Coming up on July 30

P.S. @ Jon: I read Ecco's novel 'Foucalt's Pendulum'; it was a fascinating story but I hated the ending.

If the 'sentient AI' thing is a piss-take, it's a pretty poor one, I reckon. BTW, Hi Jon. 🙂

There are a series of sort of alt-fic what-if-all-the-conspiracies-were-true-but-maybe-they-are satire novels written that focus on the Illuminati, but the ones I've read The 'Illuminatus!' trilogy and another one that I don't remember the title of, don't go down the same nasty rabbit-holes that modern conspiracies do. The whole thing +Discordianism involves an eldritch weird being and the Greek goddess Eris, and magic, and numerology and whatnot. It's an eclectic and esoteric mix. I understand why people are into it. The main originators and practitioners? Perpetrators? seem more interested in bucking society, like the Satanists who take Satan to be a figure with a quite different complexion from the Christian version. I find all this stuff fascinating and it does shade into less savoury and entertaining topics. There's too much nastiness in the Illuminati/NWO etc. end of things for that to be entertaining; it's more upsetting now. I'm more interested in love, joy and connection with people than all the horrid rot at the far end.

Got it, thanks for clarifying!

It isn't a spoof religion, honestly. It's a mindset.

Jon Levin

I guess I feel like that was the actual story here, and Noone noticed it. Techno futurism mixed with weirdly fascist tasting mysticism. In google, which is not surprising on reflection, but discomforting nonetheless.

Jon Levin

Oh, I get it now -- he's not a "christian mystic", he's a member of a spoof religion akin to pastafarianism and the like. In this case, he just might be mocking AI sentience.

"These acid-heads" being Robert Anton Wilson and others of that epoch

Jon Levin

There's a really interesting line to be drawn from the protocols of zion through these acid heads and all the way up to Q-anon in terms of the features of fascism proposed by people like Umberto eco or other critical theorists. I'd love to see that as a PhD proposal, as they say. (Not that I'm an academic or anything)

Jon Levin

Right - have a look at what discordianism is and where it comes from. I mean "prankster" in the Ken kesey sense.

Jon Levin

I looked it up, it's cajundiscordian, but despite being fired, he has continued to carry on about sentience in his twitter posts. If it is a ruse, he's playing the long game.

I think it's a bit more whimsical than that. His Twitter handle should have tipped everyone off. Can't remember off hand what it was but I recall immediately realizing he was a prankster.

Jon Levin

That's sad.

That's a really good article, thanks for sharing.

Not only that, but the guy cherry-picked bits of the "conversation" and re-ordered the dialog. When the entire back-and-forth was published in the correct order, it was clear that nothing sentient was taking place. There are reports that the engineer is a christian mystic, so he may "see" sentience at a much lower barrier than I would -- that is to say that he wasn't out to fool anyone, he really thinks the AI is sentient.

Stephen Wolfram would say "that’s a slippery topic" Here's something that I found rather sound on the consciousness topic: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/03/what-is-consciousness-some-new-perspectives-from-our-physics-project/

I read about that Google fiasco. The AI wrote like a child talking because it was shoving clauses together like how a young child does whilst they work out how to communicate what they want to say, is what I thought.

Google's AI possibly being sentient was exciting for about half a second until we found out that the guy really exaggerated his account of the situation. I am eager to hear about Penrose's consciousness argument.