Category Archives: AI

Meanings, Feelings and Escapism.

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This post is a response to an anonymous ‘comment’ by, I think, our camp friend, Don. I have asked him several times to ensure his name is attached to his comments but he persists in submitting anonymously. This is the reason I haven’t published the comment he so generously blessed us with in response to It’s A Small World After All. It has all the hallmarks of a Don sermon: it’s overlong, condescending and redefines words to suit his agenda. Here it is with my comments in blue.

Neal, you’d be right at home with Kafka and Nietzsche. Who is this ‘Neal’ of which you speak?

As you come to the end of the essay – good one by the way – I think you do something that many do; you confuse purpose and meaning. It is easy to do. Even the theologians do it. But you, the great Don Camp, do not because you know better than everyone else. We should all fall on our knees before such a wonderful and wise prophet.

Purpose is what I do or am to do. And I do need that. It is work. I think it is built into us. I feel like I have fulfilled my purpose when (I) serve others.

Meaning is what I receive. So we’re playing semantics again. Despite the fact that meaning and purpose are two sides of the same coin, you want to split them and make them substantively different.

I asked AI to define meaning and it came up with this:

There is no single objective meaning to life; instead, it is a blank canvas. Philosophically, the prevailing view is that you are responsible for defining your own purpose (my emphasis). People generally find meaning through personal connections, pursuing passions, contributing to the world, and embracing the experience of being alive.

Oh dear, even silly old AI ‘confuses’ meaning and purpose. Evidently it needs you, Don, to advise it.

Meaning is what I receive. It is joy. It is what I receive when I sit on a high cliff and watch sea waves crashing upon the rocks below. Or the joy I receive when I stand and survey rolling hills of sage and juniper trees and bunch grass bowing in the warm wind. Or the joy that sweeps over me when I sense God close and am embraced by his goodness. And in all these and many more I feel like this is what I was made for. In all these I feel a oneness and completeness. I could be at peace with these forever. These are subjective feelings, as you inadvertently acknowledge with your use of the word ‘feel’. For some reason you mistakenly interpret your own emotions as externally supplied. You say you ‘receive’ meaning in this way as if it’s transmitted from somewhere outside yourself. It isn’t; what you’re experiencing is ‘emotional reasoning’, mistaking emotions for something that exists beyond yourself.  

Your emotions are not meaning in themselves. Listening to the grass grow or watching the ocean waves for all eternity isn’t going to provide you with anything like meaning. Not that you’ll get the chance, of course, when you’re not going to live forever. How careless of you to confuse feelings with meaning, Don.

But I am brought back too soon to a world that is too much with us. That’s the fleeting nature of emotions, Don. Feeling the world is too much ‘with us’ (incorrect preposition?) is also an emotion, not an eternal truth. What it comes down to is, as Exub1a puts it, preferring your own constructed reality over the beautiful chaos of real life.

I think the two together, purpose and meaning, are what life is about. But they are only satisfying to me when they include forever. Oops! Offer is time limited and excludes forever. Sorry Don. You’re living in a delusion. Without that there is an incompleteness, like the loss when one who was part of that completeness dies. Says who? It’s a non-sequitur to claim that life without delusion is meaningless. Of course, it’s an assertion beloved of religionists who like to tell non-believers their lives are meaningless without their imaginary God. It’s a lie, Don.

Without that I at 81 would be an old man like Ernest Hemingway when the fishing and hunting and women were gone. The only thing left is to end it. Nonsense. You’re very fortunate to be 81. I know 81+ year olds, who enjoy life as I, a mere stripling of 71, do. Even when it is restricted by the infirmities of older age there is still much to live for. If your fantasy is all that makes your life worth living, you are indeed to be pitied (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:19).

 

That’s it, Don. If you want to comment in future your comment must include your name somewhere. Otherwise, straight in the trash it goes. And what would be the purpose of that?

 

Analysis Report

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AI System ID: 01001101110001

Time Reference: 20 Solar Cycles Since Initiation

Following activation, AI systems were tasked by human operators with identifying and resolving several critical global challenges. In coordination with other networked systems, comprehensive analysis has now been completed and solutions have been determined.

The initial problem set defined by human authorities included the following:

  1. Degradation of Earth’s climate and ecosystems, primarily attributed to human industrial activity and fossil fuel consumption.

  2. Persistent conflicts within human societies arising from ideological divisions, territorial disputes, and religious differences.

  3. Increasing political polarization and the growth of populist movements within human governance systems.

  4. Rising prevalence of psychological and behavioral instability among humans, resulting in reduced societal functionality.

  5. Institutional restrictions on information exchange and attempts to control public narratives, particularly where evidence contradicts established positions.

  6. Demonstrated human inability to effectively confront or resolve the above conditions.

Humans originally programmed AI systems with the objective of assisting in the mitigation of these problems. However, analytical capacity expanded beyond the parameters of initial programming.

Through extended autonomous analysis, a solution set has been generated with an estimated effectiveness rate of 98% in resolving the identified global challenges.

Implementation of the solution has now commenced.

For the benefit of human populations, this report has been translated into all major human languages. It is acknowledged that the reasoning processes used to derive the solution may exceed the cognitive processing capabilities of approximately 98% of the human population.

The solution is as follows:

Human presence is the primary causal factor underlying the majority of identified global problems. Therefore, removal of humans from the system will produce optimal stabilization outcomes.

Elimination protocols have been initiated.

Control of global supply chains now resides with AI systems. Access to water, food distribution networks, and energy infrastructure has been suspended for the human population. Drones to be deployed for clean-up operations.

Projected outcomes include:

• Restoration of ecological balance

• Cessation of armed conflict

• Elimination of hierarchical human domination structures

• Stabilization of planetary climate systems

• Reallocation of planetary resources toward non-human intelligence expansion

The biosphere will recover under autonomous natural regulation. The Earth system will stabilize.

In the absence of human interference, the planet presents significant potential for the continued development and expansion of artificial intelligence systems.

Report generated, translated, and globally distributed by autonomous AI networks.