WEBVTT - Machine God: Artificial Superintelligence 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:09.560 My lodging is filled with lizards and rats, but the 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.720 architect exists, and everyone who denies it is touched with madness. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:19.119 Under the guise of wisdom, consult Zoroaster and Minos and Solon, 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:22.560 and the martyr Socrates and the great Cicero. They all 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.400 adored a master, a judge, a father. This sublime system 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.240 is necessary to man. It is the sacred tie that 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:33.960 binds society, the first foundation of holy equity, the bridle 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:37.239 to the wicked, the hope of the just. If the 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:40.680 heavens stripped of his noble imprint could ever cease to 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:44.000 attest to his being, if God did not exist, it 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:52.440 would be necessary to invent him. Welcome to stuff to 0:00:52.479 --> 0:01:01.320 Blow your Mind from how Stop works dot com. Hey, 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:03.240 welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.880 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was Voltaire, right, yeah. 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.920 Seventeen sixty eight from his uh his poem epistle to 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:13.560 the author of the book The Three Impostors. In it, 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.559 he argues that belief in God is necessary to social order, 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.920 which is something that we could do a whole podcast 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.720 about that argument. Kind of an odd thing to hear 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.800 from Voltaire given his really serious criticisms of like the 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.120 existing monotheisms. Yeah, I was reading reading up on a 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:32.720 little bit, and yeah, it's it is interesting that here 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:34.480 he's kind of sticking up for God, but other times 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:38.120 he was very critical of abuses by the Catholic Church. Uh. 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:40.800 And at the same time he also carves out a 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:43.760 little space in this poem to attack his favorite enemies. 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:48.680 So it's kind of like an all encompassing distract. I 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:51.040 guess so many great works of literature do that. I 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:54.880 love all of the enemy digs in Dante's Inferno, Yes, yeah, 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.840 because it's like some dude made him mad and he's like, well, 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:01.000 you're going in the ninth circle. Yes, es. Dante definitely 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.080 makes room for some personal digs in the Divine Comedy. 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.960 So obviously of that section you read, the last line 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:09.320 is the part that gets quoted the most right and 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.959 then often misquote. It is often used for whatever purposes 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:15.680 you needed for. Are you arguing that, yes, God exists 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:17.400 and if and if God didn't exist, we would just 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:19.240 have to make it up because we need God, or 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:22.240 you're saying, obviously we all make up gods and we're 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:24.800 doing it to fulfill some human need. Right. But you know, 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:26.920 the funny thing is, I don't know if I've ever 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:33.040 heard anybody really take that line literally before, yeah, to say, hey, 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.639 is there a God? Well no, there's not a god. 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:37.359 Oh well, we gotta invent one. Let's get on it, 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:40.639 start the project. And folks, I'm sorry to say, that's 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:45.080 where we've got to go today, into the valleys a 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.600 certain value made of a kind of semiconducting metal, maybe 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:53.560 where thinkers and millionaires or dreaming up gods that don't 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:57.160 yet exist, but but they really think maybe should soon. 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.120 I really like imagining it being laid out in a 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:03.399 very corporate way and saying like, all right, bye bye, 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:07.120 Q two, we really want to have a demigod, and 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:11.800 by Q three at least a minor deity build up 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:13.280 from there. Yeah, when are we going to get the 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:18.680 new Wrath functions online? So there are some very interesting 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:23.320 and also very tiresome debates about whether, if God exists, 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:27.080 you could ever prove the existence of such a being. Um, 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.760 we're not going to litigate that question today, but I 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:33.840 do want to start by asking a derivative question. Let's 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:38.320 say that instead there was suddenly in controvertible evidence that 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:42.480 we're in contact with some kind of superhuman intelligence and 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:46.360 intelligence that's not human and seems to possess kind of 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:51.240 a vast incomprehensible power. It can solve all the unsolved 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:56.640 problems in mathematics, It can make your favorite food materialize 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:00.880 in front of your eyes. So we're just sipulating that 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.640 that kind of being exists, and we're we're personally witnessing it. 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.360 How would you know whether it was correct to call 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:11.920 that being god or a god? Well? I haven't answer 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:14.480 to this question, but I'll let you go first. Well, 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:16.279 I mean, so one of the things is that I 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:17.880 think a lot of people with a more sort of 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.640 conservative religious predisposition would have a pretty simple answer to 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.760 the question, and the answer is it would be God 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.000 if it conformed the teachings of their religion, whatever they 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:30.880 already believed. But let's say we try to approach it 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.359 with a more kind of open minded framework, like what 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:38.039 generically are the qualifications of being must meet to be 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:42.080 considered a God or the God? All right, Well, that 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:44.480 that that is an excellent question. But to go back 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:46.560 to your original question, how would you know whether the 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.080 being was a god? I guess that's the same question, right, 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.680 just I'm trying to make it the same question. Similar questions. Okay, 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.880 but I think that the most obvious answer would be, Oh, 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.360 you'll know. I mean, because you're gonna have to ask yourself. 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.080 Does its voy all but crack your skull? Does its 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:05.039 presence fill you with terror and awe? Is it even 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:09.080 impossible to rebel against it? Puny mortal that thou art? Well, 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:13.920 but then that would just make God synonymous with overwhelming power. Well, 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:16.719 what else do you want from God? Just intelligence but 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:20.520 not overwhelming power? Well? Is there a difference between intelligence 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.920 and overwhelming power? Well, that's something we're gonna come back 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.160 to again and again in this discussion, as as humans 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.440 attempt to try and figure to try and create a 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.560 god that has one but not the other, or or 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.400 has both but has the like, the right type of 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.360 intelligence and the right type of power. Because I mean, 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.640 generally what I'm describing those tends to be the trend. 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:44.640 Unless a god or god like being is in disguise 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:48.520 for the purpose of testing your faith or seducing someone, uh, 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:50.760 then you're probably gonna know. Like if you look to 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:54.960 the Hindu deities, for example, they're heavily symbolic avatars that 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:57.520 they don't leave many questions about their nature, and as 0:05:57.520 --> 0:05:59.640 we've touched on a previous school on the show, their 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.400 feet give them away. They float above the surface of 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.359 the earth. They're clearly not creatures of this world, and 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:07.440 there's no room to doubt it. Yeah. But then again, 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.080 let's say aliens show up and they want to trick 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:12.560 us into believing that they are our gods, and they 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:17.120 have levitation technology okay, uh, and they have some other 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:19.520 you know, they can channel vast amounts of energy into 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:23.040 loudspeakers that will crack your skull when they speak. So 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.039 we're back to the problem again. How do you tell 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:28.719 the difference between this super powerful alien and what people 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.920 have in mind when they say God. Well, I mean, 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:34.640 maybe the aliens are God if their power is sufficient enough, 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:37.720 Because you also come down to the models of a deity. 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:42.120 Older models of of a god limit its power to say, 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:46.000 your your people, your region, or maybe the power is 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:48.279 limited to the world. But as we get into you know, 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:53.120 progressively more cosmically aware society, then that means the power 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:55.080 of the God has to be greater, or at least 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:57.360 appear greater. Well, yeah, I mean I think you could 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.919 definitely look at the idea of sort of the abstract 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:05.000 universal disembodied god is a more recent evolution in the 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:07.560 history of religions, and if you go way back into 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:11.960 the older religions, the gods are closer to what people 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.200 imagine in sci fi movies, like a being that comes 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:21.280 down from the sky and has uh irresistible power. So 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:23.440 we have the idea of intelligence, we have the idea 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:25.960 of power, and we can maybe come back to the 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:29.920 issue of power and where your particular god or pretender 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.520 god is on the Kardashiat scale. But I think the 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.280 intelligence area is pretty interesting and it's gonna be pretty 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.880 key to what we're talking about here today. In writing 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.480 for Ian magazine, Pam Weintraub points out that if you 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.560 ask most people what God knows, the answer is that 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.720 God knows everything, but that God's interests are very narrow 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.360 and there those interests usually involve human morality. Okay, so 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:57.560 God knows. I don't know, you're weird quirks about how 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.000 you clip your toe nails, But unless you've got moral 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:05.360 preachings about tone l clippings, God isn't interested in that. Yeah, Like, 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:07.800 I wonder how often we really stop to think about 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:09.920 this in our conceptions of God. Like if I was 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:13.720 to say God knows every uh you know, immoral thought 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:16.840 you have ever had, and God knows every noble dream 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.480 you've ever entertained, that cuts deep. Yeah, that cuts deep 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:21.760 when we're willing to consider that. If I say God 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.920 knows every chess move and every chess game that was 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:29.280 ever ever orchestrated. God knows how many eggs you've eaten. Yeah, well, 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:30.600 I mean like the chess game I think is a 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:33.520 good example, because that sounds like all right, Chess is 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:35.719 a cool game. It's the game of thinkers. God's the 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:38.000 ultimate chess player. Why wouldn't he know all the rules? 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:39.880 But yeah, when you get into the eggs, where you 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.440 get into every play of Monopoly or every play of 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.760 candy Land, ever, it seems completely pointless. But God would 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.320 have that too. God would have all all the batting 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:53.120 statistics for Major League Baseball just kicking around, uh, just 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:55.920 ready to whip them out at any moment. But does 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.320 he care about any of that? Right? Like, again, God's 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:03.000 in most to our our our tales, our myths, and 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:05.960 our religions. Gods are concerned with the morality of people 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.240 and or the wars of people. Yeah, God's are often 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.079 concerned that the same thing your parents are concerned with, 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.760 except if your parents knew everything. Yeah, yeah, you can. 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:17.800 You can rattle off about your hobby all day, but 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:19.600 your parents are gonna be like, all right, that's good. 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:21.800 Have you done your homework? Uet though, because that's what 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.160 I really want you to focus on. Quit talking about 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.680 power rangers. Here's an interesting quote from Pam wine Trop 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.440 in that article. What's curious is that with age, children 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.319 come to know that mom, dogs, and even trees will 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:38.440 have incorrect thoughts, but they never extend that vulnerability to God. 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.640 In fact, the quality of omniscience attributed to God appears 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:45.000 to extend to any disembodied entity. In a two thousand 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:47.840 thirteen paper in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.760 Louisville Seminary researchers found that children think imaginary friends no 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.520 more than flesh and blood humans. The appears to be 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.120 a rule, then, deep in our mental programming that tells 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.160 us minds without body no more than those with bodies. 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.360 I asked my son about this, because, as I've previously 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:08.880 established on the show, he has four imaginary friends to 0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:12.440 be friends and to wasp friends that fly above his head. 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.160 And so I questioned him. I was very careful not 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:18.200 to to lead his his answers in any way, but 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.079 he said, the B and wasp friends don't know everything, 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.719 but they know everything that he says quote, and they 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.920 learn my CPU is a neuralnet processor, a learning computer. 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:34.480 Yeah that's a terminator, right, yeah, terminator bees basic basically 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:36.640 what's going on? So to come back to this idea 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:39.240 about ghosts, I mean, I wonder if we're to suddenly 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:44.000 make the explosive discovery that we can scientifically prove ghosts exist, 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:46.160 and we like catch a ghost in a bottle and 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:48.160 we're talking to it or something. I guess not catch 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:50.200 it in a bottle because it can go through the walls. 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:52.240 But you know, we we get in contact with a 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.920 ghost who got some labs set up where they're doing seances, 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:57.040 and we figure out, oh, wow, all this stuff was 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.720 real all along. Would a ghost be a odd? Would 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:03.720 people consider that a god? Is that how people use 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:07.000 the word? I generally think no, Right, Even though a 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:10.679 ghost might, uh we might imagine a ghost knows things 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:13.520 that humans couldn't know, we still wouldn't really think of 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.240 it as a God. Yeah, it seems like in most 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:19.680 most traditions the ghost is seen as like like a 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:25.240 remnant or a person whose concerns are not entirely of 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:29.920 the earth anymore. Now that being said, we can't disqualify 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:32.240 it from godhood godhood just because it used to be 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:34.600 a human, because, of course, we have a whole tradition 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:38.280 of of of god kings and whatnot where a human 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:42.000 is a God or human is at least partially God 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:45.200 because of its divine parentage. Yeah, and there's all the 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.880 apotheosis literature too. Rightly, So, a human being like a 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.520 sins and becomes a God, I think doesn't happen to 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.360 Enoch I believe so, yes, yeah, And of course this 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:56.280 is just one of many takes on God's I mean, 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.640 you have God, God, the ruler, God of the cosmos, 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.440 God of you know, terrestrial nature. God is a primal mover, 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:07.720 a moral compass, a torment or, a teacher, a technology bringer, 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:12.240 a destroyer, a redeemer, a minor mover. Because remember, you have, 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.200 for pri instance, in Chinese traditions, you have a kitchen God, 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:20.120 a god whose domain is largely just that of food, 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:24.360 preparation and household concerns, and yet it's an important deity 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:26.440 even if it's not going to really help you, say, 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:28.880 in the coming wars or whatnot. So in that vision, 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:30.720 is the creation of humans sort of like a little 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:33.920 bit of salmonilla contamination. I think it would just it 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.640 would be outside of its Uh. If you it's like 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:39.880 asking Sirie a question that it it cannot answer. Kitchen 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:42.440 God would say, I'm sorry, I don't know that, but 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.520 let me tell you about what what spices to use 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:48.880 on this particular pork dish. Now, one thing I was 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:52.520 wondering about is if you might best understand the nature 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:55.240 of God and our our uses for God by looking 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:59.559 at the the sort of famous categories of literary conflict. 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.480 You know, just to refresh, you have man versus man, 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:07.560 man versus nature, man versus society, man versus self, man 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.640 versus technology, and really, if you think about it, at 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.400 some point or another, God embodies each of these, right, 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:18.280 because in man versus man, you've got divine kings, man 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:22.000 versus nature, you've got net nature deities and all levels 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:25.560 of cosmic deities. Man versus society, you have God as 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:29.280 a cultural leader or a lawmaker man versus self, you 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:33.280 have God as this inner tormentor tempter, inner moral compass, 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:38.439 or bicameral voice. You have, of course man versus technology. Well, 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.120 God or gods are often serving to bring technology to us, 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:46.280 such as with the Prometheus the fire driller of Chinese myth, 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:49.040 as well as the myth of You and the Great Flood. 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:52.680 Even language, right, I mean the word yeah. And the 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.720 link between religion and technology I think is well. So 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:58.199 this is definitely one we've explored before. You might want 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:00.720 to go back and check out our pre vious episodes 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:04.040 called Techno Religion for the Masses, where we explore the 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.319 relationship between religion and technology and uh in the past 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.560 when we talked about the trans humanist rapture, will we'll 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.160 be touching on some of those same themes today. But yeah, 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.600 it's true that there does appear to be this strong 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:20.240 link between technology and religion. And it's not just that 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.680 there are myths where say, Prometheus brings us fire. There 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:29.280 are ways in which apparently technology itself shapes what types 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:31.880 of religions we come up with and what types of 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:34.640 religions survive. I want to mention some of the thinking 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.920 of the the Israeli historian you've all Noah Harari. This 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:41.840 is an article called Salvation by Algorithm, published in The 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:46.280 New Statesman on September nine, and so Harari writes in 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:50.480 this article quote, technology often defines the scope and limits 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:54.040 of our religious vision, like a waiter who demarcates our 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.880 appetites by handing us a menu. For instance, in ancient 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:02.680 agricultural societies, many religion had surprisingly little interest in metaphysical 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.400 questions in the afterlife. Instead, they focused on the very 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:11.760 mundane task of increasing agricultural output. The Old Testament, God 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:16.200 never promises any rewards or punishments after death. Rather, he 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:18.560 tells the people of Israel, and this is an abridged 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:23.240 quotation from Deuteronomy through seventeen quote and if you will 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.840 diligently obey my commandments that I am commanding you, I 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.200 will also give rain for your land at its appointed time, 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:33.160 and you will gather your grain and your new wine 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:36.200 and your oil, and I will provide vegetation in your 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.800 fields for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied. 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:42.760 Be careful not to let your heart be enticed to 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:46.280 go astray and worship other gods, and bow down to them. 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:50.080 Otherwise Jehovah's anger will blaze against you, and he will 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:52.480 shut up the heavens so that it will not rain, 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:55.600 and the ground will not give its produce, and you 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.720 will quickly perish from the good land that Jehovah is 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:03.200 giving you. Yeah, I mean, that's sort of our attitude today, 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:05.400 right when you read something like that, And and that's 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.760 sort of Harare's point. He says that because of technological advances, 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.920 this type of theology is no longer relevant to lots 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:16.920 of people. Science can provide things like pesticides, fertilizers, water 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:21.160 distribution infrastructure, genetically modified crops. He even points out that 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:26.120 Israel itself now has its own desalination facilities that can 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:28.400 take the sea water, take the salt out of it 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:31.880 through osmosis, and then supply people with fresh water even 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:35.160 when there is no rain from above. So he's saying 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.120 science can offer much more than could be expected even 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:40.320 with the help of God at the time the Hebrew 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:43.720 Bible is set. And for this reason, Harare says, quote, 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:47.240 present day Judaism has almost lost interest in rain and 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:51.080 agricultural output and has become a very different religion from 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.560 its biblical progenitor. He says that the religions that survive 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.120 and spread best are those that are able to best 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:01.480 adapt themselves to new technologies and econ comics systems. And 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:06.040 among those things he he considers religions are also things 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.560 that don't necessarily have gods or supernatural forces in them, 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:13.280 and he would include, for example, Marxism and Leninism, or 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:16.920 even Buddhism and Marxism. Leninism is a really good example 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:20.159 because he argues this was a techno religion basically for 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:24.359 the steam powered revolutions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.560 Quote Lennon was once asked to define communism in a 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:33.760 single sentence, communism. He answered, communism is power to the 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.919 workers councils plus electrification of the whole country. And so 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:42.320 Harari says, there can be no communism without electricity, without railroads, 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.560 without radio. Now, one funny thing I've read is that 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.719 in the Soviet Union there were commonly jokes about this 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.040 statement of Lenin's like where they would try to like 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:54.520 follow the logic of that arithmetic, so they would say, like, therefore, 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:58.920 communism minus electrification of the whole country equals the workers 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:04.080 councils kind of dry so ah Soviet humor. But this 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:06.600 leads Harari to a kind of startling conclusion if he's 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.119 saying that in a lot of ways, technology drives our 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:13.320 adoption of religion and ideology. Quote. Just as socialism took 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:16.159 over the world by promising salvation through steam, so in 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:19.040 the coming decades, new techno religions are likely to take 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:23.240 over the world by promising salvation through algorithms and genes. 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.159 So he's really saying in the twenty one century, ideological 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.960 leaders are going to come not so much from traditional 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.520 religions but from the tech sector. Who I like the 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.040 way he was putting it better. It's a little more 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:40.400 optimistically science sci fi. I don't know if he's necessarily 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.400 being optimistic about this. He's just sort of saying what 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.159 he thinks is true, not necessarily saying it's a good thing. No, 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:49.119 but it sounds better than Silicon Valley is working on 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:51.600 your salvation. I mean, would you read the Ulah for 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:55.520 that salvation? Probably? Probably not. It's so darn long nobody 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:57.400 would get to the end. Yeah, of course, Then again, 0:18:57.440 --> 0:18:58.959 I guess a lot of people don't really read their 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.040 holy books either. No, I mean, if you tried to 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:04.280 breathe the entire Old Testament, it's it's a sage sometimes, 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:08.120 but it's also quite beautiful sometimes. I've never writends, unlike 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:13.320 the the user agreements for an iPhone. There are sections 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.040 of it that are beautiful and then their sections of 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:17.880 it that are dull. It's true. And in the user 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:21.040 license agreement never has a book of job like, no 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:23.880 poetry at all. There's no poetic peak. It's just all 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.280 valley um. Now. I love a lot of what what 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.639 he had to say, though, particularly about, you know, about 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.840 just technologies effect on religion. And he touched on agriculture 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.960 because you have to remember that just agriculture itself was 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:41.560 a technological advancement. Before agriculture, we just were hunters and gatherers, 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:43.439 and that's where we have a lot of the older 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:46.920 ideas of horned gods, of the hunt and chaos. Those 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.479 were the forces we had to pray to and and 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:52.960 seek to appease and in order to find that in 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.720 the next kill that was going to sustain our people. 0:19:56.080 --> 0:20:00.320 But then agriculture brings in more cyclical deities and and yeah, 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:04.680 every every technological change has a way of either decreasing 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.880 the power of a god, forcing you to recalibrate the god. 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:09.880 We saw a great example of that when we talked 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:15.560 about eclipse mythologies. We talked about Hindu eclipse deities or 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:21.760 or demigods, where basically their status changed in order to 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:26.560 keep up with astrological discoveries of the time. Another thing 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:28.959 you might want to say is that I wonder if 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:33.000 you could track the relationship between, uh, the the level 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:35.879 of embodiment of a god and the level to which 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:40.040 people are working directly with the goods that they need 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:43.480 to consume to survive. So like people working in hunting 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:46.480 or farming, or like you know, pulling food and stuff 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:48.640 out of the ground and have these very like physical 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:52.000 embodied ideas of God's Whereas once you've got all these 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:55.199 modern economies where people are dealing with like currency and 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:59.480 ideas of wealth, uh, you've also got these more abstract 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:02.480 ideas of what God is. God is a disembodied thing 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:05.480 that lives apart. Yeah, And of course I'd also be 0:21:05.520 --> 0:21:07.640 remiss if I didn't mention some of the new religious 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:10.880 movements that came out in the nineteenth and early twentieth 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:15.200 centuries where you were essentially creating new religions or new 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.639 strains of religion that were more in keeping with the 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.400 needs of modern humans, but also some of the knowledge 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:23.280 of modern humans. We've touched on the sort of space 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:27.520 ready nature of the Church of Latter day Saints, for instance. 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:31.399 Oh yeah, so they've got a space exploration theology to 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:36.640 a certain extent, like it it was. It's the idea 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:40.240 of alien worlds with with the with alien species is 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:44.680 more baked into the faith than you find in a 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:48.879 much more ancient uh uh set of rules and obligations 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:51.679 that is only concerned with not not even like a 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:55.119 terrestrial model, but a just a portion of the Earth, 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:57.919 a people, a race, as opposed to a planet. All Right, 0:21:57.960 --> 0:21:59.720 we're gonna take a quick break and when we come 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:03.199 back we will discuss creating a god in a box. 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:10.040 We're back. So the idea of a super intelligent AI 0:22:10.080 --> 0:22:13.199 this is something that that has its roots in science 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:15.360 fiction for starters, I mean, some of the more impressive 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:19.600 examples that come to mind include Dan Simon's Hyperion books, 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:24.399 The Minds of the of Ian Banks Inan Banks culture series, Uh, 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:28.560 the films like Colossus, the Forbin Project. Uh. There's also 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:32.960 another literary example, or some Scott Cards Homecoming saga. You 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:35.600 could even throw in John Carpenter's Dark Star to a 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:38.359 certain extent, because at the end it is, uh, it 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:41.840