6 ms·

Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had

Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing. Post-industrial world needed human capital. Hence, the need for human value. If you notice most of this "need" has arisen out of then need for industrial expansion. Post-AI will be interesting. Will we go back to pre-industrial or get something better.

mrcwinn 4mo ago
I also wonder if it’s just harder to rule a much larger population in the modern world than in those times. Any jackass can show up and say that he was chosen to lead by some higher power. But you must still convince enough people that that is the case or at least have a military large enough that you can control.
atq2119 4mo ago
I don't think this is factually accurate. What it really boils down is a question of scale of societies. Most of us humans inherently value each other. There are exceptions, and small communities can get nasty. But for the most part, small human communities tend to be supportive and valuing each other. This really only stops being the case when you get large-scale societies that allow humans to view others through an overly abstract lens. Combine that with an unchecked accumulation of power, and you have the potential for those in power to view the rest as without value.
- HDBaseT 4mo ago
  I agree with you. I recently watched a bunch of videos from a YouTuber 'Mike Okay' and he visits some random, obscure and non-standard countries to travel. Most of the people he encounters are super friendly, welcoming and willing to bend over backwards to help him out. It's genuine human connection and willingness. He will speak to people from every possible background, including people in the Taliban and honestly at the end of the day, we're all humans and most people respect that. Things have become blurred with social media, digital life, closed and private nature of the modern world but if you take a step back, you can realize humans are typically, very helpful, friendly and unique characters.
GalaxyNova 4mo ago
Serfs were of value to the lord, and they were usually not treated that badly compared to many workplaces today.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  Arguably from very early on the Church has been at the forefront of "Serfs are of value to the Lord" if you will (St Lawrence, et al). So far none of the AI stuff I've seen has really been about "the computer has no soul" and more around the danger that dehumanization can bring (which has been a refrain since the previous Leo, mind you).
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
swatcoder 4mo ago
It's telling how blithely you're missing the point of what the pope(s) mean by human value. Their intended meaning is that far gone from modern consciousness, even among people who meant to champion some kind of human value themselves. They're not talking about the economic value of humans or even the psychological value of humans as subjects with experiences and a right to liberty or care or something. The idea they're trying to recall and reinvigorate is a sense of human value that transcends that temporal, material noise altogether and that is truly universal. It's the human value that welcomed slaves, prostitutes, wretches, merchants and kings as peers in something grander than economy or state or lineage or tribe or creed. Now, you can make a well-developed case that that's hogwash and that the human value that matters is the one that alleviates suffering or grants liberty or even the one that grants material reward for some virtue or bloodline or whatever, but that's not what these guys are talking about. They mean a human nature that is always there and always worthy, just as much when it's experiencing temporal poverty/suffering/abuse as when it's basking in temporal wealth/success/freedom. The idea is that Christian or not, Catholic or not, it does good for everyone to think of human value that way and the critique -- for a long time now -- is that for all the flash and glimmer of technology and its material benefits, it sometimes makes it very very easy to forget.
- orochimaaru 4mo ago
  What rot. Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved. Tell that to people in the inquisition. Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers. Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools. Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
  - swatcoder 4mo ago
    There's really no argument against the institutional and historical hypocisy. There's no shortage of people and groups that have done or currently do horrible violence against others, sometimes even in the name of these ideas. But I don't know if that takes away from the idea itself and what fruitful counterpoint it might play in modern discourse.
pryce 4mo ago
If my definition of 'value' was something that was totally contingent on both post-industrial society and an ultracapitalist approach to production, and it made me deduce that human being's lives over thousands of years or in other societies were worth "nothing", I think I would interpret this as a 'reductio-ad-absurdum'. That is, by deducing an absurd conclusion from the premise, that makes a strong argument that my definition of 'value' must be so narrow as to be effectively broken. I would respond by looking for a different, more wide definition of value, among the various ones that have been proposed.
- westmeal 4mo ago
  Then you wouldn't like Ayn Rands novels.
wahern 4mo ago
The concept of fundamental human rights is certainly new, but our notion of intrinsic human value (and intrinsic value of other life and things) arises from our empathy, which at least in its degree is perhaps our most important defining trait as a species. (Our empathy may have been a prerequisite for the emergence of our intelligence.) Conflating the two is why some people have trouble understanding why religions like Buddhism and Christianity seemed to tolerate so much inequality and violence; or more generally just assumed people writ large were historically more callous and uncaring than today. Arguably one of the downsides, though, to a focus on rights vs intrinsic value is that rights are typically couched in materialist terms. Most of the time that's probably for the better, but sometimes maybe not.
- IAmBroom 4mo ago
  Dogs show empathy towards not only dogs and humans, but even baby birds and rabbits - animals which one would expect to be viewed as pure caloric units, sans empathy. Whales show empathy towards their young, and towards humans. Male "loner" lions have been known to show empathic protection toward human and antelope young in the bush. It's increasingly hard to define a clear difference between Humans and "mere Animals"; empathy is emphatically not a clear difference. To date, fear of vacuum cleaners may well be the only known difference.
  - wahern 4mo ago
    Sure, just like many other animals exhibit analytical intelligence and complex communication. The seeds are there. The distinction is by degree, but the gap is pretty wide in all three cases. No other species has been shown to systematically display non-kin, non-mating-system altruism (for which empathy is probably an integral component). It seems likely you need systematic non-kin altruism to achieve the ubiquitous, complex cooperation humans exhibit. And that complex cooperation is probably a prerequisite to make our degree of intelligence evolutionarily profitable. Otherwise human-level intelligence should be more common than our immediate lineage. (Some cousin species may very well have been smarter or more cooperative than us; relatively speaking it could be homo sapiens found a more effective equilibrium. Nonetheless our immediate lineage seems to be the only one to break through the selfish gene bottleneck that restricts other species along these axes.)
watwut 4mo ago
People really should stop making up history from childrens books. People were valuing people to various degrees and tool seriously the human value question in every single period we have records from. And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands.
- psychoslave 4mo ago
  >And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands. Ho, certainly they did. The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of. Nothing specific to nazis, look at Rwandan genocide. Hutu extremists systematically referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches" and "snakes" in propaganda. Or even closer on a timeline perspective, Israeli leaders and media have used terms like "human animals" and described Gaza as a "city of evil" or a "nation of barbarians," while some Palestinian factions have used similar language against Israelis. Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.
  - watwut 4mo ago
    Nazi seen cruelty, violence and lack of empathy as manliness and virtue. Openly and specifically. You as a young man wanting to prove yourself would be beating and killing people, knowing they are humans and that violence toward humans is what made you manly in your peer group. They were not saying "it does not count". They were saying "I am great for doing it". > The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of. It was not a disagreement about who is human. Nazi did not killed just Jews and foreigners. They killed and tortured plenty of fellow Aryans, because those were their political opponents or to create fear in others. When a nazi tortured Aryan German to get names out of him, he knew full well he is torturing a human. It was not about whether they are human or not, it was simply that human life had less value. Using animals and insects as insults does not mean there was any confusion about whether those being mistreated are humans. > Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them. Actually believing they are not human is super rare and found only in some cults. Insults and degradations are how you work others to a rage, but they are not meant to be factual statements. And they are not interpreted as factual statements. Happily, nazi left enough writing behind them, we know what they thought about human value.
pasquinelli 4mo ago
what do you know about the pre-industrial world, really?
psychoslave 4mo ago
[dead]
graemep 4mo ago
> Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing. Not true. Serfs had rights that varied a lot between societies and over time. Religions mostly teach a value of human life, and Christianity teaches equal value: "when Adam devlved and Eve span who was then the gentleman", or "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" or "it is easier for a rich map to pass through the eye of the needle". There were all sorts of people in between. Free people who were not serfs. Skilled people who were members of guilds.
- IAmBroom 4mo ago
  In fact, the value of those lives - in terms of their souls - was quite explicitly equal. Numerous pieces of Momento Mori and Apocalyptic artwork reinforced the notion that beggars, nobles, and even popes would appear equally before Jesus for a moral judgment, with the same chance to be found worthy or damnable. And "the Conqueror Worm" would make sure all of them faced the same afterlife treatment, whether they were buried in silks or naked in a pauper's grave.

mrcwinn 4mo ago

I also wonder if it’s just harder to rule a much larger population in the modern world than in those times. Any jackass can show up and say that he was chosen to lead by some higher power. But you must still convince enough people that that is the case or at least have a military large enough that you can control.

atq2119 4mo ago

I don't think this is factually accurate. What it really boils down is a question of scale of societies. Most of us humans inherently value each other. There are exceptions, and small communities can get nasty. But for the most part, small human communities tend to be supportive and valuing each other. This really only stops being the case when you get large-scale societies that allow humans to view others through an overly abstract lens. Combine that with an unchecked accumulation of power, and you have the potential for those in power to view the rest as without value.

HDBaseT 4mo ago
I agree with you. I recently watched a bunch of videos from a YouTuber 'Mike Okay' and he visits some random, obscure and non-standard countries to travel. Most of the people he encounters are super friendly, welcoming and willing to bend over backwards to help him out. It's genuine human connection and willingness. He will speak to people from every possible background, including people in the Taliban and honestly at the end of the day, we're all humans and most people respect that. Things have become blurred with social media, digital life, closed and private nature of the modern world but if you take a step back, you can realize humans are typically, very helpful, friendly and unique characters.

GalaxyNova 4mo ago

Serfs were of value to the lord, and they were usually not treated that badly compared to many workplaces today.

bombcar 4mo ago
Arguably from very early on the Church has been at the forefront of "Serfs are of value to the Lord" if you will (St Lawrence, et al). So far none of the AI stuff I've seen has really been about "the computer has no soul" and more around the danger that dehumanization can bring (which has been a refrain since the previous Leo, mind you).

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

swatcoder 4mo ago

It's telling how blithely you're missing the point of what the pope(s) mean by human value. Their intended meaning is that far gone from modern consciousness, even among people who meant to champion some kind of human value themselves. They're not talking about the economic value of humans or even the psychological value of humans as subjects with experiences and a right to liberty or care or something. The idea they're trying to recall and reinvigorate is a sense of human value that transcends that temporal, material noise altogether and that is truly universal. It's the human value that welcomed slaves, prostitutes, wretches, merchants and kings as peers in something grander than economy or state or lineage or tribe or creed. Now, you can make a well-developed case that that's hogwash and that the human value that matters is the one that alleviates suffering or grants liberty or even the one that grants material reward for some virtue or bloodline or whatever, but that's not what these guys are talking about. They mean a human nature that is always there and always worthy, just as much when it's experiencing temporal poverty/suffering/abuse as when it's basking in temporal wealth/success/freedom. The idea is that Christian or not, Catholic or not, it does good for everyone to think of human value that way and the critique -- for a long time now -- is that for all the flash and glimmer of technology and its material benefits, it sometimes makes it very very easy to forget.

orochimaaru 4mo ago
What rot. Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved. Tell that to people in the inquisition. Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers. Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools. Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
- swatcoder 4mo ago
  There's really no argument against the institutional and historical hypocisy. There's no shortage of people and groups that have done or currently do horrible violence against others, sometimes even in the name of these ideas. But I don't know if that takes away from the idea itself and what fruitful counterpoint it might play in modern discourse.

pryce 4mo ago

If my definition of 'value' was something that was totally contingent on both post-industrial society and an ultracapitalist approach to production, and it made me deduce that human being's lives over thousands of years or in other societies were worth "nothing", I think I would interpret this as a 'reductio-ad-absurdum'. That is, by deducing an absurd conclusion from the premise, that makes a strong argument that my definition of 'value' must be so narrow as to be effectively broken. I would respond by looking for a different, more wide definition of value, among the various ones that have been proposed.

westmeal 4mo ago
Then you wouldn't like Ayn Rands novels.

wahern 4mo ago

The concept of fundamental human rights is certainly new, but our notion of intrinsic human value (and intrinsic value of other life and things) arises from our empathy, which at least in its degree is perhaps our most important defining trait as a species. (Our empathy may have been a prerequisite for the emergence of our intelligence.) Conflating the two is why some people have trouble understanding why religions like Buddhism and Christianity seemed to tolerate so much inequality and violence; or more generally just assumed people writ large were historically more callous and uncaring than today. Arguably one of the downsides, though, to a focus on rights vs intrinsic value is that rights are typically couched in materialist terms. Most of the time that's probably for the better, but sometimes maybe not.

IAmBroom 4mo ago
Dogs show empathy towards not only dogs and humans, but even baby birds and rabbits - animals which one would expect to be viewed as pure caloric units, sans empathy. Whales show empathy towards their young, and towards humans. Male "loner" lions have been known to show empathic protection toward human and antelope young in the bush. It's increasingly hard to define a clear difference between Humans and "mere Animals"; empathy is emphatically not a clear difference. To date, fear of vacuum cleaners may well be the only known difference.
- wahern 4mo ago
  Sure, just like many other animals exhibit analytical intelligence and complex communication. The seeds are there. The distinction is by degree, but the gap is pretty wide in all three cases. No other species has been shown to systematically display non-kin, non-mating-system altruism (for which empathy is probably an integral component). It seems likely you need systematic non-kin altruism to achieve the ubiquitous, complex cooperation humans exhibit. And that complex cooperation is probably a prerequisite to make our degree of intelligence evolutionarily profitable. Otherwise human-level intelligence should be more common than our immediate lineage. (Some cousin species may very well have been smarter or more cooperative than us; relatively speaking it could be homo sapiens found a more effective equilibrium. Nonetheless our immediate lineage seems to be the only one to break through the selfish gene bottleneck that restricts other species along these axes.)

watwut 4mo ago

People really should stop making up history from childrens books. People were valuing people to various degrees and tool seriously the human value question in every single period we have records from. And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands.

psychoslave 4mo ago
>And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands. Ho, certainly they did. The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of. Nothing specific to nazis, look at Rwandan genocide. Hutu extremists systematically referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches" and "snakes" in propaganda. Or even closer on a timeline perspective, Israeli leaders and media have used terms like "human animals" and described Gaza as a "city of evil" or a "nation of barbarians," while some Palestinian factions have used similar language against Israelis. Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.
- watwut 4mo ago
  Nazi seen cruelty, violence and lack of empathy as manliness and virtue. Openly and specifically. You as a young man wanting to prove yourself would be beating and killing people, knowing they are humans and that violence toward humans is what made you manly in your peer group. They were not saying "it does not count". They were saying "I am great for doing it". > The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of. It was not a disagreement about who is human. Nazi did not killed just Jews and foreigners. They killed and tortured plenty of fellow Aryans, because those were their political opponents or to create fear in others. When a nazi tortured Aryan German to get names out of him, he knew full well he is torturing a human. It was not about whether they are human or not, it was simply that human life had less value. Using animals and insects as insults does not mean there was any confusion about whether those being mistreated are humans. > Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them. Actually believing they are not human is super rare and found only in some cults. Insults and degradations are how you work others to a rage, but they are not meant to be factual statements. And they are not interpreted as factual statements. Happily, nazi left enough writing behind them, we know what they thought about human value.

pasquinelli 4mo ago

what do you know about the pre-industrial world, really?

psychoslave 4mo ago

[dead]

graemep 4mo ago

> Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing. Not true. Serfs had rights that varied a lot between societies and over time. Religions mostly teach a value of human life, and Christianity teaches equal value: "when Adam devlved and Eve span who was then the gentleman", or "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" or "it is easier for a rich map to pass through the eye of the needle". There were all sorts of people in between. Free people who were not serfs. Skilled people who were members of guilds.

IAmBroom 4mo ago
In fact, the value of those lives - in terms of their souls - was quite explicitly equal. Numerous pieces of Momento Mori and Apocalyptic artwork reinforced the notion that beggars, nobles, and even popes would appear equally before Jesus for a moral judgment, with the same chance to be found worthy or damnable. And "the Conqueror Worm" would make sure all of them faced the same afterlife treatment, whether they were buried in silks or naked in a pauper's grave.