Subway Chokehold – Daniel Penny VS Jordan Neely through the lense of Halacha | AI Paskening II

Dear Rabbi Lichtenstein,
I have really enjoyed the 100 or so episodes I’ve heard, which has mamash transformed my commute, but last week’s discussion of the incident on the train left me not only bothered, but upset. And probably not for any of the reasons you might expect.
Last shabbos at kiddush, I ran into an old friend, who’s a former wrestling coach, so of course the subject of Daniel Penny came up. He had seen the video, and was very upset about the coverage of it. He explained to me that Mr. Penny, as he was trained to do in the Marines, put Mr. Neely in a “sleeper” hold, and did it correctly. People who do not know about these things call it a “choke” hold, and he said that using that lashon is a very easy way to tell that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The idea of the “sleeper” hold is to compress the artery carrying blood to the head, so the person passes out. It does not stop them from breathing, and is considered a safe way to control an out-of-control person, so you can tie them up or handcuff them, and in fact wrestlers and Marines commonly do it to each other, in jest, similar to how police officers sometimes Taser™ each other (a bad idea, but it happens). Also, in the video, when Mr. Neely passed out, Mr. Penny immediately put him into what they call a “recovery” position, which is designed to restore blood flow, so there is no harm, and he did that correctly. Sadly, just like Tasers, sometimes a person has a medical condition that means they will respond very badly to it. Over the past 10 years, roughly one person per week has died after being Tasered by police (please look it up yourself). The “sleeper” hold has a better safety record than that, but (obviously) not perfect, and the emes here is that Mr. Neely, sadly, died, after Mr. Penny correctly performed a procedure that is widely considered safe by experts.

So, the spreading of misinformation is what had me bothered, but in this day and age, it’s not enough to upset me. But you know what is? Putting rabbanim in the position of answering questions in an area that they don’t even know enough to know how little they know about it, and asking misleading questions filled with non-facts. It’s a bezoin to the Torah. If someone were trying to make rabbanim look silly, they could hardly have done better. This is especially puzzling and upsetting, given your extended discussion about whether rabbanim know enough about AI to pasken about it; same thing here.

Now, I know everyone “knows what they saw,” but have you ever seen a video of shechita behama? If you didn’t know anything about shechita, it looks absolutely horrific and cruel. Same thing here: the experts know it’s the best way, even if it’s not risk-free.
I look forward to the undoubtedly appropriate way you will do some sort of correction of this uncharacteristic blunder.

Sincerely, Yaakov

The simple answer is that halahic decisions must be made by individuals who have Skin in the Game.

We cannot play games of word salad and definitions where we always end up with circular logic. Yiras shomayim; who has it, who doesn’t have it, who knows who has it and who doesn’t know that someone else has it, etc.

In every generation, you have the subject matter experts of that generation. But the quality that they share is that they live within the system. They live a life of Torah and mitzvos. Their children and grandchildren live a life of Torah and mitzvos. A goy does not live within the system. An AI should inform a psak, but not draft an original one.

Again, we are making a distinction between looking something up, and nouveau psak. This topic is about the latter. And in that category, there isn’t likely always a single back of the book correct answer. I realize that may be unpopular, but it is always true.

Skin in the game is all that matters.

Yossi

Apparently,the Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked why he didn’t Pasken – always sending to great or local Poskim. He supposedly said that his sayato dishmayo was to help people as a Rebbe. Rabbonim have a different siyatto dishmayo. Gut Shabos

Is it possible to get clarification on the statement from rabbi Herschel shechter , that סיעתא דשמיא וסוד ד׳ ליראיו only necessary for humans because they make mistakes but computers don’t make mistakes therefore if they theoretically can pasken new scenarios and be מדמה מילתא למילתא That would be fine because they don’t needסייעתא דשמיא.
I believe there are many proofs that סוד ד׳ ליראיו is a spiritual infusion of ideas that are from outside the system of ones current knowledge / information so for that reason alone AI would be disqualified because it has no access to information outside its own system .

עיין תוס׳ הרא״ש סוטה ד׳ דגילה לבן עזאי שיעור שלו , אע״פ דזו א״א ע״פ טבע שידע אותו ולא שייך כאן הצלה מטעות