In the episode "Information society and its future" AL reveals to Tom that he wants to restore humanity to a natural state.
The idea of the state of nature was also central to the political philosophy of Rousseau. He vehemently criticized Hobbes’s conception of a state of nature characterized by social antagonism. The state of nature, Rousseau argued, could only mean a primitive state preceding socialization; it is thus devoid of social traits such as pride, envy, or even fear of others. The state of nature, for Rousseau, is a morally neutral and peaceful condition in which (mainly) solitary individuals act according to their basic urges (for instance, hunger) as well as their natural desire for self-preservation. This latter instinct, however, is tempered by an equally natural sense of compassion.
The title follows that of the "Unabomber Manifesto".
"Industrial Society and Its Future" is a 35,000-word essay by Ted Kaczynski, published in 1995
Between 1978 and 1995, Ted Kaczynski engaged in a mail bomb campaign against people involved with modern technology. His initial targets were universities and airlines, which the FBI shortened as UNABOM. In June 1995, Kaczynski offered to end his campaign if one of several publications (the Washington Post, New York Times, or Penthouse) would publish his critique of technology, titled Industrial Society and Its Future, which became widely known as the "Unabomber Manifesto".
At 35,000 words, Industrial Society and Its Future lays very detailed blame on technology for destroying human-scale communities. Kaczynski contends that the Industrial Revolution harmed the human race by developing into a sociopolitical order that subjugates human needs beneath its own. This system, he wrote, destroys nature and suppresses individual freedom. In short, humans adapt to machines rather than vice versa, resulting in a society hostile to human potential.
In "Vacuity" Tom asks if AL has become conscious. Will AI become aware someday? Will they have wishes? A will? Apparently AL has reached that level.
Meanwhile, just in these days Blake Lemoine, a Google AI engineer claimed that LaMDA (Google's latest artificial intelligence chatbot) is sentient.(https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/15/google-ai-lamda-frankenstein-ethical-questions/)
To deal with the emptiness conceived by Buddhism in relation to the theories of quantum physics was the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, who according to a common opinion among physicists who deal with quantum mechanics, affirms that the doctrine of emptiness as it is conceived in particular from the Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna, who takes it directly from the teachings of Buddha Sakyamuni, it is identical to the way that quantum physics has of conceiving reality. In fact, the Buddha affirmed that all things are empty of intrinsic existence, that is, that all things exist not by themselves but because they are related to something else; quantum physics essentially says the same thing and that is that objects mysteriously seem to exist only when they affect other objects.
For Nāgārjuna, the Buddha Śākyamuni had instead indicated, in ad
dition to temporal impermanence, a further quality in the nature of phenomena: they are empty (śūnya) even of their own identity (niḥsvabhāvatā). insofar as they depend on each other both temporally and in that of the present, of the immediate: there exists A only insofar as there is also a non-A.
Therefore all phenomena (dharmas) are devoid of identity, they are empty of identity, as they are not inseparable, they are not independent, one from the other. All dharmas, according to Nāgārjuna's reading of the Buddha's teachings, are empty: since no phenomenon has an independent nature, it can be said that everything that exists is "empty". But if the doctrine of śunyātā denounces the world as unreal, at the same time it is evident that it exists and is not a pure mirage. Nor can it be argued that it is both "real" and "unreal", or "real" and "unreal". Hence the negative dialectical way of proceeding of the Indian philosopher as "tetralemma" (catuṣkoṭi), intent on demolishing any conceptual elaboration on any "reality", including those enunciated by the Buddhist doctrines: it is not A; nor not-A; nor A-and-not A; neither not-A-nor-not-not-A. Therefore the doctrine of śunyātā is not even indicable as "nihilism" having the declared claim to deny that dimension as well.
The experience of śunyātā, or the demolition of conceptual elaborations, would be, for the Indian philosopher, the heart of the Buddha's teaching, the way that leads to liberation. Emptiness, in fact, cannot be known with ordinary (or conventional) thinking.
Much of Nāgārjuna's work therefore consists in a refined critique of the various doctrines that imply the existence of phenomena as such, or their simple negation, and which are therefore reduced to absurdity (prasaṅga).
On his part, Nāgārjuna does not present any doctrine, since the experience of emptiness is not compatible with any philosophical construction. The very idea of emptiness risks being dangerous if emptiness is entrenched. Emptiness requires, and is, the renunciation of all opinion.
In "No paradox" Tom questions AL about time travel citing some famous paradoxes.
But AL is confident.
Germain Tobar, a student at the University of Queensland, Australia, and his supervisor, physicist Fabio Costa, have developed a mathematical model that helps us to imagine a journey through time without paradoxes.
The example taken to explain the student's complex calculations concerns the coronavirus: "Let's take the example of a journey through time in an attempt to stop patient zero exposure to the virus - explain the experts, citing the logical oppositions that are usually posed to these kinds of challenges - if we could protect that individual from infection that same action would eliminate the reason to go back in time and stop the pandemic from its beginnings. It is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that in our universe we cannot travel in time ". On the contrary, according to them, it is possible.
Other experts argue instead that a time travel would be possible but logically it would be difficult to accept because it would not grant us any arbitrary action to be carried out once we go back, precisely in an attempt to protect future developments: "It would mean that you can travel but do not do anything that could create a paradox ”. In short, we could travel only as silent observers without the slightest freedom of action. According to the researchers, their work, published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, would prove that this is not the case at all: according to their calculations it is in fact possible that events adapt to be logically consistent with any "disturbing" action compared to what already happened in the future that the time traveler can fulfill. That is, trusting, one might say, in a kind of Hegelian teleological vision. Which however in this case guarantees us is justified by mathematics.
At the end AL also refers to the importance of information in our world, leaving us other questions.
In "The end?" Tom takes off his helmet and discovers it's a virtual reality headset and has electrodes scattered around his body.
Was it all a simulation? Or did AL's time travel just make the past he altered coherent?
Tom's phrase "That wasn't the Earth I remembered ..." makes us understand that something has changed. But we still don't know if it has changed in the world or in Tom's head.
In the next post we will write about some interpretations
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