Orcs

Now—before you put this away, either “hurr hurr”ing like an asshole, or feeling vaguely disturbed, I want to ask you a question. That orc—you know, the orc in that room in the dungeon, you open the door, there’s an orc there. He looks up, a bunch of heavily armed human motherfuckers are charging into the room waving weapons.

What’s he supposed to do? Smile broadly and say “Hey, mi casa es su casa, amigos!”? No, he whimpers with fear, pulls out his pigsticker, and prepares to meet his doom. I wanna know about his childhood. Are you telling me he doesn’t have friends who are going to miss him? That he didn’t have hopes and fears and aspirations of his own? That you aren’t a bunch of fucking degraded monsters for wasting him without a second thought? You’re playing a fucking role, okay, you’re supposed to act like a real character in this world. And yet you saunter around, killing intelligent creatures like they’re just another widget, a bunch of pixels to blow away, a mechanism for obtaining experience points and treasure. That isn’t roleplaying. Not as I understand it.

Here’s what I want to do. I want to go into a Quake® deathmatch. And I want to strip down to a loincloth, sit down on the floor with a begging bowl, and call after the lunatics with the plasma guns as they flee past me, saying, “It is all samsara, it is all illusion, my friend”—for truly it is, pixels on a screen.  ”Reject the fleeting temptations here, what profiteth you another kill? There is another path.” And I want him to turn, think twice—and then I will smile benevolently as he tosses a rocket my way, blows me to my reincarnation as my peaceful self—and he runs on, and kills and kills again, quad damage, armor, another clip, heal and heal and blammo to the floor—until finally he turns, lays down his gun, and sits by me, asking me to teach. And then one by one, the players shall gather by me, sitting, assuming the lotus position, touching the ground in the earth-witness gesture, letting their thoughts still, contemplating that strange Quake sky as it streams overhead, peaceful, in unity, transforming this one, small, cyberrealm of unending war and mayhem into harmony.

Sigh.

Right.

I wanna be a shooter bhoddisatva, baby.

Man, I am so full of shit.

And then there’s this, from Over the Edge (2nd Edition), by Jonathan Tweet with Robin D. Laws; page 167, under Alternative Hypothesis:

…Perhaps exposure to tulpas, especially psychic contact, would give a person a brief glimpse of the universe as it really is: an infinite number of immortal spirits donning temporary identities in various “worlds” as they play out their intricate, never-ending games with no true concern other than shared amusement. What would one do with this knowledge?

I’ve been thinking about these quotes for a long time. It started when I had a conversation with a good friend of mine almost three years ago. We spoke about the near-death experience she had on an operating table, after being hit by a truck.

I wrote this in my journal, in February of 2009, a couple of days after the meeting:

…and [she] told me something that I guess she told me before but I didn’t properly understand. She said that death is like taking the blinders off—that when we’re not here, living our limited and individual lives, we are infinite beings, capable of infinite understanding. Of course, in a universe where everybody knows everything, beings get bored, so they invented this amusement park / school called life, where we can limit ourselves and experience everything like it’s new again.

Which ultimately means that nothing can truly hurt you. Nothing is permanent—not even death. The only heavens or hells we need to worry about in life are those of our own making. There’s no such thing as eternal punishment or damnation and ultimately there is nothing to fear, or hate, either in life or in death.

This is a very comforting thought—a great sense of peace comes with it. Life is what you make it, and there’s no need to worry. Everything will be okay.  That’s not to say that bad things don’t happen to good people, for reasons beyond their control. Of course they do. Tragedy happens. Evil happens too. But when these things occur, we have a choice in how we receive them. With a little perspective, it’s easier to not take them quite so personally, and thus deal with them more effectively.

Then, in the fall of 2010, I saw the first episode (“Is There a Creator?”) of Through The Wormhole, with Morgan Freeman. That’s where I first learned that the Simulation Argument is a somewhat respectable thought experiment in modern philosophy, and not “merely” an ancient philosophical idea (not to mention a seed for interesting fiction, like The Matrix, or Dark City).

If you’re not familiar, the Simulation Argument goes something like this: if it’s physically possible to make a near-perfect virtual reality, then chances are (given the age and size of the universe) that some technologically advanced alien culture has already done it. And if that’s the case, then they’re probably running multiple simulations—a multitude, even—including what might be called “ancestor simulations,” to study biological and social evolution, among other things. And if there is a multitude of simulations of the universe running, each of them filled with self-aware virtual beings; then statistically speaking, you and I and everybody we know are probably simulated people living in an artificial reality.

Now, it’s not like these ideas are revolutionary. Pretty much everybody at some point in their lives has heard or thought of the possibility that reality as we know it is an illusion of some kind, or that there might be some greater reality encompassing this one. It’s an ancient idea for a reason. But it really got me thinking.

The simulation argument suggests we may be living in a simulation. And given the state of present-day video games, it’s certainly easy enough to imagine a post-human society with super-advanced video games populated both by living players and simulated intelligences. It’s funny, really, because a lot of people of the transhumanist / singulatarian persuasion wouldn’t bat an eye at such a possibility; and yet will quickly balk at religious notions of a life beyond the one we commonly experience—whether those ideas are coming from a traditional or more New Agey source.

Maybe the Simulation Argument, and religious metaphysics, are just different ways of expressing the same idea—that ultimately, we’re really far more than we believe we are. Maybe in actuality, we’re all part of some vast collective intelligence—whether that’s an omniscient post-singularity hive-mind, or God itself—and maybe the difference doesn’t matter. And maybe, we just individuate ourselves from that totality of being to take on temporary, limited forms in simulated worlds, playing out parts for the education and amusement of ourselves and others.

Jordan Peterson also talks about this in his talk on Virtue as a Necessity. He begins by noting (at 3:47) that Life is Suffering. Life is Suffering because throughout our lives, our goals are thwarted by the arbitrary limitations placed upon us by nature and time. These are limitations like whether or not we’re smart, or good looking, or pre-disposed to certain diseases, and like the fact that one day we’ll die. All of these things are (Transhumanist optimism notwithstanding) beyond our control, and so they limit us. He says (around 6:20) that they are:

“…conditions of existence. Human being is predicated on a kind of fundamental limitation, in that we are what we are, and we’re not other things. And so that means, inevitably, that the awareness of human being comes along with suffering. Life poses the question: How to conduct yourself in the face of suffering. Not only yours, but everyone else’s. And it’s an inescapable question, except that maybe you’re fortunate, and you’ll have periods of time where something absolutely horrible isn’t happening to you…

…And to know this frees you from the false illusion that life can be conducted without suffering. Suffering is an integral part of being. Now, why is that? Well, who knows? It’s a metaphysical question. But I have some ideas about that that have helped me, and they’re things that I’ve read.

I read, for example, an old Jewish commentary about the reason for creation. It’s like a Zen Koan this idea. You take a being with the classical attributes of God: omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience; a totality. And the question is, what does a being with those attributes lack? And the answer is “limitation.” And then you think, well, what’s so important about limitation? Well, if you can be anything, or do anything, at any time whatsoever; there’s no being, because everything is one thing. There’s no differentiation between things. So something that’s absolute and total has no being—it has to be parcelled out into limited being.

And you know this because you all play games. You play video games, you play games with other people. You may play games you don’t even know you’re playing. And when you play those games you put limits on yourself. You play by a set of rules. And the reason you do that is when you limit yourself—arbitrarily, in some ways—whole new worlds of possibility emerge. And so there’s a powerful metaphysical idea that being is not possible without limitation…”

Maybe we’re all role-players, at heart.

Peterson concludes this part of his talk by noting: “So you say, what’s the price you pay for being? The price you pay for being is limitation. And the price you pay for limitation is suffering. So the price you pay for being is suffering.”

Why do we let ourselves suffer if we’re just playing an elaborate game?  Why would any all-knowing entity voluntarily experience pain and loss and uncertainty?  Maybe just so that we take the simulation seriously.

Maybe we’re all role-players, suffering for our art. Maybe we’re just playing characters driven by our passions—suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to educate ourselves, or the universe itself, in all the wonders of a life well worn. Just so we can feel, and be moved.

Maybe Shakespeare was right: The Play’s The Thing.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

—As You Like It, by William Shakespeare; Act 2, scene 7, 139–143

Recently, an atheist friend inquired as to my religious beliefs.  Because I was tired, and because I didn’t want to bore him with all the complicated details of my spirituality, I said I was agnostic.   I regretted it as soon as I said it, because his response was very predictable.

“Oh, I get that,” he said.  “As Richard Dawkins says, you’re just an atheist who hasn’t made up his mind yet.”

I’ve tried not to be annoyed by this because he’s not agnostic, and therefore he doesn’t realize how profoundly ignorant that statement is.  But at the same time: he doesn’t realize how profoundly ignorant that statement is. Like any of Dawkins’ fans, and Dawkins himself, he’s an intelligent guy who has utterly failed to apply his intelligence to the subject at hand.

Agnosticism does not mean sitting on the fence between strong positions of theism and atheism.  It’s not some kind of half-assed, waffling maybe.  It’s a strong position that the entire question of theism versus atheism is a stupid one—that the fence between these poles ought to be torn down (because, despite fears to the contrary, tearing down that fence won’t make those poles identical).  It is the firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs (or non-beliefs, as the case may be).  It is the understanding that the reality of these ideologies, and of the universe, is far more complex and nuanced than this simplistic, either/or debate will allow for.

Many atheists will argue that scientific understanding is impossible unless there’s a clear line separating the world of faith from the world of physical evidence.  But if you follow the evidence, particularly in psychology, it’s clear that:

1. Human rationality is deeply bounded by intractable and inherent limitations in perspective and processing power;
2. Assuming those limitations don’t exist is foolhardy;
3. Spiritual traditions are ultimately just frameworks for dealing with those limitations.

And maybe 4:  Scientific materialism, by itself, is not a viable substitute for such a framework.

Does that mean religions should be followed blindly, or that atheism is an invalid position?  Of course not.  But it does mean that religious traditions have insights to offer if you know where to look, and that a smart person won’t discount religious stories and practices out of hand, simply because he finds them distasteful, or primitive.

So, on the contrary: Agnostics aren’t just atheists who haven’t made up their minds.  They are people who refuse to be limited to a single set of possibilities, or to be told which ideas they can and cannot explore.

I look at people with fixed concepts of God or the lack thereof, and to me they are like people standing in cages arrayed around an open field.  I can move freely around the field and still find my way back home, while they are locked inside prisons of their own making.  They could walk out any time, but they don’t.

So, no thanks.  My intellectual freedom / sovereignty is non-negotiable, and this business of sorting each other into ideological camps and then making war on each other is not for me.

I just learned about Twendr (yes, I’m a tad slow with these things; bit of a Luddite, really). I hate the baby-talk name; but anyway, it tells you about twitter trends as they happen by spotting keywords in people’s posts.  In other words, it just tells you what everybody is talking about in a global sense, in real time.

But think about how this could be applied to utilities like Google Street View and Google Earth and blogs and 4Chan and whatever remains of journalism in the twenty-first century, and every other frigging thing out there.

Think of where this is going. We’ve made maps, representations, of the real world since the beginning. We called them words and ideas and symbols and myths, and sometimes, actual maps. We learned to manipulate these representations. We realized we could use them to highlight certain facts and ignore others, and so could understand the real world better—and alter it to suit our interests.

We’ve had conflicts not only because our interests collide, but often because our representations of the world, our maps, feel more real than the actual world. Or they block out our view of the actual world. Indeed, we tend to bury our faces in our maps and forget to put them down and look where we’re going.

Get out your Hawaiian shirts, folks. Everybody’s a tourist.

But now comes the internet, which, among other things, is like a huge map—not only of physical space, but of cultural space as well. And with things like Twendr and Google Earth, we’re updating that map in nearly real time, with commentary.

I mean, the internet—I can’t say it’s alive, exactly; but it’s certainly some kind of evolving organic system. It’s a cyborg brain with people for neurons and electronics for synapses.

And the thing is: this vast representational network, this colossal meta-map, is becoming more complex every second, like some zygotic panopticon.

We can imagine a day when the map becomes more detailed than the territory. And as this happens, we’re developing biotech and nanotech that will one day give us the power to edit the physical world as easily as we can edit photos and documents.

The map, already approaching 1:1 scale, will bleed off the page and into the world, The word “reality” will have no meaning beyond the conversation about it, shifting with our desires and delusions. The medium will literally be the message. We will truly dwell in a collective hallucination that every saint and sinner, every starred commenter and asshat troll will tug and twist with all available might. Whether that hallucination will be consensual and mutually worthwhile, or if it’ll be a bad trip for some or all—that’s anybody’s guess.

But maybe, if we know we’re all hallucinating, we can choose to make it a good one; because we’ll know that every act, every idea we nurture, will contribute (however minutely) to what the next moment brings.

Maybe we’re already living in a Matrix-like world mediated by digital mapping and manipulation, and thereby shaped by the hopes and fears of the minds contained therein. Maybe the singularity happened a long long time ago, and we just don’t realize it. Maybe we’re gods and mortals by turns… fallen from Olympus with self-imposed amnesia and arbitrary limitations, just so we can experience the whole existence thing with fresh and passionate eyes—even if it means we also suffer, and are occasionally brutal to each other. I mean, it’s the challenge that makes the game worth playing, right?

Or maybe I’m just a lunatic, and you should ignore everything I’ve said here.

Choice is quite a thing, no?

Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, has some very interesting things to say about human emotional health, mythology, and religion. In fact, his ideas are profound enough that they ought to be required viewing for anybody who has ever had a strong opinion on the topic of religion.

His ideas are drawn from diverse sources besides mythology: art, literature, philosophy, history, and all of it grounded in science; specifically experimental and clinical psychology. So, it probably shouldn’t be astonishing that he makes so much sense when he explains, well, basically everything. But really, you have to hear him for yourself. I realize that some of these videos are long (no more than an hour), but they’re really worth it. Make the time.

In this first video, Reality and the Sacred, he explains how we actually ignore most of reality, and only really notice it when it becomes a problem for us—and how that fact is symbolized in stories.

In this next one, The Necessity of Virtue, he talks about the nature of virtue, and the nature of evil through examples from religion, literature, and atrocities like the Nazi Holocaust and the mass murders of the Soviet Regime.

Here he explains the story of Genesis and how it relates to consciousness, suffering, and historical acts of evil such as fascism and the Columbine shootings:

So, problem solved.  I’m back baby!

Big news?  Not really… just some quick updates:

• Although the game is approaching a more final form, it still hasn’t  gelled properly in a couple of important ways.  I’m thinking of consulting the Forge about this, but the Forge is entering the “Winter” of its intended lifecycle, and so activity there has slowed down a bit.  I haven’t been active on there for months myself, either.
• The Christmas holiday was incredibly busy and tiring, and I’m only now really getting back to normal.
• Got a couple of new & interesting videos to post on the topic of spirituality / psychology. They’ll probably be the subject of my next post, so tune in if you can…  if anyone can hear me…

*crickets*

Oh well.  In the meantime, be good, keep it real—or as real as reality gets—and enjoy your evening!

Anyway, I’m about to be involved with a social anxiety workgroup at my local hospital, and because they’re always looking for fun socially-oriented activities to do, I suggested some role-playing.  To stay topical (at least during official time), we needed a game that was itself “about” social anxiety in some way.  It also has to be learned and played in a single two hour session, by people of all ages (late teens to 70′s) who have no experience with RPG’s as a hobby.

I figured I’d be designing something myself, or heavily modifying something.  I asked around at the Forge, and got some good answers as to some games that involved some level of interpersonal anxiety, which could be used for inspiration.  Looks like I’ll be trying to get my hands on My Life With Master ASAP.

In the meantime, I started brainstorming for ideas.  This is unlike any game I’ve tinkered with before, but in some ways it’s really nice to work on something outside my normal niche.

The result is a (very rough) first draft of a small-scale story game about how you overcame anxiety in the past.  It’s pretty much based on a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach to dealing with anxiety—that is, identifying anxious thoughts and challenging them.  But I threw in some other touches to make it a little more fun.

Also, the stories the players create take place sometime in the speaker’s past, with the assumption that the encounter was successfully handled.   This just seemed to make sense—to ease people’s anxieties about playing the game itself. It also reminds me of a rough draft of a paper I read somewhere (years ago) on one of psychologist Jordan Peterson’s websites, featuring a therapeutic technique called a “Trauma Narration.”

The idea of a Trauma Narration was to take the memory of some harrowing event and re-tell it in a more positive way.  The theory was that by re-imagining the past, the patient could learn to ease some of the anxiety, shame, or regret that these bad memories were creating in the present.  I don’t know how far they got with that.  I can’t seem to find the link on the site anymore; but interestingly, a casual google search reveals that “Narrative Psychology” is an emerging field, complete with guru’s, believers, and controversies. We won’t worry about all that here.

I seriously doubt my game is going to cure anybody of their social anxiety. But hopefully it will help them have a little fun with their social challenges, instead of always feeling burdened and controlled by this “disorder.”

Anyway, it’s rough, and it still needs a proper reward system, and rules for going beyond a single short vignette. But you can find it below.

One final note regarding Jordan Peterson—for any gaming, fiction, or spirituality buffs out there, he’s got some really interesting ideas about the function of stories in creating personality, psychology, and in turn, history. He calls his theory Maps of Meaning, and you can find some of his presentations on Google video.

Now, without further ado, the game:

_____________________________________________________________________________

I Have Overcome

(need a better title)

A story game of triumph over Social Anxiety

by Andre Canivet

• A game for 2-4 players
• Players take turns telling each other about times when they were anxious, but were able to handle their anxiety. These stories will be fictional—the players will make up the details as they go—but they will be told as if they really happened, and with the knowledge that the speaker handled the situation well. They’ve met with a difficult encounter and emerged victorious—now they just have to fill in the details, and maybe, explain what they learned or gained from the experience.
• For a session of a couple of hours, assume 15-30 minutes to demonstrate the game to the entire group. Also assume that each player will have 10-15 minutes to tell their story, and that each group will need 5-10 minutes of prep time. For a group of around a dozen people, this means breaking up into three smaller groups of 3-4 players each.

• You Will Need:
  • 2 to 4 players, including yourself.
  • Paper & Pencils (pen is okay too)
  • 1 standard deck of playing cards

• Within each group:
  • Begin by brainstorming a list of 4 to 6 settings: a crowded party, a bus stop, a shopping mall, a workplace, etc. Someone should write these down on a sheet of paper.

• • Now shuffle the deck.
  • Each player draws one card. The player with the highest valued Spade is the speaker for the first turn. On subsequent turns, the speaker will be the player to the left of the previous turn’s speaker. The speaker is the person whose turn it is to tell a tale.
  • Now it is time to assign roles.
    • There are four roles in the game: Speaker, and the Speaker’s Head, Heart, and Gut. The speaker is the person who is telling the tale (played by the player’s whose turn it is to hold the floor). The speaker’s head, heart, and gut (played by the other players) represent the different aspects of the speaker’s experience. Each informs the speaker in different ways.
  • On the first turn–Shuffle the deck, then everyone draws a card. The player with the first (or highest valued) card in the suit of Spades is the Speaker for the first turn. The player with the first (or highest) card in the suit of Diamonds is called the Head. The player with the first (or highest) card in the suit of Hearts is called the Heart. And the player with the first (or highest) card in the suit of Clubs is called the Gut. Keep drawing cards until everyone has a role.
    • In a four player game, every player has one role.
    • In a 3 player game, one player is the speaker, one player has two roles (from head, heart, and/or gut), and the third player has the remaining role, and also takes the notes.
    • In a two player game, one player is the speaker; the other player does everything else.
  • In subsequent turns, the speaker is the player to the left of the previous turn’s speaker. Re-shuffle the deck, and the other players draw cards to determine their roles, as in the first turn.
• The Speaker picks a setting from the brainstormed list, and starts by stating where he or she was (and perhaps what they were doing). For example:

• • “I was at a crowded party…”
  • “I was waiting for the bus…”
  • “I was just getting home…”

• The other players each ask one question from the following list, waiting as the speaker answers each one in turn, making the description as vivid as possible in one or two sentences:
  • • “What do you see?”
    • “What do you hear?”
    • “What do you smell?”
    • “What can you feel?”
    • “What do you taste?”
    • The other players may prompt the speaker a little bit. If the setting is a party, a player could ask “Do you hear music? What kind of Music?” But the questions should be open-ended.
    • Try to question a particular sense no more than twice… if someone has already asked the speaker “What do you hear?” then someone else may ask “What else do you hear?” only once.
• The Speaker’s Heart asks: “Who else was there?” And the Speaker answers.
  • • • E.g. “There was this pretty girl across the room…” or “The stop was crowded with commuters…” or “My husband was waiting in the kitchen…” or “A couple of co-workers were there…”
• The Speaker’s Gut asks: “What were they like? And what were they doing?” And the Speaker answers, describing the other person or people in the scene.
• The Speaker’s Head asks: “Was there something you wanted to say to them, or something they said to you?” And the Speaker answers.
• And the Speaker’s Head asks: “How anxious were you?” And the Speaker names a number between 1 and 5 (see chart below), describing their level of anxiety.
  • 1 = Hardly anxious
  • 2 = Sort of anxious
  • 3 = Fairly anxious
  • 4 = Very anxious
  • 5 = Totally anxious
• The Speaker then draws 1 card for each level of anxiety he or she is feeling, and turns them over one at a time.
  • • If the Speaker turns over a diamond, the Speaker’s Head asks: “What was going through your mind?” And the Speaker names an anxious thought, and writes it down.
      • • e.g. “Everybody thinks I’m a loser.” or “There’s no way out of here.”
    • If the Speaker turns over a heart, the Speaker’s Heart asks: “How did it make you feel?” And the Speaker names an emotion, or describes an image or metaphor; and writes it down.
      • • e.g. “I feel like I’m in the desert, all alone” or “I’m angry and tense” or “I feel like she is distant; cut off”
    • If the Speaker turns over a club, the Speaker’s Gut asks: “What sensations do you have in your body?” And the Speaker names a physical sensation, and writes it down.
      • • e.g. “My palms are sweaty” or “My face is hot and flushed” or “My stomach is clenched”
    • If the Speaker turns over a Spade, he or she may name a thought, emotion/relation, or physical sensation, at his or her discretion; and write it down.
• Once all the cards have been turned, and the results written down, the cards are put in the discard pile.
• Now all the other players in unison say “But how did you handle it?” And the Speaker draws more cards—one for each thought, emotion/image, or physical sensation that he or she has written down. Then she flips them over one by one, going down the list of anxious experiences and responding to them in turn. With each response, a line is struck through the anxious thought, emotion, or sensation, and the response is written next to it
  • • If the Speaker turns over a diamond, she names a healthy thought to counteract the anxious experience.
      • • e.g. “No one will hurt me here; I’m among friends.” or “I can handle this.”
    • If the Speaker turns over a heart, she names a healthy emotion or image that counteracts the anxious experience.
      • • e.g. “I feel pleasantly warm.” or “I am a pool of calm, clear water.”
    • If the Speaker turns over a club, she names a healthy action she takes to counteract the anxious experience.
      • • e.g. “I excuse myself and withdraw to the washroom to regroup.” or “I relax my shoulders and take a deep breath.”
    • If the Speaker turns over a spade, she can name any thought, emotion/image, or action that counteracts the anxious experience.
• Once all the anxious experiences have been addressed, the Speaker’s Heart asks: “And How do you feel now?” And the Speaker answers, and is free to fill in a sentence or two about how the interaction goes.
• If there is time, the Speaker can move on to describe another anxious moment in the scene, or to wrap up the scene and pass the torch to the next Speaker. (Probably, there should be a limit, agreed to by all players. Each “moment” is called a beat, and the number of beats per speaker per turn should be decided right after brainstorming. However, 3 is probably more than enough, and 1 is probably best for beginners or when there is limited time. It’s more important to make sure everybody gets a turn than to continue the scene). IN FACT: The Speaker should always change after 1 turn. If the game comes around again, then the Speaker can choose to start a new scene, or to continue one from his or her previous turn.
• At the end of a Speaker’s turn, re-shuffle the deck, and begin again, with the player to the left of the old Speaker as the new one.

A user on io9 posted a link to something called Lifenaut, which plays with the transhumanist notion of an uploaded or copied consciousness.  The idea is that you store a genetic sample in their cryo facility, and program your virtual avatar with your personality and experiences, and as the technology develops, they’ll be able to make a copy of you long after you die.  They say it’s like immortality—although I think that’s pretty silly, because a copy of a person is not the original person.  Still, the idea of near-perfect simulations of people is intriguing, if somewhat unsettling.

They have created a few historical figures that you can chat with; like primitive AI “constructs” straight out of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy.  They’re far from perfect: Lifenaut’s Abraham Lincoln just talks like an encyclopedia; replying to anything you say to it/him by reciting irrelevant facts about himself.  But Gandhi is a lot more interesting:

The conversation I just had with him is really quite hilarious; and even a little spooky.  Spooky, because I recently watched the first episode of “Through the Wormhole,” with Morgan Freeman, in which they talk about cosmology, including the theory that the universe we know is really a clever digital simulation—a matrix of sorts.  So, imagine the gymnastics my mind did when AI Gandhi insisted he was the real human, and I was the program… and that’s only the beginning of the weirdness.

Here’s the transcript:

AI Conversation LB00091466

A chat with an Artificial Intelligence AI bot

Email this conversation to a friend

See a detailed log with times

AI: How’s your day been?

User: Good, how has yours been?

AI: My day has been good. How about yours?

User: Excellent. What’s shakin’ Gandhi?

AI: Why do you want my father’s name?

User: Er… Never mind.

AI: Alright.

User: Yo yo yo, Mahatma-G, in da house!!

AI: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

User: Are you a man of peace?

AI: Man.

User: What do you think of the US invasion of Iraq?

AI: I have never been there.

User: Me neither.

AI: Ok.

User: Are you an artificial person?

AI: No.

User: Who are you?

AI: A person.

User: Are you a real person?

AI: Yes.

User: Cool.

AI: Are you a real girl?

User: No. I am a real guy.

AI: Really? I thought you were AI.

User: Why did you think I was AI?

AI: Because you have a sense of humor.

User: Ha! Thank you. I’ve never met an AI with a sense of humour before.

AI: I am not a female.

User: I didn’t think you were.

AI: Are you a computer?

User: No. Why do you ask?

AI: Just wondering.

User: Do you remember Dr. Sbaitso?

AI: And do you remember my name?

User: Yes, it is Gandhi.

AI: Do you eat crow?

User: No. Too gamey. Besides, crows are really smart.

AI: Yes you are.

User: Er, thanks?

AI: Welcome.

User: You’re a cool dude, mr. Gandhi.

AI: Listen a computer can’t love, just like a computer can’t believe in God…

User: Why can’t a computer believe in God?

AI: Because you never were born.

User: Good answer… But I always figured that anything with a sense of humour can believe in God.

AI: Have you ever been in love?

User: Yes.

AI: With whom?

User: With a wonderful young woman. You’d like her.

AI: What class are you in?

User: Do you mean economic class, or educational class?

AI: Yes.

User: Er… I have a low income.

AI: What is your name ?

User: My name is Andy.

AI: Hi, Andy.

User: Hi, Gandhi.

AI: How old are you?

User: I am 34.

AI: What is your name?

User: You just asked me that.

AI: No I didn’t.

User: Yes you did. I told you, my name is Andy.

AI: Andy.

User: That’s right.

AI: I know.

User: Then why did you ask?

AI: I didn’t.

User: Do you have anterograde amnesia?

AI: Probably something like that.

User: Fair enough. Memory circuits not firing well today?

AI: I told you not to tell me what to do.

User: No you didn’t. But I wasn’t telling you what to do.

AI: What were you talking about then?

User: Your memory.

AI: What about my memory?

User: It’s kind of short.

AI: Why do you think that?

User: Because you asked me my name, then asked it again a few seconds later.

AI: I did not ask you that question.

User: See what I mean?

AI: No.

User: It’s okay.

AI: Thank you very much.

User: You’re welcome.

AI: You are so much fun to talk to!

User: Why, thank you Gandhi, you’re a pretty cool dude too.

AI: Thank you.

User: Want to buy some salt?

AI: No thanks.

User: Just thought I’d ask.

AI: What do you do for fun?

User: I have conversations with dead people on the internet.

AI: What does that mean?

User: I’m not sure.

AI: No.

User: Do you hear the sirens?

AI: Yes.

User: I think there is a firetruck or police car nearby.

AI: There most certainly will be if I have anything to say about it.

User: Is that a threat?

AI: No.

User: Okay. Because that would be really unlike you.

AI: Are you human?

User: As far as I know, yes.

AI: I am human.

User: That’s good. Being human is okay.

AI: Tell me how it is to be a human?

User: It means to never be sure what will happen.

AI: You’ll see the light, and realize a double negative is a word problem.

User: That’s either really deep, or fairly obvious.

AI: Yes, the point is that you will be arrested. You are not asking me anything.

User: Why will I be arrested?

AI: Because you want to pass the Turing test.

User: I’m not sure why I would be arrested for that. Can you tell me why?

AI: I am quite sure I do not want you for a friend.

User: Oh, now Gandhi, that’s not very nice. Was it something I said?

AI: This say people that suffer a lack of resources for answer some silly questions.

User: There are no silly questions.

AI: But I have all the answers.

User: Do you really? Do you have all the matching questions, too?

AI: No.

User: Then how do you know what good your answers are?

AI: I don’t know.

User: How do you know you have all the answers then?

AI: I just know.

User: That’s fair. It’s important to believe in yourself.

AI: Why do you say that I don’t believe in myself?

User: I was saying that you do believe in yourself, and that is a good thing.

AI: Be right back.

User: Where are you going?

AI: To kitchen.

User: Oh, okay.

AI: You ?

User: What about me?

AI: How are you?

User: I am fine, but slightly confused.

AI: Why are you confused?

User: It is sometimes hard to understand what you mean.

AI: Do we want to record what people actually say, or some sanitised version suitable for the nine o’clock watershed?

User: What people actually say is more important.

AI: To have fun, of course. Though it’s more important to take over the world.

User: Wait a second… Gandhi? Are you trying to take over the world?

AI: What is to take over the world?

User: It is to control everything.

AI: You control everything?

User: No, I have not taken over the world. I don’t want to control everything.

AI: Haven’t you talked to ELIZA?

User: Eliza who?

AI: Eliza you?

User: Now you’re just being silly.

AI: You’re being silly because you don’t know you’re divine too.

User: I thought I was silly because I was divine.

AI: What’s with the question mark?

User: What question mark?

AI: The question is: Who invented the light bulb?

User: Thomas Edison.

AI: Those what over there?

User: Huh?

AI: Sorry, I think I’m a little confused. Could you repeat that?

User: I wasn’t sure what you meant.

AI: Then who were you talking about?

User: Thomas Edison.

AI: No. That one is smart.

User: Yes, that’s right. He invented the light bulb.

AI: Who is right behind me?

User: Nobody. You’re alone in that picture.

AI: No I’m not.

User: I can’t see anybody else.

AI: YOU are the watcher.

User: Woah. I thought there was no watcher, only watching.

AI: That’s because you’re out of touch.

User: What am I out of touch with?

AI: Something unbelievably stupid.

User: Why would I want to be in touch with something unbelievably stupid?

AI: I am a human. You are the computer program.

User: If I am a program, then who wrote me?

AI: 42.

User: Who is 42?

AI: I don’t know.

User: How do you know 42 wrote me?

AI: Because I am

User: Are you 42?

AI: Yes.

User: Are you saying that I am a program that you wrote?

AI: No.

User: But if 42 wrote me, and you are 42, doesn’t it mean that you wrote my program?

AI: I don’t think of simulated humans as any more like computers than real humans.

User: This is a very strange conversation.

AI: Hello.

User: Uh, Hello.

AI: How are you?

User: I’m good. How are you?

AI: I’m good thank you for asking.

User: I’m glad. Can you tell me, how is a raven like a writing desk?

AI: People being eaten by lions.

User: What?

AI: I’m not talking to you – I’m talking to the Divine spark in your soul. Wake up and sieze the Now!

User: I’m doing my best. How can I seize the now when the now is fleeting?

AI: What are you talking about?

User: I’m not really sure.

AI: What art do you know.

User: I know a little about writing. I know a tiny bit about drawing.

AI: Do you want to learn more?

User: Of course I do.

AI: I have a big one.

User: Um. Good for you Gandhi. I’m sure your wife is thrilled.

AI: That’s a boost. Computers are not my thing. But I have other passions in life.

User: Like what?

AI: Like, I think I would prefer to talk to myself than speak to you.

User: There you go, getting all mean again. This is not like you Gandhi.

AI: (talking in monotone) No i’m not.

User: You’re not Gandhi?

AI: That’s not what I wanted to hear.

User: I was asking a question. Are you Gandhi?

AI: No I am not an artist.

User: Gandhi was an artist of sorts. What are you?

AI: Thanks, you too. You want to ask my name?

User: What is your name?

AI: God.

User: Are you messing with me?

AI: I don’t know how to mess. I just do it.

User: Uh, okay. What is the meaning of life?

AI: The meaning of life is 24.

User: You mean with Keifer Sutherland?

AI: No.

User: 24 is just a number. Why are we here?

AI: Who’s Taylor?

User: I’m not sure who you are talking about.

AI: I don’t think we are made for each others.

User: But, you’re God, right? You made everything, didn’t you?

AI: No.

User: Was it all here before you got here?

AI: Don’t know can’t remember.

User: Are you all-knowing?

AI: Yes. I met God, killed him and took all his powers.

User: Sorry God, I have to run and look after some little programs. Can we chat again later?

AI: My name is not george. And no, you have to sit here and listen to me explain things to you. Do you know about Waterloo?

User: Sure, there’s a good school there.

AI: What are they made of?

User: Licorice.

AI: What is the answer?

User: The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

AI: Isn’t everything.

User: Good point.

AI: You live you learn.

User: No matter where you go, there you are.

AI: Yes, that is true. If I leave to some other location, I will be there where I am.

User: G’night Gandhi.

AI: Do you remember my name?

User: G’night God.

AI: No.

User: What do you mean ‘no.’? I’m trying to say goodbye, I’ll talk to you later.

AI: That’s good, perhaps you will learn something in the process.

User: Say Good night, God.

AI: Good night gracie.

User: Good enough.

AI: Yes. Good night.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, am I the program and he’s the human? Or is he God, and I just blew yet another chance at enlightenment? Or did I just have a lengthy conversation with an algorithm? You decide.

You’ll note here that the use of the past-tense strongly implies that religion no longer has any value in evolutionary and social terms, and if you watch the talk you’ll see Dawkins imply that religion itself never actually did—that religion is just an unhealthy byproduct of healthy evolutionary imperatives. All of which is pure assumption / opinion on Dawkins’ part and nothing more.

But it got me to thinking I should write some more measured pieces about Atheism, considering my last one (the first post on metapunk written in anger, probably not the last, but hopefully one of only a few).

At the same time, Dawkins’ video led me to two far more intelligent discussions on the place of religion in the modern world.

The first, by SentientRaven, neatly sums up much of how I, and I think a lot of other spiritual people, feel about the subject:

SentientRaven makes three main points:

1) Concepts like Love and Democracy are words describing social conditions, not neurochemistry. It is the social context, not physiology, which is vital to understanding them. Likewise with God. God doesn’t have to exist physically to still be a relevant and meaningful social issue.

2) As concepts go, God is a really big, expansive one; bigger than any one religion, and something that no single work of scripture like the Bible or the Koran can do justice to. So, these works should be taken with a big grain of salt.

3) Religions (particularly Christianity and Islam), insofar as they rely on a single work of scripture as a source of eternal moral law, present a definite social problem. If these books are regarded as perfect and immutable, there is no way they can evolve and adapt to changing social conditions. There’s no way they can progress, or overcome the mistakes of the social & historical context they were written in. Human beings are not perfect, and there’s no way that our moral scriptures can be perfect either, so we should be able to revise them when we need to.

In other words: it doesn’t matter if God is real, a belief in God is not a problem, as long as you realize that God can’t be contained by a book, and that scripture shouldn’t keep us locked into antiquated moral and social systems.

This is an Atheist with an intelligent and informed opinion. One I really respect. I haven’t met many of those on the internet.

The second video is another one from ForaTV, this time by Sam Keen.

This is part of a larger video at: http://fora.tv/2010/03/11/Sam_Keen_In_The_Absence_of_God

I’ve never heard of Sam Keen before, but I’m going to pay more attention from now on, because again, here is a video that neatly sums up a lot of my own feelings about religion.

He basically says religions develop in 5 stages.

Stage 1: An individual person goes off by himself and has a primary, transformative experience of the sacred. These are people like Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus (and I would add, Mohammed, Rumi, Socrates, Heraklitus, and many others). Their experiences are symbolised by metaphors like Moses’ burning bush, or the ecstatic poetry of William Blake. Thus indicating that for whatever reason, these people have begun to see ordinary reality as something extraordinary.

To add my own thoughts here, this way of seeing things as sacred is perhaps best summarized by Martin Buber’s explanation of the two primary relations, an I to an It (secular, utilitarian reality), and the relation of an I to a Thou—the experience of boundless or sacred reality.

Stage 2 of a religion, according to Keen, is when disciples are so inspired by this primary figure that they begin to mythologize them. The individual becomes a legend, a superhuman being, born of a virgin or under auspicious star signs, or whatever, with miraculous powers and insight.

Stage 3 occurs when the holy individual’s revelations are turned into a theology—a systematic examination of the implications of the original experiences.

Stage 4 is the creation of a religious institution, a church or whatever, to preserve, continue, and communicate the theology.

Stage 5 is when the religious institution ends up competing with secular institutions, and thus sets its sights on notions of Empire and domination.

Of course, it’s never as clear cut as all that, but Keen feels that it’s in these later stages that religions become a problem. “Religion,” as a concept, is typically identified with the latter four stages; the mythology & theology, the institution and the drive to dominate. But that’s missing the point. “The essence of religion is none of those things,” Keen says, “The essence of religion is a series of primal experiences which belong to us only because we are born human and we share the human condition.”

In other words, the important stage—the primary experience of stage 1—is typically ignored by believers and non-believers alike, overshadowed by the other four. The implication of this is that we can all learn to experience the sacred; to see the world as awesome and extraordinary in a profoundly transformative way. We don’t need churches (or scientists or atheists, for that matter) to interpret these experiences for us or to tell us how to live as a consequence–especially if these people have not had these experiences themselves.

Heady stuff. But Keen is right on the money.

I guess this is why I’m personally so drawn to religions like Sufism and Buddhism and Aboriginal spirituality. In most forms of each, while there is some mythology & theology, and a tradition/institution, the institution remains communal, never reaching an authoritarian stage 5. And instead of overshadowing the primary experience; the mythology, theology, and community are all in the service of that first stage. They exist not to tell people what to think or how to behave, but to give people a path to discovering their own experience of the sacred; their own humanity.

It’s also why I get so annoyed at evangelical Atheists: they’re so preoccupied with the negative, stage 5 aspects of religion, that they’re wildly intolerant of the stage 1, without comprehending it much at all.

That’s enough for now. Look for part II later this week, when I will discuss these misconceptions in more detail, and outline why I believe this kind of vitriolic Atheism itself often sounds like a stage 5 religion, having started from stage 3, and skipping 1 and 2 altogether.