No man is already granted that
As a fellow Butlerian, I salute him.
If Scientology can get a tax exception as a religious institution, then this guy can get title 9 coverage to not use AI at work as far as I am concerned.
If it was anywhere but a university I would have also expected him to be on the short list for layoffs next round for such a choice as well.
Religion is a federally protected class. Are we not even pretending our laws work anymore?
So you can’t oppose outsourcing your brain power to a megacorp that will take zero responsibility for any consequence of its spicy autocorrect…
but you can oppose outsourcing your brain power to “the machine” because it’s against your beliefs.
I mean, if it works, yeah sure, call it a religion.
Humanism is a religion.
Gotta be a religion to get privileged in USA. Reason and rationality get thrown out the window.
Or at the very least an “article of faith” protected by the US Government. Idk about humanism tax status.
I mean it’s literally not, it’s a philosophy, even the American Humanist Society states so
Lol, as if religion is anything different.
Yeah but they’re all dorks so whatever.
True and real
There’s no objective difference between religion and philosophy.
One is a way of thinking, the other is an interpretation of reality.
“an interpretation of reality”… so it’s just a re-occurring thought lmao?
No it’s a set of fundamental assumptions about the nature of the universe and reality.
The other one is bullshit *
And philosophy isn’t bullshit for sure.
I dunno, some philosophy is bullshit
Yeah, but just because all then all philosophy is bullshit. Some movies are bullshit but not for that the cinema and all the movies are bullshit too.
Anyways, every statement, even stating that philosophy is bullshit or isn’t knowledge, is a philosophic statement to some degree or another.
There is.
Philosophy is structured and rational thought.
Religion is the opposite. Easy.
It is impossible to construct ethics from first principles. A study of philosophy would tell you that. Logic can take you from one step to another, but at the end of your chain of reason will always lie some pure belief, an act of faith.
For example, many ethical systems can be traced to a few basic axioms, like “human suffering is bad.” Or “humans deserve to live.” Or “all lives have value.” But these are statements that cannot be produced through mathematics. There’s no equation that can tell you it’s a good thing for a child not to die of hunger. At some point, every moral system traces back to certain basic axioms that are pure beliefs, not rationally derived from any logic or mathematical equation.
It is impossible to construct ethics from first principles.
You’ve never read Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals? That’s pretty basic stuff, like Ethics 101 basic.
And I’m not even a huge Kant fan let alone a deontologist, in fact I’m more of a situationist, but you should at least be familiar with the Categorical Imperative before you make a nebulous claim like “A study of philosophy would tell you that.”
Sometimes abstraction is good and necessary, but a statement like “There’s no equation that can tell you it’s a good thing for a child not to die of hunger” is an over-abstraction. There’s no need to abstract it further, because the situation is already concrete. Anyone who has experienced grief can tell you that, and an ivory tower that’s too sterile to taste grief has nothing to offer the world in the way of ethics.
Only a sociopath would have to wrestle with the question of whether there’s anything objectively bad about children dying. Do you expect anyone to try to prove it mathematically? Because that would be entirely the wrong approach.
If you can’t state “living is a good thing, and therefore premature loss of an innocent life is a bad thing” as a first principle, then there could be no point in debating ethics with you because you’re already amoral.
I’m not accusing you of thinking that way, I understand you’re presenting a line of reasoning in the abstract as a thought experiment. I’m simply telling you what my response would be to someone who tried actually arguing along that line.
Perfectly said, thank you!
I used that bullshit to get out of beard length requirements at a job once. They dont like to question it to much, and if they do, you just have to get offended lol.
I mean, prompt writing is like wishes with Djinns.
I don’t know, Jewish tradition has golems. They’re basically human-shaped machines that are powered by the words written by their creators.
Though golems are supposed to be mute, and LLM are anything but. Maybe that’s why AI is bad.
I’m sure we can find something written millennia ago that describes precisely why we shouldn’t use gen AI now, we just have to look for it.
Evil genies
And BAM, just like that, the term “Butlerian Humanist” was born.
hold up. keep your torches lit.
It should be noted that while anyone can request a Title VII exemption, it will only be granted if the applicant has a deep moral conviction that could count as an article of faith. Aside from that, the law also states that the request should not place an “undue hardship on the employer’s business.” So, even though Durman is no longer personally required to use AI tools for his tasks, he is still expected to attend meetings and cooperate with colleagues who use AI or to submit materials to AI tools, as needed.
TLDR; this guy won, but you probably won’t.
The Amish and Sabbath observing Jewish people get religion-based exemptions from needing to use technology, it’s not unprecedented
Yes, humanists are now in the same camp with the amish and orthodox jews apparently.
I was actually thinking about this wrt healthcare access earlier. I have a genuinely religious conviction against the intimate, personal details of my condition being processed by a machine and made available online. That is the business of myself and a professional caregiver, not a tech company and whatever “partners” they feel like sharing it with. You’re supposed to be able to opt out, but practically that’s almost never possible
Anyways I know it’s in an entirely different field, but this felt like a hopeful precedent. Thanks for sharing :)
I view it more from the sacredness of the human voice and word.
Civilizations that existed closer to the invention of writing treated it a mysticism and magic. The ancient Egyptians would write on their tombs, “speak my name and I shall live again.” Words are extension of the spirit. They allow a piece of yourself to transcend time, place, and even death itself. Words have power. The words you write are a piece of your soul.
I don’t mind AI for replacing things that are not works of human expressiveness and creativity. Want to use an AI to test new compounds for potential medicinal effects? Go nuts. Want to use AI to optimize some soulless manufacturing process? Be my guest.
But no human being should ever be forced by their employer to have a machine speak for them. Or to make art for them. Or any other endeavor where genuine human artistry and creativity are involved. My words are my own. My thoughts are my own. Everything I write, for good or ill, is an extension of my own mind and spirit. And I find something deeply morally wrong about people who take the soulless words of a machine and pass them off as their own.
Though it’s kinda funny that Humanism was the one to do it, it’s literally atheism with extra steps
Not really. At least to me although it seems to be similar, it’s less a focus on no god and more on being a good person and improving the lives of others. (You know, the things many religious folk think atheists are incapable of)
Religious exemption should apply to common sense. That’s just common sense.
Common Sense is just code for “cultural zeitgeist”, there’s no such thing as common sense
Things don’t cease to exist just because there’s a german word for them.
Freedom from religion is more important than freedom of religion.
Time to apply this to financial economics.
I suddenly just became religious.
Praise be to whatever gets me exemption!
You’re gonna love this article
You should have seen me getting out of jury duty. Legendary sermon. They dismissed our whole group.
I would have preferred to talk about rational reasons to oppose the torture/gulag system, but unfortunately this enslaver state only privileges religious ideology.
One Butlerian Jihad comming right up, Sir!
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
Where does it say that lol
They’re referencing Dune. In the lore AI tried to kill humanity, the war was called the Butlerian Jihad. As a result, AI was banned across the galaxy. I don’t know why you’re being downvoted just for not knowing
I think the downvotes are from the “lol” where the question mark normally goes.
As is praxis.
IIRC, the war didn’t start because AI started killing humans. It started because humans opposed AI replacing them. There was a religious sect (Butlarians) who opposed this, and they eventually rose up to fight the machines. They weren’t directly attacked first.
Bah! It shall not stand that a man of such impervious ignorance should discomfort our cultured company!
The Bibble, page 241.
It’s in the Orange Catholic Bible
If you read the bible upside down, it makes much more sense.
Trump was trying to tell us that but money got in the way.
I see what you did there, but in the Dune universe, the Orange Catholics are a religious sect, not a jab at bad makeup and trump.
What a strong work of art Dune is, after all
The book probably has nothing to do with Christian Catholicism, and is not a religious sect but a book. That’s a common mistake people make. Catholic is a word outside of that particular sect of Christianity. It means “universal.” In the context of Dune, the Orange Catholic Bible refers to a universal Bible that covers many religions.
It was produced after the Butlerian Jihad to be a basis for everyone to use. There are not “Orange Catholics” as far as I’m aware. Orange and catholic are just descriptions of this essentially encyclopedia of religious texts for people to form their new understanding with after learning to think for themselves once again.
Got it, thank you!
Praise Jesus! (I guess I’m only half joking)
Alchemy goes against my beliefs, I refuse to use the philosopher’s stone.
