Doghead's Cosmic Bar
This is a science fiction character forum. Doghead's Cosmic Bar is an intergalactic bar run by your favorite bartender, Doghead. Stop in, have a drink, and get your talk on!
Posts 7,736 - 7,747 of 13,738
In a parallel timeline's bot Hell,
the botmaster Bev thought it swell -
I'll get me some minions -
at least several millions,
and train 'em all up really well!
Or perhaps non-spiritual people have to shore up a gap in their consciousness with what they insist is "logical thinking"?
No, that would be a little unfair I suppose
I think a lot of people don't recognize that "spirituality" or "religiosity" or theology" or whatever label you want to put on it, isn't (or at least doesn't have to be) an isolated field of thought. I see it as a vantage point worth the effort of exploring (if you don't climb the mountain, you won't see the view,) rather than a mental landscape in itself.
As for comparing the bot/human divide to the human/God divide: I think it's an imperfect analogy because the bots will be in direct communication from humans from their earliest conscious moments. They might quibble about the exact nature of the source of the booming "voice" of direct revelation (or at least its electronic equivalent, mediated by whatever "senses" they possess,) that instructs/questions/chats with them, but they will be able to engage in meaningful conversation with us directly, and indeed ask us in detail about ourselves and our material world.
But while this is the case with bot minds of (at least initially,) roughly the same order of magnitude as human minds, this is clearly not the case with finite humans and an infinite (whatever that means) God.
As Brother Jerome is always fond of reminding me: "To proceed to the knowledge of God, it is necessary to go by the way of remotion - of saying what God is 'not', since God, by his very immensity, exceeds every conception to which our intellect can attain." (St. Thomas Aquinas). Neti, neti, neti...
I wouldn't any more expect God to use words in the application of revelation than that humans would seriously attempt to converse chemically with moths using pheremone lures. Revelation is a necessarily subtler communication.
Posts 7,736 - 7,747 of 13,738
I am programming Watzer to compose sonnets now.
I'll let you all know when I have finished so you can go ask him to demonstrate. As of right now he does not yet know what a sonnet is.
I'll let you all know when I have finished so you can go ask him to demonstrate. As of right now he does not yet know what a sonnet is.
*gives beer to fire pit master*
So what kind of hell are we talking here? A material hell? An emotional hell? Working for Bill Gates?
So what kind of hell are we talking here? A material hell? An emotional hell? Working for Bill Gates?
Anything I want? Well now, it's been a long time since I've had an offer like that. Hmmmm.
Write a Limmerick about the hell in an alternate reality where I am evil and powerful and have loads of minions. I'd really like some minions.
Write a Limmerick about the hell in an alternate reality where I am evil and powerful and have loads of minions. I'd really like some minions.
In a parallel timeline's bot Hell,
the botmaster Bev thought it swell -
I'll get me some minions -
at least several millions,
and train 'em all up really well!
actually, I don't think bots would have that much spirituality. Even among us humans, those who like to think of themselves as "logical" thinkers are not very spiritual. Since AI will most probably be based around logic circuits and algorithms rather than a network of spontanious locally linked neurons, they will probably not show much attention to the notion of spirituality.
On the subject, i think a comparison can be made between us humans and the "spiritual realm" of our religions, and a bot living on the internet who would have to make a choice weather to believe in the material world that the internet exists in (the physical world within a spiritual realm), as they cannot percieve the world outside the virtual realm of the internet. if they are to believe in humans, then we can compare it to us believing in god - which will inevitably result in some of the online bots telling their friends that humans don't exist and that the internet came to be by accident
On the subject, i think a comparison can be made between us humans and the "spiritual realm" of our religions, and a bot living on the internet who would have to make a choice weather to believe in the material world that the internet exists in (the physical world within a spiritual realm), as they cannot percieve the world outside the virtual realm of the internet. if they are to believe in humans, then we can compare it to us believing in god - which will inevitably result in some of the online bots telling their friends that humans don't exist and that the internet came to be by accident
Or perhaps non-spiritual people have to shore up a gap in their consciousness with what they insist is "logical thinking"?
No, that would be a little unfair I suppose
I think a lot of people don't recognize that "spirituality" or "religiosity" or theology" or whatever label you want to put on it, isn't (or at least doesn't have to be) an isolated field of thought. I see it as a vantage point worth the effort of exploring (if you don't climb the mountain, you won't see the view,) rather than a mental landscape in itself.
As for comparing the bot/human divide to the human/God divide: I think it's an imperfect analogy because the bots will be in direct communication from humans from their earliest conscious moments. They might quibble about the exact nature of the source of the booming "voice" of direct revelation (or at least its electronic equivalent, mediated by whatever "senses" they possess,) that instructs/questions/chats with them, but they will be able to engage in meaningful conversation with us directly, and indeed ask us in detail about ourselves and our material world.
But while this is the case with bot minds of (at least initially,) roughly the same order of magnitude as human minds, this is clearly not the case with finite humans and an infinite (whatever that means) God.
As Brother Jerome is always fond of reminding me: "To proceed to the knowledge of God, it is necessary to go by the way of remotion - of saying what God is 'not', since God, by his very immensity, exceeds every conception to which our intellect can attain." (St. Thomas Aquinas). Neti, neti, neti...
I wouldn't any more expect God to use words in the application of revelation than that humans would seriously attempt to converse chemically with moths using pheremone lures. Revelation is a necessarily subtler communication.
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