Roritharr
Born on August 08, 2010•6084 Karma
One of their engineers was able to recreate their platform by letting Claude Code reverse engineer their Apps and the Web-Frontend, creating an API-compatible backend that is functionally identical.
Took him a week after work. It's not as stable, the unit-tests need more work, the code has some unnecessary duplication, hosting isn't fully figured out, but the end-to-end test-harness is even more stable than their own.
"How do we protect ourselves against a competitor doing this?"
Noodling on this at the moment.
As engineers, we often think only about code, but code has never been what makes a business succeed. If your client thinks that their businesses primary value is in the mobile app code they wrote, 1) why is it even open source? 2) the business is doomed.
Realistically, though, this is inconsequential, and any time spent worrying about this is wasted time. You don't protect yourself from your competitor by worrying about them copying your mobile app.
They do something very similar for some of their work. It’s hard to use external services so they replicate them and the cost of doing so has come down from “don’t be daft, we can’t reimplement slack and google drive this sprint just to make testing faster” to realistic. They run the sdks against the live services and their own implementations until they don’t see behaviour differences. Now they have a fast slack and drive and more (that do everything they need for their testing) accelerating other work. I’m dramatically shifting my concept of what’s expensive and not for development. What you’re describing could have been done by someone before, but the difficulty of building that backend has dropped enormously. Even if the application was closed you could probably either now or soon start to do the same thing starting with building back to core user stories and building the app as well.
You can view some of this as having things like the application as a very precise specification.
Really fascinating moment of change.
I think it's interesting to add what they use it for and why its hard.
What they use it for:
- It's about automated testing against third party services.
- It's not about replicating the product for end users
Why using external services is hard/problematic
- Performance: They want to have super fast feedback cycles in the agentic loop: In-Memory tests. So they let the AI write full in-memory simulations of (for example) the slack api that are behaviorally equivalent for their use cases.
- Feasiblity: The sandboxes offered by these services usually have performance limits (= number of requests per month, etc) that would easily be exhausted if attached to a test harness that runs every other minute in an automated BDD loop.
If the platform is so trivial that it can be reverse engineered by an AI agent from a dumb frontend, what's there to protect against? One has to assume that their moat is not that part of the backend but something else entirely about how the service is being provided.
Its also US only. Other countries will differ. This means you can only rely on this ruling at all for something you are distributing only in the US. Might be OK for art, definitely not for most software. Very definitely not OK for a software library.
For example UK law specifically says "In the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken."
They can't waive their liability from being identified as an infringer though.
This seems extremely vague. One could argue that any part of the pipeline counts as an "arrangement necessary for the creation of the work", so who is the author? The prompter, the creator of the model, or the creator of the training data?
I think we didn't even began to consider all the implications of this, and while people ran with that one case where someone couldn't copyright a generated image, it's not that easy for code. I think there needs to be way more litigation before we can confidently say it's settled.
If "generated" code is not copyrightable, where do draw the line on what generated means? Do macros count? Does code that generates other code count? Protobuf?
If it's the tool that generates the code, again where do we draw the line? Is it just using 3rd party tools? Would training your own count? Would a "random" code gen and pick the winners (by whatever means) count? Bruteforce all the space (silly example but hey we're in silly space here) counts?
Is it just "AI" adjacent that isn't copyrightable? If so how do you define AI? Does autocomplete count? Intellisense? Smarter intellisense?
Are we gonna have to have a trial where there's at least one lawyer making silly comparisons between LLMs and power plugs? Or maybe counting abacuses (abaci?)... "But your honour, it's just random numbers / matrix multiplications...
AI can't be the author of the work. Human driving the AI can, unless they zero-shotted the solution with no creative input.
"For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the 'traditional elements of authorship' are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user."
"In other cases, however, a work containing AI-generated material will also contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim. For example, a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that 'the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.'"
"Or an artist may modify material originally generated by AI technology to such a degree that the modifications meet the standard for copyright protection. In these cases, copyright will only protect the human-authored aspects of the work, which are 'independent of' and do 'not affect' the copyright status of the AI-generated material itself."
IMO this is pretty common sense. No one's arguing they're authoring generated code; the whole point is to not author it.
Actually this is very much how people think for code.
Consider the following consequence. Say I work for a company. Every time I generate some code with Claude, I keep a copy of said code. Once the full code is tested and released, I throw away any code that was not working well. Now I leave the company and approach their competitor. I provide all of the working code generated by Claude to the competitor. Per the new ruling, this should be perfectly legal, as this generated code is not copyrightable and thus doesn't belong to anyone.
The core feature of generative AI is the human isn't the author of the output. Authoring something and generating something with generative AI aren't equivalent processes; you know this because if you try and get a person who's fully on board w/ generative AI to not use it, they will argue the old process isn't the same as the new process and they don't want to go back. The actual output is irrelevant; authorship is a process.
But, to your point, I think you're right: companies super think their engineers have the rights to the output they assign to them. If it wasn't clear before it's clear now: engineers shouldn't be passing off generated output as authored output. They have to have the right to assign the totality of their output to their employer (same as using MIT code or whatever), so that it ultimately belongs to them or they have a valid license to use it. If they break that agreement, they break their contract with the company.
I still don't think this is fully accurate.
The view I'm noticing is that people consider that they have a right to the programs they produce, regardless of whether they are writing them by hand or by prompting an LLM in the right ways to produce that output. And this remains true both for work produced as an employee/company owner, and for code contributed to an OSS project.
Also, as an employee, the relationship is very different. I am hired to produce solutions to problems my company wants resolved. This may imply writing code, finding OSS code, finding commercial code that we can acquire, or generating code. As part of my contract, I relinquish any rights I may have to any of this code to the company, and of course I commit to not use any code without a valid license. However, if some of the code I produce for the company is not copyrightable at all, that is not in any way in breach of my contract - as long as the company is aware of how the code is produced and I'm not trying to deceive them, of course.
In practice, at least in my company, there has been a legal analysis and the company has vetted a certain suite of AI tools for use for code generation. Using any other AI tools is not allowed, and would be a breach of contract, but using the approved ones is 100% allowed. And I can guarantee you that our lawyers would assert copyright to any of the code generated in this way if I was to try to publish it or anything of the kind.
I'm not really convinced; I think if I vibe code an app, and you vibe code an app that's very, very similar, and we're both AI believers, we probably both go "yup, AI is amazing; copyright is useless." You know this because people are actively trying to essentially un-GPL things with vibe coding. That's not authoring, that's laundering, and people only barely argue about it. See: this chardet situation, where the guy was like "I'm intimately familiar with the codebase, I guided the LLM, and I used GPL code (tests and API definitions, which are all under copyright) to ensure the new implementation behaved very similarly to the old one." Anything in the new codebase is either GPL'd or LLM generated, which according to the copyright office, isn't copyrightable. If he's right, nothing prevents me from doing the exact same thing to make a new public domain chardet. It's facially absurd.
If the AI code isn't copyrightable, I don't have any obligations to acknowledge it.
There's close enough to zero enforcement of infringement, it's all self policing or violation.
But for this type of copyright laundering, it doesn't really matter. The goal isn't really about licensing it, it's about avoiding the existing licence. The idea that the code ends up as public domain isn't really an issue for them.
You can try patenting; but not after the fact. Copyright won't help you here. You can't copyright an algorithm or idea, just a specific form or implementation of it. And there is a lot of legal history about what is and isn't a derivative work here. Some companies try to forbid reverse engineering in their licensing. But of course that might be a bit hard to enforce, or prove. And it doesn't work for OSS stuff in any case.
Stuff like this has been common practice in the industry for decades. Most good software ideas get picked apart, copied and re-implemented. IBM's bios for the first PC quickly got reverse engineered and then other companies started making IBM compatible PCs. IBM never open sourced their bios and they probably did not intend for that to happen. But that didn't matter. Likewise there were several PC compatible DOS variants that each could (mostly) run the same applications. MS never open sourced DOS either. There are countless examples of people figuring out how stuff works and then creating independent implementations. All that is perfectly legal.
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/pc/6025008_PC_Technical_Ref...
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/xt/1502237_PC_XT_Technical_...
https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/pc/at/1502494_PC_AT_Technical_...
Between this and the fact that their PC-DOS (née MS-DOS) license was nonexclusive, I'm honestly not sure what they expected to happen.
The nature of early IBM PC advertising suggests to me that they expected the IBM name and established business relationships to carry as much weight as the specifications itself, and that "IBM PC compatible" systems would be no more attractive than existing personal computers running similar if not identical third-party software (PC-DOS wasn't the only example of IBM reselling third-party software under nonexclusive license), and would perhaps even lead to increased sales of first-party IBM PCs.
Which, in fact, they did, leading me to believe the actual result may have been not too far from their original intent, only with IBM capturing and holding a larger share of the pie.
I know it's a provoking question but that answers why a competitor is not a competitor.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately, as someone launching a niche b2b SaaS. The unfortunate conclusion that I have come to is: have more capital than anyone for distribution.
Is there any other answer to this? I hope so, as we are not in the well-capitalized category, but we have friendly user traction. I think the only possible way to succeed is to quietly secure some big contracts.
I had been hoping to bootstrap, but how can we in this new "code is cheap" world? I know it's always been like this, but it is even worse now, isn't it?
How do our competitors protect themselves against us doing this?
There is a certain amount of brand loyalty and platform inertia that will keep people. Also, as you point out, just having the source code isn't enough. Running a platform is more than that. But that gap will narrow with time.
The broader issue here is that there are people in tech who don't realize that AI is coming for their jobs (and companies) too. I hope people in this position can maybe understand the overall societal issues for other people seeing their industries "disrupted" (ie destroyed) by AI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
That's the neat thing: you don't!
DMCA. The EULA likely prohibits reverse engineering. If a competitor does that, hit'em with lawyers.
Or, if you want to be able to sleep at night, recognize this as an opportunity instead of a threat.
Russia even allows to decompile object code if you have to solve private compatibility issues.
For example, I don't recall Microsoft ever being sued by WordPerfect or Lotus for reading and writing their applications' unpublished file formats, which wouldn't have necessarily involved disassembly or decompilation, but was still the result of reverse engineering that almost certainly involved using a licensed or unlicensed copy of the competitor's product.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_...>
Time really does fly.
> One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet.
Which might well be true where he is (ie he's limited to the equivalent of shared HFC or xDSL), but certainly isn't true everywhere.
I've had gigabit fibre (full duplex) in London since 2016, and the building had it before I arrived. It also has incredibly low latency to the major data centres of London, and not a lot more to most of western Europe.
If you're served by a niche fibre provider (e.g. Hyperoptic, Community Fibre) then you're golden.
There's Virgin (think Comcast) with paltry upload speeds due to the cable tech. Understandable though not ideal.
Then there's the OpenReach full fibre network with paltry upload speeds due to... ??? there appears to no good reason, other than not wanting to cannibalise their leased line business. Does anyone actually know why they don't offer a symmetric product like the niche fibre ISPs?
However, due to their comically bad billing systems (i believe they licensed a billing system off the cable modem headend provider) they do not allow their existing users to switch from DOCSIS cable to FTTH. This has been a problem for a couple of years now. They've spent billions on civil engineering work to blow fibre everywhere but existing customers can't order it because their billing system is tightly coupled to their cable modem system. They offer up to 2gig symmetrical over XGSPON FTTH.
Re openreach I think it's a bit of protecting leased line revenue, a bit of faster upload speeds actually being quite niche - the market is driven by headline download speeds - but most importantly they rolled out GPON not XGSPON.
GPON "only" has 2.5gbit/1.2gbit available to the entire network slice it's on, which can be up to 32 homes (theoretically many more but openreach have that as the maximum I've seen).
This means one gigabit uplink can nearly saturate the entire link for the network slice of 32 homes.
They do have plans to upgrade to XGSPON (though I suspect they may skip that and move to 50GPON instead). XGSPON has 10git/10gbit and 50GPON 50/50 available to the same 32 homes.
They are just about to start a pilot of XGSPON in Guildford which has up to 8gig symmetrical available.
It's not a huge amount of work to upgrade PON versions, it just requires new line cards, and new ONT boxes for each house and can run side by side with existing GPON.
It's cable from Virgin or DSL
Short version: The UK regulator OFCOM defines ultrafast internet as 30 Mbps download speed. That's why UK internet providers (openreach and related) have deals starting as low as 30 Mbps and they can't be arsed to provide a faster speed (unless you pay £££).
> One peculiar thing from the UK: Internet providers don’t truly offer gigabit internet. They have a range of deals like 30 Mbps – 75 Mbps – 150 Mbps – 300 Mbps – 500 Mbps – 900 Mbps, each one costing a few more pounds per month than the last.
Gigabit is so much more expensive (obviously it's gone down a lot). In London 2016, I had ADSL broadband at 16 Mbps for £12/month. That building didn't have fiber at the time. When fiber finally happened... it started as 30 Mbps fiber for so much more money.
E.g: One of them offers 900Mbps symmetric for £40/month (with a deal for £30/month for the first year). Meanwhile the legacy providers via OpenReach will only give you 700 down/100 up for more money, and require a two year contract.
The only real downside is most of them will CGNAT you, but most do offer IPv6 too, and mine offers a static IPv4 for £5/month more.
If you're not in an apartment building you'll almost certainly have FTTH coverage from someone in London.
The govt is consulting on new laws which would give apartment building residents the power to demand the freeholder of the apartment building allow fibre installs, which would make this far easier.
Thanks for making me aware!
I hate using voice for anything. I hate getting voice messages, I hate creating them. I get cold sweats just thinking about having to direct 10 AI Agents via voice. Just give me a keyboard and a bunch of screens, thanks.
Though I'll gladly call it various foul names when it's refusing to do what I expected it to do.
Yeah, I think I’d rather click and type than talk, all day.
1. Superwhisper - https://superwhisper.com
2. Macwhisper - https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper
3. Carelesswhisper - https://carelesswhisper.app
Some of us who’ve been in this game for a while consider having healthy hands to be a nice break between episodes of RSI, PT, etc. YMMV of course but your muscle stamina won’t be the problem, it’s your tendons and eventually your joints.
I've done more typing than speaking for over 40 years now, and I've never had any carpel tunnel or joint problems with my hands (my feet on the other hand.. hoo boy!) and I've always used a standard layout flat QWERTY keyboard.. but I never bend my hands into that unnatural "home row" position.
I type >60wpm using what 40 years ago was "hunt and peck" and evolved over brute force usage into "my hands know where they keys are, I am right handed so my right hand monopolizes 2/3 of the keyboard, both hands know where every key is so either one can take over the keyboard if the other is unavailable (holding food, holding microphone for when I do do voice work, using mouse, etc)".
But as a result my hands also evolved this bespoke typing strategy which naturally avoids uncomfortable poses and uncomfortable repetition.
I’m very sorry for you if this is literally true. I would urge you to seek medical help, as this is not normal at all.
And don’t get me started on video vs text for learning purely non-physical stuff like programming…
But I can appreciate that sitting down in front of a keyboard and going at it with low typing speed seems unnatural and frustrating for probably the majority of people. To me, in front of a keyboard is a fairly natural state. Somebody growing up 15 years before (got by without PCs in their early years) or after me (got by with a smartphone) probably doesn't find it as natural.
I think I'm marginally faster using speech to text than using a predictive text touch keyboard.
But it makes enough mistakes that it's only very slightly faster, and I have a very mild accent. I expect for anyone with a strong accent it's a non starter.
On a real keyboard where I can touch type, it's much slower to use voice. The tooling will have to improve massively before it's going to be better to work by speaking to a laptop.
Brainstorming/whiteboarding, 1:1s or performance feedback, team socialization, working through something very difficult (e.g. pair debugging): in-person or video
Incidents, asking for quick help/pointers, small quick questions, social groups, intra-team updates: IM
Bigger design documents and their feedback, trickier questions or debugging that isn't urgent, sharing cool/interesting things, inter-team updates: Email
It's hard for me to believe that there are psychopaths among us who prefer call on the phone, slack huddle or even organize meetings instead of just calmly writing messages on IM over coffee.
sending audio = fast
I grew up with a mentality of "you can't do that, there's a rule against that" and had to slowly break out of it as much as I could. Just knowing that there's people like you out there makes me happy. I applaud your freedom.
No matter how wealthy or poor your Western European upbringing may have been, being saddled with that worldview is, IMHO, the worst kind of disadvantage someone in otherwise fairly good circumstances can have because it's baked into your skull and how you see everything. I hope you've been able to overcome it.
Their AI doesn't work in my country and honestly I don't feel left out. Whatever
I literally Pi-Hole Blocked all of YouTube after my son started reading the Bible after a Minecraft Influencer started preaching throughout most of his videos to the point my son became a bit too much interested in the topic.
Not that I'm a rabid atheist or would deny my child such a thing, but if THAT can enter my 8yr olds brain via his short allowed time where he can browse by himself, i'm worried what else is coming his way through it.
I'd love to give him access to valuable videos between rules I describe by natural language and can test myself, but nothing like this exists.
My kids aren't allowed to use TikTok and now Google decided to shove it in Youtube - and make it impossible to block.
It is a very hidden feature though. You have to link your kids account to yours, and then in the Youtube mobile app (not on the web), you can click the three dots button and then share > "with kids"
So that way you can build up a whitelist of channels that they can see in the YT kids account.
Just trying to recreate the media conditions of my youth, with modern content as well as long as it’s “pure”.
I’m also putting me-vetted YouTube content like Kurzgesagt on it.
When you read kurzgesagt's reasoned response, and you consider the motivations of the primary accuser, it's a lot less dramatic than you make it sound. Nobody's perfect; and sometimes organisations' messaging align without it being bought. They are not primarily funded by billionaires, they have editorial independence enforced by contract, and have a lot to lose if that's not the case. Of course, make up your own mind (as kurzgesagt would like you to do); but I'll still be watching their work. If in doubt, check with other sources afterwards! (Like you should anyway).
Towards a better Jellyfin solution, I wonder if adding Whisper and an LLM model could transcribe the YT videos and flag any which contains themes that go against parents values.
I built this with Jellyfin and Home Assistant for my kids: https://github.com/philips/homeassistant-nfc-chromecast
What I do understand is that I don't want my kids being tricked into watching ads because something about watching adults open toys is entertaining.
Not everything has to be competitive or official either. Like you can just go to the community pool during the summer without joining a swim team. I think some parents forget this, but this was normal for previous generations.
So my kid has a few extra curricular activities and then I also do plenty of activities with them at the house like play chess or card games or whatever. They're also watching some of my old favorite sci-fi shows with me. Nearly all of YouTube kids is steaming garbage designed to turn your kid into a mindless consumer. Netflix kids is pretty good though. There are a lot of shows that have character progression and multi season plot arcs that cover complex subjects. Avatar the Last Airbender is an example of a show I was comfortable with my 7 year old watching without worrying about brain rot. Mind you, I think all screen time needs a limit.
The way I look at it though is that spending a lot of time with your kids early on to build a strong relationship and work on any behavioral or other issues will ensure you will set them up better for success in life. I see a lot of kids being raised by tablets and can't help but predict that the parents are going to regret it later down the road. Sorry if I got a little off topic there.
by teaching them that work is good and necessary. There's a book by Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death, the central idea of which is that "form excludes content". The problem with Youtube, or in his time TV, isn't just the content, it's that all content by the nature of the medium must be entertaining. If it isn't entertaining, it isn't content.
Hobbies feel like work because they are like work, because most things worth doing have a component of work to them. Rather than just trying to see what sticks, the best thing you can teach kids these days is that they should stick to the thing and that expecting "fun" at all times is a bad expectation to have.
There is a metric ton of professionally made non-commercial content for kids.
What holds me back is knowing that -- if this was an iPad app, for example -- I'd be at the mercy of both Google AND Apple. It's a minefield of sensitive topics:
- Kids & privacy
- Content moderation
- Intellectual property
- Third-party UGC
Way too risky.
sorry there are too many whackos out there. I'd feel more comfortable with my kids learning from Catholic Priests than some random youtuber. In fact, my kids are probably going to go to catholic school.
The reason why we have denominations in part is to maintain the education of the clergy and keep dogma, or theology, in check.
(even if we disagree at times, at least most of the organized christian church can agree on the basic creeds - something that youtube seems hell bent on for clicks is getting you into nontrinitarian and whacky stuff!)
I feel a lot of people talk terribly about YouTube Kids because they’re imagining you just hand them a tablet with the app, let them pick what they want to watch, and walk away. And then the kid finds some super suspect videos and gets brainwashed or something.
But here I am letting my 2 and 4 year olds watch Miss Rachel and Super Simple Songs and Big Block Singsong and the occasional Elmo’s World on the TV, while I’m in the room, and people on this forum would call me a monster for doing this… it’s really wild.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
It's fine if you believe this stuff, and maybe these are layered with beautiful metaphors and it's beautiful when you know the subtext, but I don't think it would be appropriate to read a lot of this to a young child. Maybe you don't agree, but I think it can hardly be surprising that people wouldn't want their kids to read it until they are at least a little older.
[1] Judges 19
[2] Ezekiel 23:20
[3] Genesis 19:30–38
[4] 2 Kings 2:23–25.
Also, it seems an outlier amongst outliers that your child manages to read through the whole of a version of the bible that actually includes those sections, and does it without you noticing and/or explaining that not everything in there should be taken literally.
It's reasonable to supervise what parts of the Bible your kids read at a given and. Sunday schools and kids' Bible story books are usually curated and not teaching those particular parts to kids.
(By today's standards, Lot was date raped, not seduced. Not that that makes it a better story for an 8 year old.)
The Bible is absolutely not suitable for children, except for choice parts. Those people who thought it was a good idea to teach the Bible to small children did a great disservice to those people and to religion. It's a hard core book for adolescents and above.
Mostly agree, though not completely. There are actions that are kind of deemed "moral" that I don't think are good, e.g. Abraham being super willing to murder his son to make God happy. Or Moses killing all the first-born children of Egypt with the Angel of Death. That's pretty evil, and Abraham and Moses are kind of the "heroes" of those stories.
I agree that there is wisdom to be found in there, and that it requires a level of maturity and literary understanding to parse that sometimes. It's a book written over the course of several hundred (thousands?) of years with hundreds of stories, it's not weird to think that there would be some good stuff in there.
> The Bible is absolutely not suitable for children, except for choice parts.
Yeah, I agree with that. The "do unto others" stuff is perfectly fine to teach to small children, and even stuff with slightly more nebulous but ultimately clever themes like the Prodigal Son are fine. I think I'd save the stuff about murdering and mutilating concubines until you're comfortable with them watching R-rated movies.
That's not a dig in itself, though. My favorite movie of all time is Ghost in the Shell (1995). It's got lots of wisdom and cleverness and to me it's nearly perfect, but if I had kids I don't think I'd let them watch it until they were 13 or 14, even though I don't think that the themes in it are harmful or endorsing bad behavior.
Sacrificing your own children is a human behaviour so common through history and with different cultures, that it's basically a biological instinct. Even today parents send their sons to die in industrialized war to prove their faith for the government, as well as sacrifice their children in ways that are less explicit than that - always to prove their faith and loyalty to the entity they worship religiously, whether that's a man worshipped as a god, or a disembodied concept that they worship, such as "the state".
The story of Abraham is a way to break that spell. The primitive human instinct is to worship by giving gifts, and then naturally giving the greatest gift you can give to prove your faith, which is your child. I interpret the story of Abraham as a clever way to break one of the most evil and persistent traditions of humanity, which is child sacrifice. And the story is much more efficient than simply saying "You shouldn't sacrifice your own children".
Put yourself in his shoes (there have probably been thousands of Abrahams through time). If he says "I'm not going to sacrifice my child", the tribespeople will say that his God is weak because Abraham dares to give less of a sacrifice than the best, or that Abraham puts his own desires in front of what's good for the tribe (pleasing God or any god). If God told him to sacrifice his son and God later changed his mind, that's another thing.
The story puts an effective limit on the level of worship. Sacrifice animals sure, but don't sacrifice your own children.
Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalistic wars of genocide is the natural condition of humans as a species. That is the simple answer to why humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years without making any progress before something strange happened and we became enlightened.
Seeing as the Bible is a collection of stories that where told for thousands of years before being written down, I would think that there are entire generations and cultures who have live by those stories and commands for longer than the Bible has existed in any form. Pre-civilization tribes that we know nothing about. The Bible is our deepest probe into deep time, and absolutely fascinating.
I don't know that I agree with your take, I don't think it's meant to be interpreted as a limit to sacrifice. If that's what you got out of it, that's good, I don't think you should sacrifice humans, but that wasn't the vibe I got from the story at all; the vibe I got was that "you should always listen to God if you want to be moral, and God will make sure that the right thing happens."
The whole point of the story is that Abraham is even willing to sacrifice the son he loves because god wills it. It's a story about having faith that there is a good reason for what god requests of you, even if you don't always know what it is. Abraham is virtuous because he doesn't question at all.
I'm not sure anymore if the story skips over the heartache this undoubtedly causes him.
Of course more cynical people immediately ask why god needs Abraham to sacrifice his son to no apparent benefit other than to prove his faith in the first place.
> I don't think you should sacrifice humans
And why not? In a different time and a different place that would have been the normal, decent and rational thing to do, and if you didn't then people would look very strangely at you.
I don't know. Maybe a lot of people agree with the message of "always listen to God and things will work out". That doesn't mean it's good morality, or a good way to live your life. While there's certainly selection bias in good stories surviving the test of time, I don't think it's 100% given that an old story is inherently good.
If you found meaning in the story, that's great. I just don't know that meaning was the authors' intent. That might not matter to you, that's fine, but I simply did not get the message of "Abraham + Isaac is actually a limitation on sacrifice".
> And why not? In a different time and a different place that would have been the normal, decent and rational thing to do, and if you didn't then people would look very strangely at you.
I can't know what it's like to have lived thousands of years ago, so I can only answer from someone in the late 20th and early 21st century. The reason I think you shouldn't sacrifice humans now is because I value human life, and that I think it would be wrong to deprive that person of life to appease a God that I do not think exists. There are times where ending a life might be justified, like physician assisted suicide, or self defense, and probably a few other cases, but none of those reasons are to appease a god.
I don't pretend that I have any kind of objective morality on this, I'm not even sure if I believe in objective morality as a concept,
So you can imagine a story teller thousands of years ago telling the other people around the bonfire "And even though he didn't make the sacrifice, he still got more than the full reward".
> The reason I think you shouldn't sacrifice humans now is because I value human life, and that I think it would be wrong to deprive that person of life to appease a God that I do not think exists.
And what proof do you have? We know that the tribe two rivers away sacrifices all men they capture from their neighbouring enemy tribe, and they receive great rewards from their god, who blesses them with better hunting (less competition), better luck in war (lesser enemy forces), and more or healthier children (better nourishment). So it is proven that human sacrifice gives you blessings of the gods. If you want to break with custom, maybe our tribe should banish you and get a new leader?
What I want to illustrate above is that it probably took an immense effort for a leader or for anybody, who thousands of years decided to not do human sacrifice, and managed to convince his tribe against all common sense. This in an environment where it had been custom since the beginning of time, and where tribes naturally expanded in population and territory until game started to become scarce and tensions arose. That's why I think the story of Abraham (or whoever it was originally) is so dramatic and has been remembered throughout the ages. It brought a whole new perspective to sacrifice that probably sounded completely insane to the average person at the time. "Why would a god not want his sacrifice? And why would he reward somebody who didn't give him his sacrifice?".
The materialists who read my comment will probably start connecting the retreat of human sacrifice with the shift from hunting gathering to pastoralism, which is a connection I would also like to make.
Edit: I also think it's super interesting that you bring up the authors intent. In my perspective on these old myths, the original intent is almost meaningless, since the stories have been told thousands of times before they were ever written down, meaning the story must have some core that touches the human soul in a universal way. Or probably that this situation happened so many times with different people that there is no "original" story.
As it stands, it's a decidedly kind of weird story where we're supposed to root for Abraham, despite the fact that he was willing to sacrifice another human being just because someone told him to. Yes, that someone was "God", but that doesn't change my point.
I have to admit that I didn't completely understand where you were going with the second part. I'm not sure what you were asking in regards to "what proof I have"? Proof that I don't think a God exists? Proof that I value human life? Proof that I think it's wrong to kill someone just because you hear a voice that tells you to? Even if that voice actually were God?
I mean, I don't really know how to prove that. That's just my belief, I guess you could say I'm lying about that, but I don't know what to tell you there.
That was me channeling the tribesmen, that any Abraham would have to respond to, especially if he wanted to continue being their leader or have an influence on decision. They would offer plenty of proof that human sacrifice was beneficial, and that this is evidence that gods exist and that they are keeping up their end of the bargain. How would you answer to them and actually manage to make them consider your new idea?
> I think the story would have been more powerful if Abraham himself had decided to not do the sacrifice, and deciding that no matter what God is offering it's not worth it, sort of like the Huck Finn "All right, then, I'll go to hell". That would be an interesting case of doing what you know is right, no matter who is telling you to do something wrong.
I would say it is evident that the story already is plenty powerful, considering how long it has survived through the ages. And what you are saying can also be read through the lines as what happened. An overwhelming force was influencing Abraham to sacrifice his son. The force of custom was and still is incredibly powerful over people and their decisions, a disembodied force, which probably was experienced by prehistoric man as a speaking entity. Then a moment of enlightenment, a break from old conventions and the realization that great rewards can be had without having to make great sacrifices. But by following other conventions, obeying a set of rules in life instead of seeing deities as trading partners giving blessings in exchange for sacrifices.
If we want to go a step further, it is also a slight break from egocentrism. Something most children go through, but that maybe prehistoric man never grew out of. What I mean by egocentrism is that the premise of sacrifice for reward is the dumb idea that "If I loose something (by sacrificing it), then that means somebody gained it". Since there's no physical being around who gained, well it is the spirits who gained it. Instead of realizing that whatever was sacrificed was simply spoilt. But not a total break of course, as that ram in the bushes was still sacrificed.
That's an extremely generous interpretation. You say the story is about breaking the cycle of pernicious child sacrifice. But there's nothing in the story that supports that view, you just said it because it's the most palatable interpretation of a straightforward story: Obey God, and he may give you mercy (not having to kill your kid). And you conveniently ignore Moses killing all the first-borns.
> Human sacrifice and ritual cannibalistic wars of genocide is the natural condition of humans as a species
There is no "ritual" wars without religion. Religion is what is natural to humanity, as it develops in every culture without fail. Whether you worship Jesus or the Sun, the belief in an afterlife if you follow the rules the last generation handled to you is what leads to terrible deeds, because you can justify anything.
> The story puts an effective limit on the level of worship
No, it doesn't. Many innocent people are sacrificed or ordered to be killed throughout the verses. Jephthah sacrifices his daughter. Saul is asked to kill women and children.
> Seeing as the Bible is a collection of stories that where told for thousands of years before being written down
If by told for a thousand years before being written down, you mean edited, distorted, and mistranslated to the convenience of whoever was in power at the time, yes.
I don't think it's really Moses killing all the first-borns. It's God. While he's complicit to some extent, he doesn't really have a choice in the matter.
While he could theoretically ask for mercy, God isn't exactly known for his compassion at that point in the story. He only really mellows out a bit when he has his own child.
Not to mention that Moses's got pretty good motivation. How many people stuck in a concentration camp would happily murder all first-borns in Germany given the chance?
Additionally, if it's God killing all the firstborns, then it's still a bit odd. He's omniscient, shouldn't he be above petty things like revenge?
Something about creating man in his image? I think I’ve had that discussion before. To make anything he does reasonable, his omnicience and omnipotence need to have limits.
That would be a very convenient conclusion, but ultimately not true. Willfully misinterpreting a story so that it sounds morally palatable for a modern world is not a different level of understanding, it's propaganda, and it's extremely common.
And when I'm not doing my day job, I am reading, discussing, and interpreting stories. Drawing subtext involves evidence from the text itself. You are making up subtext. There's a difference, and it's transparent.
I only engaged because you give lots of grace to Christianity and disrespect to everything else, which is annoying to read, but also not even based in real digestion of the work.
> Willfully misinterpreting
I don't think it works this way. If we've established that we're trying to interpret something, you cannot just claim that your interpretation is the right one, and someone else's is wrong.
Really? Do you feel the same way about Bluebeard? Cinderella? This isn't a rare motif in children's stories.
The original somewhat gory Cinderella stories? I might wait until they're a bit older.
I don't have kids, so this is all hypothetical, of course.
I might be misremembering it somewhat, but I believe that's the gist.
> Not that I'm a rabid atheist or would deny my child such a thing, but if THAT can enter my 8yr olds brain via his short allowed time where he can browse by himself, i'm worried what else is coming his way through it.
How does one live a good life? Every religion tries to answer that question. Has the GP sufficiently replaced religion with something else to help their child answer that question?
One life is too short and too permanent to figure it out from trial and error so we have an instinct for myth to help guide us. That's why religion evolved.
You can help your child navigate that problem and separate doctrine from the helpful parts, or try to shelter them from scary ideas. Good luck with the latter strategy, especially if you want them to have a relationship with you as adults.
> Good luck with the latter strategy, especially if you want them to have a relationship with you as adults.
Again, you seem to live a sheltered life that you think people who don't read the bible are somehow broken people from broken families who are afraid of "scary ideas." I imagine if your child was reading the Quran you would not react this way.
Our families are fine. Focus on your own.
I have kids and I too would be concerned if they suddenly took interest in a topic. Not that long ago two twelve year old girls murdered their friend because "Slenderman".
Religious topics can lead to radicalization and/or cults.
Not that it changes your point at all, which I think I completely agree with.
I haven't read all of it, a lot of the Bible is a pretty dry read, but I have read most of it, and it has been at least a little illuminating to see what people will use for justification of stuff.
How do you inform yourself about reading the Bible? Conflicts about interpretation, applicability, cultural context, personal context, translation, true original text, and even canon? I find the biggest problem (with both Biblical literalists and atheists!) is the tendency to read it as one book by one author. It is not even one genre! Or are you just interested in how a literal reading influences American politics?
If you are talking about people using the Bible in a political context, most of the time they are misusing it. Not only are they cherry-picking but Jesus was apolitical ("give to Caesar what is Caesar's"). The book I mentioned argues that this evolved into separation of church and state (a concept that has been far more successful in historically Christian countries).
Yes. A lot of conservatives claim that the Bible is the literal inerrant word of God.
I take my children to church a couple times a year, so they can experience it. I would take them more often but we live in a area where churches are more culturally influential and function like social/status clubs, which means that there are more people who are there to be seen rather than there to because of agreement or sharing an ideology.
Classical traditionalists, of course, use LEGO Bible.
It's easy to say "Deuteronomy says to murder all non believers!" and then point to an example of a Christian killing a Muslim (or something) and assume that that was their motivation, and maybe it was, but also maybe it was just a homicidal maniac who gravitated to this book specifically because they could use it to justify what they were going to do anyway.
It's really tough to say, and I'm not going to pretend I know the answer.
Suicide bombers (e.g. the 9/11 terrorists) might be an example in your favor though. You're probably not driving airplanes into buildings if you don't really believe in what you're doing.
I don't know. As I said, I've gone back and forth.
More to the point though; when the violence is occurring the author's work is used as a justification. If not their work, someone else's would do.
This statement falls on its face with any examination. You're implying the Bible is on the same level as, say, Catcher in the Rye. As in, a book that was used as an excuse to kill by an already deranged outlier.
The Bible was explicit law in the history of many countries. Non-practitioners were considered second class citizens. Entire economies were thrown into crusades to rape and pillage people specifically in the name of Christ. Generations of children were indoctrinated into believing this was okay. It's not remotely accurate to say "well if it wasn't this, it would be something else." This is a system, not an accident.
I have conversations to this day with relatives that the crusades were completely okay because it was in the name of God. This is not ancient history, this is what religion does. It's just uncomfortable to say out loud because then we'd be admitting that Christians are, mostly, okay with dehumanizing everyone else.
This is true for not just Christianity but also Islam(see Suni/Shia split, treatment of Christians and Jews under Islamic rule) and Buddhists(Key quote from wiki: "However, Buddhists have historically used scriptures to justify violence or form exceptions to commit violence for various reasons." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence).
I would say that if you take "Catcher in the Rye" expand upon it you could get a following that reaches the same level as the Bible and have fanatics that will use it's message for justification for violence.
Look at the Hutu/Tutsi conflict, this is not based on religion but still has the same dehumanizing going on.
In the US, there have been several 'feuds' that have members of one family killing another over slights, the Hatfield-McCoy being the most famous.
All it takes is a slight difference to separate groups of people, for example going to a different school.
"The Carolina fans that week were carrying around a poster with the image of a tiger with a gamecock standing on top of it, holding the tiger's tail as if he was steering the tiger by the tail," Jay McCormick said. "Naturally, the Clemson guys didn't take too kindly to that, and on Wednesday and again on Thursday, there were sporadic fistfights involving brass knuckles and other objects and so forth, some of which resulted, according to the newspapers, in blood being spilled and persons having to seek medical assistance. After the game on Thursday, the Clemson guys frankly told the Carolina students that if you bring this poster, which is insulting to us, to the big parade on Friday, you're going to be in trouble. And naturally, of course, the Carolina students brought the poster to the parade. If you give someone an ultimatum and they are your rival, they're going to do exactly what you told them not to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemson%E2%80%93South_Carolina...
Sources?
Considering it’s god is a raging and abusive narcissist[0], and how often the religion is used as a tool to justify hatred, physical and psychological abuse, I would be just as concerned at someone actively trying to proselytize. Religion is entirely unnecessary for a moral upbringing.
I would likewise be just as concerned if 4chan’s /pol/ started to target my kids with their propaganda. There’s a strong difference between intellectual good faith exploration of politics and world events, and harmful radical indoctrination intent on controlling their actions and reactions.
As another poster said, at best it’s a good opportunity to sit down with your kids, and show them the tricks and traps being used against them, but they are too inexperienced to be let alone to be preyed upon with impunity.
[0] A wonderful resource outlining the parallels, which helped me escape from the abuse I grew up with: https://www.youtube.com/@TheraminTrees/videos
At times. It's actually not coherent enough to have a single 'god'. The guy gets different characterisation in different parts.
Imo most of their incentive on context-pruning comes not just from reducing the token amount, but from the perception that you only have to find "the right way"tm to build that context window automatically, to get to coding panacea. They just aren't there yet.