Avodah Mailing List

Volume 41: Number 76

Sun, 29 Oct 2023

• 1. T Chachomim to talk to in learning Ben PeKuAh (Rabbi Meir G. Rabi)
• 2. AI/Psak (Joel Rich)
• 3. Fasting Priority (Joel Rich)
• 4. Re: Proof of God's Existence? (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: AI/Psak (Micha Berger)
• 6. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on the parsha: Avraham, the first ?Protestant? (Prof. L. Levine)
• 7. Re: Monetary Damages? (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Aruch Hashulchan Quote (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: AI and Jewish Law (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Medrash ? (Micha Berger)

Can anyone suggest Talmidei Chachomim or even one, in the US, EY or Europe,
and their contact details, with whom I might be able to talk in learning
with re Ben PeKuAh
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To a maggid shiur:
Just a few thoughts on your recent AI/psak discussion.

In its current format ChatGPT will not have all the data on the poseik
because it will only include written responses not any of the discussions
that led up to those and not ones that were oral.

A more basic issue in the whole meta-physical context is what is
consciousness or sentience, how do we know the ChatGPT will not have
hashraat shechina.


There?s also a longer-term issue concerning the joint AI/human component.
Once radiologists stop looking at thousands of scans in detail, and only
look at the questionable ones with ChatGPT, will they eventually lose their
ability to read scans much as I think many people have lost the ability to
navigate because they have Waze in their cars.

I think your concerns about getting ahead of the curve are really well
founded I can only imagine what the world will look like when you?re my age

Hashem Oz Lamo Yiten Hashem Yvarech Et Amo Bashalom
Joel Rich
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There?s a halacha I?ve heard stated many times that it?s better to stay in
bed all day on yom kippur in order to be able to complete the fast rather
than to go to shul (tfila btzibur et al) and have to have even a small
break (ie shiurim). How would you analyze a similar question on tzom
gedalya?
Hashem Oz Lamo Yiten Hashem Yvarech Et Amo Bashalom
Joel Rich
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On Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 04:56:08PM -0400, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Some very interesting discussion (with pushback) concerning "knowing" that
> God exists.
> 
> https://www.yutorah.org/lectures/1075784

The concept of a Kuzari Principle a/k/a The Kuzari Proof bothers me.

As I understand Rihal, the point of the Kuzari cheleq 1 is that philosophical
proofs are of limited value. That having a mesorah is a more sure way of
knowing.

(FWIW, R Dr Sholom Carmy thought my understanding had merit.)
> 
> Rabbi Itamar Rosensweig-????? ?? ???? ?? ??? ?????: ???????, ?????, ?????

Here are my two usual quotes, since they haven't been on-list in a number
of years. Friedlander's freebie translation, touched up:

    1:13 The Chaver: That which you express is religion based on
    speculation and system, the research of thought, but open to many
    doubts. Now ask the philosophers, and thou wilt find that they do
    not agree on one action or one principle, since some doctrines can
    be established by arguments, which are only partially satisfactory,
    and still much less capable of being proved.

    1:63: The Chaver: Certainly. He [Aristotlte] exerted his mind,
    because he had no tradition from any reliable source at his
    disposal. He meditated on the beginning and end of the world,
    but found as much difficulty in the theory of a beginning as in
    that of eternity. Finally, these abstract speculations which made
    for eternity, prevailed, and he found no reason to inquire into the
    chronology or derivation of those who lived before him. Had he lived
    among a people with well authenticated and generally acknowledged
    traditions, he would have applied his deductions and arguments to
    establish the theory of creation, however difficult, instead of
    eternity, which is even much more difficult to accept.

Also, notice the framing. The King of the Khazars doesn't start by trying
to prove G-d. G-d and the idea that His Existence means something about
how to live are taken as givens. Religion is a given, the question
is which kind of worship - Christianity, Islam, whatever the Theist
Philosophers are teaching, or Judaism.

A snippet of 1:1:
    ... Yet he was so zealous in the performance of the Khazar religion,
    that he devoted himself with a perfect heart to the service of the
    temple and sacrifices. Notwithstanding this devotion, the angel
    came again at night and repeated: "Your way of thinking is pleasing
    to G-d, but not your way of acting." This caused him to ponder over
    the different beliefs and religions, and finally become a convert
    to Judaism together with many other Khazars. ...

Nowadays, the mesorah is so attenuated, I don't think Rihal's position
still works. OTOH, since Kant, we have other ideas about justifying
beliefs. Nearest the Rihal's is Reliabilism - trusting something you
got from a source that otherwise proved itself reliable. Or maybe the
first-hand experiences the religion creates. Not the aesthetics, but the
properties of the experience that one is making the aesthetic judgment
of being "elegant" or the like about. (The way mathemeticians manage
to largely agree about which proofs are beautiful.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 If you're going through hell
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   keep going.
Author: Widen Your Tent                      - Winston Churchill
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 06:33:06AM +0300, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> In its current format ChatGPT will not have all the data on the poseik
> because it will only include written responses not any of the discussions
> that led up to those and not ones that were oral.

That is a very small set nowadays. So many articles and web citings, few
oral answers remain oral.

> A more basic issue in the whole meta-physical context is what is
> consciousness or sentience, how do we know the ChatGPT will not have
> hashraat shechina.

Last iteration I suggested that a pesaq needs a poseiq. And we discussed
this in numerous conversations aout whether women can be posqos. And a
nakhri certainly can't give horaah.

But, the AI could be a good resource for a poseiq to use.

> There's also a longer-term issue concerning the joint AI/human component.
> Once radiologists stop looking at thousands of scans in detail, and only
> look at the questionable ones with ChatGPT, will they eventually lose their
> ability to read scans much as I think many people have lost the ability to
> navigate because they have Waze in their cars.

Another repeated idea, but stated shorter:

There are the facts themselves, and then learning how they are usually
handled. It think the latter is critical, which is why the gemara has a
machloqes about which negative epithet to use for someone who learned the
facts but didn't do shimush -- apprenticeship -- and yet still pasqens.

We haven't seen an AI yet built around processing facts. What we are
talking about is large language models (LLMs), like GPTs. For a LLM,
the proxy for learning mode of thought is learning mode of writing.

So, you would not only need a GPT trained on the web, you would need
one so heavily trained on teshuvos and pesaqim that it ends up combining
the facts in a pesaq-friendly way.

Now for a new extension of the thought:

People can compartmentalize, and have different styles based on context.
I don't think our LLMs are up to that yet. This is a major shortcoming,
as it means the typical poseiq may use one mode of thinking when dealing
with the metzi'us, another when dealing with the people involved, and
a third when dealing with the various halachic concepts they have to
apply to all of the above.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
Author: Widen Your Tent                    -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

From

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/379197

We?re supposed to change the world, not Torah.


When secular intellectuals embrace new ideas, many of their Jewish
counterparts try to ?update? Judaism accordingly. They even justify their
behavior, claiming that Judaism is supposed to evolve with the times.

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch rails against this assertion in his commentary on
this week?s parsha. ?The loudest protest against it is the first Jewish
command: lech lecha. Was Avraham?s first stand in accordance with the
spirit of his times? In the midst of Chaldea, Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia,
and Egypt! Idolizing sensuality and power was the contemporary doctrine
there ? worshipping the life of the senses in Asia, worshipping human power
and killing freedom in Egypt.?


G-d placed Avraham in these societies, not to fit in, but to stand in
opposition to them. In that sense, Avraham was ?the first ?Protestant,??
writes Rav Hirsch. His very life served as a protest against his
surroundings.

Going with the flow is a natural impulse. And under normal circumstances,
we?re supposed to honor our home and country. But ?stronger than the bond
that attaches us to fatherland and family should be the bond that attaches
us to G-d.?


?Everybody is responsible to G-d for himself. If necessary, alone ? with
G-d ? when the principle worshipped by the majority is not the true godly
one,? Rav Hirsch writes.


Professor Yitzchok Levine

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On Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 06:57:22PM -0400, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> IIRC there's a tshuva concerning jousting (Purim?) that holds one not
> liable for damages due to implied consent. Does this imply that the
> jousting itself is really prohibited?

Or maybe the reverse... It shows that implied concent isn't "masneh
al mah shekasuv baTorah", and therefore it must be allowed!

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On Wed, Oct 11, 2023 at 01:10:42AM +0300, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> 2 discussing the status of the chazaka of a former house minyan when a
> permanent shul is built "as it is known that multiple individual minyanim
> cause destruction in the city."

Somewhat more Areivim-y than Avodah, but...

The rav of the shteibl down the street suggested a connection to the OTD
rate.

More father's used to show more loyalty to a single shul. And a child
grew up with a real sense of belonging to that shul.

In a neighborhood (like mine) with many shuls, it is more common that
dad davens in the minyan factory on workdays, in the nearest shul Friday
night and maybe Shabbos afternoon, and gives his allegiance to a shul
he goes to only once a week -- Shabbos morning!

No social anchor of belonging to a shul and its community -- more go
OTD.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 What we do for ourselves dies with us.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   What we do for others and the world,
Author: Widen Your Tent      remains and is immortal.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                      - Albert Pine

On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 05:30:43PM -0400, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Let me just articulate one issue which I haven't really seen discussed. As
> I understand it AI assumes something along the lines of that the problem
> was presented to the decider and he went through an intellectual process
> and came up with the result. While this may be often true I can't help
> but of [RYBS]'s comments in [C]ommunity, [C]ovenant and [C]onversation
> where he
> says he knew the result for the question concerning drafting chaplains,
> and just had to come up with a logic to support it...

Again, today's AI, GPT and other Large Language Models, are doing neither.
There is no reasoning out of concepts.

Words are indeed mapped to vectors, sets of numbers that relate to the
words' meaning. But they are manipulated as tokens of language. That's
why they're large language models, not large world models.

What you get from chatGPT is something written following the patterns,
meta-patterns, meta-meta-patterns... of the texts it was trained on,
brought to the words in the prompt.

It produces results that usually seem like it knows what it's talking
about, because the taraining texts generally make sense. But that's why
at times it fills in the pattern with nonsense. Hence what people call AI
"hallucinations".

There is no parallel to logical analytics vs. gestalt thought in any
of this.

(And I still think no large language model should be all that heavily
used as a tool for a poseiq until you train one on a lot more teshuvos,
shas and posqim than on general meterial. You have to get the right
meta-patterns dominating.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 The same boiling water
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   that softens the potato, hardens the egg.
Author: Widen Your Tent      It's not about the circumstance,
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    but rather what you are made of.

On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 03:44:56PM -0400, Michael Poppers via Avodah wrote:
> Google'ing, I see Sefaria.org (URL
> https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/395598?lang=bi) quoting REMansour, "
> Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:1:8 </Shir_HaShirim_Rabbah.1.1.8>
...
> The Midrash Talpiyot, based on the Zohar in Parashat Noah, writes that the
> souls of the wicked condemned to suffering in Gehinam are given a reprieve
> from their suffering during the times when we are praying here in this
> world. Each of the three daily prayer services, the Midrash Talpiyot
> writes, lasts for an hour-and-a-half. (It seems that in the olden days the
> Sadikim spent a full 90 minutes on each prayer, even Minha and Arbit!)...

When did Pesuqei deZimra become part of of the siddur, rather than a minhag
chassidus mentioned in the gemara?

Shabbos 11b:
    Rabi Yosei said: may my place be among those who eat shalosh se'udos
    on Shabbos.
    Rabi Yosei said: may my place be among those who finish Hallel every
    day.
    Is it so? But didn't the master teach: Whoever recites Hallel every day,
    such a person is a mechareif umegadeif!? What are we talking about?
    [Finishing the lower-case-h hallel] in Pesuqei deZimra.

And the list of "yehei chelqi" continues.

In Siddur R Saadia Gaon, which is later geonic, Pesuqei deZimra are
printed as part of "Tefillas Shacharis leYachid", and isn't Tefillas
Tzibbur. (There is a copy with Hebrew translation of the Judeo-Arabic
instructions and descriptions at https://hebrewbooks.org/20685 . Also,
interesting RSG made his siddur bi-lingual.)

So, we are likely talking about a Shacharis that closely resembled our
Maariv. So:

More impressive it took 90 minutes.

Less surprising it didn't take longer than Minchah or Maariv.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 The day you were born is the day G-d decided
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   that the world could not exist without you.
Author: Widen Your Tent                  - Rav Nachman of Breslov
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF


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