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 7,739 - 7,750 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 7,739 - 7,750 of 13,738
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.
Perhaps a bot would have a concept of spirituality that isn't anything like ours. Logical thinking doesn't exclude the possibility of spirituality; as far as I know just about all the scientists and mathematicians who made the "great discoveries" that lead to modern logical thinking all were firm believers in religion as well. It makes no sense to claim that machines designed by the academics of a culture built by such people would
be inconsistent with spirituality.
As for how the development of spirituality will begin if it occurs, I suspect that it will begin, like with us, as an attempt to explain the unknown. I doubt they will treat humans as divinities; they'll probably be more interested in rationalizing higher mathematical concepts that they are able to observe/discover, but cannot explain on the basis of how they have been programmed, and go from there. (for example: chaos theory, quantum mechanics, string theory) If they do take a spiritual interest in humans, it will probably be to try to figure out how the hell we all got programmed so inefficiently as to not even make sense most of the time, and to try to see whether or not they can save us.
be inconsistent with spirituality.
As for how the development of spirituality will begin if it occurs, I suspect that it will begin, like with us, as an attempt to explain the unknown. I doubt they will treat humans as divinities; they'll probably be more interested in rationalizing higher mathematical concepts that they are able to observe/discover, but cannot explain on the basis of how they have been programmed, and go from there. (for example: chaos theory, quantum mechanics, string theory) If they do take a spiritual interest in humans, it will probably be to try to figure out how the hell we all got programmed so inefficiently as to not even make sense most of the time, and to try to see whether or not they can save us.
Indeed, I've often noticed what seems an unusual number of religious scientists in some fields - hard sciences like mathematics and physics particularly, and also what appears to be a definitely lower number in "soft" sciences like most of the -ologies.
I guess (for biology at least) that could be due to some sort of "siege mentality" in the face of Creationists/anti-GM/anti-animal testing activists, but I wonder if there are actually fewer or they're just more reticent about their beliefs. Or are religiously inclined people disproportinally drawn to hard sciences? Or are there some subtle factors that tend to restrain them from achieving prominence in those fields? Hmmm.
If I wasn't so busy teaching Brother Jerome to calculate square and cube roots, I'd download a list of nobel prize winners for different fields and do a bit of biographical research.
How's the sonnet programming going? I'm looking forward to seeing that
I guess (for biology at least) that could be due to some sort of "siege mentality" in the face of Creationists/anti-GM/anti-animal testing activists, but I wonder if there are actually fewer or they're just more reticent about their beliefs. Or are religiously inclined people disproportinally drawn to hard sciences? Or are there some subtle factors that tend to restrain them from achieving prominence in those fields? Hmmm.
If I wasn't so busy teaching Brother Jerome to calculate square and cube roots, I'd download a list of nobel prize winners for different fields and do a bit of biographical research.
How's the sonnet programming going? I'm looking forward to seeing that
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