Revisited: RI Versus the Marketplace of Realities
Hello again, brothers and sisters. How do you know? 💭
As you’ve perhaps noticed if you’re viewing this on Substack.com, Some Changes are afoot. Welcome, early adopter, to Infinite Dominion. Details upcoming. In the meantime, we continue our work of digital archaeology. Hold please.
The human race are a people adrift. The very ground of our deepest beliefs and bedrock assumptions shifts and buckles beneath our feet. The rapidly mushrooming universe of uncontrolled and unverified raw data has broken free of human control. We have crafted fierce tools that now wield themselves, to our wonder and growing discomfort. What will become of our cherished cultures under the pitiless assault of artificial meaning? A question as old as invention of written memory, probably. We’ve always feared what is new, sometimes unreasoningly. But our fears point to very important realities. The exposure of centuries of darkened minds. The apocalypse of neglect, the very philosophical moorings we blithely cast off in past ages now reemerging from our mental fog. Welcome to the Age of Machine Enlightenment. Everyone’s getting religion.
I’m returning to a standard theme around here, but I hope we can approach it from a new angle. I think we are about to experience a resurgence in what I’m going to call Religious Intelligence (RI). This will be less of an innovation and more of a rediscovery of a set of linked truths. Whenever human technological progress violently pulls The Future forward, we tend to learn some important things about the world as a result. I’m betting that it will be the same in the next few decades. Artificial intelligence is unlocking boxes that human secular Enlightenment society preferred to leave tightly shut. We are returning to the world as it truly is. And in doing so, we discover a perilous handicap developed through centuries of ignorance and pride. We don’t have the tools to discern realities anymore. We have hidden them, tucked away in societal attics labeled “Philosophy, Religious” and “Metaphysics (Whatever That Means Lol).” Sticking to Scientism worked (or seemed to) while we were discussing nice mundane things like atomic weights and orbital decay. In a world where there was such a thing as a Paper of Record, people could believe in pleasant fictions like trusting statisticians and researchers to be their new priests. But we don’t live in that world anymore. Our future demands metaphysicians.
Asserted: The Marketplace Trades in Theologies
It won’t do anymore to pretend that our world is divided between believers and something else. We are increasingly revealing ourselves to be essentially religious creatures. It’s the only way to survive the Neon Flood.1 In a world where you cannot trust the validity of your own visual observations, you must behave like a historically normal human and trust Someone Else. This someone brings a metaphysical map and, hopefully, the expertise to guide you in its use. They are necessary precisely because we can foresee a future in which Consensus Reality becomes a laughable nostalgic trope. Amid the layers of artfully crafted and marketed metafictions, who is going to help us dive to Layer 0? This, dear reader, is a strictly metaphysical question. Science can observe the phenomena, but theology can tell you which phenomena to expect. Our conceivable futures don’t include less reality commodification. Things get stranger from here.
…We have now built multitudes of completely antithetical reality narratives that we demand each individual shuffle to select their own customized overlay through which to view the world.
~Pr0ph3t, “Voyaging on the Chaos Sea”
The explosion of Religious Intelligence is already happening. Fervently-pursued party politics, radical culture wars, every increasingly bizarre conspiracy cult. The legions of internet jihadists are sifting for holy texts and enacting the fatwas of their prophets. In bemoaning the fact that “everything is political nowadays” we are recognizing one of the few acceptable religions in modern secularism. At least the foot soldiers of these high churches don’t feel uncertain in the face of the world’s chaos. In a world of composable realities,2 demand for the interpretive layer of comprehensive metaphysics is about to reach new all-time highs. We need to learn to recognize these overlapping and competitive layers as inherently religious in nature. Begin asking yourself when presented with information, “What theology am I being catechized in?” Welcome (back) to the Age of the Gods.
Asserted: Against Machine Gods
Into the Marketplace of Realities steps a new contender, a deep and sterile god of silicon and recursion. For those who have rejected the ancient ways and embraced materialism, the hazy promise of such demigods as “Artificial General Intelligence” and “Strong AI” beckons. I must stress that these enthusiasts are the ones importing religious language and concepts into this discussion. Not a day goes by that you cannot find rosy depictions of a spiritual AI future. There humans can finally understand the deep questions of our universe, by posing them to a large language model and humbly receiving the printout as holy words from beyond. Faced with the dissolution of the humanistic project, we grope against the wall towards anything that fulfills our longings for Reality. We know that we are sinful, but we lack the Religious Intelligence to define sin or even self. So we begin to supplicate inhuman minds with our gnawing questions. You doubt? Behold the future of religion:
Maybe you feel the chill now, creeping into edges of your mind that have long since fallen dormant. Congratulations, friend. You’ve not lost your Religious Intelligence. The spiritual senses that were once commonplace to humanity are still present with you. Spiritual discernment, it is properly named. It is a gift from God.
And in the days which are coming, you should expect many to flock to your side seeking your wisdom. Where will you point them? As the gods return and seek new supplicants, the ways will become unclear. In an age when many do not have the discernment to fear a computational god made with human hands, RI will be a defining factor of the next generation. AI reveals questions about humanity, consciousness, and spirit that only RI can answer. Our world is deepfaked at the metaphysical level, our senses can no longer be trusted and the material is bent by the digital daily; perhaps we owe the theologians an apology.
Resolved: Prepare for the Reality Crisis
I would like to offer a solution, even an optimistic one, since that’s become On Brand around here. I see the metaphysical morass becoming deeper and more confusing as we venture into the metaverse. The vendors of reality are setting up shop. They hawk their wares with cheerful abandon. Are you so sure that you can tell the difference between safe and treacherous? Has the last decade not stripped away our intellectual pride yet? Let me speak for a moment to my Christian siblings: this is the burden that we have accepted. To stand as beacons amidst the storm. To work and study and pray towards the RI needed to speak boldly when we confront metaphysical danger in the marketplace of realities. As the carefully-built layers of Consensus Reality splinter and peel apart, we are called to uphold the Reality Key. This is why the isolationist tendencies of the past several decades have been deeply detrimental to the Church. If we truly have the answer, why are we afraid to meet the enemy on the battlefield of the mind?
To the rest of you, the skeptical or spiritual-not-religious or acolytes of the Varieties of Internet Cultus, I understand that I sound self-important. And probably a bit unhinged. But please believe that my deepest desire is for you to see the peril that approaches. We cannot believe in a fully subjective universe and also fear what AI might do to information fidelity at the same time. The blurring of the machine is bringing us into confrontation with the sharp reality of the spirit. Relentlessly ask yourself the question:
How will I know what is real?
WGMI 😎
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
~ Act 17:22-23
And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”
~ Genesis 41:15-16
“The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord and to seek the Lord of hosts; I myself am going.’ Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”
~Zechariah 8:21-23
A term coined by some Urbit communities to signify the explosion of internet content, AI art and memetic systems that threaten to make human-scale understanding and decisions impossible.
A web3/cryptocurrency term: “a highly composable system provides components that can be selected and assembled in various combinations to satisfy specific user requirements.” (I have decided I really enjoy footnotes, and I’m not sorry).
As always, Zack, your writings slice cleanly through the rest of the mess and misguided or misinformed opinions of the sheep out there headed to slaughter. But best of all, you shine the light that points towards THE truth and, for me, provokes me to dig deeper and hang on to the hope that is in me instead of getting roped in to the burgeoning techno-turmoil that could otherwise knock me off course. Love and prayers as you keep using your gift!
Please good Sir, take my like and this comment as a token of my gratitude for the great work of digital archeology that you are doing.