On the contrary, many (including myself) would argue that "the victim's amount of money/power" has absolutely no ethical relevance: "You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly" (Leviticus 19:15).
But some would argue that reducing the amount of resources and power available to someone who has immense amounts of both and is causing great harm to society as a whole - is ethical.
I'd argue that the moral principles of the Levitical law (e.g. "adultery is wrong") are not inherently bound to the specific punishments (e.g. "adultery is a capital crime") prescribed for ancient Israel.
To defend against the accusation of cherrypicking: I don't actually think the original punishments were objectively morally wrong (even though they certainly feel harsh to my modern sensibilities)—sin is no joke. At the same time, I also don't believe that the punishments (or even all of the crimes, i.e. the liturgical ones) were intended to apply to all polities throughout history. Admittedly, my argument would be primarily theological in nature[1], so I don't expect it to be convincing... we may have to agree to disagree :-P
[1] Namely, "ancient Israel is the only divinely instituted theocracy in history, so many things just won't generalize to more 'normal' polities". And/or, see Jesus' treatment of the Mosaic Law in the gospels (and the New Testament more generally).
I agree that "you must give away all your wealth" is not a command binding on all Christians (based on other passages in the New Testament), but generosity is commanded pretty often IIRC: Matt. 6:19–21 and 6:24, 1 Tim. 6:17–19, James 2:15–16, etc.
FWIW I think the parent comment is incorrect (unless I misunderstood it, of course); I responded in more detail here [0] but the tl;dr is that the Bible does describe the (big-a or little-a) "antichrist" as more-or-less entirely opposed to Christ. (Not to mention that Jesus himself warned about copycat "Christs", in Matthew 24:23–27, and calls them "false" and says that they "deceive".)
Thanks, I see. I thought this was more settled and the authoritative tone of the parent comment was enough for me buy it. (One would hope a youth in Catholic education wouldn't have me so clueless and looking stupid in public, but here we are!) Clearly I need to learn more about this
I agree with you re: antipopes, but I don't think it applies too well to how "Antichrist" is used in the Bible, which definitely is in a "good vs. evil" sense. Small-a "antichrists" is a somewhat generic descriptor used in 1 John 2 (one of the criterion being that they "[deny] that Jesus is the Christ"), and so it seems to refer to those who actively oppose Christ.
Separately, that passage also refers to "the antichrist" (emphasis mine), who is traditionally identified w/ the "man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians 2 and the "beast" in Revelation. And this figure is pretty unambiguously evil ("man of lawlessness"; "son of destruction"; makes himself out to be God; violently persecutes Christians; makes people have to worship him if they want to buy or sell anything; etc.)—even by secular standards, he's a megalomaniacal despot.
That's interesting. Thanks for the correction and for sharing.
So if I understand this correctly, there's basically both concepts? One is an unambiguously evil figure, while the other is essentially a definition for anyone who denys that Jesus is Christ, even if their ideological differences are begign?
Sorry, this gets into a fuzzy realm that might not be useful beyond just wild conjecture: it gets me thinking about the possible intent to create a sort of strawman. Create a megalomaniacal bogeyman and align to it anyone who doesn't toe the Church's line? I don't mean to be offensive or critical and I'm sure there's a term for this sort of meta theology (or is it just theology?) where I'm fascinated by what might have been the intent of these stories as curated for generations by a historically dominant power structure?
Not a theologian. My understanding is that during Jesus' time on Earth, the Jews were under the heavy yoke of the Romans. At that time, there were many Jewish sects who all claimed secret knowledge and were led by a "messiah" who would deliver the Jews from the Romans and re-establish Judah as a military-political power. The Anti-Christ as mentioned in Revelations and in Catholic texts were a warning to Christians. Christians should not be led astray by demagogues who preached salvation by political or military means. Instead, for Christians, salvation lay in Christ's commandments to love God, love neighbor, and love like he loved us.
> while the other is essentially a definition for anyone who denies that Jesus is Christ, even if their ideological differences are benign?
I don't think this states it strongly enough (sorry for not being clearer originally): In the gospels, Jesus is very black-and-white, e.g. "he who is not with Me is against Me" (Matt. 12:30a). In my reading, the New Testament pretty emphatically denies the existence of "benign" ideological differences, and instead it's a pretty binary you-either-actively-accept-God-or-actively-reject-Him (cf. John 3:16–20 [1], James 4:4 [2], Romans 1:16–32 [3], or Luke 16:19–31 [4]).
Re: your second point about strawmen, I'm a Christian myself and so I suppose I'm gonna have a different take on things :-) Specifically, I think the Bible is true as a matter of fact (e.g. instead of being just a collection of arbitrary books as compiled by the "theological winners" of history [5]). So, I disagree a priori with viewpoints that look at it through a purely political/historical lens. Certainly it's true that the Bible is applicable to politics, and it is a historical document after all, but for me there's not much point in trying to divine the (so to speak) "true motivation" behind it, instead of just taking it at face value. (I'd say something similar about the so-called "historical Jesus", since for me the one presented in the four canonical gospels is the Jesus of history.)
Now, with that said, I do think there's a bit of internal evidence against the idea that the church just wanted to create a vague bogeyman. For one, I think that a literal reading of the relevant passages implies that there is a single (big-A) Antichrist at the end of history. Some Protestants disagree—some denominations consider the Antichrist to be allegorical, while some Lutheran denominations consider the office of the Pope (but not necessarily the person himself) to be the Antichrist—so I'm not claiming that my interpretation is entirely universal, but it is at least fairly common. And so, if there really is only one Antichrist per se, it's harder to apply it to the enemy du jour without looking really silly in hindsight fifty years later (of course, not that this always has stopped people from trying...).
More generally, and here my Protestant bias is showing, I think the Bible warns against the idea of the church being a single earthly institution that gets to set a 100% all-encompassing "party line" for its members: Jesus criticized the Pharisees for making their own arbitrary traditions (Matthew 15:1–7 [7]) and the apostle Paul repeatedly urges Christians to be tolerant of some amount of doctrinal or behavioral differences (e.g. Romans 14 [8]). Now, it is also true that the Bible draws red lines, e.g. the Jesus-denying antichrists as previously mentioned, or those who preach a different gospel (Galatians 1:6–9 [9]). So there certainly are times when I think Christians should take a stand and say that some things are just plain wrong and dangerous—Jesus was not a moral or religious relativist, and the Bible is clear on many things. But, the idea that the institutional Church is this domineering thing, with inherent authority on all aspects of faith and morals, is very much not a universal Christian belief. (And, historically, a tremendous amount of evil has been done in the name of such a belief.)
Now, I readily admit that this doesn't quite defeat what you said, since you very well might define "the Church's line" to even include core theology like "Jesus is God". But to be honest, in general I think it's difficult to defend against accusations of the form "the Bible only says that you're for or against God for rhetorical reasons, to make it easier to convince people to agree with it". I certainly understand the argument, and I myself would apply it (or at least something vaguely like it) to other religions (e.g. how Jehovah's Witnesses shun those who leave). Still, I think the argument has the problem that it's unfalsifiable, at least when considered in a vacuum: If the Bible is false, then perhaps it makes sense that it would present itself as the exclusive way to God, but isn't that also the case if the Bible is true? Like, if Jesus really is "the way, the truth, and the life" and "no one comes to the Father except through" him (John 14:6), I'd certainly hope the Bible would go out of its way to tell everyone for their sake.
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james%204%3A4&v...; N.B. "friend of the world", AFAICT, isn't used in the sense of being friendly with most everyone (which is a good thing and indeed repeatedly commanded in the New Testament), but rather in a deeper sense of e.g. going along with the morality of one's environment rather than the law of God.
[5] I'm not sure what the current secular scholarly consensus is on the biblical canon. However, many Christian (specifically, Protestant) scholars would argue that the canon was organically decided, rather than being imposed by some top-down institution (even the Catholic church didn't "infallibly" declare its version of the canon until the 1500s, as a response to the Reformation). I recently read Canon Revisited by Michael Kruger and it seemed pretty convincing to me, but I'm also just some random guy on the internet, so what do I know :-P
I don’t have anything more to add to this discussion but I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate you taking the time to share this. I enjoyed reading your perspective and I’ve got a few notes here I want to go study a bit. You took a fairly thin thought I had and gave it depth, which I can consider more fully.
Thanks so much for the kind words; it was my genuine pleasure, and I'm deeply grateful myself that you actually took the time to read it :-) Happy hunting with whatever you decide to investigate more deeply, and God bless.
Somehow this comment was flagged to death, I really don’t get it. Anyway, I clicked “vouch” and now it’s back.
I can’t imagine humans would flag this comment and not your others (like i could vaguely imagine some militant atheist going crazy, but why only flag the “thanks my pleasure” comment then?), so it’s gotta be some weird HN algorithm. Weird shit!
AI-edited or -generated comments are disallowed by HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated. I don't think any such restriction exists for submissions themselves, so that's my guess as to why the comment but not the submission has been flagged to death.
No restriction for the submission itself, unless it’s something like an Ask/Tell/Show HN, in which the content goes directly on the post (and will get flagged if AI-generated/assisted)
Your comment is—at best—misleading. See the last two paragraphs of the article:
> The study's authors make clear that the results do not indicate Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe or have design flaws.... Many of the other cars that ranked highly on the list have also been given high ratings for safety by the likes of IIHS and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as well....
> “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities”....
could be that Tesla making fans believe their level 2 driving automation is better than it actually is and marketing BS terms like Autopilot and FSD contributing to the fatal accident stat. even if the car itself is rated safe by IIHS, isn't that mostly about how well driver and passenger of the car fare when they are involved in different types of accidents? the safety rating wouldn't take into account whether the manufacturer has done its best to accurately communicate capability of its driving automation system to its customers. and i think pedestrian or passengers of other cars dying is counted under the fatal accident stat.
and if you've been in Teslas that are a few years old, you might have experienced phantom braking. random hard braking for no apparent reason. i try to avoid being behind Teslas on the road if i can help it.
hater. i use it to go work every day while programming or scheduling things or reading and replying to emails in the car. no issues. today, right now, on this date there is literally no better ownable self driving car than a tesla. there need to be more. i will not buy a car without self driving again.
The discussion was about the car's safety, not driver behavior. A car can be the safest car, but if the drivers who choose that car all decide to drive it off a cliff, it doesn't speak at all to the safety of the car, it speaks to driver behavior.
The safest car is one that is not driven, but that is not a useful measure. Put a car on the road and you add a driver, now you can start compare risk.
Yes, it's a bomb, but there's no way in hell it's going to be legalized for public road use in the US or EU. It was a cool demo, it's literally a flying car, how could that not be cool.
Perhaps some billionaires will buy it, good for them.
Why do you guys contort yourselves into knots trying to find any and every conceivable problem with something that doesn't affect you ... get over it already. Go ahead and flag me.
That iSeeCars study is shaky. The death counts come from federal data, but miles driven are their own private estimates, so nobody can check the math.
The more rigorous data is the IIHS driver death rates, which use real registration data and adjust for driver age and gender (iihs.org/topics/driver-death-rates). It shows the RWD Model 3 is about half its class average (15 vs 29 deaths per million vehicle-years) and the Model S is about average. The AWD Model 3 is above average (39 vs 29), which points more to how fast cars get driven than to the car itself. IIHS hasn’t published a Model Y rate yet.
So Teslas aren’t the deadliest brand. The faster versions show more risk, which is the same pattern IIHS sees with muscle cars.
It's also easier to learn because there's one consistent mapping between notes on the page and the sound, instead of many different irregular mappings specified by "key signatures".
But traditional notation is more compact, and for music based around diatonic scales, implies information about the harmonic function of notes that could be useful for interpretation.
It's harder to learn because fingerings are based on key notes and transpositions around that.
If the key is G you don't start with your hand on C and move it up to G, you start on G and move it relative to that root.
This matters because over/under moves usually happen at certain scale points. So if you learn the scale you have good chance of defaulting to the most efficient movements with muscle memory.
If you're referencing everything to C you'll never understand the scales and their different fingering patterns.
Anyway, here's Martha Argerich playing Prokofiev's Toccata. (What happens around 3:14 may be illegal. But here we are.)
But on an isomorphic keyboard you can just move your hand up or down and use the exact same fingering. You only have to learn how to play the scale once, not a different way for each key. You don't reference it to "C", you reference it to the first degree of the scale, and the key doesn't matter. IMO, the traditional keyboard has been obsolete ever since the Jankó keyboard was invented:
> If you're referencing everything to C you'll never understand the scales and their different fingering patterns.
If you watch someone play a Janko keyboard (1) then you'll notice that there is only one fingering pattern for each tonality or chord, you just shift up or down based on the tonic. Kind of like a guitar, where there are a handful of scale/chord/arpeggio shapes that are picked for efficiency (aka, "economy of motion") and aren't tied to the particular key.
The piano keyboard optimizes the keys for either reachability (white keys are wider) or feeling (black keys are narrow but have edges and can be pressed from the side). The Janko keyboard optimizes for neither, all keys are equal. It has all the disadvantages of the guitar with almost none of the advantages (the range for one hand is smaller than the guitar's, and there's no bending/sliding/vibrato)
It doesn't because it only has a single row of keys. Piano music is full of awkward finger crossings that could be avoided with multiple rows of keys like on the Jankó keyboard.
>or feeling
You can texture or raise/lower the keys on any keyboard as you please. No layout has an advantage here.
>the range for one hand is smaller than the guitar's
For the benefit of other readers, this is (to my deep chagrin) just a coincidence. Some other fun false friends (i.e. w/ no actual etymological connection), some sillier than others:
- そう sō, "so"
- 名前 namae, "name"
- 乱暴 rambō, "violence"
- 被る kaburu, "cover"
- 孫 son, "descendant"
- 銭 sen, "one hundredth of a yen" (sounds similar to "cent")
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