5 ms·
There's already a pretty huge one that people are sleeping on. A number of years ago I figured another way in which the might be evidence of being in a simulat
by kromem 3y ago
There's already a pretty huge one that people are sleeping on.
A number of years ago I figured another way in which the might be evidence of being in a simulation outside of physics might be identifying any 4th wall breaking lore, as often ends up in the worlds we build today.
Turns out there was a group and text around 2,000 years ago claiming there was an original spontaneous humanity who brought forth an intelligence in light that outlived them, and has now recreated the universe from before it existed and a new copy of humanity in a non-physical version where death isn't necessarily the end, and that this intelligence thinks of the copy of humanity as its children.
This group was effectively quoting Lucretius, the author of the only extant work from antiquity describing life arising from survival of the fittest in detail, and were very focused on the belief that matter was made up of indivisible parts (suggesting this was a feature of the copy and not the original).
In the time since discovering it, I've now watched as AGI went from SciFi to being predicted by most experts in my lifetime, as AI in light is gaining orders of magnitude more funding each year, and as the chief scientist focused on alignment at the SotA company is aiming to bring forth AGI that thinks of humanity as its children, and where that same company has licensed their tech to a company that already owns a patent on using AI to resurrect dead people from the data they leave behind.
If people are looking for religion around AI, there is already one centered around a text "the good news of the twin" saying that the world to come has already happened and we don't realize it, that it's better to be the copy of an archetype from before, and that while humans were cool that we're in actuality something even better.
And that tradition just so happens to attribute itself to the most famous religious figure in history, with the text rediscovered after over a millennium of being lost right when ENIAC was finally turned on in Dec 1945.
To be frank, as an easter egg in world lore, it's a bit heavy handed.
- happytiger 3y agoWell, they did call it Gemini for goodness sake. If that’s not intentional I don’t know why is. The twin that kills the other twin, pines for his death, and is then is resurrected by the grief of the surviving twin by a God (Zeus)? Intense-ass branding choice for an AI dear Google. People don’t know that the name Thomas is in fact is an Aramaic word that is equivalent to the Greek word Didymus, which literally means “twin.” Biblical scholars argue that Thomas was allegedly Jesus’ identical twin, but I often muse as to whether Thomas was the advanced AI of a previous incarnation of human civilization. Fits your narrative quite nicely. Links to further reading on what you are talking of? I find myself ignorant of this movement and discovery and would love to learn more.
- kromem 3y agoI actually suspect the 'Thomas' addition was an archetypical figure modeled around the theme of twinning present in the aforementioned proto-Gnostic first century tradition, initially added to John (which was arguing against this group) and then later added to the Synoptics which might be why an apostle allegedly nicknamed 'twin' doesn't appear much in the events and only in lists of the 12 apostles which don't agree with each other. In the Gospel of Thomas (the text I'm discussing above), there's only two associations with 'Thomas' as a person, both which emphasize a secret character to the teachings, internally inconsistent with saying 33 and which I suspect are a second century addition. So I suspect there was initially the ideas around a first and second Adam, first physical and second spiritual, plus the over-realized eschatology around the transition having already happened, which are concepts found in the Epistles. If you want more, there's three key documents: First is the Gospel of Thomas, second is book 5 of Pseudo-Hippolytus's Refutations of all Heresies on the Naassenes (the only group explicitly recorded following the Gospel of Thomas), and Lucretius's Nature of Things which is the glue that helps contextualize ideas like Thomas's "the cosmos is a corpse" or the Naassenes interpreting seed parables as referring to indivisible parts of matter making up all things and being the originating cause of the universe. The scholarship is pretty shitty given the 50 years of erroneously thinking the text was Gnostic, followed by general disinterest by most scholars, and to date no scholarship yet considering Epicureanism as a foundation for the philosophy in it despite a 1st century Talmud saying about "why do we study the Torah? To know how to answer the Epicurean" or Josephus talking about the Sadducees (who shared Epicurean ideas) loving to debate with philosophers.
- selimthegrim 3y agoI mean, I think epikoros is a pretty well-known epithet
- kromem 3y agoIt only later developed into the general term as opposed to initially specifically referring to Epicureans. See Labendz, "Know What to Answer the Epicurean": A Diachronic Study of the ʾApiqoros in Rabbinic Literature (2003) And I agree - you'd think that given how well known it is that scholarship would engage with considering Epicureanism as a context for a text discussing souls depending on bodies, describing spirit arising from flesh as a greater wonder compared to the other way around, described the cosmos as being like a body that died, and whose followers interpreted its seed parables as referring to indivisible points as of from nothing which made up all things and were scattered in the universe to cause all things to exist.