And certain manmade ones!! Golden calves and such...

Oh, right. Golden Calf. I wonder how people thought about such objects…whether it itself is imbued with cosmic properties or if it is imbued by a spirit. A worship of objects is curious. You can smash an object. You can turn off the AI God. Seems like it to work there must be a ‘spiritual element’

I suspect a lot of it has to do with the inevitable caste of priests who attach themselves to the procedural worship of the object. You can't (easily) smash an object that has a high status caste dedicated to teaching people all the reasons to never smash it lol

This is why I keep coming back to the idea of a Savonarola as the only figure who can set us right - the mystical hater, the guy willing to devote body and soul to there being No More Fun of Any Kind and self-annihilating in the process.

Oh interesting—explain!

I think the backlash to the "lol nothing matters" corruption of Trump is going to be a movement that takes everything way too seriously, probably after surviving whatever catastrophe gets caused by the failure of all the systems he's breaking. Probably a reaction against tech too.

If you mean we’ll all be like the people who take everything way too seriously and are obnoxious about it now—many are status-seeking and do one-upsmanship. The more equal and less competitive our environments are, likely the more we can mellow out and enjoy ourselves even post-Trump.

Yeah, I don't know what I mean either, it's sort of just vibes. I guess I expect extreme earnestness to have a cultural moment, maybe veering into censoriousness around whatever aspects of decadence caused whatever the salient catastrophe was. Again, this is all just wisps.

People being serious is great. People being reflecting and concerned about other people and not taking shit for granted helps us a lot. Too much inequality seems to make people reactive and anxious about where they stand and feeling like they gotta get to the front. Less inequality will help us.

So I think I lost my train of thought yesterday. I see AI, crypto and Trump as all part of the same psychic phenomenon, of fraud, lassitude and greed. This will fail at some point, and we will need (and definitely get!) a leader or leadership that shapes the opposition into an angry mob.

I think a lot of the time, the spiritual element is the human imagination and mental investment we put into it. But it throws it into overdrive when the object can talk back very convincingly. The place of "truth" in our lives is about to undergo a radical shift.

I know. 😭 I prefer Classic Truth. I do not want New Truth.

I mean... I guess that's actually a hopeful metaphor in and of itself? The Classic is still what they sell by the siloful, while the New has been nothing but a punchline for 40 years...

I guess I should say ‘responding to truth.’ When societies stop responding to truth in sustainable practices (fascism causes that) they crumble. You can HAVE a cult and flourish but can’t be Jonestown. We’re getting Jonestown now. You can believe the rainfall is from gods if you notice WHEN it comes

That's a really good way to put it. And I do think most of the priests of this cult believe the bullshit too. Again, the difference between this and Jonestown is that Jonestown had a leader; AI is just a mirage.

Yeah but it’s not truth-seeking. It cannot comprehend truth. That’s another way similar characteristic to fascist leaders and cult leaders that makes them so dangerous.

How truth operates in society is one of my lifelong questions. Societies can work BEAUTIFULLY while organized around untruths (kings, priesthoods). But there still has to be a core way of addressing truth that works or they fall apart. Maybe there’s ‘survival truths’? AI will threaten that one.

Yeah, it seems like the most salient feature of AI is that it has no core, and will say anything to anyone. In that way it's actually really Trumpian.

Yes. 20 years ago in class discussion of ‘lying’ popped up and I found almost everyone in the class prefers to be lied to if the truth is upsetting. I hadn’t know I was an outlier on that. Believing lies or being in a fog of untruth is a disturbing idea to me even if nothing happens. I NEED to know.

Kind of interesting they were so self-aware though! I would expect everyone to say they want the truth, and then in the moment to prefer the lie...

Can’t say why it sounds horrifying—maybe a similar thing to society for the self (to me)? If your primary thing in life is to BE then you base this on lies where’s the feedback? You aren’t a self-formed being you are instead a created/manipulated being. Tho yeah, OK —lots of my beliefs may be false.

They started giving lots of examples and for each example I would say ‘Nobody better lie to me about THAT!’ And they’d say ‘oh, I definitely want to be lied to about that.’ Eventually agreed if they felt good with lies but bad with truth they prefer lies. Even living in an illusion!