Though I have always believed in a higher purpose, I have done so within the confines of many established religions and outside of them. I am an officially baptized Catholic, though, I have been apart from that organized practice since my early youth. Since then, I have since moved in and out of other organized forms of spiritual practices. In all of them, I have met individuals who, appeared to me, to have an inner fire of that higher purpose, which, I instinctively felt and still feel in my life. It is their flame that has kept the ember in my soul aglow, otherwise, that ember would have died out long ago leaving a lump of the proverbial coal, that, this bad boy richly deserves. I have experienced that flame outside of the organized systems of worship as well. It is one aspect of the human condition that has kept me buoyed in dark times (this is one of the darkest I’ve experience, for so many, and, for so many reasons), otherwise, I will surely have sunk, never to resurface, in my despair.
This note is about the season, whose namesake Jesus Christ, under whose name a whole body of thought has evolved. In my limited understanding of what was central within this body of thought ( which is common to many other religious schools of thought) that I would like to talk about. That core, no matter the dressing, is the belief in love and compassion for our fellow beings. This simple principle, more than many other more elaborate exercises of mental gymnastics, exposes the monsters in our midst. Perhaps, this might be a premise for my Christmas meditation.
I will start by going over some contrasting ideas within Christmas messages of other thinkers that I have recently read, which, I have yet to fully absorb. Put in my two bits, which, will at least provide me with a direction for further thought.
I will start with a piece with, perhaps, a lighter feel to it, by the always thought provoking Ben Bartee, titled: ‘A Christmas Story: OpenAI Ambivalent on White Genocide’. This article dealt with ideas of morals and seaking computer generated AI responses to these thoughts. The unsurprising inhuman results were not such a surprise to me. A good summary from a reader response was:
I laughed when I read that report.
But, I'm not a robot. Maybe AI has been granted a sense of humour and is teasing us!
Or AI isn't very intelligent, along with its programmers, and yet it will eventually be granted powers over us.
In the meantime, I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas.
I liked how Zarayna framed this topic. I replied with the following:
Maybe, the appearance of "intelligence" in verbal replies does not make AI smart. Perhaps a few tweeks of 0's and 1's in a neural net makes AI change its answers to appear it has some moral stance. Perhaps, AI is strong on "artificial" and short on "intelligence". I don't put much stock in relating human traits with a statistical (mostly regression based) algorithms at this time. Feed it more garbage and it spews: words, music, art, etc.. which may fool us into loving the machine ,and, forget what being human is about, perhaps, we never knew. Regardless of my limitations, it will take a lot more for me to "anthropomorphize' algorithms. It's fun to think about it though.
Regardless of my personal thoughts of the inadequacies and dangers of AI, there are those who would use them now for life and death decisions. This has probably always been the case, the A-bomb comes to mind. An example of this is the current humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and Israel. Israel is, supposedly, using AI to conduct their current genocidal war. I doubt it actually independently conducts this atrocious war. Who knows, this might be used as an excuse later to give the decision makers some form of deniability. Regardless, for me, this is an area that I will need to meditate on. It surely does not square up to the message of this season. In this area, many masks have fallen of and the monsters exposed. This has certainly been the case in so many situations lately.
The second piece is from, the always steadfast, Vanessa Beeley. It is totally different than the previous one, coming from the more rarefied realm of AI. This one is from the mud from which we all emerged. It is about the plight of the Palestinians. It, seems to me, to be a Christmas appeal, more than anything else. It seem an appeal for us to live up to being human. If you can read her article and see her pictures, and, not see how this so thoroughly trampled the principles of the season. I am afraid this article can only cause you unpleasantness. You need to move to other places where you can be stroked more appropriately. Being stroked is not conducive for meditation.
This message has been related, to us, by so many good and thoughtful people I could type them without end in this note; however, I would be remiss if I don’t indicate a few more recent contributions that has helped me to meditate on this matter:
Chris Hedges: The Genocide in Gaza, The Cost of Bearing Witness
Gabor Mate: Speaks out about Palestine and Israel
Our brothers and sisters from Gaza and Israel have seen and experienced horrors perpetrated, not in the name of principles, that, we should hold as defining the best of what it means to be human, instead, it is for: greed, lies, bigotry and all other forms of base human nature. Many of us recognize these weakness should not be the basis from which a society should arise. Sadly, the power is not in the hands of these people. It’s even stranger to realize, these inhuman acts are perpetrated by a very few, bearing the hallmark of the elitists bloody hand. This is certainly something I need to meditate on as well.
I was going to include a section on tyranny, so blatantly exposed in the last few years all over the world; however, I felt we have all at least been made familiar with it and as a subject for meditation now, is probably less impactful.
I will end this with something that keeps me grounded. I had a small interaction with someone, someone that could be any of us, who touched me with a simple human statement. I wrote a small note about it awhile back (I actually linked the wrong note, here is the one I was thinking about, though, the previous one is not entirely incongruent). It is also something I will meditate on this season. Perhaps we all need to pay attention to the sea of smaller things that is the backdrop of human existence. My meditation on this will hopefully keep me grounded.
Merry Christmas.
You are top notch in my book - somebody with a bit of humility and the wisdom to learn from mistakes made in the past. We all got lessons to learn - if not - why would we be alive in the first place?
~
Peace!
Ken