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Pope Says Technology Causes Confusion Between Reality and Fiction
Pope Benedict XVI has warned that people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of new technologies, and not old books. "New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality. The image can also become independent from reality, it can give birth to a virtual world, with various consequences -- above all the risk of indifference towards real life," he said.
"New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality. The image can also become independent from reality, it can give birth to a virtual world, with various consequences -- above all the risk of indifference towards real life."
That's funny. It's arguable that the same could be said about the Bible. How many thousands of pages have been written about the workings of the Divine, or of the afterlife, when no one has truly seen either?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Pretty sure people have been unable to discern the stories told in the bible from reality for quite some time.
I can't distinguish the pope from some loony old guy who keeps talking weird stuff
... tell him he owes me a new irony meter.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
The reality is that I'm never letting my kid around any priest, or ever trusting the church again. That real enough?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Tell us, Papa Ratzi, how else would you describe someone who adtively protects, supports, defends and hides known repeat paedophiles, hmm?
That sounds exactly like someone who is indifferent toward real life.
So get off your high horse and join the real world.
And startby turning over those of your priests who are paedos to the lawful authorities and stop protecting, supporting, defending and hiding the paedos.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Talk about confusion! Dinosaurs walking with people, Noah's Ark, a walk through Biblical History...I can't figure out WHO is telling the truth! http://creationmuseum.org/whats-here/exhibits/
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I looked at that photo of him and felt complete indifference.
The pope also warned that condoms would lead to an epidemic of sex and suggested they should be confiscated and molded into a giant plastic jesus.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I'm not confused between reality and fiction, I just want to know are we talking about Pope Ratzinger or the Space Pope here?
OK, when you're done ripping on the pope, stop and consider his point of view and what he has to say. Whether you agree or disagree, his point deserves some honest thought and debate.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
For Pope's sake don't BOIL it!
...reality and fiction.
Eschew Obfuscation
Catholics are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of old and fabricated beliefs, and not new and proven sciences and technology.
The Pope is mad because he's not longer the keeper of the "magic." Now that the layman has access to his own curtain with a little man behind it, the Pope is now a punchline is a gigantic joke.
Has he watched Fox News?
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
The church is struggling for relevance in the modern world. This does not help.
Sounds to me like the Catholic Church wants to go back to the old days of an illiterate flock lead in a latin mass.
Because then people had a more "realistic" connection to things that were important like tithing or the consequences of no doing so.
At some point technology will be so advanced that couldn't be distinguished from magic... or miracles, at least for the people that don't understand it. The solution is not to complain, to hide, or to ban technology, is to make people to understand it.
I mean, the whole monotheism thing strongly suggests we ourselves are in a layer of simulation. So how real is virtual reality under those circumstances?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
In any age, there were those who blurred reality for oppressive means. Whether rewriting history to depict Native Americans submitting to colonists in a painting, to airbrushing out Stalin's opponents in photographs. Technology is a tool, and as moral beings we have the ability to do good or evil with it with it, including distorting reality.
I nominate writing. Proof:
If we can set aside the fact that this is a cult leader who likes to play dress-up (hard, I agree), it might be that his statements have some merit. I mean, Twitter isn't actual communication, the people on Facebook aren't really friends, a half a dozen regularly read blogs do not comprise a realistic worldview, and so on. There's so much technical mediation of the real world nowadays that it's not like you have to look far to find someone who doesn't believe it's true unless his phone tells him about it. (Or, worse, who can't experience something without twittering it.)
Sometimes even insane people make valid points.
It works for Fox News!
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
Darn those courts using technology to discover all the pedophiles he covers for!
Down with the machines
Aside from everybody spotting the obvious irony here, I went to read the original article to see if I could get all contrarian and spot some useful insight. I find that whenever I hear a story of the form "Person X said something monumentally stupid", there's practically always something in either the subsequent or preceding sentence that provides context and makes it debatable or thought-provoking or even obvious. That doesn't necessarily apply to people who make a living saying monumentally stupid things, often for political gain, but people who actually think for a living (and I do include the Pope in that category) often think more subtly than single-sentence extracts from newspaper articles makes them out to be.
Except in this case, that's all there is. The article is 5 sentences long. It gives no context and only the barest hint of who the audience is. It doesn't link to the full text. As far as I can tell it's not the Montreal Gazette's fault; they ran the entire article as it came to the off the Agence France-Press wire service. I had a reasonably high impression of AFP; perhaps I need to reconsider that.
Maybe there will be a more useful article coming in the future, one that provides something more than an opportunity for something other than simply going "tsk tsk" at the Pope. But RTFA in this case isn't going to make you any smarter.
(Look, I'm not here to defend the Pope. Yes, I'm aware of all the terrible things the Church and he personally have done, and I think it needs to be prosecuted. But I want my opinions to come from actual crimes, not suspiciously short quotes.)
Scientist (well me, in any case) Says Religion Causes Confusion Between Reality and Fiction
You know, it's funny to hear the pope talk about not being able to distinguish fiction from reality (setting aside that that's the whole premise of religion), but when I hear the pope call anyone out on "indifference towards real life", it makes my blood boil. We're talking about an organization that covered up molestation of kids, that tells Africans that condoms are bad despite the rampant AIDS epidemic, the sheer opulence of the Vatican contrasted with the poverty they claim to serve. And this is just from current events. Do I really need to go back and dig through the annals of history to dig up all the horrifying things that the Catholic church has done? I bet I can find exponentially more people who've used religion as an excuse to kill, enslave, torture, kill some more, and guilt others into killing too.
Pot? Is that you, Kettle?
To a greater or lesser degree, the Pope might have a point. If we take his broad argument and narrow it down to some information of the internet, he very well be on to something. One problem with information on the Internet is that it's accuracy can be dubious at best. A person could post a bald-faced lie and pass it off as truth. Technology can make it easier to use propaganda that is founded on a lie to gain popularity for a politican. On the other hand, the same can be done with printed material - technology only makes it more economic and faster.
Seriously? This coming from a man whose subordinates spread the lie that condoms don't prevent the spread of aids? From a guy whose predecessors believed they could change matters of fact by turning on their special powers? From an institution that is completely invested in the idea that consciousness is somehow divorced from the body (e.g, the soul) despite the fact that there is zero evidence for that hypothesis, and a great deal of evidence against it - after all, the entire field of therapeutic pharmaceuticals would be a waste of time if your consciousness wasn't inextricably linked to your body.
I believe Jesus said something about motes and planks and eyes.
Fiction: I can grab a sniper rifle and shoot people in the head. I can also get shot and killed. It will suck if the latter happens.
Reality: There's an invisible man who live IN THE SKY and is going to damn us all to an eternity of fire and agony. BUT HE LOVES US!
(Thank you George Carlin!)
Fiction: I can exercise fantastic powers, magic, superstrength, etc, etc, etc when I play a game.
Reality: If I'm of a suitable age, and a priest asks me to play a game, it's "hide the salami".
Now I know which one *I* would have a preference for (fiction)!
Fiction: When I'm done with a game, or I decide I don't like it, I can turn it off.
Reality: When you have the church preaching abstinence as the only way, that birth control is "bad", and you have girls popping out kids like clockwork, leeching off the public teat, killing each other over interpretations of what God is, etc, etc, we just have to live with it.
Yup. The lapsed Catholic in me can see how it'd be REALLY tough to distinguish fantasy from reality.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
OK, when you're done ripping on the pope ...
Oops! Looks like someone coded an infinite conditional into their English post. I mean, will Slashdot ever run out of things to criticize him for?
... not unlike the commentary on The Holy Bible I've read (curiously Isaac Asimov's being one of the most refreshing and providing multiple points of view).
Clearly his anti-technology agenda is just a cover for him trying to stop websites from spreading data on molesting priests and the parishes they have been hidden at. </sarcasm>
Personally I've given up on ripping apart the Catholic Pope. I am confirmed Catholic. I know The Holy Bible fairly well but whenever I want to discuss what the Pope says I get criticized for not being fluent in whatever the devil this one speaks (Polish?) and therefore any translation I have is immediately rendered useless and possibly flawed by Lucifer. I'm certain this will result in a debate on the mistranslation of "technology" or some such pedantry
My work here is dung.
... the real risk is simply human beings don't know how to think and most aren't intelligent enough to think. Most people would rather live illusions and lies. This is why religion is so pervasive, we are a species that loves our lies, technology or not. It takes real courage to pursue truth with eternal vigilance because it means your morality and feelings get over turned and you have to let real knowledge change you.
Most people do not want to do that.
I agree with him to a point. Psychologically healthy person won't have a problem with this, but some people who are already compromised may completely loose touch with reality.
Everyone I've known playing MMO's had a pretty firm handle on reality, largely because they don't think orcs elves or dragons are real.
Then I've known some second life people who have the line blurred. I can't forget once when someone was trying to convince me of something, then they said, oh, nevermind that was in SL.
And, don't forget the future is going to be like the matrix.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Modded flamebait? Who gave the Catholics mod points?!?
sate their sexual urges. Just give them a PC and a Second Life account. Onanism is surelly a smaller sin than rape.
a pusher of a non-existent god has no room to talk. Can you ride a bicycle?
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Wasn't there a time when these "old books" were new technology? His argument is irrelevant because people of faith will always adapt to the "new" technologies of the world. On a side note, wonder when the pope is getting a twitter account.
Pope Benedict XVI has warned that people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of questioning blind faith. "Reconsideration of dogmas and the refusal to believe proposals without proof can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to damnation instead of salvation. The questioning individual can also become independent from the Bible, it can give birth to a virtual world, with various consequences -- above all the risk of indifference towards the Church," he said.
Nuff said
No surprise that somebody who believes in virgin birth and a water-walking zombie riddle-speaking prophet God has difficulty distinguishing between reality and fiction. The real question is, does technology make it difficult for atheists to distinguish between reality and fiction?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I hear abstinance causes confusion between reality and fiction too... I wonder when he warns for that.
From his perspective, this is actually quite an understandable reaction. Technology exposes people to a larger variety of fictions that other people believe - which makes picking out the "right" story of reality less clearly a matter of where you were born as with previous generations.
When the ultimate truths of the universe are less a matter of derived logic and reason, and more revealed wisdom, then the entire key to "properly receiving" that truth is framing. Framing that is only reliable when information is controlled by a correctly-thinking organization.
From that viewpoint, it is completely understandable that outside ideas exposed by technology would be seen as pollution to young minds, sources of confusing reason that distract from the truth that must be learned, but cannot be derived merely by the methods of science or otherwise observing reality alone.
Once you've seen enough of these stories, they certainly do all start looking VERY similar in terms of "protecting" the truths, and even the truths start looking suspiciously similar in their advocacy of the interests of the founders and maintainers of the beliefs. Those are exactly the kinds of observations that would risk the basis of belief in many of these revealed truths - and also why so many of these belief groups cut themselves off from the ideas of outsiders, or work so hard at inoculating themselves against outside ideas.
The real kicker is that any of these beliefs might actually be true - there is rarely a clear way to outright disprove them - and the world would be mostly the same with a liberal interpretation of them. The main difference would be that one of these groups would be correct, and that we should teach their, and only their glorious revealed story - but when looking at all of their stories, there would be no way of choosing which one had evidence that made only them correct.
So, I can't fault him for his belief, or his attempt to push his exclusive truth - but I'll keep my technology, and listen to other perspectives all the same. I'd prefer not to believe in any gods that would punish me for that, thank you very much.
Ryan Fenton
So now I can't jerk off OR play video games? Damn dude, WTH am I supposed to do with my free time?
Is anyone else laughing about this coming from the bloody pope of all people?
iburnaga.blogspot.com
Imagine that, the slashdot crowd would rather take shots at religion than assess what the man is actually saying.
No where is he saying that technology is bad. No where is he saying that technology will be the doom of us all. No where is he saying repent ye sinners! He's saying be careful with your gadgets and how you let them augment your life. I believe Asimov had similar warnings.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
He is concerned that the priests are confusing computer generated child porn with real child porn.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
But where would the church be without magic?
A wise Canadian once said, "If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
Let it be known that books were considered a technological advance at some point also. And that's pretty much all the church has going for them. A freakin' book. They're just mad they can't make a Holy Video Game to carter to the "modern" people.
All glory to Arstotzka!
The Pope has been using too much technology ;)
I'm guessing this was provoked by a Cardinal developing a WoW addiction.
Don't believe in the fantasy stuff that you get from technology. Just believe in the fantasy stuff that I tell you...
...yeah you talk a real mean game. Truth is you wouldn't dare talk shit about Islam, and they are even worse about this. You guys only pick on the weak, no balls to mess with the real nasty ones.
look at the rise of right wing blogs, and the people who would trust it more than they trust mass media
a media channel loses its credibility, its audience, and its advertisers when it lies. so it has to fact check. additionally, it must remain neutral and moderate, and not espouse an agenda, or it turns people off, which means less advertising revenue. moderation and neutrality is of paramount importance to mass media
when bush was in office the far left complained about the right wing mass media supporting the phony march of war on iraq, etc. well, there is no right wing mass media, and there is no left wing mass media, there is only mass media. the real problem is that the far right thinks it is liberal, and the far left think it is conservative, only because their own perspective is so far right (or left). move far right enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and lefty. move far left enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and right-wing
so now, with the internet, we see the rise of far right wing people and far left wing people walled off in their own media universe. their own little walled garden of self-reinforcing lies. obama is a "secret muslim". obama is not an american citizen. this is obviously insanity. but walled off on their own, in their own ideological echo chamber of lies, people begin to believe these obvious smears and lies rather than reality
so the pope is 100% correct: the internet has allowed reality and illusion to become inseparable for people. it takes energy to change your beliefs to align with reality. so why change your beliefs? just change your reality instead, by choosing your partisan blogs over mass media
there are a class of people now who distrust mass media, yet, exasperatingly, trust partisan blogs which lie all the time in support of an agenda, and openly do not care about the truth or fact checking or credibility, as long as they advance a cause
this is genuinely dangerous and scary. the internet is enabling the fractionating of society into walled fiefdoms of ideologues, and no real truth, or at least even common mythology. people pick and choose what they want to believe, regardless of reality. at least mass media made for a true commons of the people. now we only have open warfare amongst entrenched ideological gangs. and the internet makes that possible
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Shouldn't he count himself lucky people have trouble discerning fantasy from reality? Job security.
...and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality.
Religions hate competition.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Spoken exactly like someone who is himself completely disconnected from reality (of the times). Bet he doesn't even have a cellphone.
When you want to have a real philosophical discussion, do you seek out New Age believers who have faith in the power of crystals? People who believe you can communicate with the dead? Conspiracy theorists who think the world is run by a secret cabal of Jew bankers?
The Pope is the middle one.
Novelists and politicians have been doing that for hundreds of years!
Religion Causes Confusion Between Reality and Fiction
Re-arrange these words to form a sentence Kettle black pot calling.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Remove yourself from this domain...You have no power here. Virtual worlds indeed. They call it evolution.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
things aren't like the old days; News at 11.
He meant to say, *Religion* causes confusion between reality and fiction.
From now on, articles from/about the Pope should replace his name and title with "Bono" of U2 fame. No doubt many people will be perplexed with the quality of the sentence structure and depth of thought, but at least there will not be the same tired knee-jerk reader secretions and comments.
The pope's right, and he should know. In virtual worlds, porn sends sends sinners to hell. In the real world, raping babies sends coverup managers to the pope's throne.
And it's technology's fault, not some ancient superstition and the global corporation that exploits it.
--
make install -not war
It's a matter of how immersed we choose to become in whatever we are experiencing that could cause us to blur the difference between reality and fiction. A video game is no more capable of creating a suspension of disbelief than a well-written book.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"I reject your religion, and substitute my own."
I'm not referring to words or phrases lost in translation...I'm talking about things like King James versions, etc.
The King James Version is a translation. The KJV-only folks actually hold that this translation is more authoritative than the original texts. This doesn't make much sense to anyone else.
Pope Causes Confusion Between Religion and Reality.
He's the leading authority on selling illusion as truth.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
pope's reality causes child molestation
It's _religion_ that causes confusion between reality and fiction, not technology. The pope mistakenly equates what you see with what you believe. Just because you see something that looks real doesn't mean you believe it's real. And just because you believe something is real doesn't make it real.
Not surprising that a religiously orthodox type like the pope would have trouble with subtleties like these, really.
if I want to learn about technology and its risks, I'm not really gonna ask the catholic church. They have a history of incompetence, denial and bending the truth in that area. They only seem to engage into science and modern topics, because they have to show their presence to not get forgotten. They'll always fight for their own interest and only give in as much as they have to. So anything they come up with will probably be purely researched and heavily biased. So I'm not reading it out anymore. Their job to convince people like me that it's worth it. We all know, not gonna happen. ^^
2. Religion causes indifference towards real life. This has already been hashed and rehashed in other threads, but this is the second thing I thought of, after...
1. Who cares if someone's indifferent towards real life, as long as they're living a fulfilled life? If a virtual world is nice enough to cause people to entirely disregard real life, then chances are (modulus some mental disorders) that world is nice enough to live a good life in. It doesn't matter what's real, as long as people are happy and they know there are other choices.
(Come to think of it, wasn't this the point of Inception?)
I'll believe the Pope on this one when the Catholic Church stops insisting that Jesus was born from a virgin and reincarnated after execution. After 12 years of Catholic school, where science was taught properly, and Adam and Eve was treated as ancient philosophy; I got turned off when it became clear that the Church still can't distinguish fact from fiction about its beginnings.
No, I will not work for your startup
- above all the risk of indifference towards real life," he said.
Says he (the speaker for the church (chirch)) who seems to feel that children aren't real and so molestations upon them have no risk towards real life..... or something like that.
WTF?????
If there is anyone who is indifferent towards real life it is him and the top people of this 'organized religion'... "it's okay to molest children, because by keeping that priest there, we bring the Catholic religion to them."
WTF???
My god (sorry, excuse me) My Dog, how can people still care what this doof says. What an idiot.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Does it react to bible as if it was real?
Of course it does, because it Israel.
1) Why do you people always post AC?
2)...
As a matter of fact, science says free will doesn't exist.
Citation?
http://www.unisi.it/eventi/practical_philosophy/paper/Mele.pdf
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The pope has been watching the latest episodes of Caprica and has been unable to distinguish them from news reports.
Tech causing confusion between reality and fiction>
That's the Roman Catholics shtick.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The Church holds monopoly on Confusion Between Reality & Fiction and resents others getting into its lucrative enterprise!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
As I understand it, the biblical commandments against swearing prohibit saying things along the lines of G* d*, not "fuck" or "shit".
If people would just believe what they believe themselves, the world would probably be alot more peaceful.
When you get idiots like the pope involved who have an investiture (sp?) in the Power, you get harm and death.
Organized religion is about power, not religion.
Stop listening to your religious Leader, and start listening to what YOU have to say.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
The one that Jews believe in? The one that Muslims believe in? The one that Christians believe in (who is kinda similar to the Jewish one)?
All these are the same God of Abraham.
this religion is the only one true religion and our God(s) is/are the only true God(s), everybody else is wrong
Islam does make special mention of people of the book, non-Muslims who follow an Abrahamic faith.
Who cares what some old religious man in Rome says about technology? Stick to your fairy tales and telling people in Africa they can't use condoms... and let people who actually care about technology comment on technology.
Seriously slashdotters? How many distopian movies have you watched and said, "Crap, that could totally happen to us?" How many of you recognize that there are people who have unhealthy addictions to their virtual worlds? If this were Kevin Smith, the Wachowskis (maybe not after speed racer though), Orwell, Huxley or somebody other than the pope saying this, then you'd all be going, "yeah, he's right, we've got to be careful". Or at the very least we'd be hearing a discussion of the implications of technology on our daily lives. But no, instead you guys go right for the genetic fallacy that because the pope is saying this, it must be garbage. If the pope said 2+2=4 would you all of a sudden stop believing that too? Seriously, the issues he brings up are completely understandable from a religious or non-religious position. We should be concentrating on these, not whether the pope can fly.
and he's talking about Project Blue Beam. ;)
Pope says New Technology, Reailty, and Fiction Confuse Him.
It has been downhill since the printing press and those vulgar non-clergy dared attempt to understand the Bible without the proper oversight of the Church.
They get "Mob Points"
Pope : "people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of new technologies".
Aepervius : "people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of iron age myth".
How about that for a debate : once the pope provide evidence that not discenerning fiction from reality due to his "holy book" is about as bad as losing it from technology ?
Who really cares what the pope says, thinks or does? These sorts of regular releases from the Vatican are really all the same: press releases. They are designed to provoke debate and cause polarization either for or against what is said. Other then true legal concerns about the conduct of some leaders within the church... their statements, beliefs and arguments are mute and have absolutely no bearing on all but those who pay them moneys on a weekly basis. This is an attempt to keep one relevant without actually being relevant... and yet we (slashdot) continually assist them in this. I wish we could stop hearing about the pope here in Slashdot as it bothers me that we continue promote their religion by repeating all their latest provocative press releases.
The pope has no effect on my life and from the catholics I know... also has little real barring on theirs either. But again: who cares???
Why isn't there a "no-religion" option in slashdot settings? Because that would really clean up this blathering about right and wrong, true and false, good and evil, just and unjust from people who have no true insight about either. And where is the science to back these claims? Why do we continue to post these stories when there are a million crackpots saying just as stupid things as the pope says?
Hey samzenpus: can you please stop posting the pointless articles/statements please?
Yes: I read the bible. It is gruesome (in the good parts). It's good fiction. It says nothing about virtual reality and for good reason. You can believe/debate whatever you want... but when it comes to my life... I don't like being associated with organizations that use a symbol of torture to represent themselves.
Surprise surprise, people are confused about truth verses illusion. If I made my money on religion, though, I wouldn't be talking about this in public. If you encourage people to ask questions like "How do I know if what I see in this picture is real?" they might ask the same question about other things too. Sshhhh.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality," the pope said.
The article does not say whether the Pope is for or against new technology.
Considering that he's a head of a religion, and supposedly the connection between man and God, it's not at all surprising that he would know a thing or two about confusing reality and fiction.
"there are a class of people now who distrust mass media, yet, exasperatingly, trust partisan blogs which lie all the time in support of an agenda, and openly do not care about the truth or fact checking or credibility, as long as they advance a cause"
You just described religion to a T. These "blogs" are their holy texts and sermons. And yet you discovered nothing new.
Indeed, following the same logic, there can't be sin as it was god's will anyway and he knew what we'd do.
Another /. article that is tangentially related to religion, another pissing match between two non-falsifiable premises.
... due to the new technology called "Fox News".
That is all.
Hitler Youth hides and protects Pedophiles; insists LGBT folks are an abomination.
I'd say the Pope blurs the line between reality and fantasy, but this is pretty much par for the course out of that disgusting organization.
I find this topic fascinating - and with a modicum of truth behind it. I was listening to 2 different discussions by old people recently - a teacher of 25 years, and a politician who'd been in politics for about 40 years. Among the good things they said about things getting better; they both said some interesting things:
-Young people are far more verbal, opinionated, and insulting when they converse
-The current trend is that we are becoming more polarized and vocal about our differences instead of honestly trying to find compromises. Comporomises being that we don't either get what we want, but are mutually able to agree on something that's a bit good and a bit bad for both of us.
I think this directly reflects the 'troll' effect on much of the internet. I've even seen it in myself. If I can anonymously, or even not anonymously, fling as much vitriol at another person as I want online without worry of much reprisal; I slowly start carrying it into my own real-life interactions. And since I spend a lot of time online, then I start living more with my online persona then my real-life one that is much more apt to listen and not immediately discount.
Now I'm not saying that this is 100% correlation - I'd also argue societal effects such as teaching all kids they must be winners (i.e. compromise is a gray area or a loser position) and that we're increasingly becoming a society of entitlement. But I don't think people here could deny there is carry-over. And what are the ethics of online interaction anymore anyway? Do we have any? Should there be any at all? Lase-faire? Clearly things like the cyber-bullying of a kid by his roommmate to post his gay sex video on the internet which lead to his suicide, or other teenage harrasment on facebook sites is a clear example that there are serious real-world consequences to our online interactions. So, anyone want to discuss this instead?
... I can think of nobody better suited to give advice about ethics than the Pope.
Looks who's talking. An institution living (and believing fully) a virtual reality since year 0. Even if I play Halo I know Master Chief won't come to rescue me, they still believe Jesus will. And, by the way, this comment is from Rome, Italy.
Well, it could be sociopathy, where in one's self is the only reality that matters.
Or schizophrenia or other mental illnesses.
Or, as I think might be the case of most who can't manage to discern the crucial difference, it could be elementary stupidity.
OK, when you're done ripping on the pope, stop and consider his point of view and what he has to say. Whether you agree or disagree, his point deserves some honest thought and debate.
Lets put this in context you're saying that I'm supposed to take a man who believes in the magic man in the sky talking snakes seriously?
And as far as modern social issues go he takes what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home more seriously than his representatives molesting children.
You argued that if God knows the outcome that we don't have free will. I argued it is not. What is your counterargument?
There is no god.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Forcing thousands of men to live celibate lives for no good reason causes confusion between consenting adults and altar boys.
Pope Palpatine has zero credibility.
They live in a world of "should", then make every attempt to bend reality to match their world-view, often with disastrous results. If the Pope would take off the fancy robes and actually interact with the world as it actually is, the world might be a better place.
I thought it was Dan Brown's job to cause confusion between reality and fiction?
These views express my own personal opinions, not those of the other voices in my head
Indifference toward real life? I fear that radical terrorists - are in much more danger of "Indifference toward Real Life" than any techno-geeks...
Hmm... So, technology, which makes things possible in the real world, is distorting people's view of reality? Guess he doesn't like the fact that it is making it more and more difficult for the church to distort people's view of reality by showing what is real...
The message came from his words to an assembly of the catholic press.
The primary sources are necessary --> Spanish not yet in English. I know /. can work google translation. /.ers to read & speak more than 1 human language.
Even better I challenge
Really, he is urging catholics not to get sucked into false reality that technology can enable. He urges catholics not to live life as a theatre -- he was not addressing the world in his comments -- its the world that got a guilty conscience after hearing them.
Probably most here wont also read the philosophical works of Jacque Ellul (French 1912-1994) who was also a contemporary of Benedict XVI. He was a philosopher who challenged a person holding Technology for Technology's sake world views -- which many do here. Both he and Benedict XVI align on many points concerning technology.
It's actually quite good to see that Benedict is actually active in commentating on Technology (as compared to other Leaders political, or spiritual who never will) and technologies impact/change of human society.
Most here take Technology as de facto like fish take water as de facto in the fish tank. Those that do here should step away from the terminal and get a different perspective for a bit -- give it a whirl.
FWIW I think Ellul's work "La technique ou l'enjeu du siècle" ought to be required reading for those in a Engineering or Comp Sci program. Aldus Huxley is said to have "brought Ellus' work on Technology" to the English speaking world BTW... so also too did the UniBomber read it... but we get all kinds here as well -- probably more of the latter..
and my backup analog Irony meter has the needle buried in the red.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Do not ask me to choose between religion and technology. Technology will win over every time.
He may have a point, but it's nothing new or specific to technology (assuming he means things powered by electricity rather than just technological advancements and developments, like writing, etc). All media has the same problem. How do you know that what you are being told / reading / etc is fact or fiction? As new technology tends to be more visual than more established media it can seem more life-like and may therefore be easier to believe in. However, you only need to look at the effect books and the words people say have had over mankind's history to see that this has happened many times throughout the years.
All sorts of groups of people have done this, from governments to religions and companies. It is not the technology that causes confusion, it is the way people choose to use it.
He wishes to caution against losing touch with reality by paying too much attention to make-believe, Hitchens couldn't have made a joke this funny if he had started thinking about it back in the 80's
i call myself a socialist on purpose, just to bait the knuckledraggers who think the simple obivous idea of the common good is somehow an evil. some of the idiots on the far right wouldn't even fund the building and maintenance of ROADS, or at least don't understand that is exactly what their retarded selfish ideology argues for
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Whoosh .... like a camel thru a needle you have comprehension.
Infuriate left and right
therefore they can't go right or left, as they would get less viewers. they have to focus, ideologically, on the dead middle of the bell curve of ideological belief to win the most viewers
but you are correct in that the mass media is radical, but not ideologically radical just... adrenally radical? what i mean by that is, any image or word that primes or pumps up the adrenal glands, causes you to react like a small furry mammal in flight or fight that sees a snake: grab your attention by the gut. because it wins viewers and therefore it wins mass media money. "if it bleeds it leads": sex and violence and pettiness appeals to the lizardlike lowest common denominator of attention getting of our brain
so mass media is "adrenally radical" not ideologically radical
however, i would say to you: who cares? it is what it is. you don't have to watch it, even though it is doing its damndest to make you by appealing to your lowest mental processes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually you can make do with only Hebrew -- there's very little Aramaic and you can infer your way around it, and whatever Greek can be found has long since been incorporated into Hebrew as well.
The problem is that the Hebrew is very very archaic, and a large portion of what you read is self conflicting gibberish -- "you shall not make yourself an idol" it says, but the entire book is used for idolatry.
While I can appreciate the role positive religion often plays in people's lives, I rarely see religious worship I can wholeheartedly respect.
My original philosophy was " " (literally "everybody should live by their own faith") -- a Hebrew proverb very similar to "to each his own". I remember having an argument with some truly bigoted people, with them insisting that the proverb is a distorted version of the biblical quote " " -- meaning the same thing but applied exclusively to people who are "just" (literally "the just should live by their own faith"). Conveniently, those people had very strong convictions regarding who is "just" (naturally, they were included).
While I they are technically right, that is very much besides the point. I learned that I can only afford to apply "to each his own" to people who would apply the same to me, and while I should allow most people the benefit of the doubt, I learned that this courtesy should not be extended to people who insist that "to each his own" is a mistake -- let bigots feel a taste of their own medicine!
Lets say that at time X, some person P is asking himself whether he should do act A or act B, and then tells himself he should, and will, do act B, rather than act A. Then P proceeds to do B.
Elsewhen, at time Y, person Q knows about the aforementioned event at time X.
Lets say I am Q and you are P, time X is yesterday morning and time Y is now, and A and B are your choices for what to have for breakfast. In that case, I know what you chose to have for breakfast yesterday. Not a problem for free will at all, right?
Now, lets change just one of those things: time X is not yesterday morning but tomorrow morning. In that case, I know what you will have for breakfast tomorrow. Why is that suddenly a problem for free will?
Similarly, assuming causal determinism, then the past logically necessitates the present and the future; but, likewise, the future and the present logically necessitate the past. Given causal determinism, the fact that I am writing this post (as well as any other fact about the present) necessitates that the dinosaurs went extinct; but do we say that, by doing so, I am making them go extinct, in the past? Likewise, given causal determinism, the extinction of the dinosaurs (and every other fact about the past) necessitated that I write this post; why then do we say that (if causal determinism is true) the extinction of the dinosaurs forces me to post this?
Determinism just means that the events of one time necessitate the events of all other times. Where those different times are in sequence to each other makes no difference. Events in one time having a causal connection to events at another, or people at one time knowing about people's choices at another, don't make any difference as to whether a choice-event was free or not.
Incompatibilist notions of free will are inherently broken. Randomness is no more freedom than determination, and adding a little randomness into an otherwise deterministic system (or adding determination into an otherwise random system) doesn't magically introduce freedom. Some people like to take this to mean that free will is logically impossible, but I take it to mean that people arguing about freedom vs determination have a fundamentally incoherent understanding of 'freedom'. In other words, whether or not people have free will has nothing to do with determinism or the lack thereof.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Which provides its relevance at the edge of a sword (or a bullet nowadays).
Free will is a strange concept. If someone does research and predicts that there will be 30,000 suicides in the US next year, and then it turns out that he is correct, what does that say about free will? The 30000 people had intense personal reasons for their decision. But did they have free will?
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Somebody send the pope a copy of William Gibson's book, Idoru, where the main character wants to marry a computer character. That'll really get him going.
i don't think they would be reading kierkegaard if glenn beck wasn't whipping them into a froth with his demagoguery
in other words, the media doesn't make people dumb, they are just dumb, and the media stoops to their level
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I always had a feeling that none of you slashdot community members were real. But now, PROOF! :-P
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Seriously? I really doubt that there's anyone on Earth that can't tell the difference between 'reality' and fiction (example: a video game). If there are, well, those people would likely already be deemed 'insane' by the rest of society. This isn't the fault of technology if such people exist, but ignorance.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
This is much the same point Jean Baudrillard made in Simulacra and Simulation. You may remember that book from cameo appearances in films such as The Matrix.
I happen to agree with both of them...
--Pete
Continental postmodernism: Simulacra, simulation, hyperreality. Just do a Wikipedia.
It's a lot deeper than "video games make you crazy" so I guess I'm sort of on the side of the Pope on this one. [And I'll need to bookmark this link to prove it to people who know me.]
Uh...actually, if anything, the bible proves free will doesn't exist either. god's supposed omnipotence makes free will an impossibility.
If someone already knows what you are going to do, how is it a choice?
God's knowledge of the future doesn't mean lack of free will on your part. It's your choices... an omnipotent god can see your future without interfering in those choices.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
hehe - I was going to post "Well, I guess the Pope would know!" but you got there first and included the Library at Alexandria to boot. Well done!
New technologies have warned that people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Says Technology Causes Confusion Between Reality and Religion
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Who has ever heard of a preacher saying of another that he/she is wrong on a particuler issue?
Seriously, don't tell a guy to get behind sexually abused children until he's be cleared for that. There are databases for that.
Wait... maybe it's those specific databases that has the Pope scared for the church?
Must be a slow day on /. if the ramblings of an old fart make the news.
http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
Your welcome and I am sorry.
is the illusion, or error, that the non-adept wrongly equates to reality and modern technology can either reinforce the illusion or reveal the basis of the same !!
Insight into much, Influence over nothing !
i'm certain the average north korean wouldn't think japanese and westerners were vampires who wanted to eat their babies and sell their organs on the capitalist market if they weren't immersed in propaganda, so yes, you are correct
we need to get corporate influence out of media, and politics. build firewalls of law: no corporate dollars allowed here
i'm not saying that would be easy, it would be easier to get a heroin junkie to quit, but that is what we have to do, no matter how hard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...and the Song of Solomon. Srsly.
Isn't "Pope Benedict XVI" his avatar name?
Never heared such news till I view this post