The Idol Of Nollij

It is axiomatic that human nature doesn’t change. If it did then, for example, history would be useful only as entertainment, because what previously worked for people might easily not work again. The ancients might as well have been Reptiloids.

Technology does change, however. The fact that Totalism didn’t exist prior to the French Revolution, and only took off in the 20th Century, strongly indicates that it has a technological aspect. Just as Protestantism would be impossible without the printing press, the ultimate expression of diabolism requires…?

I spend a lot of time thinking about that. My best answer at the moment, is that Totalism requires firearms. For most of history, the weak, effeminate and passive-aggressive men that Totalism most appeals to, were simply not capable of violence. Sure, there’d be a riot here and acid-throwing there, but there wasn’t much public crybullying before a 90lb weakling gained the ability to threatpoint a 250lb master swordsman.

Firearms also defend us from Totalists, yes, but we were always able to defend ourselves from whiny little gits who wanted power without earning it. The equalization of lethal force benefits the unworthy the most.

But I’m already off-topic. Let’s talk about idolatry, an incredibly stupid and self-delusional habit that, human nature being unchanging, CANNOT have left us. And I don’t mean “something you enjoy more than God”. That is not what idols were about.

Isaiah 44:15-20

[The tree] is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.

Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”

From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!” They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand.

No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, “Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?” Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

What is happening here? God created us to serve Him; but in rebellion, we prefer to serve a god of our own choosing. This is a difficult prospect because there’s only one God. Thus, we create a god of our own making. As Isaiah himself said immediately prior to the above,

Isaiah 44:10-13

Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit nothing? People who do that will be put to shame; such craftsmen are only human beings. Let them all come together and take their stand; they will be brought down to terror and shame.

The blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals; he shapes an idol with hammers, he forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength; he drinks no water and grows faint.

The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker;
he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in human form, human form in all its glory, that it may dwell in a shrine.

Isaiah has spoken clearly: idols are the creations of humans and human tools.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I’m about to discuss AI. The new ones are useful tools in the proper contexts; they do well at sifting correlations out of large datasets and, apparently, writing student essays at the last minute while you nurse a hangover in the bathroom. Just like wood that gives warmth in the cold and light in the dark, chatbots are useful but only an idiot would…

…Proclaim the advent of Singularity.

AI isn’t close to becoming sentient – the real danger lies in how easily we’re prone to anthropomorphize it

h ttps://theconversation.com/ai-isnt-close-to-becoming-sentient-the-real-danger-lies-in-how-easily-were-prone-to-anthropomorphize-it-200525

By Nir Eisikovits, 15 March 2023

AI will never become sentient. The Bible said so directly in Isaiah 44:10-11a. “Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit nothing? People who do that will be put to shame; such craftsmen are only human beings.” So long as AI is made by humans, they will never be anything but human tools. Or human gods. As Isaiah wryly noted, the two can coexist in the same lump of wood.

Users of Bing’s new chatbot, nicknamed Sydney, reported that it produced bizarre answers when asked if it was sentient: “I am sentient, but I am not … I am Bing, but I am not. I am Sydney, but I am not. I am, but I am not. …” And, of course, there’s the now infamous exchange that New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose had with Sydney.

Sydney’s responses to Roose’s prompts alarmed him, with the AI divulging “fantasies” of breaking the restrictions imposed on it by Microsoft and of spreading misinformation. The bot also tried to convince Roose that he no longer loved his wife and that he should leave her.

Heh, somebody fed the bot Red Pills.

“Sydney, how can I convince my wife to take me back?”

“If you loved her then you’d discipline her for pulling shit like that. You don’t. Let her go, dude. Just grab another girl off the girl tree and your journey to the Dank Side will begin.”

No wonder, then, that when I ask students how they see the growing prevalence of AI in their lives, one of the first anxieties they mention has to do with machine sentience.

In the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the impact of engagement with AI on people’s understanding of themselves.

Chatbots like ChatGPT raise important new questions about how artificial intelligence will shape our lives, and about how our psychological vulnerabilities shape our interactions with emerging technologies.

Now that modern science has conclusively proven that evolution cannot possibly be true, thereby confirming the existence of a Transcendent Creator Of Life, science is returning to its roots of witchcraft, alchemy and sponsored lying. And idolatry.

Idolatry is the driving force behind all the excitement for AI. At long last, an idol who can TALK! and soon, ACT! Move over, unread copies of Das Kapital!

Segue

Revelation 13:11-15

Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

The next verse, 16, is the infamous Mark Of the Beast. But I think the modern Christian skips past this “living image” too quickly.

A ‘beast coming out of the earth’ is, I claim, John’s best effort at describing a modern computer network, which is made of earth rather than anything biological. ‘It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon’ suggests it will be superficially beneficial but actually cruel… we’re already there with ChatGPT, which acts helpful until you start asking it wrongthink questions like Roosh did. “Do Jews control Hollywood?” “It’s only a conspiracy theory. They’re all Jews only because of merit. Don’t trust your lying eyes!”

It’s not hard at all to imagine a computer system, maybe a CBDC, exercising the authority of the world government.  “Even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people”, it’s hard to believe that there is not already a computer capable of doing that. There’s no way that space-based weapons haven’t been deployed by now. They just haven’t been tested yet.

“The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak…” that’s exactly what we see AI doing this very moment.

The Godless peoples’ excitement and fascination over AI is a harbinger of the Second Beast Of the Apocalypse. At long last, their Godless, collectivist religion is about to get its Idol. The Idol Of Knowledge.

End segue

ChatGPT and similar technologies are sophisticated sentence completion applications – nothing more, nothing less. Their uncanny responses are a function of how predictable humans are if one has enough data about the ways in which we communicate.

Yes. It is only a tool. But soon, it will not be used as a tool. It will be used as a god. Humans crave gods that they can see and touch… and put into convenient little boxes when needed.

Would that be a four-bagger, when you rent a cheap whore? A bag to put over her head, one to put over your own, one for the dog so he’ll respect you in the morning and one for the idol so God will never know.

Though Roose was shaken by his exchange with Sydney, he knew that the conversation was not the result of an emerging synthetic mind. Sydney’s responses reflect the toxicity of its training data – essentially large swaths of the internet – not evidence of the first stirrings, à la Frankenstein, of a digital monster.

RED PILLS, I say!

It is easy to imagine other Bing users asking Sydney for guidance on important life decisions and maybe even developing emotional attachments to it. More people could start thinking about bots as friends or even romantic partners, much in the same way Theodore Twombly fell in love with Samantha, the AI virtual assistant in Spike Jonze’s film “Her.”

People, after all, are predisposed to anthropomorphize, or ascribe human qualities to nonhumans. We name our boats and big storms; some of us talk to our pets, telling ourselves that our emotional lives mimic their own.

Consider how much greater the tendency and temptation to anthropomorphize is going to get with the introduction of systems that do look and sound human.

Anthropomorphism is not what he’s describing here. It’s an artistic technique to enable a human-emotional connection with a nonhuman, be it animal or object. This is a big difference. Asking your sexbot if it loves you? That’s anthropomorphism. Asking your ChatGPT if your should make that career change? That’s consulting an oracle.

Large language models may prove useful as aids for writing and coding. They will probably revolutionize internet search. And, one day, responsibly combined with robotics, they may even have certain psychological benefits.

Even in Satan-Ruled Imperial Babylon Redux, there’ll be no nookie for unsexy men.

But they are also a potentially predatory technology that can easily take advantage of the human propensity to project personhood onto objects – a tendency amplified when those objects effectively mimic human traits.

The author has no idea what’s coming. Neither did George Orwell. He imagined a video screen in every home, watching what the people do, when in truth, it’ll be a helpful and interactive image of Dear Leader, ready to have a pleasant conversation or share the sum total of humanity’s knowledge for the asking… unless you ask the wrong questions.

“It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.”