What's so striking about computer and information technologies is that the "materialism" they inspire is founded in an immaterial concept of "information". This struck certain deep thinkers, like John von Neumann and more obscure figures associated with the early days of cybernetics, as a deep mystery.
Today's midwits don't have that kind of depth to their thinking. Many of them are actively hostile to it because "I can build machine".
By comparing AI with any living intelligence, we can note how it isn’t merely a different kind of cognition that is so striking, but that there are other aspects of life that are completely missing. Even the most advanced AI systems still do not display any shred of agency, volition, intentionality, desire, self-reflection, autonomy, or goal-directedness. It is even contentious whether generative AI has, in and of itself, any creative and original impulse other than what it is prompted to do by a human agent and from the data it soaked up from the collective. If one doesn’t feed a chatbot with an input, it will remain forever a completely passive black box doing nothing. Yet, there are some people who deny this for some reason....
Indeed. I mean, AI was literally (there's that word again) created as an illusion, as a machine simulating a mind. Maybe by giving in to this illusion, we might actually feed it part of our life force, making "real AI" a self-fulfilling prophecy? But as I said in another comment, should it be possible for AI to become something other than a mere machine, this will happen within a framework completely different than how materialists conceive of it. Perhaps given enough complexity and "living input", it can start attracting something like a soul potential, or interface with intelligences of a different kind... Don't know, our current language fails here.
This is not, and will never be possible, to make believe, give illusion by programs manipulating gullible people, why not, but a good objective observation will unmask the deception. The living is untouchable and cannot be fully copied.
Materialist Reductionism is the opiate of the Techno-Optimists.
These people need to get outside and take a walk. Your dog knows going for a walk is a fine and lovely thing to do, ipso facto your dog is smarter than they and their computers.
I'm guessing you have, but if your readers have not, they should read "The Matter With Things" by Iain McGilchrist (both volumes, and after priming themselves with "The Master and His Emissary", of course), and they will find, among many other things, a fantastic remedy for midwittery. We are not machines https://escapingmasspsychosis.substack.com/p/are-you-a-machine
Every technology has a bias: To a man with a computer, everything looks like data.
As we know "The Medium is the M(a)essage", M. McLuhan ("Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man")
Remember Harari and his "Homo Deus" dataism - declares that the universe consists of data flows, and the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contributions to data (even "useless eaters" are "useful" in that sense).
Digital vocabulary applicable to people/brain/computer: 0/1 - binary thinking, automatic, programmable, reset, anti/virus, control, on/off.
"Just like at the beginning of the postmodern age, we must once again attempt to find a new language, new ideas - which often means creatively reframing old ideas - to get us out of this funk."
I agree, we should be much more precise in our expressions and choice of words, and find others if that is not enough.
New ideas, I do not think personally, I would opt for a better observation, a better consatation, and better reflections on this world and the living. I don’t think we have the possibility to fully understand the living and this world, but analyze it, and change course too.
"Since we can’t really escape the thought patterns of our age, this is a difficult task, and we can (and should) only go so far."
We can, and I think we should get out of it, approach any situation with a fresh and objective look, it’s quite possible, you just have to dare to do it, the fear of being lost and many other reasons prevent us from doing so. We will then understand that almost everything was conditioning, illusion etc.
"At this point, it’s merely amusing that it still exists and that people still embarrass themselves by writing tweets such as the one that started this recent blowout."
It is so and no one can change this, but those who have lost their illusions, abandoned their unnecessary conditioning, can be examples, it is more instructive than debates...
I would say that we should think more and read less reviews, studies etc. from others, this is very useful but should not replace our own research (thinking). If the brain has functions "biocomputer" (that is how it is and is useful in life) this does not mean in any way that it is only this, quite the contrary, no machine, AI program will be able to replace, compete with the brains of the living. It is an illusion, a deception...to divert people from their abilities, hence the conditioning at a young age.
We are perfectly equipped to succeed in life, just want it.
According to John Lily the human brain, the chakras and the nervous system altogether mounted on the spinal column (the Tree of Life) is indeed a bio-computer.
It also operates on the principle of garbage in, garbage out.
Unfortunately garbage has always been the principal input.
Even more so since the advent of TV.
His work was summarized in his book Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer
Can someone ELI5 how materialism was dead by the 1920s? I agree that brain-computer analogies only stretch so far (although certain classes of modern hardware are optimised for running neural nets), but subjective qualia could be possessed by either present or future AI agents for all I know.
The intellectual currents and atmosphere was very different back then. 19th century billiard-ball materialism (often coupled with Darwinism) came under attack from many sides: the new physics, at the very least, complicated the picture. Philosophically, you still had a strong idealist tradition, and in Germany an open revolt against physicalism by the "Lebensphilosophie" thinkers (Germany was an academic world center at the time). Vitalism was a mainstream theory in biology. In England, thinkers like Whitehead (and others) developed new theories incorporating teleological and religious thinking. Etc.
It's interesting to ask how and why materialism came back. To my mind, Neo-Darwinism and new technology played a big role. Ever since then, the materialist-Darwinist package is largely driven by biological reasoning and not physics.
As to AI possessing subjective qualia, I don't rule it out at all, but if so this would take place within a very different framework. the idea that consciousness "evolves" out of non-consciousness doesn't make sense. Maybe AI can "attract" or connect to a sort of soul potential, to a sort of other sphere that can "work with it". Words still fail, because all we have is our current paradigm. Talk about "subjective qualia" is often not very helpful IMO, because it has a lot of presuppositions baked in, such as reductionism, the idea of conscious experience as a property of something material, etc. (although I perfectly understand what you mean here).
Quantum mechanics and contemporaneous breakthroughs like Godel's incompleteness theorem certainly frustrated the goal of modelling the universe in a complete and deterministic manner, but that's distinct from the assertion that "matter is all that exists" (particles can still be the bedrock of reality even if they behave in probabilistic ways.)
Quantum mechanics has been profitably incorporated into a wide away of commercial/industrial applications since then (notably the semiconductor industry, probably the apex of human-made deterministic engineering), so maybe it just wasn't perceived as especially threatening to the paradigm after a while?
> The idea that consciousness "evolves" out of non-consciousness doesn't make sense.
Well, that depends on whether consciousness is an essence or a process. For a long time it wouldn't have made sense to theorise that life could arise from inanimate materials under vitalist assumptions, but it gradually turned out that life is something matter *does* and not a separate quintessence. Maybe consciousness is something similar, but I don't pretend to have an answer to it.
What's so striking about computer and information technologies is that the "materialism" they inspire is founded in an immaterial concept of "information". This struck certain deep thinkers, like John von Neumann and more obscure figures associated with the early days of cybernetics, as a deep mystery.
Today's midwits don't have that kind of depth to their thinking. Many of them are actively hostile to it because "I can build machine".
By comparing AI with any living intelligence, we can note how it isn’t merely a different kind of cognition that is so striking, but that there are other aspects of life that are completely missing. Even the most advanced AI systems still do not display any shred of agency, volition, intentionality, desire, self-reflection, autonomy, or goal-directedness. It is even contentious whether generative AI has, in and of itself, any creative and original impulse other than what it is prompted to do by a human agent and from the data it soaked up from the collective. If one doesn’t feed a chatbot with an input, it will remain forever a completely passive black box doing nothing. Yet, there are some people who deny this for some reason....
Indeed. I mean, AI was literally (there's that word again) created as an illusion, as a machine simulating a mind. Maybe by giving in to this illusion, we might actually feed it part of our life force, making "real AI" a self-fulfilling prophecy? But as I said in another comment, should it be possible for AI to become something other than a mere machine, this will happen within a framework completely different than how materialists conceive of it. Perhaps given enough complexity and "living input", it can start attracting something like a soul potential, or interface with intelligences of a different kind... Don't know, our current language fails here.
This is not, and will never be possible, to make believe, give illusion by programs manipulating gullible people, why not, but a good objective observation will unmask the deception. The living is untouchable and cannot be fully copied.
Materialist Reductionism is the opiate of the Techno-Optimists.
These people need to get outside and take a walk. Your dog knows going for a walk is a fine and lovely thing to do, ipso facto your dog is smarter than they and their computers.
I'm guessing you have, but if your readers have not, they should read "The Matter With Things" by Iain McGilchrist (both volumes, and after priming themselves with "The Master and His Emissary", of course), and they will find, among many other things, a fantastic remedy for midwittery. We are not machines https://escapingmasspsychosis.substack.com/p/are-you-a-machine
Every technology has a bias: To a man with a computer, everything looks like data.
As we know "The Medium is the M(a)essage", M. McLuhan ("Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man")
Remember Harari and his "Homo Deus" dataism - declares that the universe consists of data flows, and the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contributions to data (even "useless eaters" are "useful" in that sense).
Digital vocabulary applicable to people/brain/computer: 0/1 - binary thinking, automatic, programmable, reset, anti/virus, control, on/off.
Haha a computer and AI is a machine a man is a human and so is his mind.
Scares the shit out of me how they want to meld the two to create transhumanism! Creating a modern Frankenstein! No thanks!
"Just like at the beginning of the postmodern age, we must once again attempt to find a new language, new ideas - which often means creatively reframing old ideas - to get us out of this funk."
I agree, we should be much more precise in our expressions and choice of words, and find others if that is not enough.
New ideas, I do not think personally, I would opt for a better observation, a better consatation, and better reflections on this world and the living. I don’t think we have the possibility to fully understand the living and this world, but analyze it, and change course too.
"Since we can’t really escape the thought patterns of our age, this is a difficult task, and we can (and should) only go so far."
We can, and I think we should get out of it, approach any situation with a fresh and objective look, it’s quite possible, you just have to dare to do it, the fear of being lost and many other reasons prevent us from doing so. We will then understand that almost everything was conditioning, illusion etc.
"At this point, it’s merely amusing that it still exists and that people still embarrass themselves by writing tweets such as the one that started this recent blowout."
It is so and no one can change this, but those who have lost their illusions, abandoned their unnecessary conditioning, can be examples, it is more instructive than debates...
I would say that we should think more and read less reviews, studies etc. from others, this is very useful but should not replace our own research (thinking). If the brain has functions "biocomputer" (that is how it is and is useful in life) this does not mean in any way that it is only this, quite the contrary, no machine, AI program will be able to replace, compete with the brains of the living. It is an illusion, a deception...to divert people from their abilities, hence the conditioning at a young age.
We are perfectly equipped to succeed in life, just want it.
According to John Lily the human brain, the chakras and the nervous system altogether mounted on the spinal column (the Tree of Life) is indeed a bio-computer.
It also operates on the principle of garbage in, garbage out.
Unfortunately garbage has always been the principal input.
Even more so since the advent of TV.
His work was summarized in his book Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer
Oh saar, you are misbestsken. It is all computer.
Oh thank you, that feels really good, once it's said...
Can someone ELI5 how materialism was dead by the 1920s? I agree that brain-computer analogies only stretch so far (although certain classes of modern hardware are optimised for running neural nets), but subjective qualia could be possessed by either present or future AI agents for all I know.
The intellectual currents and atmosphere was very different back then. 19th century billiard-ball materialism (often coupled with Darwinism) came under attack from many sides: the new physics, at the very least, complicated the picture. Philosophically, you still had a strong idealist tradition, and in Germany an open revolt against physicalism by the "Lebensphilosophie" thinkers (Germany was an academic world center at the time). Vitalism was a mainstream theory in biology. In England, thinkers like Whitehead (and others) developed new theories incorporating teleological and religious thinking. Etc.
It's interesting to ask how and why materialism came back. To my mind, Neo-Darwinism and new technology played a big role. Ever since then, the materialist-Darwinist package is largely driven by biological reasoning and not physics.
As to AI possessing subjective qualia, I don't rule it out at all, but if so this would take place within a very different framework. the idea that consciousness "evolves" out of non-consciousness doesn't make sense. Maybe AI can "attract" or connect to a sort of soul potential, to a sort of other sphere that can "work with it". Words still fail, because all we have is our current paradigm. Talk about "subjective qualia" is often not very helpful IMO, because it has a lot of presuppositions baked in, such as reductionism, the idea of conscious experience as a property of something material, etc. (although I perfectly understand what you mean here).
Quantum mechanics and contemporaneous breakthroughs like Godel's incompleteness theorem certainly frustrated the goal of modelling the universe in a complete and deterministic manner, but that's distinct from the assertion that "matter is all that exists" (particles can still be the bedrock of reality even if they behave in probabilistic ways.)
Quantum mechanics has been profitably incorporated into a wide away of commercial/industrial applications since then (notably the semiconductor industry, probably the apex of human-made deterministic engineering), so maybe it just wasn't perceived as especially threatening to the paradigm after a while?
> The idea that consciousness "evolves" out of non-consciousness doesn't make sense.
Well, that depends on whether consciousness is an essence or a process. For a long time it wouldn't have made sense to theorise that life could arise from inanimate materials under vitalist assumptions, but it gradually turned out that life is something matter *does* and not a separate quintessence. Maybe consciousness is something similar, but I don't pretend to have an answer to it.