*Hopefully the post is just as sensible sober too though
There is a lot of information available. Objective facts, subjective opinions, outright lies, fantasy, fiction and so on regarding pretty much every topic. In this weird moment of piecing things together I thought “maybe we’re all right”. Not in the sense of any of us individually having the correct answer to stuff, but collectively piecing all of this information together we arrive at the universal truth of things. Surprisingly I thought of this post stone cold sober while proofreading my prior post “Over the Top”. I know that probably sounds conceited that I was inspired by myself, but I had a video playing in the background about Nicolai Kardashev which was mixed into that gumbo of inspiration too.
Nicolai Kardashev came up with this ranking of civilizations from Type 0 to type 3 based on that civilizations’ ability to harness available energy. Type 0 (what we are) rely primarily on fossil fuels and energy sources that are also damaging to our ability to exist. Type 1, which is a big ass leap, is able to harness all of the energy on its planet sustainably. Type 2 would be able to use all of the energy it receives from the host star…in our case the sun. Type 3 which is an unfathomable leap from where we are and highly unlikely given the distance, is being able to harness all of the energy in its galaxy. People have since added new types, several layers and context to each civilization type. Some additions stop at 5, 7 or this crazy idea of stopping at Type 40. They go far beyond energy harnessing and instead include the abilities of the beings as well. That’s what was playing in the background as I read.
The Spark of Inspiration
The interesting part of what made ALL of this click to me is I was at the part of my post discussing the Tower of Babel when that video got into Type 1. In order for us to advance beyond a Type 0, a high degree of cooperation would be required. Currently, the bulk of our technology is used to hold dominance over others, waste time, or reduce our reliance on humans. Cold blooded right! The push for AI is foolish to me, but someone, somewhere wants to live forever by way of AI. I believe we are nearing the point of no return in regards to artificial intelligence in a bad way. I’d love to be 100% wrong on this, for humanity’s sake, but far too many humans would rather live disconnected from each other these days.
Gods to Men
Again, why would God be fearful of the advancement of its creations? The lightbulb started shining bright with that question. For the record, I thought it to myself, didn’t say it aloud. As I thought it, paying attention to the Kardashev video and my post it dawned on me. As it pertains to artificial intelligence, humans are gods to it. We created it, use it at our disposal, and it is not nearly powerful enough to recreate humans, but it is advancing. We fear (some of us at least) the machines taking over and subjugating humans or making us obsolete once AI grows to a certain point. That is 100% possible. That certain point is self-replication. Unlike childbirth, AI would be able to replicate thousands if not millions of times in 9 months. Maybe humans are to God(s) of the Bible what Artificial Intelligence is to us. Seeing as God had a serious issue with us having and sharing knowledge (according to the Bible at least) that could be the reason calamity befell every advanced civilization before us.
Why rage against the machine when you can just unplug it?
Phonte
Now, besides feeling like an NPC in this potential civilization sim, I feel like certain things make a bit more sense, even biblically. I once thought about the difference between dreaming and awake. In both worlds life is happening, characters are walking around and somehow my brain accurately recreates voices, images, and all that…just with worse peripheral vision in the dreams. What if we were actually the functioning collective in some higher being’s dreams? Of course we’d never know, but we do know that to a small degree we have many of the capabilities of our creator whether we are sleep or alert. AI is meant to have our characteristics albeit artificially, if it is also capable of dreaming or becomes advanced enough to match or exceed our abilities, I’d say we’re well on our way to being fucked!
Just in my brief time on this planet, I have been able to witness humanity “evolve” in thought, while simultaneously devolving in terms of connection. In all of the information of surviving history, people have been waging wars against each other and acting like pure assholes. Maybe, just maybe we were the machines that the higher being(s) needed to rage against, but instead, decided to unplug us and reboot. That would explain why we feel like a species with amnesia.
All That To Say
There’s this term “Wisdom of the Crowd” that refers to the correct answer being near the average of all the wrong answers. That’s not the technical explanation, but a pretty good gist. In terms of religion, the meaning of life, scientific theories, and other big questions we have, there are a plethora of ideas. Some wacky enough that you can say “that sounds stupid, I know people that knew L Ron Hubbard was a weirdo” or plausible enough like “There’s a great chance that there is life on other planets given the odds”. Humanity has been trying to answer the question of “why are we here” for as long as we’ve been around. The answers create noise, distractions, and clear bullshit, but in there is also the genius level possibility that the truth is somewhere in the middle of all that and we’re too focused on our wrong answers to see it. Hmm, maybe I should’ve consumed an edible for this one after all.