3 ms·

There are also light switch hacks that allow to turn on/off the light without actually interrupting or creating an electrical circuit (e.g. there's a photo-sens

by smsm42 6y ago

There are also light switch hacks that allow to turn on/off the light without actually interrupting or creating an electrical circuit (e.g. there's a photo-sensitive relay which checks at random intervals if the path of light is blocked, and then switches the circuit, but since blocking the path of the future light does not do anything right now, it may not be a violation). While the religious permissibility of those are still questionable, one has to admire the ingenuity. Not sure about Alexa things, would be interesting to check what rabbis think about the always-on devices on Shabbat... The simplest hack I've seen was pre-torn toilet paper - while tearing stuff is not permitted on Shabbat, the needs of your body do not cease, so one has to prepare :)

gambiting 6y ago
But literally all of those hacks feel like playing some stupid game with God. Like, if God is a truly omnipotent and all knowing, why would he/she care that you're tearing toilet paper on Shabbat or flipping a light switch. Equally, if you assume that this all powerful God really cares about this stuff, why would you assume they can be "tricked" by those hacks? Is the God all powerful and all knowing? Or literally so stupid that you can defeat the sacred logic with some simple hacks? Like the Eruv wire that wraps around Manhattan - do religious people honestly think that this "trick" works, in a spiritual sense? That they go to have their eternal judgement dispensed and God goes "yep, well done, you tricked me, I never specified the maximum diameter of the wire, and clearly you humans are too stupid to read context/intention in 'do no work' so yeah, it's all good, I have to let this one slide".
- lolc 6y ago
  There's no reason to follow the internal logic of a religion when trying to understand its workings. With Sabbath, observe how the rabbis decide on how to apply the rules. They know that their task is to keep the society functional, even if they use religious language to express it. One basic reason a community will have some arbitrary rules: They make it expensive to be part of the community. They make it harder to fake adherence and profit from the group. All members of the community understand this intuitively even if they can't express it. So they welcome what looks like silly rules to the outsider.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- lebuffon 6y ago
  You are re-visiting questions posed by a famous 2nd temple period rabbi from the Galilee which ultimately spawned a radical offshoot sect that exists to this very day. ;)
- TchoBeer 6y ago
  I'm not religious anymore, but none of this strikes me as particularly compelling. I can take up the part of the theist here. >Like, if God is a truly omnipotent and all knowing, why would he/she care that you're tearing toilet paper on Shabbat or flipping a light switch. Because god prohibited these things. >Equally, if you assume that this all powerful God really cares about this stuff, why would you assume they can be "tricked" by those hacks? Because they permitted doing it that way. >Is the God all powerful and all knowing? Or literally so stupid that you can defeat the sacred logic with some simple hacks? God is all powerful and all knowing and the things they prohibited are prohibited and the things they didn't aren't. >Like the Eruv wire that wraps around Manhattan - do religious people honestly think that this "trick" works, in a spiritual sense? Loaded question, but short answer is yes. I think you should read this article (https://www.halachipedia.com/index.php?title=Introduction_to_the_Modern_Eruv https://www.halachipedia.com/index.php?title=Introduction_to...). The eruv is to get around a rabbinic prohibition, not a divine one. It's also not accepted by everyone as a valid technicality; my rabbi would carry in nothing less than a walled city. >That they go to have their eternal judgement dispensed and God goes "yep, well done, you tricked me, I never specified the maximum diameter of the wire, and clearly you humans are too stupid to read context/intention in 'do no work' so yeah, it's all good, I have to let this one slide". No you go to your eternal judgement and god goes "good job you never violated any of my commandments".
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Right, some good arguments here. If you don't mind, to continue the discussion a bit further: >>Because god prohibited these things. But God didn't, at least not explicitly. The specific instruction is to "do no work on Shabbat". The interpretation is human. I think(and of course Rabbis disagree) that interpreting "flipping the light switch" as work is NOT what God meant, it feels almost like an insult to intelligence to interpret it this way. There is an intention behind it, and I think the intention is more important than trying to be as literal as physically possible. After all doing literally anything is "work" in the sense that there is physical activity happening, you are burning oxygen just breathing, walking creates sound and talking moves the air about - it's all "work" in the physical sense. Why is flipping a switch special? I know the answer to this - because religious authorities have decided that's the case. But that loops back to the original point - God didn't decide this. Rabbis did. It's like Muslims are prohibited from consuming alcohol and if we accept that this is a divine restriction, we can still discuss what it actually means for us humans. Some interpretatioms say that Muslims shouldn't drink alcohol because the intention here is to prevent inebriation. But cooking with alcohol is fine because it doesn't lead to inebriation. Some other teachings say that all alcohol is bad. Those teachings conveniently ignore that alcohol is in everything(your average loaf of bread contains up to 2% alcohol by volume, purely due to yeast fermentation), but dogma is more important than reality. So yes, I think I stand by what I said initially - all of this feels like a game, with some really crazy rules. Play according to the rules and you get eternal salvation. Don't question the rules.
- smsm42 6y ago
  > if you assume that this all powerful God really cares about this stuff Nobody knows what God "cares" about, nor even if "caring" is something God does at all, in a sense that humans do it. It's like comparing human to CPU by clock frequency - these are different things, and clock frequency is a useable measure for a CPU (at least certain designs of CPUs) but quite useless if you want to talk about a human. You can't just bring terminology from one area onto another and expect it automatically to make sense. > Is the God all powerful and all knowing? Yes. > Or literally so stupid that you can defeat the sacred logic Why you think it's "defeating" anything? God is not a CTF contest. You framing it as "defeat" is just your framing, but it's not how Jews see it - they see it as "preserving", not "defeating". > do religious people honestly think that this "trick" works, in a spiritual sense? What you mean by "works"? It certainly works for them. It may not work for you, but if you are neither an observant Jew nor God, who cares if it works for you or not?
  - gambiting 6y ago
    >>What you mean by "works"? Works as in - they believe that they go for their eternal judgement and God says "I clearly said 'do no work' and you thought that by wrapping an entire city in a piece of wire you can safely ignore my commandment". I know it's pointless to apply logic to religion, but how far could you stretch that? Could you wrap an entire country in wire and claim it still have the same effect? An entire continent? The entire planet? >> who cares if it works for you or not? I understand you're being flippant, but come on. I'm just asking if religious people think that such a simple "trick" is really going to be accepted by God as compliant with holy commandments. I can see the answer is clearly yes.
    - sevrinsky 6y ago
      Try to think of the Torah -- God's literal word, to Orthodox Jews -- as the Constitution, and rabbinical scholars throughout the generations as the Supreme Court. The Torah prohibits work on Shabbat, but only points out a few instances in the broadest terms. One of those is to not carry items "between domains", directly referenced in Exodus and Jerimiah, but again only a single passage in each instance. This was expanded upon in Talmudic works, which include an explanation of what exactly constitutes a public domain. The eruv is not a loophole to "fool God". The eruv is a means to adjust the technical (or legal) definition of a public domain. When one ensures that a community has a functioning eruv, that itself is part of Shabbat observance.

by smsm42 6y ago

gambiting 6y ago

But literally all of those hacks feel like playing some stupid game with God. Like, if God is a truly omnipotent and all knowing, why would he/she care that you're tearing toilet paper on Shabbat or flipping a light switch. Equally, if you assume that this all powerful God really cares about this stuff, why would you assume they can be "tricked" by those hacks? Is the God all powerful and all knowing? Or literally so stupid that you can defeat the sacred logic with some simple hacks? Like the Eruv wire that wraps around Manhattan - do religious people honestly think that this "trick" works, in a spiritual sense? That they go to have their eternal judgement dispensed and God goes "yep, well done, you tricked me, I never specified the maximum diameter of the wire, and clearly you humans are too stupid to read context/intention in 'do no work' so yeah, it's all good, I have to let this one slide".

lolc 6y ago
There's no reason to follow the internal logic of a religion when trying to understand its workings. With Sabbath, observe how the rabbis decide on how to apply the rules. They know that their task is to keep the society functional, even if they use religious language to express it. One basic reason a community will have some arbitrary rules: They make it expensive to be part of the community. They make it harder to fake adherence and profit from the group. All members of the community understand this intuitively even if they can't express it. So they welcome what looks like silly rules to the outsider.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
lebuffon 6y ago
You are re-visiting questions posed by a famous 2nd temple period rabbi from the Galilee which ultimately spawned a radical offshoot sect that exists to this very day. ;)
TchoBeer 6y ago
I'm not religious anymore, but none of this strikes me as particularly compelling. I can take up the part of the theist here. >Like, if God is a truly omnipotent and all knowing, why would he/she care that you're tearing toilet paper on Shabbat or flipping a light switch. Because god prohibited these things. >Equally, if you assume that this all powerful God really cares about this stuff, why would you assume they can be "tricked" by those hacks? Because they permitted doing it that way. >Is the God all powerful and all knowing? Or literally so stupid that you can defeat the sacred logic with some simple hacks? God is all powerful and all knowing and the things they prohibited are prohibited and the things they didn't aren't. >Like the Eruv wire that wraps around Manhattan - do religious people honestly think that this "trick" works, in a spiritual sense? Loaded question, but short answer is yes. I think you should read this article (https://www.halachipedia.com/index.php?title=Introduction_to_the_Modern_Eruv https://www.halachipedia.com/index.php?title=Introduction_to...). The eruv is to get around a rabbinic prohibition, not a divine one. It's also not accepted by everyone as a valid technicality; my rabbi would carry in nothing less than a walled city. >That they go to have their eternal judgement dispensed and God goes "yep, well done, you tricked me, I never specified the maximum diameter of the wire, and clearly you humans are too stupid to read context/intention in 'do no work' so yeah, it's all good, I have to let this one slide". No you go to your eternal judgement and god goes "good job you never violated any of my commandments".
- gambiting 6y ago
  Right, some good arguments here. If you don't mind, to continue the discussion a bit further: >>Because god prohibited these things. But God didn't, at least not explicitly. The specific instruction is to "do no work on Shabbat". The interpretation is human. I think(and of course Rabbis disagree) that interpreting "flipping the light switch" as work is NOT what God meant, it feels almost like an insult to intelligence to interpret it this way. There is an intention behind it, and I think the intention is more important than trying to be as literal as physically possible. After all doing literally anything is "work" in the sense that there is physical activity happening, you are burning oxygen just breathing, walking creates sound and talking moves the air about - it's all "work" in the physical sense. Why is flipping a switch special? I know the answer to this - because religious authorities have decided that's the case. But that loops back to the original point - God didn't decide this. Rabbis did. It's like Muslims are prohibited from consuming alcohol and if we accept that this is a divine restriction, we can still discuss what it actually means for us humans. Some interpretatioms say that Muslims shouldn't drink alcohol because the intention here is to prevent inebriation. But cooking with alcohol is fine because it doesn't lead to inebriation. Some other teachings say that all alcohol is bad. Those teachings conveniently ignore that alcohol is in everything(your average loaf of bread contains up to 2% alcohol by volume, purely due to yeast fermentation), but dogma is more important than reality. So yes, I think I stand by what I said initially - all of this feels like a game, with some really crazy rules. Play according to the rules and you get eternal salvation. Don't question the rules.
smsm42 6y ago
> if you assume that this all powerful God really cares about this stuff Nobody knows what God "cares" about, nor even if "caring" is something God does at all, in a sense that humans do it. It's like comparing human to CPU by clock frequency - these are different things, and clock frequency is a useable measure for a CPU (at least certain designs of CPUs) but quite useless if you want to talk about a human. You can't just bring terminology from one area onto another and expect it automatically to make sense. > Is the God all powerful and all knowing? Yes. > Or literally so stupid that you can defeat the sacred logic Why you think it's "defeating" anything? God is not a CTF contest. You framing it as "defeat" is just your framing, but it's not how Jews see it - they see it as "preserving", not "defeating". > do religious people honestly think that this "trick" works, in a spiritual sense? What you mean by "works"? It certainly works for them. It may not work for you, but if you are neither an observant Jew nor God, who cares if it works for you or not?
- gambiting 6y ago
  >>What you mean by "works"? Works as in - they believe that they go for their eternal judgement and God says "I clearly said 'do no work' and you thought that by wrapping an entire city in a piece of wire you can safely ignore my commandment". I know it's pointless to apply logic to religion, but how far could you stretch that? Could you wrap an entire country in wire and claim it still have the same effect? An entire continent? The entire planet? >> who cares if it works for you or not? I understand you're being flippant, but come on. I'm just asking if religious people think that such a simple "trick" is really going to be accepted by God as compliant with holy commandments. I can see the answer is clearly yes.
  - sevrinsky 6y ago
    Try to think of the Torah -- God's literal word, to Orthodox Jews -- as the Constitution, and rabbinical scholars throughout the generations as the Supreme Court. The Torah prohibits work on Shabbat, but only points out a few instances in the broadest terms. One of those is to not carry items "between domains", directly referenced in Exodus and Jerimiah, but again only a single passage in each instance. This was expanded upon in Talmudic works, which include an explanation of what exactly constitutes a public domain. The eruv is not a loophole to "fool God". The eruv is a means to adjust the technical (or legal) definition of a public domain. When one ensures that a community has a functioning eruv, that itself is part of Shabbat observance.