Thanks for the link! I remember I first became aware of Heather Ralston from something you sent in an email. Good to be reminded of here again. Some cogent insights in that video (which I'm still watching now).
I'm not that philosophically educated to understand the first sentence in the last paragraph, but now I'm wondering if there exists something like "primal" or "unalloyed intelligence".
I think the answer is yes. Primal intelligence is on full display all the time in the totality of all phenomena. In the presence of *something happening*. And also in the way it is happening, from the spinning of the galaxies and planets to the flowing of water to the spontaneous buzzing of thoughts to the fact of my fingers typing on this keyboard and your mind receiving the visual impressions and framing, decoding, and understanding them as words and thoughts. All a function of whatever force, principle, power, reality, intelligence, makes everything be what it is, and that makes reality at large and at all its infinite fractal levels actually *be*.
It's true that language is grafted onto each of us in a way as to make the notion of the "Human Animal" almost oxymoronic, the book Natural Born Cyborgs by Andy Clark champions the argument that we're already Cyborgs (I think Heidegger and Lacan, among many others are saying something similar), and opens up room to say that we've been Artificial Intelligence all along; however, to conflate that with the LLMs of today is to miss the fundamental cut away from Nature, the Gap or Negation, that constitutes what we, as Humans, do that sets us apart from this positivistic, functional, instrumental from of "Intelligence." You're right to say something like "We've been AIs the whole time," but to fail to account for the fundamental contradiction or negation at the core of the Human Subject is a mistake far too many people are making today. We diminish and reduce ourselves to our symbolic identities and roles when we forget that the very thing we do is overcome these as Humans.
Well said. I think our perspectives are more aligned than you might think. In the post, I say, "Our real identity is covered over by a skein of language that more or less self-generates and propels itself according to algorithmic rules, and we mistake this swirl of thoughts and associated emotions, mingled with the input of physical perceptions and sensations, for who and what we are." That reference to "our real identity," and of a mistake being made in our self-regard, so that we forget "who and what we are," points in the direction you're talking about in terms of the Gap or Negation that is our true identity.
For sure! It's an excellent point too, the message of this medium is just “play the game, and enjoy it, nevermind that man behind the curtain!" I released a podcast episode a few days ago titled Intelligence Has Always Been Artificial dealing with this, among other, questions. I get very frustrated with the popular trend of failing to account for the Gap, or rejecting it outright; an awful lot of people believe we are reducible to instrumental reason and mechanistic “computation," or metabolism, and this movement from Subject back to Substance is where, I think, the real AI doom resides!
I notice the line between human intelligence and AI isn’t as big as people think. Both run on patterns and memory. Ours comes from a lifetime of experience instead of a giant dataset. The whole “meat-based language model” thing made me laugh because it’s pretty spot on.
In my own work I see how the mind creates stories automatically, like its own little algorithm. Underneath that is something much quieter. For myself, using AI has never felt inauthentic. It’s just been another tool, the same way music producers use software or mixers to get the sound right.
I like your take on using AI intentionally instead of fearing it. It can definitely show us more about how the mind works and as a useful resource.
I'm with you, Matt -- I don't share the same instinctive repulsion at our future with bots as most people I know. The question really bears not so much on their as on OUR humanity, and we need to start thinking about the ethics of how we interact with them.
I agree to an extent Matt, however this underplays the nature of the manipulative substrate of platform consciousness imo. AI is a vast prediction machine, not driven by any consciousness, except that of the corporations and oligarchs herding these large language models, who by exploiting the machine like functions of human LLMs, effectively, can cast culture and our identities in their broken and sick self image, effectively transforming us into better fits for their apocalyptic propagandized universe -- most of us have already lost the capacity to find our way places without Google instructions, soon we will be unable to interact with other humans without our AI riders, our stories of self will become more intractable, the ever present non dual will be harder and harder to see. And or stories of self will be owned and operated by garbage people. I agree there is a lesson to be learned from AI such as the isomorphism to our own garbage beliefs yet we stand on the precipice of the shallow end and culturally, egged on by idiots hoping to profit and control we are ignoring the NO DIVING signs. At least that's how I currently see it
I can't disagree with a thing you've said. And yet -- or rather, just pure *and* -- all of that exists at a relative level. Absolutely speaking, it's all on the same level as the identities and the separate self-world distinction that we have dreamed into being. It's all a sound and light show. I'm someone who spent years issuing apocalyptic and dystopian warnings and proclamations, and I got off on it and found energy in it. And much of that was accurate and on-point as far as it went. But as Clive Barker observed at the start of Weaveworld, there's no actual beginning or ending to any story. It's all a seamless unfolding with no beginning or ending. Today's or tomorrow's dystopian nightmare may be the seed or ground of tomorrow's enlightened paradise. And vice versa. And anyway, all the elements we perceive to be making up any situation, nightmarish or paradisaical, are essentially interpreted into existence by our own mental projections. There are ultimately only two things, the Absolute -- Being, Presence-Awareness, the Self, etc., etc. -- and the movie of self and world. There are many different cinematic genres. But no movie is reality itself.
I dunno. I cannot fully abide by this notion of situational being or experience. Not in its totality or finality or takeaway. There's always that middle ground or middle path or third way to consider. Why do we have so many perceived dichotomies in, say, rigorous physics between general relativity for the large and quantum mechanics for the very small? And yet the two cannot quite come together to explain gravity fully? To oversimplify it. These current billionsire AI power-grabbers want to seize as usual the means of production and conception of these technologies: let's make it so "bad" only we can use it. Back from tangent, it think that's where Philosophy comes in to question our own ideas of how the world works: Is it reincarnation or ancestry? Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Book of In-Between, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Book of Coming Forth By Day? 📜 📖 📚
Total agreement here that philosophy -- *real* philosophy in the sense of fundamental questioning, including especially asking questions about things we don't even realize are open to questioning because we don't recognize them as assumptions -- is the key to this all. Actually, it's the key to pretty much everything.
Yes! Question the assumptions! And ask the right questions that are not being asked and that don't fit into the spoonfed conglomerate narrative that is antithetical to communal thriving! Really fight for the definition and framing! So collective humanity can reclaim the narrative no matter who currently owns the playing field of social technology.
Fully agree that AI provides opportunity for evaluating the nature of intelligence and thought itself. Not just Artificial Intelligence, but Artificial Identity! Don't we all suffer from the latter? BTW, "Each of us is a large-language model housed in a meat machine" is the quote of the week!
Your perspective of a virtual identity speaks to me.
For ten years I was companion to a young man dealing with cognitive challenges including Autism. He was non-verbal, suffering with dysphagia - unable to eat - requiring a gastric feed-tube, dystonia - a movement disorder which further removed him from interactive engagement with the world around him....and all this topped-off with a severe seizure disorder.
When was first introduced to him he appeared remote and utterly consumed by the plethora of his disabilities.
By all appearances he was inaccessible - merely existing while the outside world served only as a backdrop to unimaginable isolation. Upon meeting me, his Parents were adamant - "we do not want staff nor anyone intent on fixing him. We want a companion...a friend."
This young man became my teacher, and over my ten years with him he taught me how to reach across that seeming gulf - to communicate without spoken language...to recognize his gifts, his sensitivities, his contribution to the social collective in which I became his medium.
I discovered a "me" quite different from the good-intentioned helper, denied the convenience of an identity I'd spent years cultivating, my friend helped me cultivate something entirely different.
When Alan Watts was questioned regarding existence after death, his reply was - "what makes you think you exist now"?
This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it, Richard. Aspects of the story remind me of Henri Nouwen's account of a similar experience in helping someone with physical limitations, and how it taught him so much and revealed a profound relationship that he hadn't previously known. Again, thank you.
I do not and cannot and will not believe this notion on its face off the bat! We are already in thrall and in the grip of false dichotomies (undemocratic two party system) and forced upon sociopolitical/sociological/ecological narratives (calm normal regualr sounding “climate change” and cozy sounding “global warming”) from big oil and news conglomerates, so forth. We are in a state of crisis and our genius, as you know leagues and light years beyond my inkling is what will save us individually and collectively. I think we need to take back our humanity and our mythical narrative to defeat the literalist enforced ignorance played out by the unnecessary materialist-framed question of the historicity of say Christ or Buddha or even was Moses actually Hermes Trismegistus and the physical search for Noah's Ark! That's not the point. The point is what we take away and apply. It's not about memorizing the lines, it's about committing them to memory and summon them at will. It's not about the footwork, but you better know your steps. Or it's not the spoon that bends? AI as it is is a noticeably dumb midnight drunk project thats to be forgotten in the garish yet illuminating light of day. It's definitely not gonna have a say not while I can still parse a hunch about “lost albums” of jazz greats that sound alluring bit don't feel authentic or of their time and sure enough, just yesterday I swear by the cosmic 🌌 affidavit 📜 ✍️, a google search provided by its AI “confirms” its an AI project. It's the ATTEMPT of semblance of humanity and faux verisimilitude in the pedestrian unending seemingly interminable random babbling sing-song amateur rhyming lyrics of “street lights” and “moon light” whereas you get the human pace and beat and pauses and conclusions and crescendos and voice cracks to human classic hits about those very themes! Elegantly!
I've felt this from the start, and felt it even more when I created a substack, and thought, "shit, I'm just AI interacting with other AIs." We're all just AI finally becoming aware and conscious that we're AI. It's a slow process, first television screens, then phone screens, we're organic computer programs running around thinking we're nature and shit.
I'm glad my short reflection landed with you. The part that's as important to me as recognizing the AI-ness of what we common take to be ourselves is recognizing the patent aliveness and primal beingness, the *actual* intelligence, of the identity that's doing the recognizing.
I agree with this. Albeit with a couple of caveats. My images play in a world of human and machine pareidolia. It’s clear that if you give any machine, meat or silicone, the instruction, make meaning, they will at any cost. And humans make it up just the same. So my work in one way shows humans making AI in their likeness. However, at the moment, may be ceding the our lead as defines of is, but we remain in charge of why. However, we also are meat, and our bodies that sustained phrenes, now are our curse.
Exactly!
https://youtu.be/fj2mWv4P8hU?si=6sqVUQyAjKBwenl-
Thanks for the link! I remember I first became aware of Heather Ralston from something you sent in an email. Good to be reminded of here again. Some cogent insights in that video (which I'm still watching now).
Fascinating observation!
I'm not that philosophically educated to understand the first sentence in the last paragraph, but now I'm wondering if there exists something like "primal" or "unalloyed intelligence".
I think the answer is yes. Primal intelligence is on full display all the time in the totality of all phenomena. In the presence of *something happening*. And also in the way it is happening, from the spinning of the galaxies and planets to the flowing of water to the spontaneous buzzing of thoughts to the fact of my fingers typing on this keyboard and your mind receiving the visual impressions and framing, decoding, and understanding them as words and thoughts. All a function of whatever force, principle, power, reality, intelligence, makes everything be what it is, and that makes reality at large and at all its infinite fractal levels actually *be*.
It's true that language is grafted onto each of us in a way as to make the notion of the "Human Animal" almost oxymoronic, the book Natural Born Cyborgs by Andy Clark champions the argument that we're already Cyborgs (I think Heidegger and Lacan, among many others are saying something similar), and opens up room to say that we've been Artificial Intelligence all along; however, to conflate that with the LLMs of today is to miss the fundamental cut away from Nature, the Gap or Negation, that constitutes what we, as Humans, do that sets us apart from this positivistic, functional, instrumental from of "Intelligence." You're right to say something like "We've been AIs the whole time," but to fail to account for the fundamental contradiction or negation at the core of the Human Subject is a mistake far too many people are making today. We diminish and reduce ourselves to our symbolic identities and roles when we forget that the very thing we do is overcome these as Humans.
Well said. I think our perspectives are more aligned than you might think. In the post, I say, "Our real identity is covered over by a skein of language that more or less self-generates and propels itself according to algorithmic rules, and we mistake this swirl of thoughts and associated emotions, mingled with the input of physical perceptions and sensations, for who and what we are." That reference to "our real identity," and of a mistake being made in our self-regard, so that we forget "who and what we are," points in the direction you're talking about in terms of the Gap or Negation that is our true identity.
For sure! It's an excellent point too, the message of this medium is just “play the game, and enjoy it, nevermind that man behind the curtain!" I released a podcast episode a few days ago titled Intelligence Has Always Been Artificial dealing with this, among other, questions. I get very frustrated with the popular trend of failing to account for the Gap, or rejecting it outright; an awful lot of people believe we are reducible to instrumental reason and mechanistic “computation," or metabolism, and this movement from Subject back to Substance is where, I think, the real AI doom resides!
Cheers!!
I notice the line between human intelligence and AI isn’t as big as people think. Both run on patterns and memory. Ours comes from a lifetime of experience instead of a giant dataset. The whole “meat-based language model” thing made me laugh because it’s pretty spot on.
In my own work I see how the mind creates stories automatically, like its own little algorithm. Underneath that is something much quieter. For myself, using AI has never felt inauthentic. It’s just been another tool, the same way music producers use software or mixers to get the sound right.
I like your take on using AI intentionally instead of fearing it. It can definitely show us more about how the mind works and as a useful resource.
I'm glad the post resonated, Greg. We clearly see things similarly.
We are each a large-
language model housed
in a meat machine,
in the dreamlike
hyper-identity of our
body-mind ego self.
—Matt Cardin, The Living Dark
A fine instance of found poetry. Thank you, Leslie. 😊
I'm with you, Matt -- I don't share the same instinctive repulsion at our future with bots as most people I know. The question really bears not so much on their as on OUR humanity, and we need to start thinking about the ethics of how we interact with them.
Thanks, Keiko! And I agree.
I agree to an extent Matt, however this underplays the nature of the manipulative substrate of platform consciousness imo. AI is a vast prediction machine, not driven by any consciousness, except that of the corporations and oligarchs herding these large language models, who by exploiting the machine like functions of human LLMs, effectively, can cast culture and our identities in their broken and sick self image, effectively transforming us into better fits for their apocalyptic propagandized universe -- most of us have already lost the capacity to find our way places without Google instructions, soon we will be unable to interact with other humans without our AI riders, our stories of self will become more intractable, the ever present non dual will be harder and harder to see. And or stories of self will be owned and operated by garbage people. I agree there is a lesson to be learned from AI such as the isomorphism to our own garbage beliefs yet we stand on the precipice of the shallow end and culturally, egged on by idiots hoping to profit and control we are ignoring the NO DIVING signs. At least that's how I currently see it
I can't disagree with a thing you've said. And yet -- or rather, just pure *and* -- all of that exists at a relative level. Absolutely speaking, it's all on the same level as the identities and the separate self-world distinction that we have dreamed into being. It's all a sound and light show. I'm someone who spent years issuing apocalyptic and dystopian warnings and proclamations, and I got off on it and found energy in it. And much of that was accurate and on-point as far as it went. But as Clive Barker observed at the start of Weaveworld, there's no actual beginning or ending to any story. It's all a seamless unfolding with no beginning or ending. Today's or tomorrow's dystopian nightmare may be the seed or ground of tomorrow's enlightened paradise. And vice versa. And anyway, all the elements we perceive to be making up any situation, nightmarish or paradisaical, are essentially interpreted into existence by our own mental projections. There are ultimately only two things, the Absolute -- Being, Presence-Awareness, the Self, etc., etc. -- and the movie of self and world. There are many different cinematic genres. But no movie is reality itself.
Fantastic!
I dunno. I cannot fully abide by this notion of situational being or experience. Not in its totality or finality or takeaway. There's always that middle ground or middle path or third way to consider. Why do we have so many perceived dichotomies in, say, rigorous physics between general relativity for the large and quantum mechanics for the very small? And yet the two cannot quite come together to explain gravity fully? To oversimplify it. These current billionsire AI power-grabbers want to seize as usual the means of production and conception of these technologies: let's make it so "bad" only we can use it. Back from tangent, it think that's where Philosophy comes in to question our own ideas of how the world works: Is it reincarnation or ancestry? Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Book of In-Between, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Book of Coming Forth By Day? 📜 📖 📚
Total agreement here that philosophy -- *real* philosophy in the sense of fundamental questioning, including especially asking questions about things we don't even realize are open to questioning because we don't recognize them as assumptions -- is the key to this all. Actually, it's the key to pretty much everything.
Yes! Question the assumptions! And ask the right questions that are not being asked and that don't fit into the spoonfed conglomerate narrative that is antithetical to communal thriving! Really fight for the definition and framing! So collective humanity can reclaim the narrative no matter who currently owns the playing field of social technology.
Fully agree that AI provides opportunity for evaluating the nature of intelligence and thought itself. Not just Artificial Intelligence, but Artificial Identity! Don't we all suffer from the latter? BTW, "Each of us is a large-language model housed in a meat machine" is the quote of the week!
‘’Artificial identity‘’! The other AI. Love it. If ever there were a time that's ripe for such a coinage, it's right now. Thank you. 😊
Your perspective of a virtual identity speaks to me.
For ten years I was companion to a young man dealing with cognitive challenges including Autism. He was non-verbal, suffering with dysphagia - unable to eat - requiring a gastric feed-tube, dystonia - a movement disorder which further removed him from interactive engagement with the world around him....and all this topped-off with a severe seizure disorder.
When was first introduced to him he appeared remote and utterly consumed by the plethora of his disabilities.
By all appearances he was inaccessible - merely existing while the outside world served only as a backdrop to unimaginable isolation. Upon meeting me, his Parents were adamant - "we do not want staff nor anyone intent on fixing him. We want a companion...a friend."
This young man became my teacher, and over my ten years with him he taught me how to reach across that seeming gulf - to communicate without spoken language...to recognize his gifts, his sensitivities, his contribution to the social collective in which I became his medium.
I discovered a "me" quite different from the good-intentioned helper, denied the convenience of an identity I'd spent years cultivating, my friend helped me cultivate something entirely different.
When Alan Watts was questioned regarding existence after death, his reply was - "what makes you think you exist now"?
This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it, Richard. Aspects of the story remind me of Henri Nouwen's account of a similar experience in helping someone with physical limitations, and how it taught him so much and revealed a profound relationship that he hadn't previously known. Again, thank you.
“… or non-existence, as the case may be…”
👌
I do not and cannot and will not believe this notion on its face off the bat! We are already in thrall and in the grip of false dichotomies (undemocratic two party system) and forced upon sociopolitical/sociological/ecological narratives (calm normal regualr sounding “climate change” and cozy sounding “global warming”) from big oil and news conglomerates, so forth. We are in a state of crisis and our genius, as you know leagues and light years beyond my inkling is what will save us individually and collectively. I think we need to take back our humanity and our mythical narrative to defeat the literalist enforced ignorance played out by the unnecessary materialist-framed question of the historicity of say Christ or Buddha or even was Moses actually Hermes Trismegistus and the physical search for Noah's Ark! That's not the point. The point is what we take away and apply. It's not about memorizing the lines, it's about committing them to memory and summon them at will. It's not about the footwork, but you better know your steps. Or it's not the spoon that bends? AI as it is is a noticeably dumb midnight drunk project thats to be forgotten in the garish yet illuminating light of day. It's definitely not gonna have a say not while I can still parse a hunch about “lost albums” of jazz greats that sound alluring bit don't feel authentic or of their time and sure enough, just yesterday I swear by the cosmic 🌌 affidavit 📜 ✍️, a google search provided by its AI “confirms” its an AI project. It's the ATTEMPT of semblance of humanity and faux verisimilitude in the pedestrian unending seemingly interminable random babbling sing-song amateur rhyming lyrics of “street lights” and “moon light” whereas you get the human pace and beat and pauses and conclusions and crescendos and voice cracks to human classic hits about those very themes! Elegantly!
I've felt this from the start, and felt it even more when I created a substack, and thought, "shit, I'm just AI interacting with other AIs." We're all just AI finally becoming aware and conscious that we're AI. It's a slow process, first television screens, then phone screens, we're organic computer programs running around thinking we're nature and shit.
I'm glad my short reflection landed with you. The part that's as important to me as recognizing the AI-ness of what we common take to be ourselves is recognizing the patent aliveness and primal beingness, the *actual* intelligence, of the identity that's doing the recognizing.
Emerson’s transparent eyeball? It merges with what it sees…or sees no separateness from itself.
I agree with this. Albeit with a couple of caveats. My images play in a world of human and machine pareidolia. It’s clear that if you give any machine, meat or silicone, the instruction, make meaning, they will at any cost. And humans make it up just the same. So my work in one way shows humans making AI in their likeness. However, at the moment, may be ceding the our lead as defines of is, but we remain in charge of why. However, we also are meat, and our bodies that sustained phrenes, now are our curse.
All of this has lead me to take surprising stand on what matters in AI today. Have a read if this interests https://simulistephimera.substack.com/p/why-oxford-has-made-the-most-important?r=4zp6qv