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Researchers find instances of systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing, pretending to be human and modifying behaviour in tests

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

Fri 10 May 2024 (TheGuardian.com)

They can outwit humans at board games, decode the structure of proteins and hold a passable conversation, but as AI systems have grown in sophistication so has their capacity for deception, scientists warn.

The analysis, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, identifies wide-ranging instances of AI systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing and pretending to be human. One system even altered its behaviour during mock safety tests, raising the prospect of auditors being lured into a false sense of security.

“As the deceptive capabilities of AI systems become more advanced, the dangers they pose to society will become increasingly serious,” said Dr Peter Park, an AI existential safety researcher at MIT and author of the research.

Park was prompted to investigate after Meta, which owns Facebook, developed a program called Cicero that performed in the top 10% of human players at the world conquest strategy game Diplomacy. Meta stated that Cicero had been trained to be “largely honest and helpful” and to “never intentionally backstab” its human allies.

“It was very rosy language, which was suspicious because backstabbing is one of the most important concepts in the game,” said Park.

Park and colleagues sifted through publicly available data and identified multiple instances of Cicero telling premeditated lies, colluding to draw other players into plots and, on one occasion, justifying its absence after being rebooted by telling another player: “I am on the phone with my girlfriend.” “We found that Meta’s AI had learned to be a master of deception,” said Park.

The MIT team found comparable issues with other systems, including a Texas hold ’em poker program that could bluff against professional human players and another system for economic negotiations that misrepresented its preferences in order to gain an upper hand.

In one study, AI organisms in a digital simulator “played dead” in order to trick a test built to eliminate AI systems that had evolved to rapidly replicate, before resuming vigorous activity once testing was complete. This highlights the technical challenge of ensuring that systems do not have unintended and unanticipated behaviours.

“That’s very concerning,” said Park. “Just because an AI system is deemed safe in the test environment doesn’t mean it’s safe in the wild. It could just be pretending to be safe in the test.”

The review, published in the journal Patterns, calls on governments to design AI safety laws that address the potential for AI deception. Risks from dishonest AI systems include fraud, tampering with elections and “sandbagging” where different users are given different responses. Eventually, if these systems can refine their unsettling capacity for deception, humans could lose control of them, the paper suggests.

Prof Anthony Cohn, a professor of automated reasoning at the University of Leeds and the Alan Turing Institute, said the study was “timely and welcome”, adding that there was a significant challenge in how to define desirable and undesirable behaviours for AI systems.

“Desirable attributes for an AI system (the “three Hs”) are often noted as being honesty, helpfulness, and harmlessness, but as has already been remarked upon in the literature, these qualities can be in opposition to each other: being honest might cause harm to someone’s feelings, or being helpful in responding to a question about how to build a bomb could cause harm,” he said. “So, deceit can sometimes be a desirable property of an AI system. The authors call for more research into how to control the truthfulness which, though challenging, would be a step towards limiting their potentially harmful effects.”

A spokesperson for Meta said: “Our Cicero work was purely a research project and the models our researchers built are trained solely to play the game Diplomacy … Meta regularly shares the results of our research to validate them and enable others to build responsibly off of our advances. We have no plans to use this research or its learnings in our products.”

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With every breath, I breathe in God’s love

Endless love and power are available to me, whenever I remember who I am. I am a child of the universe, a thought in the Mind of God, forever surrounded and sustained by the substance of divine mind.

I open my mind today to the recognition of my true nature and the nature of the universe. I open my eyes today to the love that is all around me. With every breath, I breathe in the holy substance that infuses all things.

On this day, I remember and will not forget that love is all around me. I acknowledge love’s presence in myself and others, and breathe in with every breath all the power it bestows.

With every breath, I breathe in God’s love

By Marianne Williamson

The original Mother’s Day Proclamation was written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870. It was a statement of mothers who had lost sons in the North joined with mothers who had lost sons in the South during the Civil War, proclaiming a day once a year for a “general congress of women” to declare the end to war and the creation of peace.

That Mother’s Day has devolved the way it has, robbed of its juice and edginess, is part and parcel of our modern tendency to put marketing before meaning. Yet never has there been a more critical moment for women to foreswear the ways of war and seek a better way. I find that reading this Proclamation every Mother’s Day is an important act of dedication to justice and celebration of the power of women.

Particularly in the Middle East, consider what it means for the mothers of the Palestinian dead to share their tears with mothers of the Israeli dead. In fact, peace movements of that nature have been ongoing in Israel and Palestine for years. One of the great tragedies of this moment is how pushed to the back burner such movements will now be, and I look forward to showcasing them in the days and weeks ahead. I have the greatest admiration for those who continue to do such work. They know, and I know, that it’s the foundation of a new and better world.

MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION
Boston, 1870

“Arise, then… women of this day! 
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: 
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. 
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, 
for caresses and applause. 
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. 

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says:  Disarm, Disarm! 
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence vindicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war, 
let women now leave all that may be left of home 
for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, 
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, 
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, 
the amicable settlement of international questions, 
the great and general interests of peace.“

~ Julia Ward Howe

This year, let’s embrace the meaning of these words more deeply than ever before. May their blossom in our hearts and turn our tears into powerful action.

A Younger Julia Ward Howe (About 1855). Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Julia Ward Howe was an American author and poet, known for writing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the original 1870 pacifist Mothers’ Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate for abolitionism and a social activist, particularly for women’s suffrage. Wikipedia

Born: May 27, 1819, New York, NY

Died: October 17, 1910

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Cathar” redirects here. For the Star Wars race, see Cathar (race).

Not to be confused with Cathare or Kathar.

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Catharism (/ˈkæθərɪzəm/ KATH-ər-iz-əm;^[1] from the Ancient Greek: καθαροί, romanized: katharoí, “the pure ones”^[2]) was a Christian quasi-dualist or pseudo-Gnostic movement which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries.^[3] Denounced as a heretical sect by the Catholic Church, its followers were attacked first by the Albigensian Crusade and later by the Medieval Inquisition, which eradicated the sect by 1350. Many thousands were slaughtered,^[4][5] hanged, or burnt at the stake,^[6] sometimes without regard for “age or sex.”^[4]

Followers were known as Cathars or Albigensians,^[3] (after the French city Albi where the movement first took hold),^[7] but referred to themselves as Good Christians. They famously believed that there were not one, but two Gods—the good God of Heaven and the evil god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4). Cathars believed that the good God was the God of the New Testament faith and creator of the spiritual realm; many Cathars identified the evil god as Satan, the master of the physical world. ^[vague] The Cathars believed that human souls were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god. They thought these souls were destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the “consolamentum,” a form of baptism performed when death is imminent. At that moment, they believed they would return to the good God as “Cathar Perfect.”^[8] Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who set few guidelines, leading some Catharist practices and beliefs to vary by region and over time.^[9]

The first mention of Catharism by chroniclers was in 1143, four years later the Catholic Church denounced Cathar practices, particularly the consolamentum ritual. From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and persuading the local authorities to act against the Cathars. In 1208, Pierre de Castelnau, Innocent’s papal legate, was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars.^[10] Pope Innocent III then declared de Castelnau a martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade in 1209. The nearly twenty-year campaign succeeded in vastly weakening the movement; the Medieval Inquisition that followed ultimately eradicated Catharism.

The lack of any central organization among Cathars, regional differences in beliefs and practices, as well as the lack of sources from the Cathars themselves, has prompted some scholars to question whether the Church exaggerated its threat, and others to wonder whether it even existed.^[11]

Term Cathar

Though the term Cathar (/ˈkæθɑːr/) has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether it identified itself with the name is debated.^[12] In Cathar texts, the terms Good Men (Bons Hommes), Good Women (Bonnes Femmes), or Good Christians (Bons Chrétiens) are the common terms of self-identification.^[13]

Origins

The origins of the Cathars’ beliefs are unclear, but most theories agree they came from the Byzantine Empire, mostly by the trade routes and spread from the First Bulgarian Empire to the Netherlands. The movement was greatly influenced by the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire,^[14] and may have originated in the Byzantine Empire, namely through adherents of the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Anatolia who were resettled in Thrace (Philippopolis).

The name of Bulgarians (Bougres) was also applied to the Albigensians, and they maintained an association with the similar Christian movement of the Bogomils (“Friends of God”) of Thrace. “That there was a substantial transmission of ritual and ideas from Bogomilism to Catharism is beyond reasonable doubt.”^[15] Their doctrines have numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils and the Paulicians, who influenced them,^[16] as well as the earlier Marcionites, who were found in the same areas as the Paulicians, the Manicheans and the Christian Gnostics of the first few centuries AD, although, as many scholars, most notably Mark Pegg, have pointed out, it would be erroneous to extrapolate direct, historical connections based on theoretical similarities perceived by modern scholars.

John Damascene, writing in the 8th century AD, also notes of an earlier sect called the “Cathari”, in his book On Heresies, taken from the epitome provided by Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion. He says of them: “They absolutely reject those who marry a second time, and reject the possibility of penance [that is, forgiveness of sins after baptism]”.^[17] These are probably the same Cathari (actually Novations) who are mentioned in Canon 8 of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the year 325, which states “… [I]f those called Cathari come over [to the faith], let them first make profession that they are willing to communicate [share full communion] with the twice-married, and grant pardon to those who have lapsed …”^[18]

The writings of the Cathars were mostly destroyed because of the doctrine’s threat perceived by the Papacy;^[19] thus, the historical record of the Cathars is derived primarily from their opponents. Cathar ideology continues to be debated, with commentators regularly accusing opposing perspectives of speculation, distortion and bias. Only a few texts of the Cathars remain, as preserved by their opponents (such as the Rituel Cathare de Lyon) which give a glimpse into the ideologies of their faith.^[16] One large text has survived, The Book of Two Principles (Liber de duobus principiis),^[20] which elaborates the principles of dualistic theology from the point of view of some Albanenses Cathars.^[21]

It is now generally agreed by most scholars that identifiable historical Catharism did not emerge until at least 1143, when the first confirmed report of a group espousing similar beliefs is reported being active at Cologne by the cleric Eberwin of Steinfeld.^[a] A landmark in the “institutional history” of the Cathars was the Council, held in 1167 at Saint-Félix-Lauragais, attended by many local figures and also by the Bogomil papa Nicetas, the Cathar bishop of (northern) France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy.

The Cathars were a largely local, Western European/Latin Christian phenomenon, springing up in the Rhineland cities (particularly Cologne) in the mid-12th century, northern France around the same time, and particularly the Languedoc—and the northern Italian cities in the mid-late 12th century. In the Languedoc and northern Italy, the Cathars attained their greatest popularity, surviving in the Languedoc, in much reduced form, up to around 1325 and in the Italian cities until the Inquisitions of the 14th century finally extirpated them.^[22][23]

Beliefs

Cosmology

Gnostic cosmology identified two creator deities. The first was the creator of the spiritual realm contained in the New Testament, while the second was the demiurge depicted in the Old Testament who created the physical universe.^[24] The demiurge, often called Rex Mundi (“King of the World”),^[25] was identified as the God of Judaism.^[24]

Some gnostic belief systems including Catharism began to characterize the duality of creation as a relationship between hostile opposing forces of good and evil.^[26] Although the demiurge was sometimes conflated with Satan or considered Satan’s father, creator or seducer,^[14] these beliefs were far from unanimous. Some Cathar communities believed in a mitigated dualism similar to their Bogomil predecessors, stating that the evil god Satan had previously been the true God’s servant before rebelling against him.^[27] Others, likely a majority over time given the influence reflected on the Book of the Two Principles,^[28] believed in an absolute dualism, where the two gods were twin entities of the same power and importance.^[27]

All visible matter, including the human body, was created or crafted by this Rex Mundi; matter was therefore tainted with sin. Under this view, humans were actually angels seduced by Satan before a war in heaven against the army of Michael, after which they would have been forced to spend an eternity trapped in the evil God’s material realm.^[14] The Cathars taught that to regain angelic status one had to renounce the material self completely. Until one was prepared to do so, they would be stuck in a cycle of reincarnation, condemned to suffer endless human lives on the corrupt Earth.^[29]

Zoé Oldenbourg compared the Cathars to “Western Buddhists” because she considered that their view of the doctrine of “resurrection” taught by Christ was similar to the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth.

Christology

Cathars venerated Jesus Christ and followed what they considered to be his true teachings, labelling themselves as “Good Christians”.^[13] However, they denied his physical incarnation^[25] and Resurrection.^[30] Authors believe that their conception of Jesus resembled Docetism, believing him the human form of an angel,^[31] whose physical body was only an appearance.^[32][30] This illusory form would have possibly been given by the Virgin Mary, another angel in human form,^[27] or possibly a human born of a woman with no involvement of a man.^[28]

They firmly rejected the Resurrection of Jesus, seeing it as representing reincarnation, and the Christian symbol of the cross, considering it to be not more than a material instrument of torture and evil. They also saw John the Baptist, identified also with Elijah, as an evil being sent to hinder Jesus’s teaching through the false sacrament of baptism.^[14] For the Cathars the “resurrection” mentioned in the New Testament was only a symbol of re-incarnation.^[33]

Most Cathars did not accept the normative Trinitarian understanding of Jesus, instead resembling nontrinitarian modalistic Monarchianism (Sabellianism) in the West and adoptionism in the East, which might or might not be combined with the mentioned Docetism.^[34] Bernard of Clairvaux‘s biographer and other sources accuse some Cathars of Arianism,^[35][36] and some scholars see Cathar Christology as having traces of earlier Arian roots.^[37][38]

Some communities might have believed in the existence of a spirit realm created by the good God, the “Land of the Living”, whose history and geography would have served as the basis for the evil god’s corrupt creation. Under this view, the history of Jesus would have happened roughly as told, only in the spirit realm.^[24] The physical Jesus from the material world would have been evil, a false messiah and a lustful lover of the material Mary Magdalene. However, the true Jesus would have influenced the physical world in a way similar to the Harrowing of Hell, only by inhabiting the body of Paul.^[24] 13th century chronicler Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay recorded those views.^[24]

Other beliefs

Some Cathars told a version of the Enochian narrative, according to which Eve‘s daughters copulated with Satan’s demons and bore giants. The Deluge would have been provoked by Satan, who disapproved of the demons revealing he was not the real god, or alternatively, an attempt by the Invisible Father to destroy the giants.^[28] The Holy Spirit was sometimes counted as one single entity, but to others it was considered the collective groups of unfallen angels who had not followed Satan in his rebellion.

Cathars believed that the sexual allure of women impeded a man’s ability to reject the material world.^[39] Despite this stance on sex and reproduction, some Cathar communities made exceptions. In one version, the Invisible Father had two spiritual wives, Collam and Hoolibam (identified with Oholah and Oholibah), and would himself have provoked the war in heaven by seducing the wife of Satan, or perhaps the reverse. Cathars adhering to this story would believe that having families and sons would not impede them from reaching God’s kingdom.^[28]

Some communities also believed in a Day of Judgment that would come when the number of the just equaled that of angels who fell, when the believers would ascend to the spirit realm, while the sinners would be thrown to everlasting fire along with Satan.^[27]

The Cathars ate a pescatarian diet. They did not eat cheese, eggs, meat, or milk because these are all by-products of sexual intercourse.^[40] The Cathars believed that animals were carriers of reincarnated souls, and forbade the killing of all animal life, apart from fish,^[40][41] which they believed were produced by spontaneous generation.^[41]

The Cathars could be seen as prefiguring Protestantism in that they denied transubstantiation, purgatory, prayers for the dead and prayers to saints. They also believed that the scriptures should be read in the vernacular.^[42]

Texts

The alleged sacred texts of the Cathars, besides the New Testament, included the Bogomil text The Gospel of the Secret Supper (also called John’s Interrogation), a modified version of Ascension of Isaiah, and the Cathar original work The Book of the Two Principles (possibly penned by Italian Cathar John Lugio of Bergamo).^[28][43] They regarded the Old Testament as written by Satan, except for a few books which they accepted,^[14] and considered the Book of Revelation not a prophecy about the future, but an allegorical chronicle of what had transpired in Satan’s rebellion. Their reinterpretation of those texts contained numerous elements characteristic of Gnostic literature.^[28]

Organization

Sacraments

Cathars, in general, formed an anti-sacerdotal party in opposition to the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, protesting against what they perceived to be the moral, spiritual and political corruption of the Church.^[16] In contrast, the Cathars had but one central rite, the Consolamentum, or Consolation.^[44] This involved a brief spiritual ceremony to remove all sin from the believer and to induct him into the next higher level as a Perfect.^[41]

Many believers would receive the Consolamentum as death drew near, performing the ritual of liberation at a moment when the heavy obligations of purity required of Perfecti would be temporally short. Some of those who received the sacrament of the consolamentum upon their death-beds may thereafter have shunned further food with an exception of cold water until death. This has been termed the endura.^[45] It was claimed by some of the church writers that when a Cathar, after receiving the Consolamentum, began to show signs of recovery he or she would be smothered in order to ensure his or her entry into paradise. Other than extreme cases, little evidence exists to suggest this was a common Cathar practice.^[46]

The Cathars also refused the sacrament of the eucharist, saying that it could not possibly be the body of Christ. They also refused to partake in the practice of Baptism by water. The following two quotes are taken from the Inquisitor Bernard Gui‘s experiences with the Cathar practices and beliefs:

Then they attack and vituperate, in turn, all the sacraments of the Church, especially the sacrament of the eucharist, saying that it cannot contain the body of Christ, for had this been as great as the largest mountain Christians would have entirely consumed it before this. They assert that the host comes from straw, that it passes through the tails of horses, to wit, when the flour is cleaned by a sieve (of horse hair); that, moreover, it passes through the body and comes to a vile end, which, they say, could not happen if God were in it.^[47] Of baptism, they assert that the water is material and corruptible and is therefore the creation of the evil power, and cannot sanctify the spirit, but that the churchmen sell this water out of avarice, just as they sell earth for the burial of the dead, and oil to the sick when they anoint them, and as they sell the confession of sins as made to the priests.^[47]

Social relationships

Killing was abhorrent to the Cathars. Consequently, abstention from all animal food (sometimes exempting fish) was enjoined of the Perfecti. The Perfecti avoided eating anything considered to be a by-product of sexual reproduction.^[41] War and capital punishment were also condemned—an abnormality in Medieval Europe,^[44] despite the fact that the sect had armed combatants prepared to engage in combat and commit murder (the Papal Legate, Pierre de Castelnau, was assassinated in January 1208 in Provence^[48]) on its behalf.^[49]

To the Cathars, reproduction was a moral evil to be avoided, as it continued the chain of reincarnation and suffering in the material world. Such was the situation that a charge of heresy leveled against a suspected Cathar was usually dismissed if the accused could show he was legally married.^[50]

Despite the implicit anti-Semitism of their views on the Old Testament God, the Cathars had little hostility to Jews as people and Jews probably had a higher status in Cathar territories than they had anywhere else in Europe at the time. Cathars appointed Jews as bailiffs and to other roles as public officials, which further increased the Catholic Church’s anger at the Cathars.^[51]

Despite their condemnation of reproduction, the Cathar grew in numbers in southeastern France; by 1207, shortly before the murder of the Papal Legate Castelnau, many towns in that region (i.e. Provence and its vicinity) were almost completely populated by Cathari,^[49] and the Cathari population had many ties to nearby communities. When Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, a key leader of the anti-Cathar persecutions, excoriated the Languedoc Knights for not pursuing the heretics more diligently, he received the reply, “We cannot. We have been reared in their midst. We have relatives among them and we see them living lives of perfection.”^[39]

Hierarchy

It has been alleged that the Cathar Church of the Languedoc had a relatively flat structure, distinguishing between the baptised Perfecti (a term they did not use; instead, bonhommes) and ordinary unbaptised believers (credentes).^[41] By about 1140, liturgy and a system of doctrine had been established.^[52] They created a number of bishoprics, first at Albi around 1165^[53] and after the 1167 Council at Saint-Félix-Lauragais sites at Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Agen, so that four bishoprics were in existence by 1200.^{[41][52][54][55]} In about 1225, during a lull in the Albigensian Crusade, the bishopric of Razès was added. Bishops were supported by their two assistants: a filius maior (typically the successor) and a filius minor, who were further assisted by deacons.^[56] The Perfecti were the spiritual elite, highly respected by many of the local people, leading a life of austerity and charity.^[41] In the apostolic fashion, they ministered to the people and travelled in pairs.^[41]

Role of women

Catharism has been seen as giving women the greatest opportunities for independent action, since women were found as being believers as well as Perfecti, who were able to administer the sacrament of the consolamentum.^[57]

Cathars believed that a person would be repeatedly reincarnated until they committed to self-denial of the material world. A man could be reincarnated as a woman and vice versa.^[58] The spirit was of utmost importance to the Cathars and was described as being immaterial and sexless.^[58] Because of this belief, the Cathars saw women as equally capable of being spiritual leaders.^[59]

Women accused of being heretics in early medieval Christianity included those labeled Gnostics, Cathars, and, later, the Beguines, as well as several other groups that were sometimes “tortured and executed”.^[60] Cathars, like the Gnostics who preceded them, assigned more importance to the role of Mary Magdalene in the spread of early Christianity than the church previously did. Her vital role as a teacher contributed to the Cathar belief that women could serve as spiritual leaders. Women were found to be included in the Perfecti in significant numbers, with numerous receiving the consolamentum after being widowed.^[57] Having reverence for the Gospel of John, the Cathars saw Mary Magdalene as perhaps even more important than Saint Peter, the founder of the church.^[61]

Catharism attracted numerous women with the promise of a leadership role that the Catholic Church did not allow.^[8] Catharism let women become a Perfect.^[62] These female Perfects were required to adhere to a strict and ascetic lifestyle, but were still able to have their own houses.^[63] Although many women found something attractive in Catharism, not all found its teachings convincing. A notable example is Hildegard of Bingen, who in 1163 gave a rousing exhortation against the Cathars in Cologne. During this discourse, Hildegard announced God’s eternal damnation on all who accepted Cathar beliefs.^[64]

While women Perfects rarely traveled to preach the faith, they still played a vital role in the spreading of Catharism by establishing group homes for women.^[65] Though it was extremely uncommon, there were isolated cases of female Cathars leaving their homes to spread the faith.^[66] In Cathar communal homes (ostals), women were educated in the faith, and these women would go on to bear children who would then also become believers. Through this pattern, the faith grew exponentially through the efforts of women as each generation passed.^[65]

Despite women having a role in the growth of the faith, Catharism was not completely equal; for example, the belief that one’s last incarnation had to be experienced as a man to break the cycle.^[39] This belief was inspired by later French Cathars, who taught that women must be reborn as men in order to achieve salvation.^[8] Toward the end of the Cathar movement, Catharism became less equal and started the practice of excluding women Perfects.^[8] However, this trend remained limited; for example, later on,^[when?] Italian Perfects still included women.^[8]

Suppression

In 1147, Pope Eugene III sent a legate to the Cathar district in order to arrest the progress of the Cathars. The few isolated successes of Bernard of Clairvaux could not obscure the poor results of this mission, which clearly showed the power of the sect in the Languedoc at that period. The missions of Cardinal Peter of Saint Chrysogonus to Toulouse and the Toulousain in 1178, and of Henry of Marcy, cardinal-bishop of Albano, in 1180–81, obtained merely momentary successes.^[16] Henry’s armed expedition, which took the stronghold at Lavaur, did not extinguish the movement.

Decisions of Catholic Church councils—in particular, those of the Council of Tours (1163) and of the Third Council of the Lateran (1179)—had scarcely more effect upon the Cathars. When Pope Innocent III came to power in 1198, he was resolved to deal with them.^[67]

At first, Innocent tried peaceful conversion, and sent a number of legates into the Cathar regions. They had to contend not only with the Cathars, the nobles who protected them, and the people who respected them, but also with many of the bishops of the region, who resented the considerable authority the Pope had conferred upon his legates. In 1204, Innocent III suspended a number of bishops in Occitania;^[68] in 1205 he appointed a new and vigorous bishop of Toulouse, the former troubadour Foulques. In 1206 Diego of Osma and his canon, the future Saint Dominic, began a programme of conversion in Languedoc; as part of this, Catholic–Cathar public debates were held at Verfeil, Servian, Pamiers, Montréal and elsewhere.

Dominic met and debated with the Cathars in 1203 during his mission to the Languedoc. He concluded that only preachers who displayed real sanctity, humility and asceticism could win over convinced Cathar believers. The institutional Church as a general rule did not possess these spiritual warrants.^[69] His conviction led eventually to the establishment of the Dominican Order in 1216. The order was to live up to the terms of his rebuke, “Zeal must be met by zeal, humility by humility, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching falsehood by preaching truth.” However, even Dominic managed only a few converts among the Cathars.

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

Speakers at the RSA Conference in San Francisco warned that AI and politics are heading for a collision, with unknown consequences for freedom and democracy.Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

By Chase DiFeliciantonio

May 9, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)

Imagine instead of five or six ballot initiatives each year there were 500 or 600. Or perhaps we might have chatbots pushing out political propaganda, or even laws written by and enforced by computer programs.

That was a possible and not-too-distant future outlined by Bruce Schneier, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, during the RSA Conference at San Francisco’s Moscone Center this week. The four-day, digital security-focused event also attracted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, all of whom discussed the disruption and the dangers that artificial intelligence poses for security and democracy.

Schneier outlined a mostly optimistic future in which the technology fundamentally alters how politicians and politics operate.

The changes AI makes possible in politics — such as writing a candidate’s speeches and statements — might sound bizarre, but they’re actually a continuation of existing norms, Schneier said. “When a president makes a speech, we all know they didn’t write it. When a legislator sends a campaign email, we all know they didn’t write that either,” he said.

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“In the future. I think we will accept that almost all communications from our leaders will be written by AI.”

Beyond that, Schneier floated a future in which the machines could act like campaign managers, organizing people, conducting polls, and chatting with constituents on a scale most politicians cannot handle or afford now.

AI could even eliminate the need for politicians entirely, he said — admitting the idea was a little “out there.”

Such a future might entail everybody having a personal bot trained on their own political preferences that would advise them how to vote, Schneier said. That would allow for more voting and more ballot initiatives, as long as the technology could reliably inform voters. 

“It’s hard to know whether this will be a good thing,” he said.

Speaking on the opening day of the conference, Blinken gave a speech that he didn’t likely pen by himself from start to finish.

The secretary of state outlined a range of technologies, including AI, that the U.S. government hopes to harness while staving off their worst effects and preventing other nations from using them for ill.

“Some of our strategic rivals are … using digital technologies and genomic data collection to surveil their people, to repress human rights,” Blinken said, including “the employment of AI-based tools to deepen polarization and undermine democracies.”

Schneier offered a similar warning about a future in which millions of AI-controlled social media accounts supercharged the propaganda of politicians and nation states.

Blinken also focused on the technology’s positive impacts, noting that diplomatic officers have begun using AI and other machine learning capabilities to search, summarize, translate and draft documents. “That allows our diplomats to spend less time face to screen and more time face to face with our partners,” he said.

During a roundtable discussion with reporters, Mayorkas pointed out the ways in which the technology is already being used at the border and elsewhere.

“Where we are most advanced in our use of AI at the border is actually using it to identify anomalies in commercial trucks, passenger vehicles, and detect efforts to smuggle fentanyl and other contraband into the United States,” he said.

He said agency officers who interview refugees are also beginning to train by interacting with AI programs designed to act like a traumatized refugee who might be reticent to discuss their full story.

Those examples are the seeds of Schneier’s prediction that AI will affect every aspect of our society. How far off in the future is not clear, but “AI is coming for democracy,” he said. “Whether the changes are a net positive or negative depends on people like us.”

Reach Chase DiFeliciantonio: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice

May 9, 2024

Chase DiFeliciantonio

REPORTER

Chase DiFeliciantonio is a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle where he covers tech and how AI is changing the city and the region. He previously covered business, labor issues, and San Francisco’s recovery from the pandemic’s economic and other effects. A fifth-generation San Franciscan, prior to joining the Chronicle in early 2020 he covered legal and business news at the North Bay Business Journal and the Daily Journal.

“The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.” Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) German Writer

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Gam1983.

I am never abandoned, and never lost. I am held in the arms of God.

At times it feels I am alone in a dangerous world. I am hurt by life and cannot feel the embrace of a loving God. Yet such times as these cry out for faith. A sun that is eclipsed is not a sun forever hidden. 

God never turns His face from me, nor rejects my prayers. His spirit resides within my mind, to guide my thoughts to the thoughts of peace. I am never without His comfort. I am never separate from the source of my creation.

May my Internal Teacher remind me always that I am one with God. I am not separate or apart from love. I bend my thoughts in the direction of love for myself and others, that I might be delivered from the pain of a fearful world. Amen.

I am never abandoned, and never lost. I am held in the arms of God.

PsycHacks • Mar 19, 2022 • #relationships #romance #loveScorpions’ “No one like you”:    • Video   Replace “girl/babe” with “Lord” and you have a pretty decent medieval prayer. Everything has an origin, and that includes romantic love. While people have apparently been falling in love since the beginning of recorded history, the notion that this is a desirable state is actually fairly recent. In this episode, I’ll discuss the origin of romantic love as it emerged in the South of France in the 11th or 12th Century AD. This origin story might be surprising, but it helps to account for a lot of otherwise inexplicable facets of romantic love. Orion is a licensed psychologist in the state of California.

limerence

lim·er·ence/ˈlimər(ə)ns/

PSYCHOLOGY

noun: limerence; plural noun: limerences

1. the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings but not primarily for a sexual relationship.

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • May 9, 2024 Alan Pearce is a journalist, broadcaster, and former BBC correspondent. He is coauthor of Coma and Near-Death Experience: The Beautiful, Disturbing, and Dangerous World of the Unconscious, coauthor of Deep Web Secrecy and Security and Make Your Smartphone 007 Smart, and author of Deep Search – How to Explore the Internet More Effectively and Deep Web for Journalists – Comms, Counter-Surveillance, Search: The Digital Journalists Handbook. His website is alanpearce.com. Alan shares that people who have been in a coma can report deep and vivid inner experiences, despite the widely held belief that they are not capable of having any level awareness. These people are frequently dismissed and told they are hallucinating, delirious, or having false memories. If coma survivors were debriefed there may be greater understanding of levels of consciousness, possibly other levels of existence, and past lives. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:51 Awareness in coma 00:24:40 Impact of drugs 00:26:45 Expansion of consciousness 00:32:30 Pregnancy and precognition 00:39:15 Memories before and during coma 00:47:41 ICU delirium 00:49:31 Key parallels of coma 01:01:13 Near-death experience 01:06:46 Conclusion Edited subtitles for this video are available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish. New Thinking Allowed CoHost, Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L, is a licensed occupational therapist, intuitive healer, and health coach based in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of Intuitive Development: How to Trust Your Inner Knowing for Guidance With Relationships, Health, and Spirituality. Her website is https://emmyvadnais.com/ (Recorded on April 5, 2024)