• 16 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
Cake day: June 16th, 2024
  • JOMusic@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Ex-believers, what made you quit your religion/cult?English
    9·
    2 months ago

    I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me “if I hadn’t been born a Christian, would I be a Christian?” Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”

    So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:

      1. I couldn’t currently defend my faith reasonably
      1. If God was actually real, he wouldn’t be scared of people exploring arguments against Christianity, because the faith would be based on something ultimately true.
      1. By exploring other faiths, arguments, etc, if I returned as a Christian, I would have a much stronger faith.

    The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a historical and literature sense), more and more of the belief system unraveled, eventually to the point I didn’t call myself a Christian anymore.

    Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a “spiritual pull” / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That’s been the most complex part of all of this.

    I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. (I suspect this hole in our culture is why a lot of fundamental US Evangelism has flourished btw)

    But that’s how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed :P

  • JOMusic@lemmy.mlOPtoOpen Source@lemmy.ml•Open Euro LLM launchesEnglish
    61·
    3 months ago

    "Europe’s leading AI companies and research institutions combine their forces and expertise to develop next-generation open-source language models in an unprecedented collaboration to advance European AI capabilities, the OpenEuroLLM project.

    A consortium of 20 leading European research institutions, companies and EuroHPC centres coordinated by Jan Hajič (Charles University, Czechia) and co-led by Peter Sarlin (AMD Silo AI, Finland) will build a family of performant, multilingual, large language foundation models for commercial, industrial and public services. The transparent and compliant open-source models will democratize access to high-quality AI technologies and strengthen the ability of European companies to compete on a global market and public organizations to produce impactful public services.

    The OpenEuroLLM project is aligned with the imperative to improve Europe’s competitiveness and digital sovereignty. The project is a prime example of the type of technology infrastructure needed to lower thresholds for European AI product development and refinement, demonstrating the strength of transparency, openness and community involvement, values largely recognized across the European tech ecosystem.

    The models will be developed within Europe’s robust regulatory framework, ensuring alignment with European values while maintaining technological excellence. Cooperating with open-source and open science communities like LAION, open-sci and OpenML, and additional experts in the field assembled in the project’s Open Strategic Partnership Board, OpenEuroLLM will ensure that the models, software, data and evaluation will be fully open and can be fine-tuned and instruction-tuned for specific industry and public sector needs. These performant multilingual models preserve both linguistic and cultural diversity, enabling European companies to develop high-quality products and services in the era of AI.

    The project, which has been awarded the STEP (Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform) seal, leverages support from previous European projects and the experience of the partners and their results, including large repositories of high-quality data and pilot LLMs developed previously. The consortium commences its work on February 1st, 2025, with funding from the European Commission under the Digital Europe Programme."