https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-universal
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Lucifer, the fallen angel, the 'light-bringer', was a being of pure spirit. Lucifer's influence pulled humans away from the material realm and towards a gnostic 'oneness', entirely without material form. Ahriman, meanwhile, was at the other pole. Named for an ancient Zorastrian demon, Ahriman was a being of pure matter. He manifested in all things physical - especially human technologies - and his worldview was calculative, 'ice-cold' and rational. Ahriman's was the world of economics, science, technology and all things steely and forward-facing. 'The Christ' was the third force: the one who resisted the extremes of both, brought them together and cancelled them out. This 'Christ', said Steiner, echoing heresies old and new, had manifested as 'the man Jesus of Nazareth', but Ahriman's time was yet to come. His power had been growing since the fifteenth century, and he was due to manifest as a physical being … well, some time around now.
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I often ask them the same question: If you think calamity so possible, why do this at all? Different people have different things to say, but after a few pushes, I find they often answer from something that sounds like the A.I.'s perspective. Many not all, but enough that I feel comfortable in this characterization feel that they have a responsibility to usher this new form of intelligence into the world.
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What new form? And where is it coming from?
Some people think they know the answer. Transhumanist Martine Rothblatt says that by building AI systems 'we are making God.' Transhumanist Elise Bohan says 'we are building God.' Kevin Kelly believes that 'we can see more of God in a cell phone than in a tree frog.' 'Does God exist?' asks transhumanist and Google maven Ray Kurzweil. 'I would say, "Not yet."' These people are doing more than trying to steal fire from the gods. They are trying to steal the gods themselves - or to build their own versions.
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Today, we can combine this claim with Marshall McLuhan's notion that digital technology provides the 'central nervous system' of some new consciousness, or Kevin Kelly's belief in a self-organising technium with 'systematic tendencies'. We can add them to the feeling of those AI developers that they are 'ushering a new consciousness into the world'. What do we see? From all these different angles, the same story. That these machines … are not just machines. That they are something else: a body. A body whose mind is in the process of developing; a body beginning to come to life.