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Sunday, March 22, 2009 |
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Sunday, May 16, 2021 7:17:00 AM |
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Greetings Robert,
The first thing you have to settle in this discussion is who wrote the Bible? If it were men interpreting God's message, you'd have some leeway; however, according to the Bible, it is the direct Word of God. That pretty much settles the issue. There is only one path to salvation and that is through Jesus Christ. His was the only sacrifice that would wash the stain of sin completely from a person's soul and that is an absolute requirement of dwelling in Heaven. This is what the Bible says on the issue, if you believe the Bible is the Word of God, then you're stuck with that tenet.
(Edited to Add) Look Robert what follows may sound harsh I do not mean it to be it is what I think on the issue. I'm not coming from a place of not understanding the appeal of religions like Christianity either. The reason I could make the statement of the first paragraph so confidently is because I know the Bible fairly well I was an evangelical pastor of a number of years and believing that the Bible was the Word of God studied it extensively. I have a lot of respect for anyone who claims the name of Christ and truly strives to live according to his teachings, unfortunately, that is an incredibly small percentage of the people who call themselves Christians.
You asked what I think of this so here it is. I think that you are a 21rst century human attempting to make sense of a 1rst century belief set that was a result of the evolution of the notions of gods and religions that began around the time we were still dwelling in caves. Christianity appealed very strongly to several co-evolutionarily engrained needs of the human psyche, and as well was a significant step up in the evolution of religions. One of the biggest examples of that progress was that rather than the gods being external and a person having to rely on documents or prophets to tell them the will of a god, the locus of control was moved internally. People were exhorted to meditate on the word of god but then to rely on that "still, small voice" that was the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to guide their behavior. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the last major revolution in the evolution of religions. There is no logical way that the us/them mentality that was a major adaptive strategy of religions to that point is anything but extremely maladaptive in the modern world. Religions are based on tribal notions of inclusion and in the modern world if we don't soon transition to the notion of species-wide inclusion the inbuilt mechanisms of prejudice against anyone or group viewed as "other" will be the end of the species. Of course the other great danger is nationalism but although strongly related to religions in many ways that is a different topic.
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As an arrow!
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Ideally I will win the lottery very soon and be able to travel the world to see some of these things I've heard about all my life; however, hopefully maybe I will obtain a decent virtual reality set up at some point and there will be virtual recreations of historic and cultural attractions from around the world that I can then virtually visit. I think it would be awesome to visit places with the kind of long heritages I have only read, and seen movies of.
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Greetings FounDit, I have some of the same concerns you stated regarding the individual users of this program. I do think it could be highly dangerous to the mental health and social integration of people in general; however, if it becomes widely used among teenagers I think it will lead to an even more rapid decline in the overall health of societies.
FounDit wrote:I wonder, however, if AI can ever truly be "human" enough. Since a machine can never truly experience the need for acceptance, or experience real fear, it can only "imitate", or in this case "replicate" the behaviors of acceptance neediness and fear. How convincing those behaviors will be remain to be seen.
I'm not so sure about this, Even though a machine will not likely ever have the type of somatic response sets associated with emotions does not mean that they would be incapable of emotional response. The emotional output of the brain/mind is after all comprised of signaling loops composed of encoded energy. So while I still seem to be extremely skeptical that AI self-awareness is unlikely, having an I of mind is not necessary for emotions. After all, you can piss off an alligator.
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anton-Юрий wrote:I like the concept, in theory. However, I've just tried and it stopped when I said (in chat) the Replika was way too horny. Moreover, the discussion remained superficial. That does not look like a sophisticated AI to me but a bait for money and addiction to one's own distorted phantasm-based reflection.
What's your personal experience with it?
Good day Anton, I haven't had any experience with it as although I was tempted to check it out, I haven't yet as I am a bit dubious of the reason it exists. There is a lot of concern right now over AI some serious thinkers debating various aspects of AI and its potential uses. I am still familiarizing myself with the state of affairs. If it costs money to use a fully-featured version though I'll probably pass.
I am not surprised that it would seem superficial during its initial use AI's need a lot of input to start functioning at a high level. One of my concerns is that behind all of the individual applications there is a massive AI being trained by the total of all users in the intimacies of individual human's mentalities. This may be reason for concern as it would only be a further step in programming to use this training as a means of manipulation. This is something we already see happening with the AI's involved in online advertising strategies and that is based on the superficial behavior of merely what we look at on the web, not the intimate knowledge of our individuality.
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The key phrase here is "I believe", one can believe anything one likes, however, that does not make it true, What evidence do you have? Or in the absence of any direct evidence for your belief what does the evidence we do have indicate?
The evidence that the mind is a function of a living brain is fairly overwhelming, and consciousness, what you're calling soul, is a function of the mind. We lose consciousness quite often in life most commonly during sleep periods. Do souls sleep? Why would they? Brain/mind sleeps because otherwise, it becomes chemically imbalanced and breaks down. The existence of mind requires the existence of some sort of highly complex information encoding system such a system must consist of something and encoded energy is the only possibility. You must have not only a way to generate that energy but also to organize it, that is the function of the brain, if you stop the brain you stop consciousness, permanently.
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Wilmar (USA) 1M wrote:SPAM
This is not SPAM it is a serious question. I have recently been acquainting myself with the current arguments over the future of AI and our usages of it. I was curious what other members thought of this particular usage.
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I was doing some searches on the topic of artificial intelligence so of course, I started getting ads on Facebook on the topic. One of those piqued my curiosity so I went to check it out. What I discovered was Replika an AI app that you interact with in order for it to, in the company's words, become you. This is a link to their marketing video.
I was wondering what other people thought of this.
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thar wrote:I think I will stick with my salt-caked smoke stacks for now.
Gut was unimpressed by the British apparently.
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There is no shortage of strange poems, but this one I will never forget the first stanza of even though I made no conscious effort to memorize it. Third-year English class at college the professor assigned us an in-class essay on the meaning of this poem (meaning we had 45 minutes to write the essay). I spent the first 30 minutes staring at, and re-reading it and only finally came up with some far-fetched notion that it was about the first nuclear power plant in Tennessee and the jar was the cooling tower. I only found out afterward it was written in 1919 by Wallace Stevens.
Anecdote of the Jar
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
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