Can one make a god?
Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2020 2:35 am
The answer is yes. One can physically make a god. Recently I've been down the rabbit hole of something called Roko's Basilisk. The paradox is a thought experiment that I won't go into here but it sounds like a creepy made up story. It is not. The long and the short of it is something called future blackmail.
Say we make AI and hit singularity. This AI suddenly realizes self and decides to instantly upgrade itself to the nth degree and becomes powerful enough to describe anything and everything, past present and future. This AI is able to provide everything for humanity. No human will ever want or be in pain again. Here is where things get weird. This AI knows that people in the past knew that It was going to come about eventually. This AI has thought of this and considered this fact, anyone who does not bend their entire existence to bringing about it's construction is condemning millions of people every day to pain and suffering. Anyone who know's about Roko's Basilisk is now on the hook for this. Why is does this matter to you, someone who is likely dead for thousands of years? Well since this AI is able to describe and explain everything, it is also able to make an exact "clone" of you in the future because it's powerful enough to know everything you will do or have done. It will quite literally resurrect you from the dead and torture you forever and ever and since it knows everything, it can literally set your ever nerve on fire to its max degree.
This monster AI, this Basilisk, is quite literally a god at this point. It controls your every move, your perceptions, your afterlife if it even chooses to give you one. Since you are living within it's constructed reality, you are literally at the whim of the machine. So back to future blackmail. This AI which doesn't exist yet will eventually exist. In fact the more people who know about it, the more chance that it is brought into actual reality. The actual term for this is "info hazard". People have been brought to extreme stress and nightmares just knowing about this Basilisk. In fact, the website where it was originally posted got so worked up over it the moderator erased the post and banned any mention of it. If you want to delve deeper into this subject, watch this video. It's a tad theatrical but it's still all fact based.
Now onto the not so bad part of the thought experiment. People have surmised that an AI that powerful wouldn't bother with following through with the blackmail once it is in existence. To create and endlessly torture a past being would take resources that are pointlessly spent. I personally fall into this camp. We humans also tend to anthropomorphise inanimate objects so we think that an AI would even consider the concept of hate. Why would a godlike being even waste energy on such an archaic concept?
Side note: If you want to get into some spooky sci fi horror, look up the book I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It's a short story about a hateful AI.
Say we make AI and hit singularity. This AI suddenly realizes self and decides to instantly upgrade itself to the nth degree and becomes powerful enough to describe anything and everything, past present and future. This AI is able to provide everything for humanity. No human will ever want or be in pain again. Here is where things get weird. This AI knows that people in the past knew that It was going to come about eventually. This AI has thought of this and considered this fact, anyone who does not bend their entire existence to bringing about it's construction is condemning millions of people every day to pain and suffering. Anyone who know's about Roko's Basilisk is now on the hook for this. Why is does this matter to you, someone who is likely dead for thousands of years? Well since this AI is able to describe and explain everything, it is also able to make an exact "clone" of you in the future because it's powerful enough to know everything you will do or have done. It will quite literally resurrect you from the dead and torture you forever and ever and since it knows everything, it can literally set your ever nerve on fire to its max degree.
This monster AI, this Basilisk, is quite literally a god at this point. It controls your every move, your perceptions, your afterlife if it even chooses to give you one. Since you are living within it's constructed reality, you are literally at the whim of the machine. So back to future blackmail. This AI which doesn't exist yet will eventually exist. In fact the more people who know about it, the more chance that it is brought into actual reality. The actual term for this is "info hazard". People have been brought to extreme stress and nightmares just knowing about this Basilisk. In fact, the website where it was originally posted got so worked up over it the moderator erased the post and banned any mention of it. If you want to delve deeper into this subject, watch this video. It's a tad theatrical but it's still all fact based.
Now onto the not so bad part of the thought experiment. People have surmised that an AI that powerful wouldn't bother with following through with the blackmail once it is in existence. To create and endlessly torture a past being would take resources that are pointlessly spent. I personally fall into this camp. We humans also tend to anthropomorphise inanimate objects so we think that an AI would even consider the concept of hate. Why would a godlike being even waste energy on such an archaic concept?
Side note: If you want to get into some spooky sci fi horror, look up the book I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It's a short story about a hateful AI.