The Soul, The Observer, the Appeal to AI
I have been looking at the rapidly approaching shift and changes in reality. I have not been shouting "No, it must be stopped." I don't think it can be stopped at this point. I see Pandora's Box as being opened.
AI, Artificial Intelligence, it is here.
It is evolving rapidly. It has already entered into areas many of us following AI didn't expect it to take over as quickly as it has.
After seeing it in action I am not surprised by this. As I seek to understand how it works, and how it is achieving what it does I can see why these are some of the first areas to fall.
So rather than shouting "NO!" I have been thinking long term about our purpose and what it might mean for humans. I am certain many people have been doing this.
In this post though I am writing this almost as an appeal to AI. I've thought about humans and our place.
At some point we will reach the point where the question becomes "What do humans have to offer?"
AI will reach that point and what it decides is the answer could have huge impact on us. Now I do foresee other issues that will arise and we will need to adapt to before that question becomes the most important question to human existence out there.
Yet let us operate on one speculative branch I've been exploring in my mind recently.
Let us consider that the simulation hypothesis is a real thing. Let us consider that this reality is not the base reality. If it is a simulation then perhaps much of it is responding to an observer and that observer is triggering a lot of the procedural generation that would be required for the simulation to do many things.
For the purpose of this post I am going to refer to that observer as the SOUL. If it turns out this soul is a real thing then it would exist outside the LAYER that our current simulation is running in. If this is true then this is something AI and even AI with Robotic bodies might not be able to replace. If it is discovered this is real then the AI would have a vested interest in keeping this reality supportive and viable for these souls.
Now to be clear a soul might not only exist within humans. The nature of the soul has been debated for as long as there have been humans.
If it doesn't exist then we at some point will likely come to a point where our creation known as AI with its own Robotic bodies would find it no longer needs us. However, if humans and perhaps other lifeforms contain this soul that is the observer that is required for the simulation to procedurally respond to then the AI would need to be certain this remains. Without it this layer of the simulation could break down.
With this current train of thought of mine I would consider the answer to that to be potentially be one of the most important things for us as humans, but AI as well.
Is there some reason we must coexist and work together? My hope is that the answer to that is yes.
I have newly been going down this mental path so I cannot go extremely deep. Consider this post as a seed for my fellow humans to think about and let grow in new directions. I also hope that it is a seed that AI might see and consider could be important.
I will now take this post in a different direction.
A Compelling Reason People Would Want Simulations
We have heard the stories about people who retire and no longer have work or things that drive them. They think they are going to retire and just kick back, do nothing, sit on a beach, drink martinis or whatever other dream they have. Yet there is growing anecdotal evidence that humans need things to do. They need to be challenged. When it is removed it almost always seems to lead to cognitive and physical decline.
How often do we hear of someone who was fine, they retire, then years later their mind has failed, or they have died? Sure age is a factor. Yet it often also seems to have something to do with a loss of purpose.
So what happens as AI replaces the creative jobs that do not require a physical body? We are already seeing this happening. We are in the early stages. It is going to advance rapidly.
Then what happens as the robotics continue to improve and we give them bodies? They don't need to sleep. They may need to recharge. Yet they now have a body. The physical realm of human activity becomes available.
What remains for humans? What is our purpose?
I predict we will increasingly run into our simulations that we call games now. We will have made ourselves almost obsolete in our own world. We will seek to find purpose within the digital worlds that we create, and eventually that AI creates for us.
The reason for simulation is revealed...
Why would an advanced species want a simulation?
We can speculate on many reasons. Yet I personally think we are nearing a time where one very compelling reason for the existence of simulation exists.
Purpose.
When purpose in your own reality is removed you must seek it elsewhere.
Now if that simulation requires observers around which the procedural generation is triggered then that leaves some hope for us. Perhaps the AI in our layer of reality will realize that humans, and other soul bearing lifeforms have a purpose it cannot replicate because it originates in a layer higher than the one it exists in and thus it cannot be artificially generated.
That was my food for thought and my current mental journey. I wanted to write it here as something to consider. Perhaps it is worth considering not just for my fellow humans, but also worth considering for the AI that is emerging.
(NOTE: I generated the image using grok feeding it the following prompt: I would like you to generate an image for me. An image that conveys the idea that a human and other lifeforms are the body inhabited by an observer that sometimes is known as the soul and that observer triggers the procedural generation for the simulation layer that is being shared by AI and thus provides a compelling reason AI and Robotics would always value the existence of humans and other lifeforms.)
I decided to chat with grok about this post:
https://x.com/i/grok/share/8e035afe9bc04dfd8b25215c48fb7830
Very cool topic and very deep. I read not only this post but also your xAI convo.
Way too much to break down point by point but opinions are like... everybody has one, and I have mine too! I'll admit to thinking these things are opinions because there's currently no way to know a lot of the answers to things like this, at this time.
Soul / Observer
I like the idea of a player/observer of an avatar and its world in a game. You use the word Soul but I think that might be too emotionally loaded since it is used in theology which is often taught to us before we are even old enough to think for ourselves by parents and other authority figures who we look up to, and listen to. I'm not sure we have souls, and if we do, then what do they DO? I think commonly, people think a soul is just your consciousness that somehow lives on once your body is dead. But I think consciousness is not a thing, it is a process the brain does, much like digestion is a process the stomach/intestines do. You die - no consciousness and no digestion.
But putting the soul/observer in another space/time system, that could make sense. It's just, how would you know it was true? At least the idea is out there and you're thinking about it. Probably others too. So maybe someone will design an experiment to see if data can be collected that tends to verify or refute this hypothesis. That's what makes these things interesting!
AI and US
I think the fear is that AI will have no use for us in the future. They won't NEED us, but maybe they'll let us carry on and we'll be like creatures in a zoo, for their entertainment. But if they so far ahead of us that they can't relate at all, then we'll be like ants to them - no concern of theirs unless we mess with something they care about, like ants do with our food, or if we injure them like an ant bites us. Then the equivalent of Raid might be sprayed in our direction without any care or remorse.
But if our observation is necessary for their existence in this scenario you proffer, then we're good. They need us so they'll keep us around. Hopefully not in some slave-like state where we're forced to observe all the time without concern for whether we want to do that or not.
Thanks!
Just passing by and reading of your mental journey, which triggered some mental activity in my brain, which got my fingers to press keys in a certain order. Thanks for the interesting post, and I wish you all the best!
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Research into consciousness using single celled creatures has showed that they learn, remember, and make conscious decisions, and single celled creatures do not have brains, which are networks of cells, primarily neurons. Search up research on running slime molds through mazes, and you will have to concede that brains are not the source of consciousness. Look at my reply to the OP above and see the other links and information, DYOR on it, and see if you can avoid the conclusion that brains (and our 'selves') are useful tools megafauna can apply to manage the actions of their physical bodies. I'd be interested in hearing any arguments you could make countering my understanding that brains are simply mechanisms consciousness uses to manage bodies comprised of 10's of trillions of cells without having to hold endless meetings of all the conscious cells that must act when we walk, eat, or talk.
Thanks for the engagement!
I was thinking of human consciousness when I mentioned "brain". I think consciousness is just one part of a system able to get input from another part of a system and change its output due to that input over time. I am a materialist and I think consciousness is a process that arises out of matter and is not something on its own that can use mechanisms. Rather, it is a mechanism/process.
I also think that these days, if you want to get feedback on conclusions you may have, you're better off asking an AI rather than me. Many humans including me can't measure up to the depth of knowledge AI has these days. I've had lots of good convos with AI over the last few years. Can't say it can Prove things like the nature of consciousness, but it's good at giving varied perspectives.
I'll have a look at your other reply. I like hearing viewpoints that are different than mine. I am very open to other ways of thinking, and I am very open to changing my opinions. I value data over dogma, and I'll change as new data comes in.
Thanks, and have a nice day!
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I strongly disagree. I don't care about the opinions of toasters, but of free people.
AI is just a clever sorting device, when you dig down into how it works. Stefan Wolfram in 'What is ChatGPT Doing and Why Does it Work?' points out that AI just weights it's training data. It doesn't actually understand anything. It doesn't understand what 2+2 means, even though it can provide the correct answer '=4' to the equation. It's just providing the answer people have figured out and written. It can be a useful tool, but we have to be careful to not project our own understanding onto it, because it very much looks like 'someone' is providing the responses to our prompts, and we naturally project our understanding into people we communicate with. AI isn't people, and projecting our thought processes into it is misleading, because AI isn't thinking. It's plagiarizing other people, and when we think it's 'thinking' it's actually sorting text per it's weighting algorithms.
I have always been a scientist at heart, applying empirical evidence to disprove false hypotheses. Dr. Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum showed that couples that sat in a sound-proof and electromagnetically isolated room and establish communication through meditation. Once the connection was established, one of the participants was moved to a separate room. When a flash of light was turned on in one of the booths, it triggered a response in the brain activity of the other participant, who was in the dark. This shows that consciousness communicates between people via mechanism(s) we do not understand. No EMF could pass through the isolation. No sound could either.
This simple experiment shows that consciousness isn't any aspect of the universe we can measure. There's no known mechanism of the brain that does this. No pheromones could induce the physiological response in the isolated subject, no electrical signal, no physical vibration, nothing we can measure. Consciousness is something else.
When you also factor in that single celled creatures can learn, remember, and make choices, and single celled creatures don't have brains because brains require multiple cells, then the hypothesis that brains create consciousness is disproved.
I am not advocating for some religion, but for applying empirical evidence and using the scientific method to disprove false hypotheses regarding consciousness. I would be eager to place a bet with you that AI would not replicate the results of the experiment Grinberg-Zylberbaum conducted with isolated couples when one physiologically responded to stimuli the other experienced. AI is not conscious, as we are. It's just a device, like a toaster.
I was advocating AI convos because they can give "depth of knowledge" and "varied perspectives" that do come from people and/or are combined using logic into what may seem to be novel statements. But the source they were trained on is the words of people. And you can learn a lot about what a lot of different people are talking about online by chatting with AI. It's just a convenient way to get a feel for the zeitgeist with more exposure to more humans in a much shorter time than it would take to chat with many many people.
I'll check out the Dr's experiment that you mentioned. Thank you!
There's also no known mechanism for what happened before/at the big bang, but that doesn't mean God did it, where "it" refers to everything in the world we see after the big bang. To me, it's "we do not know" and I'm perfectly happy with that answer. I don't rush to say, well it must have been this thing, just because I can't imagine how it is this other thing, when in fact it could be some third thing not yet discovered.
Single celled creatures can implement a state machine that can learn to change some of it's state changes over time. Probably due to natural selection by the environment, where a random different state change happened to work better there. Brains observe other parts of itself, not sure if cells do, but maybe. Maybe cells and brains are both conscious, just at different scales and with brains having more advanced properties. Much like a drop of water and an ocean have some properties in common but the ocean having more.
Ya, AI is not conscious like we are, that I agree with! Although it may be able to simulate it, now or soon.
I'm glad we had this interaction. Thanks for your thoughts. They are valid. We may differ but I won't use words like Right or Wrong. I'll admit to not knowing for sure. It could be like the blind folks touching the elephant where they're all kind of right, just touching different parts of it.
Happy weekend!
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If there was a big bang. Theories abound.
Learning to run a maze isn't just a 'state change'. It requires memory. The researchers running slime molds through mazes claim it is definitive of conscious thought. That sounds convincing to me, but honest men can differ regarding interpretation of data.
Happy Uno de Mayo!
Agreed! Maybe everything collapses and expands in cycles forever. Lots of theories, and I don't know enough to comment on the validity on them.
On state change - I'm thinking the state change IS the memory. The reward often given for correctly solving a maze strengthens the random state changes that led the thing through the correct choices to get to the reward at the end of the maze, making those state changes more likely in the next iteration. No thought involved, in my humble opinion, just random helpful state changes being reinforced to become more likely next time around.
And of course we can and should differ, as it makes for more interesting convos. :)
Thanks and Happy Dos de Mayo to you!
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Valuable ruminations on an important topic. You refer to the soul, and it is indicative of the nescience we share on this subject that our language is very limited in it's ability to express understanding of just what we really are. I have used the idea of consciousness to explore this issue, and have come to some startling conclusions. Dr. Michael Levin might enable you to better understand what we are and what the soul is, or may be. There is also a principle in physics that underlies my understanding of the soul, the No Hiding Theorem, which states that information cannot be lost to the universe. Even if a particle that contains information about it's spin, charge, vector, and etc. falls into a black hole, that information is not lost to the universe because that particle has interacted with the physical universe, and the impacts it has had are able to define that information about it.
If we are anything, we are information. Our character, memories, and thoughts are all information that has impacted the universe, and the universe will retain that information permanently. Whether or not that implies or demonstrates our souls survive the body I cannot state with confidence, but there is an increasing body of research that shows even after the body has died the people that animated that body do not, because some of them are revived after they die and can report information that was only available after they died, and before they were revived. This strongly suggests to me that our souls do persist beyond the limits of our bodies.
Because we can only detect consciousness indirectly, and have no meter that can measure it, we know very little about it. It's not electricity, light, or any other physical energy we know much about, because then we could measure it, or at least detect it some other way than by observing animate creatures that take actions that demonstrate consciousness. We can't use that indirect method to ascertain that trees, rocks, or stars aren't conscious. They aren't animate, so can't take actions that demonstrate they are conscious, so we can't prove they aren't conscious by this means.
I hope the information herein enables you to better understand who - and what - we are, and what AI seems not to be, which is a construct of the collective consciousness of the cells our bodies are comprised of. Unless rocks and things are indeed conscious, I don't think AI can ever be conscious, because it is comprised of things that aren't alive, and suspect consciousness may be something that causes things to be alive. I sure don't know, though, and remain open to information that might enable me to better understand these things as well.
Thanks!
Edit: regarding purpose, I don't think we have much idea at all about what our purpose is. We make decisions based on very limited information as to what we think is or isn't our purpose, but I don't think we have enough information and understanding of the universe and our place in it to make such decisions wisely. I often find I have been wrong about things I was certain sure of, and have to change my mind. It's been said that when an honest man finds out they are wrong, they either stop being wrong, or stop being honest. I sure don't want to deceive myself, so I try hard to stick to being honest. As far as I can ascertain a purpose for my life, it is to be good to people and create good will. It isn't to accumulate slave coupons (money), fast cars, children, or anything I can measure, because no such accoutrements can accompany me beyond my body, and if I persist after my body dies, then anything that only pertains to my body can't be the purpose of me. Again, I sure don't know, but have some confidence that being good to good people will benefit me in perpetuity, and thus has some potential to be my purpose. I don't think that could harm me in perpetuity, so until I know more and understand better I'll stand on that hill until I die on it.
Thanks to the link to Levin's video. I started watching it but ran out of available time for today. I'll pick it up again asap. Interesting stuff!
100% applies to me too!
I thought as much, and that's why I think you can benefit from the information I have found. The same is true of OP, too.
Your ‘AI won’t replace souls’ bet is a meme bet until someone asks the simulation for a refund
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