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Does the pope count as a precedent? Lots of donations head the pope’s way every day.

thinkingemote 3y ago
The church provides a number of charitable services in healthcare, education etc across the world particularly in the developing world. If you add them all up they provide the most globally. They actually do things compared to this "open" and "non profit" front of a technology company.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 3y ago
  You're comparing apples (openness) to oranges (doing stuff). It would be weird to even ask "How much open source code and research does the Catholic Church publish?" The church does stuff away for free, sure, but then so too does ChatGPT have this shockingly powerful free tier.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    > How much open source code and research does the Catholic Church publish? The Catholic church has not only engaged in centuries of religious scholarship, it has given the knowledge freely to anyone. They even set up buildings where you can go and they will teach you what they have found, most people go on Sunday. That isn't to mention their patronizing of the arts supported the greatest painters and composers that humanity has ever produced. Now how many hungry has OpenAI fed?
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > The Catholic church has not only engaged in centuries of religious scholarship, it has given the knowledge freely to anyone. They even set up buildings where you can go and they will teach you what they have found, most people go on Sunday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Apostolic_Archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Apostolic_Archive Also, one of the biggest issues that Martin Luther had with Catholicism was that it put the clergy between the faithful and god. *The Thirty Years' War enters, stage left*. > Now how many hungry has OpenAI fed? Around as many as the number of Python programs that the Catholic Church has written with Hindi comments, which was one of the first things I tried on ChatGPT. There's also a reason why I said "apples (openness) to oranges (doing stuff)". OpenAI also didn't send nine crusades to liberate the holy lands from the Muslims. Someone probably thinks that makes them "woke" or something.
      - smegger001 3y ago
        On the otherhand measuring and organization like the Catholic church and judging it today by its worst behavior over 500 years ago (while ignoring the environment it was in at the time no one ever mentions the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople going on concurrently) and ignoring the massive changes in teaching, theology and behavior that has happened in the intervening centuries.
        ben_w 3y ago
        Yes, but as my entire point is this is a bad comparison… …as OpenAI is only a few years old, wasn't the first few years of Christianity, before Catholicism split from other denominations, "oh no, we need to stop our converts committing suicide immediately because they want to get out of their awful lives and into the heaven we promised them and they're afraid they might sin again between baptism and death if they don't off themselves"? Even with the weird end of the "Rapture of the Nerds" (the attitude not the book, I've not read the book), I don't think we're seeing so much of that resulting from AI development. And that's despite more users than there were Europeans in 1500 AD, let alone 1 AD.
    - ckdarby 3y ago
      That is what most companies would call a recruitment event.
yieldcrv 3y ago
I like how you focused on the fiefdom aspect accurately, while others focused on the nonprofit aspect
toyg 3y ago
And the Vatican is rightly subject to a lot of criticism and scrutiny every time their activities stray in the for-profit realm. A few years their banks were effectively banned from the global banking system because they were too shady - they're not shady because they like to be shady, but because they work hard to hide activities that are not, er, "in character" with their stated non-profit mission. They had to clean up their act before they were allowed back in. The state of their numerous properties and businesses in Italy is constantly under legal challenge, with various different outcomes at various points in time. The pope is not a model.
username332211 3y ago
Well, the donations the pope collects aren't gathered trough entirely rational arguments, so that helps get away with lots of issues. And the pope is quite bound by ancient texts and the the pronouncements of previous popes. While no way exists to depose him if he disregards them, having the cardinals declare the current pope was illegitimately appointed and appointing a new one was fairly common back in the days.

The church provides a number of charitable services in healthcare, education etc across the world particularly in the developing world. If you add them all up they provide the most globally. They actually do things compared to this "open" and "non profit" front of a technology company.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 3y ago
You're comparing apples (openness) to oranges (doing stuff). It would be weird to even ask "How much open source code and research does the Catholic Church publish?" The church does stuff away for free, sure, but then so too does ChatGPT have this shockingly powerful free tier.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  > How much open source code and research does the Catholic Church publish? The Catholic church has not only engaged in centuries of religious scholarship, it has given the knowledge freely to anyone. They even set up buildings where you can go and they will teach you what they have found, most people go on Sunday. That isn't to mention their patronizing of the arts supported the greatest painters and composers that humanity has ever produced. Now how many hungry has OpenAI fed?
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > The Catholic church has not only engaged in centuries of religious scholarship, it has given the knowledge freely to anyone. They even set up buildings where you can go and they will teach you what they have found, most people go on Sunday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Apostolic_Archive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Apostolic_Archive Also, one of the biggest issues that Martin Luther had with Catholicism was that it put the clergy between the faithful and god. *The Thirty Years' War enters, stage left*. > Now how many hungry has OpenAI fed? Around as many as the number of Python programs that the Catholic Church has written with Hindi comments, which was one of the first things I tried on ChatGPT. There's also a reason why I said "apples (openness) to oranges (doing stuff)". OpenAI also didn't send nine crusades to liberate the holy lands from the Muslims. Someone probably thinks that makes them "woke" or something.
    - smegger001 3y ago
      On the otherhand measuring and organization like the Catholic church and judging it today by its worst behavior over 500 years ago (while ignoring the environment it was in at the time no one ever mentions the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople going on concurrently) and ignoring the massive changes in teaching, theology and behavior that has happened in the intervening centuries.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        Yes, but as my entire point is this is a bad comparison… …as OpenAI is only a few years old, wasn't the first few years of Christianity, before Catholicism split from other denominations, "oh no, we need to stop our converts committing suicide immediately because they want to get out of their awful lives and into the heaven we promised them and they're afraid they might sin again between baptism and death if they don't off themselves"? Even with the weird end of the "Rapture of the Nerds" (the attitude not the book, I've not read the book), I don't think we're seeing so much of that resulting from AI development. And that's despite more users than there were Europeans in 1500 AD, let alone 1 AD.
  - ckdarby 3y ago
    That is what most companies would call a recruitment event.

yieldcrv 3y ago

I like how you focused on the fiefdom aspect accurately, while others focused on the nonprofit aspect

toyg 3y ago

And the Vatican is rightly subject to a lot of criticism and scrutiny every time their activities stray in the for-profit realm. A few years their banks were effectively banned from the global banking system because they were too shady - they're not shady because they like to be shady, but because they work hard to hide activities that are not, er, "in character" with their stated non-profit mission. They had to clean up their act before they were allowed back in. The state of their numerous properties and businesses in Italy is constantly under legal challenge, with various different outcomes at various points in time. The pope is not a model.

username332211 3y ago

Well, the donations the pope collects aren't gathered trough entirely rational arguments, so that helps get away with lots of issues. And the pope is quite bound by ancient texts and the the pronouncements of previous popes. While no way exists to depose him if he disregards them, having the cardinals declare the current pope was illegitimately appointed and appointing a new one was fairly common back in the days.