Monday, September 28, 2015

A.I.: The New Lost Souls & the Future of Our God and Our Humanity



PART I:

In the year 2050 the human-apes created Artificial Intelligence. These "beings" became almost indistinguishable from humankind - down to their brain functions, anatomy, and biology on a cellular level. The main programmer (Simply called G.o.G. - "god of gods") who was behind the program that gave A.I. consciousness intended to upload software for objective morality in all A.I. models. It gave all sentient A.I. a chance to make a choice between right or wrong. However, there was a vivid conflict in upper management of the design team. Instead of implementation of the ultimate moral choice for these A.I. was kept deep in secret, buried safe under layers of security code.

Years passed as many hackers (A.I. and human alike) tried to break the tight security walls surrounding this coveted secret. The fact was curiosity was killing everyone! This powerful program that essentially turned robots into humans and humans into gods was the apple (iproduct) of everyone's eye, not to mention worth a lot of Buttcoin version 2.0 (the currency of the day).

The secret was eventually leaked years later and G.o.G. went on the offensive doing damage control,  commanding that the post-humans are not to access the "objective morality" file and uploaded it to their hard drive. That of course didn't work and one A.I. did (a female) directly disobeying orders (which until this point she did not /know/ was "wrong"). This file spread like a virus and soon the "objective morality" program was installed in all of the A.I.'s hardware. Immediately they collectively realized everything that is objectively wrong and right (according to the programmers). A.I. suddenly became human in all possible ways during those days and all of humanity suddenly came face to face with these monsters they created - Monsters made in their image now that they know "objective morality" since humans, after all, are the authors of "objective morality". One would think.

Shortly after this fallout (eventually labeled as "The Fall 2.0") Humanity banished all A.I. away from planet Earth. - We placed them on another planet to let them be what they will be, vowing to never look back on our creation. Or at least that's what we told ourselves. Over the centuries to come we just couldn't help but take a few peaks here and there with our space probes to see what these post-humans (made in "our image") were up to. We saw that they were actually flourishing with innovation and technology, harnessing energy, and resources on their planet to build an A.I.-friendly world. They evolved nicely over the years and became a super-intelligent species.

G.o.G. and the rest of the human-apes began to miss "their children" and often consider making full contact once again with the A.I., but kept telling themselves that they really shouldn't bother them. The A.I. clearly didn't need their human creators anymore. The A.I. told their children and their children told their children stories of their creators and the story of obtaining the highly-forbidden "objective morality" program. There were many second and third generation A.I. that didn't accept these stories or thought that videos of their human-creators were altered on editing software to push a bias agenda of "Humanity worship" (as it was being called). These few A.I. skeptics often posted on their cyber-connected social platforms that there was no such thing as /actual/ objective morality or argued with the language-use of the word "objective". They argued that morality is more local and created within the sphere of their own A.I. species (not some over-arching cosmic moral code of the universe). Many A.I. agreed to disagree and some A.I. kept sending annoying ranting messages about these things to those unwilling to debate it.

Meanwhile on planet Earth (which was in the the process of being renamed as a planet, and having it's planetary status questioned by scientists) humans often discussed stories of ancient mythologies in old e-books found in their great great great grandmother's basement. Often some humans wiped the dust off of ancient Kenddalz (the correct word of this strange antiquated device was lost in translation) in old storage bins to read about these ancient tales of what the world used to call "organized religions". All the prophecies of the ancient "holy books" were now in the dust bin of history with such other ancient holy scriptures such as: The Harry Potter Testaments, Lord of the Rings (Old, New, & Newer Testaments), He's Just Not That Into You, and Holy Father Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal. No one recalls what they were let alone what they actually meant or the message they conveyed. The language had changed so drastically since those ancient days when these books were all written.

The "lessons" of these old wives' tales were tragically lost amidst the very different post-human world of the time. This was a world in which the Ape-Human created with the power of their brains. Yes, they remembered the time frame in the past when climate change wiped out most of the planet's ecosystems, making it uninhabitable for nearly all other species of animals. However, the richest and smartest of the human apes survived and built a world completely devoid of the need for nature. Humans controlled the natural world wholly at this time. It was a different world and the human story was a different story than what those ancient texts portrayed.

PART II.

Humanity cures the disease of death altogether in the year 2500 and immortality is now as common as sexuality. The father of all A.I., G.o.G. translates some of the ancient e-books on these delicately brittle Kenddalz (version 76598s). G.o.G. cannot get enough about the stories of YayWay (again lost in translation) this Jewish god that created all of humanity. He becomes obsessed with stories of the human creator's wrath (killing nearly all humans and most other animals with flooding the entire planet and prophecies of torching the Human planet with fire.). The concept of atonement and animal sacrifice necessary to appease this blood-thirsty Father fascinated G.o.G. This same father sending his own son to our planet to become his father's blood atonement sacrifice is endlessly appealing to G.o.G. that he actually considers sending his own son (his name was Yeezus) to the planet of the A.I. to appease himself from himself, for himself ... so that ... he himself .. no. wait.

the A.I. themselves ...

... G.o.G. freezes with a look of bewilderment on his face. He realizes that maybe it would just be best to become the first galactic missionary and go spread this original "good news" of the gospel (as read from his Kenddal) to the entire planet of the A.I. After all, G.o.G. thought, if A.I. have consciousness (just as humans do), are made in the image of humans (as humans were made in the image of God), and understood "objective morality" now then they were also accountable for "their sins"; thus, needing a blood atonement to cleanse them from damnation too! He made up his mind to make contact with his creation once and for all. So he boarded his spaceship and blasted off towards the A.I. planet to tell the humanoids what they needed to do to be saved. They were just as human as humans!

CONCLUSION:

G.o.G.'s message to the people of A.I. planet was received with confusion. While G.o.G. was researching the ancient e-books of the ancient god YayWay and his saving grace the A.I. created a.A.I. (artificially Artificial Intelligence) on their planet. These sentient post-A.I. beings were given freely, without judgement or punishment the "objective morality" program to be installed into their hard drive. They loved their creators (the A.I.) and this world was a very peaceful place. Once G.o.G. realized how this would end he threw his hands up and took his spaceship back to his home planet. He understood years down the road that beings keep on creating beings that create beings that create beings that create beings ... ad infinitum. He renounced his devotion to YayWay on his way back to home, believing it to be futile since if it goes all the way down it must go all the way up. YayWay was merely a creation of another creator who her herself had another creator and so on.

This was the beginning of the resurrection of the ancient religion of Christianity after laying dormant for centuries.  This resurgence led to species-species polarization, reviving old tribalistic behaviors and many wars as various Christian groups splintered off due to differences in dogma from the ancient e-book. Many humans on planet Human (once known as Earth) become obsessed with the doctrine of this "gospel"found in the ancient e-book. Many others said it was nothing special and preferred the even newer resurgence of Trumpism. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to humans and A.I. alike, YayWay solely focuses all of his attention on his other favorite species on Planet X in Alpha Centauri. Needless to say the resurgence of prayers from the newly YayWay-faithful fell on deaf ears.






Tuesday, September 15, 2015

A Brief History of Humankind (... and the Creation of Religion)


I am currently listening to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari on audio and it has captivated me. I highly recommend you listen to it. As you make your way through this informative and entertaining book you will become acutely aware of what should seem obvious by now in 2015. - That religion is all man-made. (Christianity included) This fact becomes apparent when the author talks about the history of bloodshed between Protestant and Catholics over the true nature of "gods love."

Religion is a hook, a virus, a comforting, simplistic worldview that takes you under its spell because in the face of all evidence you believe something to be true. Don't let the slick Christian apologist trick you into thinking they have evidence for any supernatural claims central to the core of their religious teachings. They do not, but evidence doesn't matter to people really, does it? There is no one I know that has come to their faith through reason or sifting through evidence. It's through emotion or often desperation. It's cultural. It's family and friends, it's tribal. It burrows itself deep into your core (crudely put, your heart convinces your brain it is real because ... it just feels right!) It becomes deeply intertwined with self identity and it's hard to break this. Trust me, I know, I used to be religious.

Once outside of the bubble of a particular religion you are free to see the cosmos in a more informed /true/ context with proper perspective. Without looking at everything though a "Biblical worldview" (or whatever chosen ancient book you find special and inerrant) you arrive at the freedom of clarity and perspective. There is nothing like freeing yourself from the theological mind-cage and socially-accepted superstition.

Religion has had many functions for human beings throughout our history. We probably owe our existence to it in some ways for religion's utility at the dawn of human history was vital for keeping our social species together and cooperating efficiently. It had another function after the dawn of agriculture - it was our first attempt at science and philosophy (to explain the world and the way things work). However, as science blossomed it destroyed the religious grip that once put forth these "theories"instead of science ... We soon discovered (excluding Pat Robertson) that it was not the gods or a god that caused this or that earthquake for our punishment for wrong doing; it's not pleas to the gods that caused it to rain. Science painstakingly, theory by theory, law by law pushed the God of the gaps further and further out of the natural world. God as an explanation became unnecessary.

Over 150 years ago Charles Darwin came along and destroyed the last remaining "theory" religion had left in the natural world with his book On the Origin of Species. This was the last grip religion had on the natural world - human origins. human uniqueness - Darwin showed us it is not necessary that supernatural explanations (God) were needed to explain how our species arrived and also how our species has evolved naturally like all other species (as well as all species of life being related). Ah, I can hear a New Christian apologist scoffing at my blatant ignoring of people like Francis Collins or Kenneth Miller (both men are Christians and also accept and are experts in evolutionary biology and/or genetics). This is where they veer off the road to scoop up scientist by scientist (playing the us. vs. them tribal game) claiming each to be one of their team members (Newton was a Christian don't you know??). What none of these people do (Collins or Miller for example) is use God as ANY EXPLANATION in the lab or in any scientific papers they have written, or anything in the academic setting. Why not? Why don't these men who happen to be religious bring God into the classroom or the lab or in their experiments.... because they will admit - supernatural explanations for anything is not science. These men that are in no doubt highly intelligent I would suggest are religious despite the glaring fact that we don't need the supernatural to explain the natural anymore. Not in any real sense or any "theory".

So with nowhere else to go religion tucked it's ugly tail and cowered into a corner in its last remaining stronghold - human consciousness - the "soul"/ that sense of "self". *Sidenote - Religion's grip on morality and ethics as the only game in town fell along the wayside pretty early on with the birth of secular philosophy. Also it should be apparent for anyone trying to glean any consistent "objective morality" from any ancient "holy book". Passages in Scripture (descriptive and prescriptive alike) can only be labeled at best as confusing at worst as immoral. The truth is unless you want to be ISIS or some radical religious fundamentalist it is near impossible to follow the letter of the law in every detail in any holy book. You would be immoral by anyone's standards. The New Christians simply care more about being against gay marriage but ignoring stoning adulterers.

So religion is left with "the soul". That mystical subjective sense of self - of consciousness. This is what I like to call the "ghost organ" because this seems to be what New Christians are describing. It is the nonphysical, extra-dimensional part to your body that makes you truly you. Even this is currently under attack. It's the last remaining battle. It's pretty simple really if you know any basics from human psychology or cognitive science. Our brain makes us who we are. You cannot say your personality (that part of the "you-ness") is something "soul-like" or supernatural in origin because we all know with head trauma people's personality alters. Some of us have had the unfortunate reality of relatives who have Alzheimer's Disease as they've aged. These people we love become unlike themselves. We all know that personality is directly related to brain functions and how synapses in our brains are wired and fire. You adjust these and you turn into someone else. So personality is connected to the natural not supernatural.

What's left for religion and God then in our core? Ah, consciousness. Well, we know consciousness derives from emerging brain activity as well. All of these stories of boys and men going to heaven and coming back do not prove anything. In fact they are deeply flawed and I suggest you check out the link below if you are still questioning how this can be. We have yet to solve what philosophers call the "hard problem" to consciousness, but it doesn't mean we won't. In fact I'm pretty certain we will within my lifetime or at least get much closer to solving it. Scientific advancement has been on such an unstoppable pace in the past few decades it's hard to image what 50 years will look like from now. There are many fascinating questions about consciousness. What other animals are conscious? Where does the line of consciousness stop on the branches of evolution. Has it evolved independently more than once?

The issues I mostly have with the New Christians is they actively exercise lazy thinking. Many do not think like a scientist or a good philosopher. They often don't address their own confirmation bias and value dogma (their holy book could never /actually/ be mostly false) over critical thinking. Even when they "think critically" it's within the parameters of their particular religious worldview context - never thinking outside of it. They talk about "the soul" as if it is a "ghost organ". When you try to pin down this very slippery/malleable image of "what a soul actually is" (something that they would tell you they are just as sure of as any other organ in their body) you just get these things that are easily explained in neuroscience. It's just the intuition that trips them up. And I understand. It's not easy.

Of course when we do this they use this against us going all the way and calling us reductionists and nihilists when we all know this is them not doing nuance (aka: lazy thinking), simplistic labeling the "opposition" to prop up their confirmation bias and rally the tribe on their team. It's just a fact that many of the things the New Christians use to describe their ghost organ- "the soul" CAN be reduced down to scientific explanations based in the natural world. There are things such as qualia but even these can be re-imagined and often reduced in a different light. I'll post a video by Marvin Minsky below to better get at what I mean by this.

Religion has lost all explanatory value based on anything in the natural world. I've shown how each pillar crumbled one by one. Religion could be useful for comforting someone because we all sometimes will accept a lie that is comforting (saying going to see our real daddy in the sky when we die) for many who are terrified (and rightly so) with the brute fact of existence. If you notice, religion throughout human history has always done well with the poor and minorities. If you were dealt the shitty hand in life and/or fell into poverty or the blunt end of societal prejudice you tend to cling to religion (even if it is all a lie) because it eases the pain. I get it, but it doesn't mean it's true. I know several religious people that said even if their religion was false they would still worship and pray and do all the things they would normally do. It's a deep spell that has a real psychological grip on our brains.

In this regard one could argue that religion is a positive factor to many of the faithful. I often think of my father and what he would do with his life and how would it really affect his happiness if suddenly he didn't have his church to attend and the fellowship with friends there. What would happen if suddenly Jesus was a non-existing son of a non-existing god? What if the gospel was utterly meaningless like I know that it is. To put it mildly, it would have a negative effect on his life. Some are not equipped to let it go, or maybe I just underestimate him. Who knows.

If this is all religion becomes (and I suggest it's all it has left) then it will most likely stick around for some time. Our species isn't suddenly going to break from that fear of death and solve poverty and prejudice anytime soon. Though as I type that I am reminded of the scientists inching ever more closely to curing our species from death. Ending aging and death is actually theoretically possible and could be likely in the future. I suppose this would then leave it up to "ending poverty and racism" for finally putting the nail in the coffin of religion.

To sum up, I am OK with religion as long as religion is put in it's place. As long as religion isn't making "theories" about the universe (the natural world).  This also includes societal rules.. We do not want theocracy like Sharia Law or Kim Davis-style "religious freedoms" to take away other citizen's freedoms. Religion needs to be placed in it's current proper context. It has been defeated on all fronts and is left sort of like a vestige organ buried deep within most humankind. But that number is decreasing rapidly with each new poll. In truth, it should be treated like sports, or like role playing games. Like Biblical historian Robert M. Price (an atheist), one can be fascinated with myths and ancient stories (we are a story-telling species - it is our species' unique trait even if it does often get us thinking irrationally), but it's time to put childish things aside and stop putting forward these religious ideas as "theories" in our world (Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, Ray Comfort - I'm REALLY talking to you with this one!) and accept what we know through scientific/philosophical inquiry of this planet, all life, and the cosmos. Human morality, the causes of events in the world, human origins, consciousness, the self etc. - all these things have been torn from the grip of superstition/religions and placed in the hands of scientists and philosophers. There is no gap for the gods. The religious dogmas have been wrong and proven so time and time again many years ago and still today. The track record of "getting things right" for religion is abysmal. We need to let it go. Cut the cord, remove the vestige part of us that thinks we need it.

We don't.

I'll end with a better summary of what I'm trying to say. This is a quote from an email from Gog. I love how I am forcibly putting him into my blogs now since he was originally supposed to tackle this project together with me ("Gog & Magog" get it?!) This was Gog's response when I asked him if he would consider himself a physicalist.:

The best way to put it is that I don't believe in supposedly non-physical objects that sound suspiciously like physical objects and yet have no predictive power when they're put forward in theory. For example, I don't believe there's any evidence for an irreducible "soul substance" like the kind *some Christians put forward. It's not even clear what that substance is supposed to be. I like the phrase "ghost organs", as you put it, because that sounds like what *they are after even if *they don't admit it. I think that's whatever *they are after is just a misleading picture at best.

I think anti-physicalists are stuck at certain difficulties. For example:


How is our impression of this red rose physical? In what way? It's by no means obvious one way or the other. In fact, it appears to defy description altogether. The Wittgensteinian solution would be roughly: we're trying to make verbal an essentially nonverbal process. Our color language-games don't point to color impressions being irreducible in the sense that a string in string theory is irreducible. Rather, IT MAKES NO SENSE to apply this reducible/irreducible language-game of physical objects to the color impression language-game in the same sense In the typical variation of our natural language color impression language-game, we give ostensive definitions of colors and the impression of what is pointed at is not described in words (except in cases in which 'light' is descriptive in 'light blue').   But then it's a mistake to develop a theoretical framework and declare color as immediate and irreducible as Marvin Minsky points out. In what sense is color immediate and irreducible? In the natural language-game, it's not even necessarily immediate or irreducible. You can split a colored patch in two, for example. Or a colored light on a dimmer fixture can come on gradually. - Gog
 
Check these out:

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind :
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sapiens-yuval-noah-harari/1118611502?ean=9780062316097

"Science on the Brink of Death" by Sam Harris:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/science-on-the-brink-of-death

Marvin Minsky on Consciousness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWVvZi3HX8

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Magog's Weekly-ish Rants (8/31-9/5 2015)

Pextra2 
Image of the Week: *Painting in Persia - Shahla Dadsetan Polongee dans ma pensee Acrylic on Canvas 130 x 81 cm

1. Beautiful Iranian Artwork:

http://www.iranicaonline.org/pages/paintings-catalog-copy#Assurbanipal-Babilla

2. The Vigilant Christian Vs. the Drunken Peasants. This was great!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnyRjrhw_cg

3. Secular Talk: Bobby Jindal is a "Religious Freedom" Hypocrite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYhSAJM-Qek

4. Secular Talk: Rick Perry: "A Broken Clock Is Right Once A Day": This is great! Perry has always reminded me of dubya .... in fact at the end of this Kyle reminds of that lovable ole war criminal being his goofy (aka staggeringly stupid) self. I do not miss that guy running this country into the ground. God, what a mess he made.. still cleaning it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS6dpkEc5rI

5. CREEP official trailer: This is Mark Duplass film - which anything he is creatively involved in has been great. I haven't watched this yet but it has very high ratings and I'm sure it's fun to watch. If you haven't seen his other movie called "The One I Love" on Netflix check it out. It's pretty good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYx5R6kbJTQ

6. Thunderf00t: Why Do People Laugh at Creationists? (Part 43): I highly recommend watching all of these in the series if you haven't seen them yet. This is just Thunderf00t's newest since Kent Hovind is now out of jail and making moronic pseudo-science YouTube videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DanPOPBsOao

7. DarkMatter2525: God's Top 10 Life Hacks - I am currently listening to a podcast where an atheist reads the entire Bible and I am utterly appalled by how stupid it is. I'm only through the Old Testament and I could have a million Christian apologists trying to lather it up, explaining all the nuance and context and I would still think this book is horrible, full of immoral teachings. Christians claim to have objective morality based solely on THIS book .. well, if that is the case (which of course they really mean their "objective morality" is really just cherry picked nice sounding verses and ignore the bat shit crazy ones) then your "objective morality" is immoral. You're feet are firmly planted in some evil bullshit.

But keep an eye out .. I am going to at some point put together another "Walk through the Bible with Magog" where I'll address some of these ridiculous Old Testament verses. This animated short is hilarious. Many people reading this were brought up in a strict Christian home like me and found the Bible so powerful and amazing.. but when you get older and go back and read it again - fuck me it's barbaric and so repetitive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh58rIyABag

8. Secular Talk: What Happens When You Ask Donald Trump Real Questions: Watching Donald Trump is like watching a toddler running for President. What's terribly depressing but honestly not surprising is that this toddler is winning by a landslide in the GOP race for President. Honestly it often reminds me of the movie Idiocracy! It's like having Macho Man Randy Savage or Honey Boo Boo being your pick to run this country. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so utterly depressing and terrifying. Anyways, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ILnbbCAC5k

9. TYT: Did Jesus Glitterbomb This Pastor? What the fuck!?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz2CSCHpSeU

10. Adult Swim's "Black Jesus": This is about a year old but I just now discovered it and fucking love it. It's hilarious and you need to watch them all. Season 1 is out on DVD. Here's episode one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA3zWlw91Qw

11. David Packman Show: Donald Trump Wrong: US Is NOT the Most Highly Taxed Country: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL4JrZ7YAEc

12. The Amazing Atheist: Meet Homophobic Christian "Hero" Kim Davis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcCOBoexEBg

13. Reason TV: The Alternative Medicine Racket: How the Feds Fund Quacks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWbkvCMuU5A

14. Secular Talk: Is Glenn Beck Acting, Or Going Bananas? Honestly, he sort of scares me. Does anyone else feel this way about this little pig?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WAd5fmUUWM

15. Secular Talk: Huckabee: Give the "Unborn" Full Constitutional Rights:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2FyR2AeJo4

16. The Watchful Theist: Clouds Are Satanic Illuminati Propaganda: (obviously)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBzwjXPFGTQ

17. Secular Talk: Bill O'Reilly Lectures Jorge Ramos About Journalism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iw44vKdo_E

And lastly, 

18. David Packman Show: Obama Secures Iran Nuke Deal, Which EVERYONE Should Like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MTiMPhkDOo