oh boy this is gonna be a thread
hey fellow atheists, can you please make me not embarrassed to be an atheist for one day in my life
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
222 points (97.8% liked)
TechTakes
2778 readers
184 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Yes please.
I as an atheist can absolutely respect that this man has wide influence, have agreed with many things he has said and done, and appreciate that he doesn't appear to be an idiot.
Yep, it's a dumpster fire all right.
While I believe we could one day reach some form of AI, it ain't going to be from LLMs.
That's my take as well.
I think this Anthropic fellow is too much of a psychopath to understand that there's other reasons to ponder the question of consciousness, than to try to upsell a chatbot as a slave, and so he can't understand that it would actually be very bad for him if a bunch of normies were told, with full weight of divine authority, that these things are conscious. I mean, maybe not civil war level bad, but worse than PETA on your ass level bad for sure.
And that is to me very disturbing. He can't even imagine that a reaction to "this is a slave" could be anything other than "shut up and take my money".
I was raised Catholic, but am an atheist now. Yet I gotta say I have a LOT of respect for this guy - for someone who's the leader of the most famous branch of Christianity (so far as I know), he seems very surprisingly down-to-earth. I hope he's able to move the rest of the flock in that direction as well.
I grew up in NJ as a non-Catholic. Even I respect Pope Leo and Francis.
Granted, I moved to the Midwest and realized for all the quirks Catholics have, they're not as a monolith god awful people like Evangicals are.
Careful there are plenty of fucked up Catholic sects too, like the ones JD Vance and Amy Coney Barrett are in.
I hear what you're saying and I don't fully agree nor do I fully disagree...
Catholicism at it's core is pretty evil. See their rampant sex crimes through their leadership and their leadership's complacency.
But since Pope Francis, I believe they've made an attempt at growing their religion in an ethical(ish) way. That's to say, they've chosen leadership that is more liberal in an attempt to guide them into the modern world.
The structure of catholicism being pope down lead with regional leadership keeps parishes relatively in-line with one another.
I've witnessed first hand a lot of Catholics in rural, conservative towns being somewhat exiled due to their extreme MAGA beliefs. Particularly on LGBT issues. Catholicism in my opinion has held a line that separates them from Evangelists. In part because of the top down leadership - you're not finding priests living the high life like you are mom and pop Evangelist pastors. That's an organizational difference.
That doesn't mean you don't get evil shitbags like Just Dance Vance - but let's not pretend that Just Dance Vance is a Catholic beyond that he went through all the Catholic sacrements. He has a piece of paper he can point to to say that he's Christian. But he's more aligned with Evangelists.
load more comments
(20 replies)
Really bummed about the news that chatgpt will not be going to hell
Even people that believe in a mythical creature in the sky aren't dumb enough to believe AI is conscious
I mean, there are folks that believe that rocks and trees are conscious, why not code?
I'd actually be willing to entertain the idea of plant and fungal consciousness (of a kind unlike animal consciousness) before I'd believe LLMs to be conscious. Plants, at least, interact with the world around them.
Anthropic should be completely embarrassed of themselves
I think it's like their "it can kill everyone" thing. The sort of people who actually care about things like slavery or the risk of everyone dying, with the exception of an occasional crazy person, are not interested in believing complete bullshit.
Not surprising he's saying that, that's like, his whole thing. Probably would say that even if the thing were actually conscious.