Back to God through high-tech?

Translated from Dutch. View the original post here

Very nice and very good broadcast of Tegenlicht. I pay again with pleasure my contribution VPRO!
For a few years, data is the new holy grail. It is often even called the 'new oil'.

That data is also used to create a lot of artificial intelligence.
One of the speakers in the documentary says 'artificial cleverness' because it remains a computer
which is very good at arithmetic and increasingly good in language.

In his latest film, the Tegenlight episode 'Technology as Religion', Busstra seeks an answer to the question of whether, now that his faith in a biblical God has fallen apart, technology might be able to solace and, in that quest, bites himself into the notion of 'dataism'. That term was coined in 2013 by journalist David Brooks, in an article in The New York Times. Dataism at Brooks stood for the 'philosophy' that big data would mean the end of our limited, intuition and experience-based approach to reality. What works and what does not, what is good for us and what is not, what we think of something and even what we like and what not — the computer powered with endless data knows better than ourselves and will lead us into a world of optimal shared knowledge, harmony and happiness.

The computer calculates and calculates and thus can win chess grandmasters by quickly calculating all chess setups ever.
The mathematics professor shows with a relatively simple arrangement that he can make the chess computer completely “crazy”.
The computer could see with a tiny bit of human insight that it's not going to work. But it's a computer and not a human.

So we get to 'the hard problem' What is consciousness and how do we get consciousness into that computer?
So it's not the case that when you build a humanoid, a consciousness is automatically included.
The hard problem is currently seen as one of the greatest scientific challenges.
Where is the consciousness and how do we make it after. Briefly, through the bend.

Wikipedia:

Consciousness is elusive

According to Colin McGinn's new mysterianism, consciousness remains a mystery that will never be unraveled by human intelligence. This is also called cognitive closure. [17] Other 'mysterianists' think that understanding of consciousness is beyond our present human mind, but believe that consciousness will become more understandable by future developments in the science and technology. Steven Pinker is also a supporter of the new mysterianism, although he would give up his position when a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness comes up with a stunningly new invention of consciousness; so that it all suddenly becomes clear. [18]

Consciousness is illusionary

Philosophers such as Daniel Dennett, [19] Stanislas Dehaene [20] and Peter Hacker [21] oppose the idea of the problem, that there is no problem. These theorists argue that once we fully understand consciousness, we will realize that the problem is unreal.

Dennett, unlike Chalmers, indicates that consciousness is not a fundamental property of the universe, and instead, according to him, it will be fully declared as a present natural phenomenon, reduced to, for example, matter. Instead of involving the non-physical, as he explains, consciousness plays a game with people so that it appears to be non-physical, and compares it to magic. [22] To show how we deceive ourselves into overestimating consciousness, he describes a phenomenon called change blindness. A visual process that reflects the failure, in terms of discovering differences in alternating images. Also in his book called: Consciousness declared, he describes a term to undermine the problem (English: Intuition pump). It's a thought experiment to allow a thinker to use intuition, to construct an answer to a problem.

Critics of Dennett's approach like David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel assume that he completely ignores the subjective aspect. This has led to opponents Dennett's book declaring consciousness, also called The consciousness ignored or the consciousness passed away, this is also discussed in his book.

Non-materialistic
In the documentary Mr. Kastrup speaks. Also a real scientist. He says: We should not seek consciousness in materialim. It's not a construct of a gray matter or our body. It's not a construct of anything materialistic at all. We're looking in the wrong place.

An important role in Busstra's film is played by philosopher and AI scientist Bernardo Kastrup. Kastrup, born in Brazil, worked at CERN. Recently he leads a foundation that aims to promote an idealistic science. Kastrup's ideas are not average. The reality we perceive is only the representation of a spiritual state, says Kastrup. Consciousness is not the product of physical processes, it is exactly the other way around: matter is created by mind. The whole universe is one cosmic consciousness, and the relation of our individual consciousness to that collective consciousness is similar to how in one suffering from multiple personality disorder one's own personality (cosmic consciousness) relates to the different subpersonalities (the individual).

The core of his story is above:

Matter is created by mind

I just dissected it.

1. Consciousness is not the product of physical processes, it is exactly the other way around: matter is created by mind.
2. Het hele universum is één kosmisch bewustzijn,
3. en de verhouding van ons individuele bewustzijn tot dat collectieve bewustzijn is vergelijkbaar met hoe bij iemand die aan een meervoudige persoonlijkheidsstoornis lijdt de eigen persoonlijkheid (het kosmische bewustzijn) zich verhoudt tot de verschillende deelpersoonlijkheden (het individu).

Everything you feel, see and experience comes from the outside is the theorem.
It arises from a great cosmic whole which gives us all as individuals a consciousness that
provides us with an individual lens on reality. Or as you like, a personal perspective.
If we die, that opening closes and we go back to the whole. Whatever that may be.

The 'evidence'

Kastrup refers to quite different research to explain the death of materialism — and hence the dataistic 'ideology' that consciousness is algorithmic —. Recent research into brain activity in subjects under the influence of psychedelics had the remarkable outcome that at the moment when the experience was most intense, very little brain activity was measured: an outcome that at first sight can be misaligned with physical principles and according to Kastrup points out — and Busstra follows him in this — that consciousness is not a physical process in the brain. 'I recently own an Aya huasca session done, 'says Busstra (a group meeting where a hallucinogenic drink is taken — red.). “It's not in the film, but it has influenced the film.”

God?

Hans Busstra thank you for creating this masterpiece!


#VPRO #backlight #dataism #tv #science #religion








The broadcast:

• https://www.npostart.nl/vpro-tegenlicht/24-01-2021/VPWON_1322203