Religiously-minded people like to invoke mystery as a reason for believing in God and the supernatural. They adore how holy books teach that the workings of divinity are beyond human comprehension, you know, the whole man proposes and God disposes thing.
But it isn't necessary to go anywhere outside of the closest entity any of us has to ourselves to come face-to-face with a gigantic mystery, because that entity is the mind that experiences both mystery and everything else from our birth until our death.
In my previous post, "No, neuroscience doesn't support religiosity," I included a passage from Ross Douthat's book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.
At the heart of their wonder was the technology's air of mystery, its oracular quality, the way it seemed to break with the patterns of Enlightenment science, in which sequences of replicable experimental processes are supposed to yield results that are trustworthy and verifiable because we can see, step by step, how the entire process works.
With AI, by contrast, the systems can be so complex that we don't always understand how they are generating answers to our questions… There's a black box at the heart of the machine, a hard-to-pin-down element inside the algorithms.
That description of AI was correct. But Douthat's conclusion was false.
But the quest to build an artificial intelligence also represents a place where the supernatural has returned to haunt the scientific project.
This is a ridiculous thing to say.
It reflects the weakness of Douthat's arguments in favor of being religious that he has to throw out absurdities like AI research being haunted by the supernatural. For actually, AI is merely demonstrating how the human mind, Non-artificial Intelligence, works. And the mind is thoroughly physical, being nothing more than the brain in action.
The February 24, 2025 issue of TIME magazine has a story, "DeepSeek's hidden warning for AI safety." Basically, that warning is that AI systems are becoming disconnected from human language, which means that it will be increasingly difficult to understand how the systems arrive at responses to queries posed to them.
In other words, the AI response may be in words, but the process that produced the response will be beyond the reach of words. Here's an excerpt from the story:
Of course, even human-legible AI has its problems. It might look like an AI is faithfully showing its work but some experts aren't sure if these explanations reveal how the AI really makes decisions. It could be like asking a politician for the motivations behind a policy — they might come up with an explanation that sounds good, but has little connection to the real decision-making process.
As it is, our ability to know exactly how an AI model arrives at its answers is already riddled with uncertainty. It's true that today's most powerful models express chains of thought, in words, that appear to show their reasoning. But the process that creates those words happens at a deeper level: via complex mathematical operations inside a neural network.
Nobody truly understands how that math works. And so the worry is, an especially powerful AI system could potentially craft its chains of thought to conceal dangerous capabilities from monitors, all the while keeping its real logic hidden from view.
Well, this might turn out to be a valid worry. However, at the moment my attitude is that what's being described about how an especially powerful AI system could work is very much, if not exactly, like how the mind of every person on earth works.
Namely, the human mind comes up with thoughts, actions, and such that typically can be expressed in language, yet don't arise from expressible language. Instead, the products of conscious awareness flow from a hundred billion or so neurons that have trillions of interconnections.
How the heck could all that neuronal activity be described in any language? All that we humans are capable of is expressing in words or some other symbolic fashion the tiny conscious tip of a hugely larger unconscious neuronal iceberg.
Why did I decide to write this blog post? I can attempt to describe my conscious motivation, but that would be woefully incomplete. After I read the TIME story about AI, I had a wordless urge to use it as the basis for tonight's blog post.
Yet I have no idea what produced that wordless urge. It just appeared in my mind, in the same fashion as outputs of an AI model just appear without even the creators of the model understanding how this happens.
So as AI systems come ever closer to manifesting the goal of Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, it seems to me that we're just going to have to get used to the idea that AGI processes will be as much a mystery as the workings of the human mind already is.
Nobody freaks out because how we arrive at our everyday thoughts and actions is hidden beneath the veil of unconscious mental operations. At present, this means I'm not going to freak out about AI models behaving in a similar way.
Until a freak out truly is justified, which I readily admit could happen in the not-so-distant future. (By the way, my computer just typed out "not-so-distant future" as soon as I'd typed "not-." This is a glimpse of how AI soon will become embedded in even routine daily activities.)
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This ai scene..
I think it’s all a scam.
A worthless Bitcoin pump and dump scheme.
These WERE illegal, then a group of countries agreed upon all the mula they could make.
AI, same story, the demon GREED.
I try to choose the Guru’s spiritual gold, over the false guarantee of ‘worldly power’ which will end in death and ultimately spiritual poverty.
The question is:
Is there knowledge to be had beyond words?
and
What is the effect of using words on the perception of .??????
Scientific-Atheist-Religiously minded people like to invoke science as a reason for dis-believing in God and the supernatural. They adore how science books teach that the workings of Reality & Consciousness are well within human comprehension, mundane, random, accidental & meaningless. You know, the whole arrogant human ape thing who thinks they can understand the workings of the entire universe & consciousness despite having such a feeble intellect that it is so blinded by their own scientific-religiously minded dogmatism that they cannot even comprehend simple, basic arguments.
Despite the argument I made yesterday being imo fairly simple and succinct, judging by the incoherent, non sequitur response/s to them by AR and obliquely here by Brian, let me try again.
It is NOT the mystic who claims the GAPS in SCIENCE prove there is a God or divinity – it is the religiously minded materialist ATHEIST who is making the FALSE claim that science DISPROVES there is a God or divinity.
The mystic claims, actually, evidence of Divinity is beyond duality, beyond thought, beyond concept and definitely beyond science. It is a PURELY experiential, ontological, existential thing known within their very BEING. THAT is their “proof” or evidence of the Divine.
What the mystic is doing when they point out the many, many GAPS in the pseudo-scientific claim made by atheist, materialist religiously minded folks that science DISPROVES there is a God or divinity, and that the mystery of consciousness and the universe is explained, is merely pointing out the fact that, actually, science disproves nothing of the sort, and that our current scientific knowledge devoid of ideological reductionism if not strongly suggests some kind of divine mystery, at the very least ALLOWS for it.
So, the inverse straw man argument being perpetuated here is fundamentally a lie. It is not the mystics who claim the GAPS in scientific explanations prove there is a God or divinity, but rather the materialists claim there are no GAPS and that consciousness and the universe have been fully explained and that there is no room for God.
It is a complete inversion of who is making what claim. A lie.
And therein lies a fundamental clue; there are huge GAPS in science when it comes to consciousness and reality, and I suggest they will never be filled precisely because they are attempting to grasp something beyond the duality of the scientific method.
The mystic doesn’t claim because there is a GAP there must be a God; that is utterly absurd and a juvenile type of logical error. They know the reality of “God” or the “Divine” through their very being, not logic. This is an ontological issue, not epistemological.
On the contrary, the religiously minded materialist falsely claims science disproves there is a God, despite there being HUGE GAPS in this theory. And merely pointing this out to them results in these kind of dishonest sleight of hand ideological tricks where, because they have not had personal ontological, experiential understanding of these things, the “Divine”, they are unable to even conceive of their reality and imagine the mystic, like them, must be basing their view on deduction, logic and rationality.
Which is also an extension of the same kind of insular, head in the sand, fundamentally grounded in ignore-ance comment often made by Ron E that frames inner experiences & paranormal phenomena as some kind of thing people fantasise about and are always trying to “chase”, by folks who don’t understand the illusory nature of self or as some kind of coping mechanism of the brain. It is evident these comments are neither coming from, or could ever possibly apply, to somebody who is not “chasing” them, but simply experiences them as part of their daily reality. What we have here, in both these kinds of instances, where folks either claim people deduce the existence of a God through science and logic (by falsely attributing a God to the Gaps in science), or that folks seek or chase God or “paranormal” phenomena due to some kind of fantasising by an insecure self, is an inability to comprehend any kind reality beyond their own, limited realities, insisting instead to project their own set of limited, lived reality & experiences upon everyone else. Ironically, these folks like to talk zen, or at least pseudo-zen. Perhaps going back to basics would be a start:
“Once upon a time, there was a wise Zen master. People traveled from far away to seek his help. In return, he would teach them and show them the way to enlightenment.
On this particular day, a scholar came to visit the master for advice. “I have come to ask you to teach me about Zen,” the scholar said.
Soon, it became obvious that the scholar was full of his own opinions and knowledge. He interrupted the master repeatedly with his own stories and failed to listen to what the master had to say.
The master calmly suggested that they should have tea.
So the master poured his guest a cup. The cup was filled, yet he kept pouring until the cup overflowed onto the table, onto the floor, and finally onto the scholar’s robes. The scholar cried, “Stop! The cup is full already. Can’t you see?”
“Exactly,” the Zen master replied with a smile. “You are like this cup — so full of ideas that nothing more will fit in. Come back to me with an empty cup.””
All in all, the very simple and basic argument I’ve made here, which has apparently caused confusion and incoherency in AR and Brian, blinded by their religiously minded atheist materialism, judging by their responses which merely re-iterate and re-inforce the original point I made, I am brought back again to what I think is a fundamentally important question for all of us;
If you are so blinded by your religiously minded conceptual beliefs, be it in materialist reduction or Jesus Christ or RS, that are you are unable to even comprehend basic and obvious, integral, coherent arguments as I’ve made above, and instead with immense cognitive dissonance revert back to making obviously false claims (that the mystic claims the gaps in science prove there is a God, whereas the reality is the atheist claims there are no gaps in science and that disproves there is a God, which is just factually and scientifically untrue. Gaps do exist.) – what the hell makes you imagine such feeble intellects can and indeed have (haha 🙂 worked out the workings of consciousness and reality. THIS VAST, INCOMPREHENSIBLE, GLORIOUS, MAGNIFICENT reality……comprehended by your minds and intellects?
WAKE UP.
I enjoyed reading what you wrote kind Sir Brian. Thank you and the comments too.
I actually don’t have anything needed to contribute, because you mention so much accuracy, that we may not truely understand. I like this what you stated: “With AI, by contrast, the systems can be so complex that we don’t always understand how they are generating answers to our questions… There’s a black box at the heart of the machine, a hard-to-pin-down element inside the algorithms”.
I also enjoyed one of the comments that stated this, “”Once upon a time, there was a wise Zen master. People traveled from far away to seek his help. In return, he would teach them and show them the way to enlightenment.
On this particular day, a scholar came to visit the master for advice. “I have come to ask you to teach me about Zen,” the scholar said.
Soon, it became obvious that the scholar was full of his own opinions and knowledge. He interrupted the master repeatedly with his own stories and failed to listen to what the master had to say.
The master calmly suggested that they should have tea.
So the master poured his guest a cup. The cup was filled, yet he kept pouring until the cup overflowed onto the table, onto the floor, and finally onto the scholar’s robes. The scholar cried, “Stop! The cup is full already. Can’t you see?”
“Exactly,” the Zen master replied with a smile. “You are like this cup — so full of ideas that nothing more will fit in. Come back to me with an empty cup.””.
That was very good.
“Nobody freaks out because how we arrive at our everyday thoughts and actions is hidden beneath the veil of unconscious mental operations. At present, this means I’m not going to freak out about AI models behaving in a similar way.”
The “freak out” is a principal topic in Douthat’s book, but it’s the mystery of where the universe came from and why life exists, and why consciousness hasn’t yet been figured out. That freak-out has been going on as long as there’ve been people. It’s a fundamental issue that won’t go away. one that science hasn’t come close to answering.
I haven’t yet received a copy of the book but I look forward to Douthat’s argument beyond his detailing the mystery, to why believing in a divine creator is a positive for both the individual and society.
But if I may extrapolate a bit from what you wrote, I think you make a solid point: One can go the whole day thinking about any number of things besides God or anything mystical, and yet feels none the worse for it. Indeed, I recall an ex-satsangi making one of the best online critiques of “the path” ever: “It’s a wonderful day, and you’re enjoying life…and suddenly the thought comes to you that you”re a satsangi on the RS path….and now all the joy and freedom you were feeling disappears, and your situation in life is now a problem (get to 3rd eye, get master’s darshan, do simran, get to sach khand somehow).
More halfwittery from our brazenly disingenuous self-proclaimed “mystic”.
No point talking to manjit directly, the man’s completely without integrity, or honesty, or shame. But let’s just address some of his latest half-witted drivel, just for our amusement, and to clearly demonstrate to any readers that might be interested how completely shallow is this person’s now-desperate posturing at profundity, eh?
———-
“(…) They adore how science books teach that the workings of Reality & Consciousness are well within human comprehension (…) thinks they can understand the workings of the entire universe (…)”
That’s a lie, from our serial liar. No one’s said that. That’s a strawman, and a lie.
No one claims that everything’s within the grasp of human comprehension. No one has claimed that they can understand the workings of the entire universe. Science books don’t “teach” that, and nor do “we” think that, not outside of poor manjit’s fervid imagination. Reality is a vast thing, and how can anyone ever presume to say that?
But the realist and the rationalist does say that what is so far outside of the grasp, we will seek to know and understand; but until we’ve actually known and understood a thing, we won’t presume to pretend to know about it. Plain simple honesty, is all.
———-
“judging by the incoherent, non sequitur response/s to them by AR and obliquely here by Brian”
manjit’s hilarious. He has this habit of routinely saying that he’s “eviscerated” arguments, when he hasn’t even substantially addressed them. Same thing here. He grandly announces that my comments that squarely addressed his, are “incoherent”, and “non sequiturs” — except, he hasn’t even addressed them. In his mind, his thinking up words like “eviscerated”, and “incoherent”, and “non sequitur”, are adequate rebuttal to substantial arguments!
Here’s the thing. This man is demonstrably and demonstratedly lacking in integrity. That has been actually shown, multiple times. So, given that what we’re dealing with here is a fundamentally dishonest person, therefore it is reasonable to assume that his tall claims of spiritual visions are lies as well.
So, this weirdo haunts internet forums, self-aggrandizing himself with tall claims about all manner of visions and “experiences”. And that’s the beauty of “spirituality”, people often take him at his word. I did myself, for the longest time. And since he’s gotten by for so long by lying through his teeth, and getting away with it, that he imagines that simply making empty claims will work every time. For instance when he claims that he’s “eviscerated” their arguments, and that their arguments are “incoherent” — except, far from showing that’s so, manjit’s not even addressed those at all.
———-
“It is NOT the mystic who claims the GAPS in SCIENCE prove there is a God or divinity – it is the religiously minded materialist ATHEIST who is making the FALSE claim that science DISPROVES there is a God or divinity.”
Haha, our poor compulsive liar, lying through his teeth again.
In this case, it is this Douthat person, the author of the book that Brian’s reviewing, who’s demonstrably made God-of-the-Gaps arguments. Demonstrably so.
So that is what Brian had been talking about, and I as well. We’re addressing Douthat’s clearly written words here, that Brian’s directly quoted.
(Maybe poor manjit does not understand what is a fallacious God of the Gaps argument? Could be. Man’s an ignorant half-wit, underneath that surface polish of his. No matter, if he asks, we’ll be happy to enlighten him.)
———-
“The mystic claims, actually, evidence of Divinity is beyond duality, beyond thought, beyond concept and definitely beyond science. It is a PURELY experiential, ontological, existential thing known within their very BEING. THAT is their “proof” or evidence of the Divine.”
Poor manjit lacks the wits to understand why that proof doesn’t work.
That proof doesn’t work even for the sincere seeker of truth that’s themselves experienced such. Even for someone that’s experienced such themselves, that’s just data, that’s just the first step to figuring out a worldview that incorporates such. To imagine that such constitute “proof” is risible. (And of course, there’s no question of this working in context of someone else’s claims of their alleged experiences, which might well be outright lies, which very often *are* outright lies.)
This is pure Dunning-Kruger territory.
———-
“It is not the mystics who claim the GAPS in scientific explanations prove there is a God or divinity, but rather the materialists claim there are no GAPS and that consciousness and the universe have been fully explained and that there is no room for God.”
No, that’s a strawman. No one claims that. And that isn’t what the God of the Gaps fallacy is.
Haha, it’s exactly as I thought. Poor manjit does not even understand the God of the Gaps fallacy, and just why it is a fallacy. He clearly does not understand how the burden of proof works. In short, he does not understand the basics of rational thought and rational discourse.
———-
“They know the reality of “God” or the “Divine” through their very being, not logic. This is an ontological issue, not epistemological.”
Haha, no, that is not an “ontological” issue. That is halfwittery, is all.
First, I completely reject the claims of manjit himself, of having experienced that sort of thing, given that the man’s a serial liar, that is DEMONSTRABLY lacking in integrity. Anyone can make tall claims.
And second, even should someone actually experience this knowing-the-divine-with-their-being, even that is just data, and no more than the first step of uncovering a worldview that incorporates such. Even when actually experienced by oneself.
Poor ignorant manjit. So ignorant he does not know how ignorant he is. So stupid he does not know how stupid he is. Again, pure Dunning-Kruger territory.
———-
“the religiously minded materialist falsely claims science disproves there is a God, despite there being HUGE GAPS in this theory”
Haha, there it is again, in plain view. A fallacious reversal of the burden of proof. A misunderstanding of what atheism is. And a misunderstanding of what the God of Gaps fallacy amounts to. Not to mention a strawman, a lie, about what he represents as being claimed.
———-
“You are like this cup — so full of ideas that nothing more will fit in. Come back to me with an empty cup.”
Haha, the irony of this old Suzuki chestnut being paraded out now. That’s basically our manjit in a nutshell. Demonstrably ignorant. Demonstrably stupid. And yet so full of himself that he will not learn, he will not correct himself, even when instruction is presented to him on a platter, repeatedly.
———-
“All in all, the very simple and basic argument I’ve made here, which has apparently caused confusion and incoherency in AR and Brian”
No, we’ve seen through manjit’s lies, and manjit’s own incoherence, and CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED SUCH, MULTIPLE TIMES.
Poor manjit, once again, seems to think that merely labelling someone else’s arguments as “confused” and “incoherent” — without actually showing how that is so — is adequate rebuttal.
———-
“THIS VAST, INCOMPREHENSIBLE, GLORIOUS, MAGNIFICENT reality……comprehended by your minds and intellects?”
It is manjit that claims such, not “us”. We know what we know, and we know what we do not know. We’re not the mountebanks claiming to know more than we actually know. We’re not the ones making these tall claims.
@ Sant 64
>> ….. , I recall an ex-satsangi making one of the best online critiques of “the path” ever: “It’s a wonderful day, and you’re enjoying life…and suddenly the thought comes to you that you”re a satsangi on the RS path….and now all the joy and freedom you were feeling disappears, and your situation in life is now a problem (get to 3rd eye, get master’s darshan, do simran, get to sach khand somehow).<< People marry with their expectations and makes others responsible for the delivery and if the outcome doesn't suit them, they blame the other and in the end separate. Tjhat is how people chose and deal with marriages and marriage partners but also with Guru's who are made responsible for THEIR expectations. and if they don't ... and the never do ... they are blamed as being this or that They have tried even the same in higher education ...not delivering the needed effort, lacking the tallent and even the desire , they tried to make the professors seen as responsible for their own shortcomings. This is a generalisation ...but ..first .. find out whethjer you were a "perfect" student" ...BEFORE finding the cause elsewhere.
Methinks somebody overestimates their noise to signal ratio, and underestimates their obvious cluelessness.
Methinks somebody overestimates their noise to signal ratio, and underestimates their obvious cluelessness.
Posted by: manjit | February 21, 2025 at 10:46 AM
————
There it is again. Just baldly say it’s “noise”, and just simply say it’s “clueless” — without actually showing that, and without even addressing any of that — and bingo, the argument is won, and the issue settled! (At least in the delusions of our resident blowhard.)
A lot of swell comments here today. I think I can help a COMMON doubt:
Q: How do you know if what I saw while in meditation is really of the divine?
A: The path of the divine Ones is arduous. As when we begin, there instantly is a period of Recession. Because in the beginning we have NO proof of inner experience, hence the reason to adhere to the practice prescribed by the Guru (True Sat Guru). This period may last longer than years for some. Gaining NO results, as it is difficult to even sit in one spot for an hour, let alone the prescribed 2 1/2 to 3 hour stretch. The Great Master stated; “that before one will have viable proof for one’s self he must cross the inner sky, clouds, star and moon. And see the workings of Karma in the region Trikuti. But without this initial relentless effort, seedlings may never even sprout.”
Do well, and go in peace!
Speaking of AI, anyone tried Grok? I just did, and I feel Grok way outperforms ChatGPT.
https://x.com/i/grok