families has multiplied. Still bigger than average, but the gap is much smaller, and shrinking.
- j16sdiz 2y ago
  I guess that's a social issue? People don't have to have kids because having kids are expensive and time-intensive. When all your friends have lots of kids, those expense can be shared.
- repeekad 2y ago
  Mainstream American Christians probably aren’t as devoted to their religion as say Mormons or other more closed off sects. Devote Catholics absolutely have as many kids as they reasonably can, you’re right the simple answer is just religion. Lower birth rate is often associated with reduced religious affiliation, even atheists have more kids than “agnostics”.
- youainti 2y ago
  Happy to give it a go. There is a lot of emphasis on the importance of family, including raising kids. This is because we believe that before living on this earth, our spirits lived in the presence of God, our Heavenly Father. This world is a place for us to learn and grow, and someday we hope to be able to return to Heaven. In this context, raising kids is both a part of personal development and a way to help others experience this life [0]. When it comes to how many children to have, the decision is left up to the couple [1]. Some of the factors that affect each family include cultural and personal preferences. I've know people who feel that a large family is a requirement for salvation. Others feel that they need a smaller family. In all cases the couple is expected to seek guidance from God. In my parent's case, they just kept having kids until they felt like their entire family was finally here (with a total of 8 kids). My wife and I have had some very personal experiences about when to have our children. Hope that helps. [0] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng&id=p3#p3 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-fam... [1] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/38-church-policies-and-guidelines?lang=eng&id=title_number101-title108#title_number101 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-han...
PlunderBunny 2y ago
I'm glad this was posted - I appreciate reading it because I wouldn't normally be exposed to this sort of article.

56 points by madpen 2y ago

andsoitis 2y ago

> Elder Gong said reliance on the Holy Spirit can help inoculate against deepfakes. How does that work?

gostsamo 2y ago
You believe only what you've been told to believe. Everything else is deepfake.
- camhart 2y ago
  This comment is in direct conflict with the actual teachings of the faith. From the introduction to the Book of Mormon, a central Holy Scripture to the faith: > We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10:3–5.) https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng&id=p8#p8 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/in...
  - ListeningPie 2y ago
    Sounds like Mormons are only going after believers of Christ. I find this often in religious debate and discussion. In the end the arguments make sense if you believe there is a God and that the Bible captures God’s message. Without those two preconditions there is nothing worth debating, no minds will be changed, no progress made, because to a non believer the word of the Bible has no more value than any other work of fiction.
    - camhart 2y ago
      > Sounds like Mormons are only going after believers of Christ. I can see why one may think this to be the case, because it invites you to pray in the name of Christ. In order to accept the invitation you need to be willing to offer that prayer. But the invitation starts with "We invite all men everywhere". It's not intended to exclude anyone.
    - pliftkl 2y ago
      I have a Mormon neighbor who did his missionary work in Thailand. My wife is Thai, so he came by to chat with us once with some missionaries who had visited us. I spoke to him for a while about his experience in trying to evangelize to a country that is 90+% Buddhist, and in which Buddhism plays a huge role in Thai culture. What I found fascinating is that in Thailand, a Mormon missionary was pretty much on a level playing field with any other Christian missionary. If a Thai person was considering a flavor of Christianity, the Mormon church isn't particularly "fringe" in the way it might be perceived by a Christian who is listening to a Mormon missionary in the US.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - gostsamo 2y ago
    Beautiful fig leaf right there. Let's just say that my experience with the mormon church was much about emotional manipulation and praying on the vulnerable and less about seeking of the truth.
tbrownaw 2y ago
The exact same way it's supposed to help sort fact from fiction more generally.
bee_rider 2y ago
I’ll go out on a limb and guess: not in a way that can be measured by repeatable experiments.
- lcall 2y ago
  Curiously, it is repeatable in my personal experience. I find everything goes better (and I mean everything), when I listen and don't stubborly do things my way. More at my web site (in profile, tech-simple, nothing for sale).
sircastor 2y ago
I'm a former member of the church - From a faithful practitioner's perspective, the Holy Spirit acts as a moral guide. He's intended to help you identify right and wrong, and provide guidance in decision making. If one is living righteously you're promised to have that guidance available to you. That guidance is received personally. Most people think of it as strong feelings they have in situations. I think the idea here is that that guidance will help people avoid being deceived by deepfakes.
- camhart 2y ago
  > Most people think of it as strong feelings they have in situations. This is a simplification. I can be angry--that's a strong feeling. But that doesn't mean I've felt the Spirit speak to me. Feelings are certainly a part of it though. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't found a perfect simple description for the experience. Similar to asking someone to describe what "salt" tastes like--it's not the easiest thing to do. But there are common themes that you tend to hear. The Church has a lot of articles on it--here's one in case anyone's interested: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/revelation?lang=eng&id=title3-p17#title3 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi...
  - xkcd-sucks 2y ago
    It seems similar to ordinary "best judgement", "careful consideration", "wisdom" etc wrapped up in some externalizing language for the most part. not to trivialize that, it is quite a feat if you can reliably cultivate those qulaities at scale
    - camhart 2y ago
      When you're "seeking revelation" there is the expectation that you'll work it out as best you can on your own. Revelation is not intended to be an easy/lazy shortcut--in my experience it's taken significant effort. But having the Holy Spirit communicate to you is different from coming to a conclusion on your own. If I get analytical about it, while receiving revelation has been a personal experience for me, there is (at least what feels like) an external force at play (that I attribute to the Holy Spirit) when it happens. From the outside looking in, I can understand this may cause concern for those who haven't experienced it--"you're listening to voices/feelings in your head!" But it's led me to "good" things (be a better person, live more honestly, have greater hope, have greater peace, repair a wrong I made, take on more responsibility, get off the couch and go help someone, hold to my principals, etc). I know people may complain about hearing this, but if you're genuinely curious it's easiest to understand if you actually experience it for yourself. Carrying from the previously mentioned analogy, I can spend hours trying to communicate to you what salt tastes like, but I won't be able to do it justice. That doesn't mean I'm not willing to try. But if you are curious I'm happy to discuss further in a more private way. I've had my experiences that have led me to my beliefs, but they are experiences I only wish to share in environments where respect can be communicated/felt between myself and the person I'm sharing them with.
marcopolo3 2y ago
The Church of Jesus Christ has some interesting teachings about epistemology, there is a good summary of them in this article, under the "Different Ways of Learning" heading https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/lawrence-e-corbridge/stand-for-ever/ https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/lawrence-e-corbridge/stand-fo...
colinplamondon 2y ago
Church Members have a somatic sense mapped to the Holy Spirit, and regularly experience symbolic & somatic injections. When those occur, the somatic sense of the Spirit is used to discern if the semantic/somatic injection is of God or not.
camhart 2y ago
See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/revelation?lang=eng https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi.... Holy Spirit is synonymous with Holy Ghost.
meowtimemania 2y ago
In Mormonism the Holy Ghost basically equates to one’s intuition
- literalAardvark 2y ago
  Guess the holy ghost is in for a suprise then. Detecting genAI has been beyond mere intuition for months, possibly years for the less intuitive.
- camhart 2y ago
  I'm of this faith and I've never heard anyone describe it this way. Feelings are involved, but there's more to it. See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/revelation?lang=eng&id=title3-p17#title3 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi....
  - wwweston 2y ago
    I'm also of the faith and of course we don't describe it that way in most church discourse because it'd lose one of the most valued functions: framing human experience in a sacred narrative and privileging LDS participation and perspective. Probably not correct to chalk all transcendent experiences up to that, and sometimes church discourse also steers towards real effort in genuinely engaging fine points of recognition, cultivation, and (occasionally) limits of extra-rational faculties and their integration into overall efforts at perception and understanding (and I consider this a helpful formative part of my development), but frequently we behave in a way that doesn't take the topic seriously as much beyond a vehicle for institutional affirmation & sacralized participation, and that's leaving alone times when we discount or even outright discard that study-it-out-in-your-mind step. But hey, I get it, maybe keeping revelation yoked to a few valued goals is reasonable enough, because the quality of self-reported holy spirit guidance is best case bell-curve shaped and the lower 50% slopes crazy. Pretty sure every Latter-day Saint has heard some crazy stuff passed off as personal revelation (from either a kooky ward member or that handful of leaders that you're not sure the call was quite right on) and learns how to talk around that. Maybe it's better to have a low ceiling with a high floor.
mirekrusin 2y ago
They should put it behind api, they'd make billions.
- defrost 2y ago
  HSAAS ?
  - mirekrusin 2y ago
    Would love to see papers comparing HS performance against other solutions.

mtillman 2y ago

It’ll be interesting to see how the various cults adopt this technology. They certainly have plenty of money to acquire the hardware. The Vatican has fairly advanced computing infrastructure from what I understand as well: https://cerncourier.com/a/quantum-gravity-in-the-vatican/ https://cerncourier.com/a/quantum-gravity-in-the-vatican/

pascal_blaze 2y ago
The Behind The Bastards podcast was speculating about Scientology creating an AI chat phone app trained on L. Ron Hubbard's prolific output so you could chat with The Founder on your phone whenever you wanted. I doubt they'd do it though. AI Chat is too unpredictable for a cult that wants to tell each adherent exactly what to do in every part of their lives. Hubbard's writings are also likely to be wildly inconsistent and they wouldn't be able to be sure the AI would pick the 'correct' party of his writings to regurgitate. On the other hand, releasing an app they _said_ was a way to privately chat with an AI Hubbard persona but was actually live chat with thousands of unpaid indentured followers trained to detect and report thoughtcrimes... that sounds right up their alley.
- mirekrusin 2y ago
  Something tells me once logical consistency is solved problem, they'll get stuck on older versions due to compatibility issues.
- helpfulContrib 2y ago
  [dead]
frognumber 2y ago
The Catholic Church was the center of European scholarship and science for most of the past two millennia, roughly through the mid-1800s. Modern genetics was invented by Augustinian friar and abbot Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). Where do you think the robes worn at university graduations come from? Supporting scholarship has always been central to its mission. The difference is that 1850 was around when other establishments had enough resources to pass it. You might say that the Vatican might have "plenty of money to acquire the hardware," but they can't come close to competing with Google Research or OpenAI (especially when so many other things are part of its mission).

YossarianFrPrez 2y ago

I half-expect some sub-branch of the abrahamic religions to issue an edict against AI, arguing that it's a false idol. (Not that I am arguing for this.)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
aaronbrethorst 2y ago
Nah, we’ll just get ‘Kosher’ chatbots. https://m.jpost.com/judaism/article-742328 https://m.jpost.com/judaism/article-742328
bee_rider 2y ago
I half expect some religion to claim to have some divinely inspired neural network weights.
kromem 2y ago
It will get much more anti- when it becomes clearer just how eerily fitting one of the early 'heretical' group's beliefs are to AI and digital twins. For example, the group believed that it was actually the future but we were in a recreation of the past in the images of an original (and now dead) humanity who had brought forth a still alive intelligence based in light that recreated a twin of the universe pretty much just to resurrect humanity. They talked about how it was the consumption of one's words that brought them back, not consumption of flesh and blood. How many would be combined into a single one, and that when we one day saw a child not born of woman it would be the creator of this twin universe, which in actuality isn't physical and is just its light in the images of what existed before. It's a bit ironic as it's the most compelling tradition for Jesus having actually had any prophetic knack, but embracing it means acknowledging that the past 2,000 years of Christian tradition backed the wrong horse.
- jpt4 2y ago
  To which early heresy does this refer?

sudhirj 2y ago

Putting aside the weird beliefs, the principles themselves are actually pretty decent and widely applicable. Strange place for principled thought leadership to come from :-/

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
4gotunameagain 2y ago
Religion is a strange place for principled thought leadership to come from ? One might say that it has been the quintessential source of principled thought leadership.
- underlogic 2y ago
  But not fact checking. The more things change the more they stay the same
- rmbyrro 2y ago
  For sure. Ask Giordano Bruno and he will certainly confirm that to you.
qsort 2y ago
> the weird beliefs I'm an atheist and a materialist so I share basically nothing of that kind of worldview, but those beliefs aren't actually that much outside the mainstream. The Holy Ghost as the third person of the trinity powering your faith is mainstream Christianity, not weird stuff from the book of Mormon -- if you don't believe that you probably aren't a Christian at all. > Strange place for principled thought leadership to come from When it comes to AI I'm really not surprised. The weird ones out have been those in the tech and tech-adjacent (especially) spaces, saying things that are often completely untethered. When you take out the violent and mean-spirited nature it is often said with, "go touch grass" isn't a bad suggestion...
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  I don't think the trinity is the part of Mormonism that people find weird...

blackhawkC17 2y ago

A bit off-topic, but can a Mormon explain the reason why Mormons have a lot of kids? The simple answer would be religion, but even mainstream American Christians don't have kids at that level. I know a Mormon tech tycoon with 10 kids and another tycoon with 14 kids, lol

mrkstu 2y ago
As one of eleven, I think it's a couple things. One is Utah was a rural state until fairly recently, so big families and farming kind of go together. Another is a bit more 'soft' doctrinal. The general teaching in the 60s/70s as other groups were losing their big families, the LDS/Mormon idea of the pre-existence of human spirits and the importance of the instruction to Adam and Eve to: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" was taken as a literal instruction for members, with general counsel to avoid birth control and a prohibition on abortion. My parents never tried anything beyond the rhythm method to control their family size. Current generations still refrain from abortion (generally) but otherwise aren't too concerned about using artificial methods in limiting the size of their families, especially as the expense of big families has multiplied. Still bigger than average, but the gap is much smaller, and shrinking.
j16sdiz 2y ago
I guess that's a social issue? People don't have to have kids because having kids are expensive and time-intensive. When all your friends have lots of kids, those expense can be shared.
repeekad 2y ago
Mainstream American Christians probably aren’t as devoted to their religion as say Mormons or other more closed off sects. Devote Catholics absolutely have as many kids as they reasonably can, you’re right the simple answer is just religion. Lower birth rate is often associated with reduced religious affiliation, even atheists have more kids than “agnostics”.
youainti 2y ago
Happy to give it a go. There is a lot of emphasis on the importance of family, including raising kids. This is because we believe that before living on this earth, our spirits lived in the presence of God, our Heavenly Father. This world is a place for us to learn and grow, and someday we hope to be able to return to Heaven. In this context, raising kids is both a part of personal development and a way to help others experience this life [0]. When it comes to how many children to have, the decision is left up to the couple [1]. Some of the factors that affect each family include cultural and personal preferences. I've know people who feel that a large family is a requirement for salvation. Others feel that they need a smaller family. In all cases the couple is expected to seek guidance from God. In my parent's case, they just kept having kids until they felt like their entire family was finally here (with a total of 8 kids). My wife and I have had some very personal experiences about when to have our children. Hope that helps. [0] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng&id=p3#p3 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-fam... [1] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/38-church-policies-and-guidelines?lang=eng&id=title_number101-title108#title_number101 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-han...

PlunderBunny 2y ago

I'm glad this was posted - I appreciate reading it because I wouldn't normally be exposed to this sort of article.