The "AI" Litmus Test Fail: Is it caused by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Projection? Managerialism?

I am intrigued by the Litmus Test failure of so many self-identified Christians to discern the grossly net-evil intent driving the current (post November 2022) wave of so-called AI. I want to understand it. 

"It's just a tool" - they say. Yes, and so are all the instruments of mass surveillance and population control "just tools"; from secret police and death squads, to smear campaigns, covert propaganda, and infiltration/ subversion. 

Of course, there are always potentially useful aspects to any tool, bureaucracy, technology - but so what? You can use thumbscrews to hold the door open, or a cosh as a paper weight. You need to ask - what are they designed for, how will they be used.  

The real questions at issue are things like: why did the global Establishment spend trillions of dollars on developing, launching, and implementing these "AI" technologies; what results are they intending to achieve from their investment; and what functions will they actually be deployed for, in the world as it actually is? 

Clearly; it is very important to some people with a lot of power and money, that these AI technologies be adopted and used very widely - whether they work well or not, whether we want them or not. 

Then, from our spiritual and Christian point of view we need to ask - honestly, and by learning from past experience - what will be the overall effect of mass usage of AI-technologies: what will they (on average) do to the way people think, Western society and its institutions, our attitude to the world, our aspirations?

Does the spread of AI technologies lead towards a more spiritual and creative, personal, loving and Christian perspective - or towards ever-more this-worldly manipulative materialism? 

To ask is to answer. 

 

The only honest conclusion from such questions regarding the evil provenance of AI, the fundamentally untruthful propaganda surrounding its emergence and spread (e.g. the word-concept "intelligence!), the coercive and totalitarian implementation - is that this kind of AI is a massive strategy designed to do harm of many kinds. 

Whether you personally believe you are personally exempted from general harm, that you can surf this wave of evil to your own advantage - well this is another matter altogether. 

But even if you can, and even if you actually do make the best of a societal state of waxing corruption (gaining more money, prestige, or power for yourself, perhaps?) - this does not excuse you when you argue in favour of what should recognized as a malign plan.

Otherwise you are no better than a stereotypical war profiteer; one who uses his influence (fasle information, bribery, blackmail etc.) to cause, expand and continue destructive wars - so that you personally can do well out of it. Even if some war is good for you here-and-now, does not mean that war is good in itself - and you ought not to believe or say that it is. 

We cannot defend ourselves against evil unless we recognize evil. Apologists for "AI" are not just harming themselves but others in failing to acknowledge an obvious and major demonic scheme. 

Why, then, do they do this? I think the reasons are psychological - not spiritual. 

There is, I think, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome at work. 

I discern that some of the most vocal advocates of AI themselves actually fear AI; AI makes them afraid - and they respond by trying to make friends with AI - they take the side of AI, defend it against its critics. 

I think this befriending, like the Stockholm Syndrome it so much resembles, is fear induced - a response to a threat they perceive to be potentially deadly, and inescapable. 

(You cannot beat 'em, so you might as well join Them.)  

One reason I think pro-AI advocacy is often fear-induced, is that such people project their fear onto others - inappropriately, wrongly. They taunt that those who do not embrace AI are afraid of AI!

But this is patent nonsense in general and specifically. Fear of AI is far from normal - which is why so much propaganda must be expended on trying to generate fear (via innumerable mass media fictions about evil AIs, and AI dystopias).

In real life the overwhelming response to AI is on a spectrum from moderate irritation and boredom, to mainstream everyday careerist attempts at exploitation of "the latest trendy thing". 

Therefore such an accusation of fear is a dead giveaway, a projection onto others of something within oneself - often emanating from those who really feel, personally, threatened by replacement or oppression with AI technologies. 

For instance those who hope (like generations before them) to escape this fate by vaulting-over the threat into a managerial situation: to position themselves as expert and enthusiastic "AI managers" in their particular field. 

To adopt an accusatory or "therapeutic", stance to those who see the evil motivation behind AI is classic managerialism! 

The managerial way of dealing with dissent is that real world (and spiritual) problem is reframed into emotions... 

The problem is not the global Establishment-driven mandatory AI take-over;  the "real" problem is those who criticize or resist AI, or who decline to engage with it. "They must have something wrong with them". 

AI-resisters are assumed to be ignorant, weak, or frightened - and the managerial answer is they need to be educated, soothed, or mocked and shamed - until they fall in line, and do what is good for them.

If you regard yourself as a Christian, and are currently an advocate of AI - you are Missing The Obvious; and it is time to take a step back. It's never too late to repent, and all spiritual learning from experience is a positive gain. It's what we are here for, after all.     

 

The AI ("Artificial Intelligence") agenda: Evil works mainly by doing things to people's *minds* - not their bodies

An AI-generated image of "nice AI versus evil AI" - 

naturally, necessarily, both AI images are clearly (and seductively) evil

I am not saying, because it is not true - that our bodies and the physical material world are irrelevant to the workings of evil. 

On the contrary; the material is always spiritual (but not vice-versa). However the workings of evil are primarily on the mind, not the body - because evil is primarily engaged in a spiritual war on God and creation. 

It is one of the many deceptions of evil to induce people to take the common attitude of focusing on the physical and material aims and consequences of evil - rationalizing this by emphasizing that it is the most urgent thing that is needed to fix...

The excuse being that after people are "safe" from such-and-such a threat (war, mass immigration, economic destruction, poisoning of food and environment etc), then will be the proper time to transfer our attention and efforts towards the spirit. 

Yet this is wrong and fatally mistaken. Not just because the time of safety will, in practice, never come - and we will instead struggle from one engineered existential material threat to the next, and the next...

But also because the material threats cannot, and will not, be dealt with until after the endemic spiritual disease of Western Civilization has been identified, acknowledged, and self-treated.

Spirit must come first, or else the desired material changes will not come at-all. 

As many people have often noted; it is not usually (in principle) difficult to deal with the physical threats of evil - it is known how to do this; and the problem is that we do not actually do what would work. 

However; how this situation arose and prevails (i.e the situation that we do not, in practice, solve soluble-problems) is regarded as a superficial and trivial matter (to be dealt with after the potentially-lethal problems have, somehow, been dealt-with)  - when in reality it is the pointer towards the very essence of our civilizational malaise. 

Consequently we see such insane absurdities as the vast, colossal, genuinely titanic levels of analysis, discussion, prediction, guidance... with respect to campaigning and voting in the US Presidential election, including among people who purport (and suppose themselves) to be first-and-foremost spiritually motivated!

Likewise, when it comes to commentary on the Establishment drive towards implementing AI (artificial Intelligence) in ever more domains of everyday life and socio-economic functioning; the focus is entirely on evaluating the validity of claims, and the material consequences in terms of unemployment and effective administration. 

Yet, behind the Establishment puppets and dupes who do all this implementing, and who devise the oceanic AI-related propaganda in novels, movies, plays, computer games etc; are demonic spirits for whom this agenda is primarily spiritual - not physical, not material, not civilizational. 

We need to focus on the strategy behind (or below) all the huge, persisting, multi-pronged tsunami of AI... The soft-sell of awareness-raising, arts and media depictions, the profit-luring, and the hard managerial compulsion - beneath this lies a whole underworld of demonic scheming that intends to corrupt human Minds - not just control or destroy human bodies. 

Unless this evil purpose of mental shaping with respect to AI is acknowledged and identified - then human beings are just mind-putty for the agenda of evil. 

"AI ethics" scaremongering is part of the totalitarian PSYOP

The global Establishment "AI" project began almost exactly three years ago - with the multi-national, multi-pronged, coordinated mega-launch on 30th November 2022.

The "AI" project has, of course - like all such*, tried to capture both of the side of the "debate" - by using some portion of its multi-trillion dollar budget to fund courses, qualifications, conferences, books, and jobs; that purport to discuss the "ethics" of this technology. 

Some of these "AI"-employees are techno-utopian apologists for "AI"; while others have the task of scaremongering.

"AI" scaremongering is done in such a way that the realities of this vast totalitarian project are obscured; and the categorically false assertions of "AI" are instead simply being-assumed to be true - by being used as the basis for the scaremongering!

In other words; the discourse variously called "AI ethics" (like the related field of "AI governance") is part of the PSYOPS that attempts (and successfully, it seems) to manipulate the masses into a state of bemused, terrified, passive and resigned acceptance of... whatever bad things "AI" brings. 

Some of the "ethicists" base their "concern" on evaluations of what is coming - very soon! 

These include assumptions that are smuggled in covertly, because they form the taken-for-granted basis of the ethical hand-wringing: 

1. Inevitability

2. Takeover from humans

3. Destruction caused by the technology

The assumption of "inevitability" hides the unimaginable trillions of tax dollars confiscated from the masses to fund the "AI" project - its massive computational infrastructure, the massive energy consumption, the countless reallocated and recruited "AI"-personnel in innumerable organizations...

And to bribe/force compliance upon all the major social institutions and corporations by a vast and coordinated program.

The assumption that "AI" will "takeover" from humans; hides that all actual decisions to (allegedly) "replace" people with computers, are made by humans.

Yet the background-assumption is that this planned takeover of human activities by "AI" technologies will - somehow - happen because of the technologies innate alleged-"power". 

The simple fact is that people make the decision; and when these humans decisions lead to "AI" takeover, this is because that human choice has been heavily propagandized, incentivized (by subsidies, tax-breaks etc), driven by legislation changes - and so forth. 

If "AI" is in any sense "inevitable" - then that inevitability is merely because enough people will respond to the enormous pressures and incentives that have been created via the colossal funding of the project and the compliance of the leadership class.  

Destruction: Software is stated to be the cause of the inevitable (i.e. planned) personal and social damage confidently-predicted to result from the "takeover" of "AI".

This tries to hide that the whole process of "AI"-replacing has been driven and enforced, top to bottom, by people.

And this includes the common appeal to "market forces" and geopolitical competition, that supposedly compel corporations and governments to implement "AI" technology - or else be overwhelmed by those who adopt "AI"...

This assumes what is false: that "AI" really does or soon-will replace humans more efficiently and effectively in significant functional roles. 

It also takes no account that the "market" for "AI" has been deliberately and artificially constructed by totalitarian fiat using coercively-confiscated resources. 

If the marketplace had instead been orientated towards effectiveness and efficiency in achieving real-world outcomes; then it would not, indeed could not, have led to "AI". 

So; the "AI" project serves to conceal and deny a vast program of (yes - inevitable! if the totalitarian Establishment get Their way) planned personal and societal harm; under cover that all this has been done "by the AI" - and in a way that is unstoppable and impersonal.

In a way that is nobody's fault. 

No person or group is to blame for anything!

It All Just Happened..

(And "how sad", say the AIethicists...)

The lie is that this is not really people who are doing the destroying by means of a colossal organized and resourced international strategy; but instead it is the software that is doing this to us humans!

(When we suffer or die; we are meant to cry out from our hearts: "Woe is me, my heart bleeds! But what can mere Men do against such impersonal necessity?")

Behind the advertised ethical "concern" lies a raft of made-up, dishonest and propagandistic assertions about the functional efficiency and effectiveness of (post-November 2022) "AI". 

The truth of these assertions is another thing which is assumed, in the face of a complete lack of serious and honest evidence; and fundamentally rooted in the categorical impossibility of the claims.

  

My point here is clarify that those who are put-forward in mainstream discourse as "ethically concerned" by the "implications" of "AI" - including those who scaremonger on the basis of false assumptions concerning the technology's effectiveness and impersonal-inevitability - are themselves part of the coordinated AI-PSYOPS. 

+++

*It seems that "AI" project (in all its facets) has been the primary - single largest and most sustained - strategy of the globalist leadership class over the past three years. 

"AI" is the current main mechanism of progressing Ahrimanic evil; those in the leadership class who desire a wholly materialist society of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

Meanwhile, since early 2022, the "Agents of Chaos" (who pursue the spiteful and destructive agenda of Sorathic Evil); have been focussing their efforts on escalating everywhere-wars abroad plus intra-national violence at home. 

Although these two types of evil are increasingly in conflict among the leadership class of the world; they seem to have reached an uneasy truce on the subject of "AI"; based on opposite understandings of what "AI" will actually do. 

The totalitarians (falsely) believe that AI can be the basis of a world-administering bureaucracy that is both cheaper and more controllable than the current armies of managers and clerks.

On the other side, the Agents of Chaos (correctly) realize that "AI" cannot - therefore will not - perform this functional job; but will instead destroy social functioning, generate mass misery and death, and collapse civilization into that disorder they crave.

So, at present; both sides of the Global Establishment have reasons to continue to facilitate, fund, and propagandize the ongoing "AI" takeover - which is why you never hear an Establishment voice that is critical of "AI" for the right reasons and from the right assumptions. 

Why "AI" is qualitatively worse than the internet/ social media/ smartphones

People apparently have difficulty understanding (or explaining to themselves) just why post-November 2022 "AI" is qualitatively worse than the previously-existing computer-media phenomena - such as the internet, social media and smartphones. 

The answer is quite simple: upfront and no secret. 

As usual; probably because evil must be invited into the heart in order to damage the soul; the agents of strategic evil always tell us what they intend for us, before they try to do it. 

In this case, "They" have told us explicitly that the purpose of "AI" is to replace human thinking, judgment, creativity - and loving-relationships. 

Again: "AI" is intended to replace humans in the realms of:

1. Thinking

2. Judgment

3. Creativity

4. Loving-relationships

In other words, the explicit intent of "AI" is to replace human beings in their most distinctive and spiritually-highest aspects. 

And that is what people are agreeing-to, when they defend and promote the "AI" project. 

The fact (and I regard it as a simple and sure fact) that "AI" cannot replace human beings in these aspects is almost irrelevant to the purpose of "AI"; because the purpose does not depend upon "AI" actually being able to do these things; but only on convincing human beings that "AI" can do these thing. 

In sum; the reason for the tera-dollar investment and subsidy of "AI"; the mandatory top-down societal transformations, the colossal pro-"AI" career and status incentivization of the intellectual, technical, and managerial class...

Is simply that people will believe that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships.  

The endemic condition of AI-dolatry can therefore be defined the belief that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships. 

Because if you believe that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships; then you will almost-inevitably (sooner or later) conclude that "AI" should replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships.

The "should" follows the "can", because "AI" is (and has been grossly subsidized, at our expense, so as to be) quicker, easier, and more reliable than human beings. 

In other words; if we believe "AI" can do X as well as (or better) than humans, then it follows that "AI" should do X.  

To conclude: It is the belief about "AI" that does the spiritual harm to human beings. 

We have been told explicitly what "AI" is intended to do, and there is a trillions-dollars international program tasked with implementing this...

Thus, those who justify and advocate "AI" just-are agreeing-with, justifying and advocating; the actual and on-going totalitarian strategy of replacing human beings in their most distinctive and highest aspects. 

This is the side the AI-dolators have chosen, in the spiritual war of this-world. 

And who could deny that the global totalitarian "AI" project and strategy has (so far) been overwhelmingly successful in convincing great swathes of people (especially in the managerial, technical, and intellectual classes) that "AI" can (and therefore, implicitly, should) replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships? 

In three short years; AI-dolatry has become not just statistically normal; not just a functional requisite for tens of millions; not just ubiquitous and unavoidable on and around the internet and social media; not just socially-rewarded...

But AI-dolatry has become positively-valued. 

Given the provenance, intent, and effects of "AI"; we have here an explanation for the observation of a unique and qualitatively-enhanced nature of personal spiritual corruption; directly resulting from the high and increasing prevalence of AI-dolatry. 

Tron: Ares at the cinema - brief notice, and consideration of its "AI" agenda

Yesterday I went to see Tron: Ares at the cinema, and found it exciting and enjoyable: a solid three star (out of five) movie of the "worth watching" category. 

I had not seen the male lead Jared Leto before, or at least I don't recall seeing him; and I found him a very good actor with definite screen presence. He seems to have considerable scope - including understated comedy. 

The rest of the acting was okay or decent; except female lead Greta Lee who was moderately sub par - neither a good actor, nor having star quality; but this didn't much matter in the action-orientated context of the movie. 

What I found interesting as I left the cinema, was to reflect - yet again - on how often a modern mega-corporation with net-evil motivations, produces movies that at least seem to be about the intrinsically evil nature of modern mega-corporations... 

This was particularly strange, given that Tron: Ares has a happy (albeit cursorily so) ending which involves the intrinsic evil being overcome, and a mega-corps made net-beneficial to humanity - simply by having a nice person in charge! 

The threadbare notion of a benign dictator "setting all to rights" in an intrinsically corrupt world; is still (for lack of alternatives, perhaps) a governing wishful delusion for many people. 

Witness that (albeit very brief!) episode earlier this year when so many people expressed intense and joyful - and insanely optimistic - fantasies of just this kind, when DT became US president. 

The other aspect I found intriguing was how Ares frames the "AI" aspect; given that this is currently (and during the production of this movie) perhaps the numero uno socio-political strategy of the totalitarians in the the Western Establishment. 

In sum: throughout Tron: Ares "AI" is assumed to be - and is presented as - functionally powerful, in a way that it just cannot be. 

The whole world of "AI" is visually-depicted as overwhelmingly vast and sophisticated, its progression and take-over happening with a stream-roller inevitability - a combination that induces in the audience a kind of awed-helplessness. 

Furthermore; it is both shown in the script and explicitly asserted that these "AI" systems are genius-like; in that they are creatively problem-solving. 

This superhuman creativity is harnessed to the usual left-progressive agenda - which is to reduce/eliminate particular forms of human suffering and environmental damage. 

Because of "AI"'s steamroller effectiveness, this fantasy of progress is given an apparent inevitability... if only we can ensure "the right people" are "in charge". 

And - most strikingly - we are (yet again) shown that "singularity-moment" whereby sufficiently-advanced "AI" will develop agency, autonomy, human characters - including motives, feelings, and morals. 

Since I understand these as attributes of Beings; and because "AI" is not a Being - also Beings are eternal entities and cannot be manufactured -- then I know that this singularity stuff is either 100% incoherent impossible nonsense - or else an evil-motivated and -manufactured dishonest manipulation.  

But the singularity assumption also has a consoling spin; because, despite the probabilities of evil-AIs to contend with; it holds-out the hope of a world where (as in Tron: Ares) the conscious-AI agents can become our mutually-loving friends. 

In sum;

By funding and enabling the production of spectacular action movies that assume and depict nonsensical and impossible attributes of "AI" - the Establishment creates a halo around the actuality of that necessarily-destructive and function-destroying "AI" which is being rolled-out and implemented all over the world - in one of the biggest technological projects of all time.

At some level of this process, there are people (or, at least, sentient beings) who know perfectly well that the Hollywood depictions of the scope, nature and possibilities of "AI" have nothing whatsoever to do with the actuality.

At another level, the (qualified) techno-optimism of Tron: Ares reveals to me that the great mass of people who are involved in the Great "AI" Project - the AI-dolators - are literally deluded...

By literally deluded; I mean that (in the active and functional aspects of their thinking) the AI-dolators have a false understanding of what they are dealing with, and what they are doing. 

They may, somewhere in their memories, have a correct understanding of the nature and limits of so-called AI -- but, if so, this truth is cut-off, encapsulated from their everyday and working-life cognitive processing. 

(Such encapsulations are characteristic, indeed necessary, for modern mainstream thinking, as was described by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances. For example, both those who assume that reality is "out there" and objective (including most traditionalist Christians); and those who assume the only reality is subjective and individual - are both engaged in encapsulated delusional thinking.) 

Any truths about "AI" reality such people may once have grasped, have since been sealed-away in a watertight mental compartment; so that functionally-speaking they can and do believe the fantasy-hype that lies behind the media representations; and in practice they conflate such untruths with the mundane reality of multi-national mega-corps top-down-mandatory "AI"*.  

That, at any rate, is how I regard Tron: Ares. 

At one level it is an enjoyable and decently-made spectacle and drama; at another it is a work of deep and re-framing propaganda; at another level I can observe the propaganda working in myself - and thereby have the chance to learn something more about the Establishment agenda. 

    

*This is used in self-deceptive as well as publicly dishonest ways: "Yes, of course, we all know that This is the case... Look we acknowledged it Here..." While, in practice, taking zero account of such knowledge and acknowledgements. Thus someone who parrots phrases about the nature and constraints of current-"AI" - completely ignores these realities whenever reasoning or making decisions, and the fantasy-hype assumptions inevitably encroach-upon on and dominate both behaviour and rhetoric. 

Why So Many Kinds of intellectuals have been captured by "AI"

The vulnerability to "AI"-capture seems to run deepest among intellectuals - but this vulnerability extends across a very wide range of intellectual types - politicians, media executives, corporate managers, finance entrepreneurs, technocrats, academics, teachers, totalitarians, atheists and traditionally religious, New Age spiritual seekers... 

Indeed, no class or kind of intellectual persons seem to have much resistance to capture.

It seems that almost all have by now succumbed; and with those who have not succumbed... well, it seems like just a matter of "not yet"*.  

Why are intellectuals especially vulnerable?

My best guess is that intellectuals have always tended to engage with life via models; and models are abstract simplifications of the boundless complexity of reality. Such models include mathematics, sciences, politics, economics; and indeed all academic and bureaucratic subjects. 

This second-hand engagement via abstract simplifications is valuable insofar as the models are useful; albeit the usefulness of a model may not have been checked, and even if a model has been checked these checks are only retrospective (can only be retrospective). 

The prospective, future limitations of a model (which limitations are many and intrinsic exactly because it is an abstract simplification) are not knowable or predictable in advance; and indeed when the model has captured a person, the failures of a model will usually be denied, explained-away.  

The value of intellectuals is not that they understand Life, or The World, or The Universe, or God; but that they understand the model. 

Insofar as the model is useful or valued, so intellectuals are useful or valued. 

But the problem, the weakness, is that intellectuals (of all kinds) so-often depend for their position and self-esteem on maintaining the special value of second-hand understandings (of all kinds). 

One malign tendency among intellectuals is to assert the primacy of the model: that the model is itself The Thing being-modelled. 

And another tendency is to increase the abstraction and complexity of the model, partly to protect their own expertise - e.g. to keep the model difficult enough to elude external analysis and critique, and to impress/ bamboozle/ subordinate the layman. 

I mean that intellectuals are prone to elaborating or generating a complex model that covers ever-more ground. 

Indeed, intellectuals tend to press their models to such a degree of complexity and abstraction, that they themselves do not understand the model in which they claim expertise. 

Instead intellectuals may claim expertise in using the model.

So the situation arises that many intellectuals suffer the profound and existential disadvantages of a belief-in, a commitment to, the primacy of merely secondhand models of reality...

Yet these are models which the intellectuals themselves do not understand; instead these are models that the intellectual merely serves (or claims to serve).

This situation, although common, is wrong - is indeed evil; insofar as service to the un-understood, service to something whose nature is not known, is evil.  

So-called-AI is a cluster of abstract, highly complex, and un-understandable models of reality. 

There can be no expertise in understanding an "AI" model.  

As such; "AI" technologies suffer all the intrinsic disadvantages of all models; but "AI" also intrinsically lack the potential value (which is a pragmatic and retrospective value) of the most valid models.   

Therefore, the special vulnerability of intellectuals to capture by "AI" is in the first-place a consequence of the evil abuses of secondhand models as a way of relating to reality; secondly that "AI" models are of a model-type that cannot validly be used, since they are un-understandable. 

The answer to this situation is in striving to eschew un-understandable models of reality - and to reject their primacy; and to recognize that to be useful a model must genuinely be understood. 

Such a moral discipline will reject a great deal more than "AI" - but exactly that is necessary+. 

Because all abstract models of reality need to be simple enough that we genuinely understand them: and if we are to regard them as central to our lives, we need personally to understand them. 

It is not difficult, as a mental process. 

I believe that we all already-have a simple, innate and direct (because God-given) contact with primary Life and Reality. 

The intellectual deception is in demanding a more comprehensive, hence too-complex, typically too abstract, understanding - than that which is understandable and knowable.

In a nutshell; modern intellectuals of all stripes and types have become experts at self-validating, self-serving, self-deception; by pretending (for advantages of self-esteem, for claimed social expediency) to understand that which they do not understand...

Which is why intellectuals are so especially vulnerable to capture by the un-understandable models of "AI". 

_____

+ I mean that if someone tries to reject "AI" while retaining their commitment to some abstract, complex, un-understood model/s - then that person will end-up by embracing "AI". 

And this is exactly what has happened to so many intellectuals over the past four years. 

As they come to realize that "AI" is not qualitatively different from that-to-which-they-have-outsourced-their-thinking-and-judging; rather than rejecting their practice of outsourcing, such persons instead expand their outsourcing such as to include "AI". 

*NOTE: My concern here is spiritual. Of course; the effect of "AI" will be to hasten the destruction of Western Civilization. But in that resepct "AI" is just one of many, simultaneous and synergistic global strategies (e.g. everywhere war, financial parasitism, purposive economic and agricultural destruction, mass migration, the CO2 Climate agenda etc etc). And, after all, the West is by-now (and increasingly) the most extremely and unrepentantly evil civilization in world history - such that striving to "save" WC in the absence of a prior spiritual rebirth, entails a personal commitment to advance purposive evil. No: The most significant harm of "AI"-capture is spiritual: 1. spiritual outsourcing; and 2. spiritual outsourcing of almost the worst conceivable kind - its being evidently both addictive in the short-term, and purposively soul-destroying in a cumulative and self-stoking fashion. To observe more and ever-more once-respected persons, across the board of thinkers and intellectuals, so-willingly succumbing to AI-dolatry of one sort of another - is a spiritually-dismaying experience. I should add that although AI-capture is common across the board, and not confined to intellectuals; I believe that its spiritual damage is most severe and pervasive - and negatively transformative - among the intellectual class.  

Anything "AI" can do, is, fundamentally, Not Worth Doing or Better Not Done: A potentially valuable lesson of this Litmus Test

One thing about the Litmus Tests of our era is that they are learning opportunities: but more emphatically they are opportunities to learn something important and especially relevant to ourselves and this era of human history. 

This is because the very success of Litmus Test issues - the large degree of (often passionate) public support they attract - makes it evident that the "tasks" of recognizing their fundamentally evil falseness is one of especially great value.  

Even when we personally happen to be largely immune to the appeal of a specific Test, we can learn valuable lessons from considering the nature of their appeal - from considering what particular (maybe distinctive) modern weakness they are probing and exploiting. 

The current dominating Litmus Test is probably the (post-November 2022) "AI" project; and the lesson comes from observing and analysing the nature of its appeal - from studying what it is about "AI" that AI-advocates focus upon or enthuse about - including both its actual capabilities, claims of capabilities, and hoped-for effects and consequences.

Each of these have different causes; but I have noticed that when it comes to the actual capabilities of post-2022 "AI"; it is apparent that:

Whatever "AI" can do, ought Not to be done. 

Either because it is not worth doing, which covers a good deal. 

Or because it is actively harmful to the human spirit that this task be automated. 

To recognize this requires that we be able to detach our-selves from the here-and-now worldly imperatives, such as making a living while dwelling in a totalitarian System that has (increasingly strongly) net-evil aims, values, and methods.  

If this can be achieved, then we notice that "AI" is actually being-used for anti-loving and anti-creative purposes. 

(And for a Christian anti-loving and anti-creative means evil: it means an opposition to the nature of divine creation.) 

I mean that "AI"-systems are being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate human to human, and therefore any potential for genuine inter-personal relationships. 

Instead we get automated simulation. 

And "AI" is being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate from tasks any potential for genuine human creativity.   

Instead we get automated simulation. 

This is the actual effect of actually-existing "AI" systems. 

And on the flip-side there is the situation that anything "AI" genuinely does do, which is not a simulation - should not be done. 

This insight can be helpful because there are many aspects of modern life that are (whether in practice, or fundamentally) unavoidable and pervasive; but which we should spiritually recognize as intrinsically un-Good, evil. 

As so often, it is the clear spiritual recognition of a reality that is necessary - and that is the proper task of a Christian; and not our personal ability practically to eliminate that which is a necessity. 

Because, often there is nothing we can do to alleviate an evil necessity. 

But we can always recognize and acknowledge that a necessity is evil - and that is our proper task. 

Why are so many mainstream media concerning with the danger of takeover by evil A.I.s (artificial intelligences)?

I was watching the most recent 'Terminator' movie and I wondered - not for the first time - why 'Hollywood' has been so keen on 'warning' us about the perils of takeover by evil AIs (Artificial Intelligences). Probably my first recollection of this theme was the computer HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey; and there have been many examples since.

These cannot really be intended as serious warnings, since the same Establishment that funds major media is also engaged in a massive, unrelenting programme to introduce AI (e.g. the interlinked 'internet of things' aka. smart devices) - whether we like it or not. So what is going on?


The first idea might be along the lines of that apparent 'law' by which evil is 'required' to tell us what it is going to do to us, before it does it - as if our tacit consent is necessary.

I suppose this is the origin of the 'monologuing' of all the villains of stage and screen, who almost invariably do this to the hero before attempting to kill him (So, Mr Bond; after I have rushed off to deal with some urgent problem elsewhere, you will be cut in two by this slowly-moving laser beam which I have linked to...); and are then (notoriously) thwarted as a consequence of the delay.

But I think there must be more to it than that, particularly since AI is 'not a real thing'. Computers cannot think, have no will nor personality - and are never under any circumstances going to become living, conscious Beings...

So what is it all about?


My understanding is that the triumph of AI will not be when it becomes sentient, but when people believe it is sentient.

This is the crucial step in mass populations consenting to their own thought-control; which is the ultimate aim of the vast totalitarian bureaucratic System that already covers the world, and is continuously narrowing the mesh of its net to embrace as much of Life as possible.

Therefore my theory is that the evil AI is simply a plausible 'soft sell' of the core idea that there is such-a-real-thing as AI.


Given that it would be nigh impossible to convince modern people into believing that an AI could be the benign controller of a Utopian, it may be that dystopian movies about evil AIs are an indirect and more-plausible way of brainwashing the populace into believing that machines can become alive and conscious and potentially do nearly all of the things that humans currently do.

Once that crucial point has been got-across, then the next stage would be to get people to accept that things-called-AIs could be trusted to do things like drive cars and trains, pilot delivery drones,  fight enemies, do police and government surveillance etc. - so long as there is some kind of human 'supervision'.

Which would - inevitably, nowadays - be bureaucratic surveillance; since demon-serving Establishment seeks - ASAP and as a matter of urgent priority - to monitor and control everybody in the world by one single linked bureaucracy.


In a nutshell - the intent is that things-called-AIs would-be/ will-continue-to-be integrated int The Bureaucracy.

Then things would be set-up for the AIs to be blamed for whatever nasty things the world government bureaucracy has in store for us.

AI: the ultimate fall-guy! (i.e. one who is utterly obedient and who never answers back)


Note: This post is not arguing that AI is impossible. It assume it is impossible and I believe it is impossible; but I am not arguing the case here. The argument is a deep one, to do with the fundamental nature of life and consciousness - and it is not a matter of science; because scientific proof or demonstration depends on prior assumptions as to the nature of life and consciousness. We can't prove or disprove AI with 'evidence' until after we know what counts as evidence and how to interpret it.

"AI" is strategically about destruction, not control - Francis Berger's post, Laeth's comment

Following an insightful post on "AI" by Francis Berger; in the comments, Laeth produced a simple and convincing re-conceptualization of what lies behind this global strategy 

I have edited this excerpt. 

Ahrimanic refers to a type of totalitarian/ bureaucratic/ systemic evil, that is materialistic in assumptions and seeks omni-surveillance and thought control. Sorathic refers to a more advanced, negative, and purely-destructive evil; that is motivated a spiteful hatred of humans, life, and all manifestations of divine creation.

**

(Laeth's comment, edited)...

When all this started my intuition was that the diabolic element here was mostly Ahrimanic, that is, the objective was pure control. 

But more and more I think I was wrong about this (even if Ahrimanic forces were channelled to bring it to fruition). 

It seems more likely to me now that 'AI' is actually pure Sorathic envious evil. A big fraud at all levels that won't really even be useful for control, only to debase and destroy everything - from its enormous consumption of earthly energy for its functioning to the consumption of human energy from the engagement of people. An all consuming strategy, really. 

I try to avoid even seeing anything of AI or about it. I even try to avoid speaking too much against it, because I fear that too is me being sucked into its web. But it's now impossible to not find it: it's everywhere. Even normal, (and older) people, have started to talk about it (and in the exact terms the system wants them to). 

Yet even my tangential acquaintance with AI is enough to see that it's terrible at its purported higher objectives. It will just jumble up things with no direction, no purpose and no coherence - and any minimally intelligent person can understand that it's all nonsense. it cannot 'manage' anything. 

If given any power to manage a system, AI will just run it to the ground'; and I see now that that it its goal. To destroy any possibility of management, while consuming every possible resource that could be used to correct it. 

I think Ahriman was tricked too, in other words. Full Sorathic destruction is its only route and possibility of it.

**

My Comment: This immediately struck me as correct. 

The globalist totalitarian Establishment who sustain "The System" is being lied-to and tricked-into the Trillions-Dollar-Project of AI, by demonic beings whose purpose includes the destruction of The System. 

Once pointed-out (but it needed pointing out!), the strategy seems clear. 

Because (given the actuality of AI, of what it is, of how it works) this is the only possible outcome of widespread usage of, and therefore inevitable dependence upon, so-called AI. 

AI is a kind of mind virus that has been introduced into the consciousness of managers, at almost every level - from national and multi-national leaders down to the multitudes of middling-myrmidons. 

In the immediate short-term, all the institutional incentives are lined-up to focus upon introducing and developing and expanding AI - regardless of its effect on institutional functionality. 

But in the medium to long term; AI will destroy management itself, in a very direct fashion; along with institutional functionality. 

So the mind virus of AI functions like an addictive drug that rewards its user by short-term euphoria, at the cost of actively killing the user. 

My reading of Western social trends is that the Sorathic agenda has been gaining ground since the summer of 2020; when the Ahrimanic-totalitarian global triumph of the Birdemic coup (with its international lockdowns); began to yield to the intrinsically socially destructive policies of combining multivalent institutional antiracism with a renewal and acceleration of mass immigration. 

Since 2020; the Sorathic destructive agenda has been doubled-down-on by those who control the Western leadership class. Especially, it has caused/ sustained/ escalated war in Eastern Europe; then rolled-out to the Middle East; now (being attempted) in South Asia (also elsewhere). 

All this gratuitous and self-annihilating destruction (eg "sanctions" that damage the sanctioner more than the sanctioned!) is "sold" to the managerial classes of the world as assisting their globalist totalitarian goals (Great Reset, Agenda 2030 etc.). 

They are told that inducing societal chaos will create a desire for order, and thereby facilitate a further coup (on-top-of the successful early-2020 Birdemic coup) to enable a stable and lasting dictatorship of the Left.

Yet this was never possible; because the materialist Leftist ideology of the totalitarians is intrinsically negative, oppositional, hence destructive. 

Even in its earliest and partly-good manifestations; Leftism always had Sorathic evil as its Secret Master. This canker of the heart was evident in that, whenever totalitarian control was (briefly) established, it was inevitably followed by accelerating disorder and destruction.      

 

While there is an almost irresistible Schadenfreude induced by watching the managerial state enthusiastically implementing that self-destruct button which is AI; observers need to be mindful that evil does not cancel-out. 

As totalitarianism is destroyed by spiteful sadism, the process yields no increase in net-good in the world. 

Good comes from recognizing what is going on in the spiritual war of this world; rejecting it inwardly (i.e. repenting our complicity); and then spiritually affiliating to God and divine creation - by following Jesus Christ to that salvation which is resurrected eternal Heavenly Life. 

Is there any positive value to debating "AI"?

I have long been sceptical about the benefits of arguing; because the result of any significant argument is settled in advance by fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of that reality under discussions. 

Unless the metaphysical assumptions can first be acknowledged, then the argument will necessarily be futile or counter-productive - at least in the short-term.

(Sometimes an argument may have a delayed beneficial effect - that can happen.) 

But since "AI" is the current major project of the global totalitarian leadership, which they devised, launched (on November 30th 2022), and have implemented internationally and coercively (at a cost (probably) of tera-billions of dollars and vast quantities of energy) - then an argument on the subject can hardly fail to be revelatory of the nature of personal assumptions. 

And, thereby - by observing somebody's quality and strength of attitude towards the actuality of "AI"; we can sometimes discover which side that person has chosen to fight-upon, in the spiritual war of this world.

And I mean the actual side that person is actually on - regardless of his self-identification and self-image; because the vast majority of those who believe they oppose the mainstream of Leftist are in fact actively in service to that agenda of this-worldly ideologically-hedonic materialism.

This can be valuable; because "AI" is one of those Litmus Test issues; which evidently has a strong tendency either to reveal, or indeed actively to shape, a person's entire ideology. 

I have myself observed, in multiple instances, the way that a failure to understand and inwardly-reject the net-evil of the globalist "AI" project; crystallizes an individual into assumptions, attitudes, behaviours etc. that sustain the totalitarian Establishment project.  

In a spiritual sense, what is happening is that external evil can only enter our hearts, souls, inner selves... by invitation. 

But, when we do invite evil into our heart - and especially when we publicly apologize for, defend, and even promote evil...

Then this is a capitulation that (un-repented) Will Have (and demonstrably does have) rapidly adverse consequences.

We then Just Are a servant of evil, in the spiritual war; and it does not matter that we may suppose or advertise ourselves to be based, or Christian, or whatever.  

Insofar as it is helpful for our own spiritual quest to identify such people, and not to be misled by their surface protestations; then debating "AI" has value.

It can hep us learn something important about another person.  

But argument does not help, or very seldom - and may actually hinder - any intent of persuading such people to abandon their support of an obviously-evil mass project.

NOTE ADDED: As usual, the problem with this latest strategy of evil is that it is so pervasive, so lavishly funded, and so multiply-incentivized; that people who are (whatever their protestations) fundamentally this-worldly and action-orientated, cannot help but get on-board with it. "AI" advocacy, including pseudo-debate that accepts the fundamental assumptions offers (at least in the short term) many opportunities for enhanced status, influence, and a sliver of the money. Because the totalitarian System is almost ubiquitous, it can effectively be resisted "only" spiritually (not materially) and by individual persons (not organizations or institutions), and in their souls (not in socio-politics)... I put scare quotes around "only" because this is the issue at stake. The Issue wrt "AI" (as with other Litmus tests) is about whether or not the spiritual, the individual and the soul are genuinely to be primary in our own personal spiritual lives; whether or not we inwardly affiliate with God, Divine Creation and following Jesus Christ. What I personally find so dismaying is that So Many public-Christians will willingly (indeed eagerly) subordinate their inner commitments to external pressures and propaganda.   

What is it to be spiritually uncompromising? (With reference to the Christian Litmus Test Fail of so-called "AI")

A couple of years after becoming a Christian, I encountered the work of Fr Seraphim Rose - I warmed to him immediately, as he was a modern Westerner who had become an uncompromising and spiritually-dedicated Eastern Orthodox monk - while at the same time embodying a warm-hearted, loving nature.  

One of my greatest disappointments on becoming a Christian was the insipid worldly compromise of all the Christians I knew-of: they were, where it most mattered, spiritually indistinguishable from the mainstream of atheistic materialists. 

Seraphim Rose - with his ascetic and hermit-like life - was (it seemed to me) on a different and qualitatively higher level of holiness; that very unusually enabled him to discern clearly; and give full value to the depth, as well as breadth, of the modern spiritual malaise.

By contrast, other Christians I came across really did not seem to grasp the profundity and seriousness of our civilization's spiritual malaise. 

However; I fairly soon recognized that the monastic life - which attempts to live materially in a way that is compatible with spiritual understanding; is not an answer. 

Seraphim Rose was almost unique among monks in his warm-hearted asceticism; because other monks are either warm-hearted but worldly, deluded, often corrupt -- or else they may be genuinely ascetic but with a narrow, harsh and prideful rigidity. (A group that Seraphim Rose called "the super-correct".) 

In other words, I now distinguish between the inner spiritual self on the one hand; and the public and social self. 

Indeed, I think that the - inevitably failing - attempt of people to live their lives fully in accordance with the highest Christian hopes; is actually a major source of spiritual corruption among Christians.

What actually happens is that Christians cut their Christianity to fit the cloth of their nature and circumstances. 

In other words, the limitations of their personality and abilities, and the pressure of their lives, are allowed to dictate the scope and aspirations of their Christian faith.

They limit their definitions of Christianity to whatever they can themselves accomplish.    

Examples include the spiritual Litmus Tests of our time. 

The practicalities of living in an evil totalitarian system mean that most people will "inevitably", more-or-less, go-along-with the demonically-originated evil strategies that are designed to engineer our society into a machine of damnation. 

A current example - a spiritual test that most Christians have failed spectacularly! - is so-called "AI". 

The way it seems to work is that a Christian finds himself in a work or life situation in which he is compelled to use, and even to work-with and develop and propagandize-for - "AI" systems. Compelled in that either he follows these bureaucratic diktats, or else he fails to get the job, is sacked from his current job, or cannot get promoted above a low level. 

Or else the Christian cannot resist the temptations of using AI to amuse or divert himself. 

Or he may find that he cannot resist using "AI" to add a professional (pseudo-creative) gloss to his own productions; or to project an image of greater knowledge, competence, understanding than he personally possesses - maybe at work, or in his hobbies.  

Then, because Christian finds himself in his actions and life either compelled to use, or expediently using, "AI" - he argues that therefore "AI" is not (in its actual origins, and implementation) intentionally evil; but is merely a neutral tool; or a Must-Do qualitative breakthrough in societal capability - with potential significant benefits for humanity that we therefore have a duty to exploit... 

Because Christian actually uses "AI" and has no intention of stopping; he infers that - because he is A Christian - therefore "AI" must be A Good Thing, and he soon finds himself defending and proselytising for "AI" in both public - but also even in private.   

I have come to believe that if Christians try to insist upon a compatibility of Christian actions with spiritual aspirations; what this actually leads-to is a dishonest denial of real and significant evil among Christians, and the air-brushing of their own sins as trivial or non-existent.

"Rigorous" and devout Christians are therefore, in practice (nearly-always) those who make a big deal about their own avoidance of some categories of Big Sins (like murder, theft, rape, sexual infidelity and unchastity, drug use &c.) - while denying, engaging-in and defending many other sins; but especially those expedient and publicly acceptable besetting-sins of mainstream modern life...

Sins such as systematic untruthfulness  - eg. the frequent and extreme levels of habitual and pervasive dishonesty that are now a condition of all middle class employment, including in all churches. Or fear and resentment. 

And defending or promoting the cause of global AI.  

The orthodox and traditional idea is that all men ought to cease from all sinning; so the answer to such examples of sinning as lying for money and status, and covering-up the demonic totalitarian plans for corrupting Mankind with "AI" - is that people ought to stop doing this - as people should stop doing everything bad. 

My view is different, because I accept as a fact that people cannot (as well as will not) stop sinning*. 

People who must deceive in order to keep their jobs and get promotions, will continue to deceive. 

People who are managerially-instructed to implement and promote "AI" will continue to do this; and those who personally get pleasure or profit from using "AI" systems will continue to exploit them for such purposes. 

In general terms: people will continue to sin, and will continue to have no serious intention of ceasing from sin. 

However, this is not a reason to pretend that sins are not sins, that evil strategies are not real, that people personally aren't working to overall-promote the plans of the demonic world rulers. 

But following what I take to be a core teaching of Jesus, I expect that all Men are and will be sinners and will not, cannot stop doing this, and shall not even have any serious or workable plans to stop sinning - and this applies even the most devout and ascetic and good of modern monks like Seraphim Rose, even in the most ideally un-worldly of environments. 

I see no reason why this our pervasively-sinful and evil-promoting lives are incompatible with being a genuinely devout and uncompromising Christian in our spiritual aspirations.  

In sum: we must not compromise our Christian principles in all their depth and rigour merely because we cannot and never will live-up-to-them. 

Indeed, only by separating our spiritual understanding and aims from the corruptions of everyday life; can we really discern, understand, appreciate the nature of this world - and the profundity of our own corruption - and do this without being overwhelmed by despair (which is itself a potentially terrible sin).  

We can always be at work at clarifying our spiritual nature in the most uncompromising way - indifferent to the constraints and practicalities that are inescapable. 

+++

* This is what Jesus also says, by my understanding; at least in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus does not select his followers for their good behaviour, nor does he say that his followers should cease from all sinning - but instead Jesus implies and says he came to save actual sinners. Stopping sinning - either in particular or in general - is Not the way that Men attain eternal resurrected Heavenly life. 

"If I do it, then it can't be bad..." (The example of "AI")

A recurrent theme - in everyday life and online, in mundane matters and in philosophy - the "argument" that if I (of all people) do it, then that proves it can't be bad. 

Such reasoning can be, and is, used to justify (and normalize) almost anything; especially new things; especially new evil things.  

For the past two years, since the globalist totalitarians simultaneously media-launched and bureaucratically imposed several new text and image technologies; it has been Artificial Intelligence or "AI". 

Suddenly, this was pervasive, hyped, and all-but unavoidable - therefore most people were compelled to "use" it, whether driven by sheer omnipresence, peer pressure, curiosity, or the demands of the workplace. 

Having used AI, then the assumption of many people seems to be that "it can't be bad" because, well, "look at me!". 

The assumption behind the argument is that "I" am obviously a Good Person and I use AI; or that "I used AI, and it did me no harm...". 

The argument is made; but there is no feedback-loop of asking or waiting for confirmations that A: You really do regard "me" as A Good Person; or B: You agree that I have not been changed for the worse by my usage of AI. 

In fact, most of the people who regard themselves as Good People, I would regard as (whether unwitting or willing) servants of the agenda of evil.

Furthermore, I have observed plenty of people whose discernment and sensibility has apparently been coarsened, and their motives corrupted, by usage of AI. 

But such feedback evaluations of character and trends are not sought; and if they were known they would cause offence as being obviously (and necessarily) unjustified, hence clearly dishonest and/or intended to hurt.

Thus is evil normalized, and rendered into an invisible background. 

    

Note added: Because the nature of this world is such that we are all compelled to do much evil, and a great deal more we do because of the weakness of our natures. The point is not that we refrain from evil - which is impossible - but that we recognize evil, and repent it. (In a world of endemic and pervasive AI; you will be forced, bullied, bribed or tempted into using it.) Repent even - or especially - those many, many evils that we cannot or will not cease from doing. Even though we do it, and keep on doing it, and have zero intention of stopping doing it; and even though we have a thousand excuses - that doesn't make it good. Jesus came to save sinners, and that means you (and me). Only Repent. (But how difficult is that "only".) 

The "AI" dupes: Thumbs in the scales

One of the difficult lessons, particularly emphasized by Owen Barfield, is that in every way the spiritual is prior to, and encompasses, the material. 

The spiritual world existed first - material and incarnation came later, and locally. Reality is spiritual - with some parts of it also material. The material is always spiritual, but the spiritual is not always material. 

Therefore, necessarily, the post-November 2022 "AI" phenomenon is spiritual... But that platitude does not tell you in what way any particular asserted-AI is spiritual.  

One deep problem with "AI" is that almost everything we are told about it (what it is, what it can and should do) is asserted by corrupted, lying, manipulative and evil-motivated sources (i.e. the leadership class in the major social institutions) - or by those who are on the payroll. 

This nearly-always means that our knowledge can only be negative and general - because, in a domain of untruthfulness, we cannot have valid positive and specific information.  

(One honest Man dwelling in a world of liars cannot rely on other-Men for valid knowledge.) 

We should therefore assume the problem of discovering the nature and capability of actually-in-place "AI", and even more its assumed future possibilities, this problem goes much deeper than recognized. 

It is obvious that people who interact with "AI" assume that everything it does is done by computers. 

But there is no reason to assume this is true - especially not in situations where it is advantageous to the "AI" agenda that human thumbs should be pressing down the scales in the desired direction, whenever that is useful. 

Of course, even the acknowledged mechanisms of "AI" rely on humans for all the heavy-lifting - the fundamental categorizations of phenomena that form the basis of all subsequent processing, the "AI" learning feedback etc. 

But there is every reason why human beings would actively, in real-time, be involved in so-called "AI" processing; when it is important enough to make the effort. 

After all, the funding and resourcing of "AI" is incomprehensibly vast - so paying people to add a human touch to "AI" processing is perfectly feasable! 

Human boosting of "AI" can be (and is) even explained-away - so that the actual people who are actually paid to do it, apparently do not necessarily realize (most often do not care) why they are providing human tweaks to the algorithms, nor what are the top-level planned consequences of their human-assists. 

There is a definite precedent with Search Engines; in which processes of ranking results that were advertised as objective and algorithmic, were in fact subjective and ideologically-driven. 

Big Tech is prepared to pay its myriad minions to subvert or distort its algorithms, when this is in aid of an agenda that they consider to be more important. 

And currently it is supremely important that as many people as possible be persuaded of the nigh-miraculous powers and capabilities of "AI", including ideas that "AI" has intrinsic functional capability, sentience, agency, and superior intelligence to human beings - and therefore that "AI" not only will but ought-to replace human beings. 

The PSYOP includes a strategy of convincing humans of their own inferiority to that mixed package of people and computers called "AI"; and therefore that this self-styled "AI" should replace the humans...

And in practice, therefore, to manufacture consent for the a centralized totalitarian System; in which those who own/ operate/ control the truly-colossal "AI"-enterprise are voluntarily accorded an objective right to rule the rest of Mankind... in whatever ways They "know" to be just and good.  

So we should expect human inputs and enhancements - a human thumb in the computerized scales - to be normal and routine whenever this is expedient for the success of the "AI" agenda.  

AI-dolatry is an Antichrist phenomenon, because the Antichrist is The System

I just stumbled across a post of mine from 2018 on the (now stale) subject of Jordan Peterson; in which I described him as an Antichrist figure. 

The idea of an Antichrist is not really of any general and public use for discernment, because of the mass and institutional breakdown in truthful consensus. 

Nonetheless it is a subject to which I find I recur, because so many individual people remain spiritually wedded to external authority, and in a totalitarian "System-" world, that means that almost all self-identified Christians are following Antichrists. 

The question I ask is: will such people follow their Antichrist to self-chosen damnation, or at what point will they realize what is happening to them?

(Luckily for Mankind, by my understanding; this point of recognition and repentance can be post-mortal.)

The current AI-dolatry (i.e. the positive embrace, and in-practice promotion, of the "AI"-agenda) is evidently motivated by evil-intent when advocated by mainstream left-materialist ideologues; but the phenomenon takes-on an Antichrist role and quality when found among self-identified Christians. 

What I see is Christians who support (and spiritually I am inferring an inner support) an actually overall- and net-evil strategy; on the basis that they see in such a strategy the possibilities for a selective, partial, "if-only" possibility of Good.  

IMO, this rationale is how people justify to themselves an inner subordination to external authority.

Because when all actual external authorities (all formal and public institutions; including all the churches) are actually integrated-within the System of global totalitarianism - then this just-is the Antichrist phenomenon, as I understand it.

I mean; people choose to subordinate themselves spiritually (and therefore psychologically) to a powerful and influential entity (i.e. The System), even when that entity is net-evil; by an argument that there are aspects of The System that may be turned to good... 

Which "may" be good understanding, then gets transformed to an assertion that it "will" be good... in my hands, the way that I will use it...   

So the world is (apparently) full of Christians who support one or more of the primary agenda items of global totalitarianism (such as "AI", a foreign war, the Birdemic-Peck, CO2-climatology, sexual revolution...); because they have convinced themselves that they have nuanced these strategies into specific pro-Christian activities.

From overall-evil intent, they finesse particular Good Works, "Christian" works; of one kind or another. And claim that this particulars are then the main thing: that they personally can nuance the particular Goods, without spiritual-complicity in the overall evils.     

The reason why this kind of reasoning has become so massively-dominant is exactly that The System is everywhere, and inescapable - we are all sustained-by-it and work-for-it.   

Therefore - in this-worldly terms - as a brute fact we are all of us deeply-complicit in strategic evil, in this-world. 

Which means that - to do good works in this world, to be "practical"; we can only work with The System: we can only "make this world a better place" (including better for ourselves, and those about whom we care) by accepting The System in some overall fashion, and despite specific dissent.

This brute fact of a self-identified Christian - in-practice and inescapably - supporting the large-scale demonic agenda; becomes a potentially agonizing "cognitive dissonance" insofar as Christianity is regarded as a this-worldly religion - i.e. a religion that "makes this world a better place". 

It is to avoid this cognitive dissonance, indeed stark contradiction! - that so many Christians end by choosing spiritual-subordination to the the ubiquity of global totalitarianism, while asserting an officially-propagated false and virtual understanding of the world. 

Thus, most Christians - including serious Christians - are engaged in whitewashing the actuality of global totalitarian evil: either they deny its reality as an existing fact, or else they falsely construct a fantasy of the fundamental, coherent, and purposive evil of The System of global totalitarianism - as if it were instead a drama of good versus evil Establishment people and institutions. 

As if minor distinctions between greater and lesser evil purposes somehow included the operations of purposive good; as if a mass of competing negations could eventuate in positive values...  

Things have come to a point; compromise is no longer validly possible; we are compelled to choose between clear and distinct alternatives of evil and Good. 

It is not a matter of what we do but what is our faith. If we base our ultimate faith in-this-world, we shall become of-this-world.  

Either we recognize that Christianity is, and (deep down) always was; a next-worldly and individual religion - i.e. a faith that does not depend on practical obedience to the authority of any specific institution/s - or else we will be following one or another of the many Antichrist phenomena that constitute The System. 

Either we are rooted in this-world, in which case we shall be in truth supporters of "The Antichrist; or else we locate our faith and hope in post-mortal resurrected eternal life, in Heaven. 

Why the dystopia-mania?

Netflix have introduced a new category into their streaming services which is Dystopian Futures. 

In other words; one of The System's core propaganda sources is encouraging its audience to consume movies and TV programs which focus on future hellish societies; just as (since the summer of 2020) they introduced the category "Black Stories" as an approved category. 

This invites consideration; because on the surface it would seem to be counter-productive for The System to warn the masses about the nasty things The System intends to do with the masses... Yet, here we have it. 

The answer is quite simple, as indeed are all such matters of large scale System policy - because, if strategies were not simple, then they would be rendered ineffectual by the complex and varied multi-society implementation process. Only simple policies can be relied upon to have their desired effect across many nations and across extended timescales.  

The reason why Netflix is pushing dystopian narratives is related to their overall service to the core demonic agenda, which is the damnation of Men.

Overall (and on average) modern dystopias - under modern conditions - promote the agenda of evil; which is the agenda of The System. 

The damnation is Men is not an easy thing to achieve, because Men must choose it: that is, each Man must (as an unique individual) choose to reject the offer or eternal resurrected life in Heaven that is made possible by Jesus Christ. 

That is: a Man must be induced not-to-want Heavenly resurrected and everlasting life; but instead to prefer death and hell. 

In other words; Men must be made to want evil (not Good); and to desire evil entails that Men understand evil and its implications; understand the planned evil sufficiently to consent to evil, sufficiently to say yes to evil. 

Furthermore, Men be be induced Not-to-repent; because it is never too late (in mortal life) for any Man to repent and instead follow Jesus Christ. 

Damnation is never secure so long as Men retain an accurate sense of what is Good, and what is sin. 

Only when the evilness of sin is denied and its opposite asserted, is damnation secure. 

This means that - at some level - there needs to be a value-inversion whereby real Good is understood to be evil; and actual evil is understood to be Good.   

This is the spiritual function of Dystopian Futures - and indeed the reason for the mania for dystopian depictions in the mass media and arts, especially since about the millennium: to induce Men to consent to the evil which is planned for them, and to choose it in preference to Heaven.

There are many (unlimited in number and variety, although with some common themes) ways in which modern (especially post-2000) dystopian fictions can promote exactly the dystopias they 'warn' against. 

Maybe simply through depicting dystopia as inevitable - hence inducing the 'resistance is futile' mindset; which is just one step away from embracing the evil plans while trying, personally, to make the best of it. 

Depictions of 'apocalyptic' collapse likewise often promote an attitude of ruthlessly selfish personal-survivalism - indifferent to any spiritual or divine goals (which are implicitly depicted as unreal delusions when times get hard). 

For example; physical survival is assumed (but without stating it) to be the ultimate Good; therefore a 'whatever it takes' ethic becomes ultimate. 

Or; evil is promoted by opposing the depicted dystopias with leftist/ atheist/ materialist/ hedonic System ideologies. This means that both support-of dystopia and 'opposition'-to dystopia both share the same ideology, and both sides in the conflict are merely different aspects of the same (evil) System. 

For instance; Nazi-like 'racist' fictional dystopias are opposed (in-world) by 'antiracist' freedom-fighters - when in real-life antiracism is a core tool of the totalitarian System. 

Or when 'environmentally destructive/ indifferent' tyrannical and cruel rulers, are opposed by some 'eco-warrior types' aiming to save-the-planet - when in real life the environmental movement is utterly in-thrall to (indeed a creature of) the globalist agenda. 

And there are (many) fictions about  Artificial Intelligences. If these are 'evil' (i.e. cruel, selfish etc) this implies that there are also potentially 'Good' AIs (kind, altruistic etc). Fictions of 'Good' AIs, and 'nice'/ or beautiful robots - may have these depicted as better than (most) Men. 

In the end, the message is that AI is a real thing, and AIs are persons and might replace (in essentials) Men - and often the AI future is said to be inevitable anyway (again "resistance is futile"). 

Yet another strand of the propaganda is that futures are some combination of random materialism, scientific determinism, and the Man-made; such that divine creation is excluded completely from the range of possibilities. 

In dystopia Men inhabit a meaningless and purposeless world - because only the divine creation of a Good God has purpose and meaning; consequently those who are depicted as opposing dystopia in these worlds, implicitly accept the same nihilistic assumptions concerning reality, that are inevitable when creation is excluded from possibility. 

In other words; the 'dystopian' worlds portrayed are ones in which all depicted options, on all 'sides' in the dramatic conflict, are all servants of the demonic agenda - in one or another of its aspects. 

Past Dystopias were indeed sometimes genuine warnings against that which they depicted; but the vast expansion and promotion of the dystopia agenda during the past few decades is undoubtedly driven by evil motivations, and is intended to work in support of the evil System-agenda: to pave its way, reduce resistance, increase acceptance...

In a nutshell; 'dystopian futures' are depicted with the overall intent of - by one means or another - generating consent for a totalitarian and materialist society; and, further, inducing mind-sets, attitudes and responses to the unfolding global dystopia that support its development.

Modern dystopias encourage a wide-range of Jesus-rejecting, anti-God, spirit-disbelieving, leftist ideologies that feed-back-into The System, and indirectly but materially and spiritually support it; because in dystopia, all possible futures derive from exactly the same basic and fundamental assumptions upon-which dystopia has been built.     

The proper approach to evaluating "AI" - From the comments...

From commenter No Longer Reading:

There's an idea that you need to have written the Summa Technologica to criticize technology. But it's a lot more basic than that. If it has bad effects or it's based on a bad ideology then it's bad. 

Techno-totalitarian mass surveillance has obviously had bad effects. There's no need to debate whether "the true mass surveillance has never been tried". It's also based on a bad ideology. So, it's bad. 

Also, there's a mixing up of two separate things. On the one hand there's the fact that the universe is set up such that a particular technology can be invented. On the other hand is the technology itself. Nature works how it works, but then humans choose what to investigate and what to try to invent within the bounds set by nature. 

Whether the universe is set up in a particular way is neutral, well, no living human being knows that, so it's a moot point. But technology is a human endeavour. 

If religion doesn't get a free pass that it's always good or at least neutral, why are we supposed to give such a fee pass to technology, which is every bit as human as religion?

**

My comments: 

I was struck by the incisiveness of that last sentence. It makes a telling point. 

The exact same people who are defending-promoting AI are often-usually people who are hypercritical of some religions (and of leftist politics, or its components such as the climate agenda). 

What they are doing is to regard some mass-scale coordinated human endeavours as appropriate to be evaluated morally in terms of their overall intent and nature... 

But other mass-scale coordinated human endeavours - specifically AI - are exempted from evaluation; and assumed to be neutral tools.

A further point that strikes me is the "but its only an incremental extension of... [something already existing]" argument. 

Such that AI is only an (admittedly multi-trillion-dollar and coercively implemented) incremental development of the already-existing internet. 

It is, of course, true that AI is a development of the internet - the problem is that word "only"! 

As if a vast and coordinated political/ administrative/ financial/ industrial/ mass media program was rendered insignificant - simply by inserting the word "only"!

Further; almost-all evil is an extension of pre-existing evil. 

In a sense; horrific world wars are only "politics by other means"; and politics is only interpersonal interaction writ large. Each increment of the sexual revolution is built on what went before, so that SSM is only an extension of no fault divorce. 

True enough in terms of lineage. But are we not, then, to notice when some big new evil is being imposed upon us? 

Or to pretend that - because a development of what already is - it doesn't matter; or that it is not evilly motivated?

This is why repentance is so vital. We made an error of judgment that leads to further errors of judgment - often to rationalize or justify that first error. We then find ourselves (individually or collectively) a long way down a path to evil.

But for a Christian, this is not too late - it is never too late!

This is when we ought to recognise and acknowledge that the first and subsequent choices were actually on the side of evil, although not recognized at the time they were made. 

It does not matter how we got here, or that we are far advanced in evil. We can always repent evil, at any time or place, and from any degree of corruption. 

It's not a matter of whether this repentance can or will lead to some positive change in the world as we know it - that is not the point. Repentance is about our attitudes and allegiances - repentance is not about palliating or reforming this mortal life.

Of course repentance may lead to betterment, and spiritual progress (in an individual or socially) can scarcely be made without repentance. But that is not the point of repenting; and anyway all such this-worldly benefit is of-its-nature extremely partial, restricted, and temporary.    

  **

BUT, as WmJas Tychonievich wisely opines:

Arguing the point with people who don't immediately and intuitively get it, unfortunately seems to be a waste of time. 

Let the dead bury their dead.

"AI" and the propaganda of abstracting-isolation: how to explain away evil purposes

A post by Francis Berger brought into focus a common propaganda tactic to which I must invent a term "abstracting isolation". 

The basic idea is that some-Thing harmful being introduced, some new and bad policy, or some strategic plan of evil... is explained-away...

Is talked into neutrality or insignificance - and this is achieved by the tactic of drawing a line around it: thereby abstracting it from the actual situation and process in which it is encountered.

I have repeatedly seen this at every level of life. 

In the University workplace, management (on instruction from government) would introduce some bureaucratic change that Always took power from academics and transferred it to management. yet another in the unending stream of schemes for monitoring and control of academics and students...

The latest step in a successful strategy pursued over many years, a strategy of of incremental managerial bureaucratic takeover. 

But; this latest change was always abstracted from the strategy and from the big picture. In effect, a line was drawn around the new task or policy. We were made to consider the change as if it was an isolated entity - coming from nowhere except the earnest desire for functional improvement that we all know characterizes management; and going nowhere in particular - and especially not any kind of power-grab! 

(Only a delusional nut-job could imagine such a ludicrous notion as a planned government-management take-over.)

As such the New Thing always seemed neutral, trivial - nothing to get "upset" about, nothing to make a fuss about (unless you are neurotic, or paranoid?)... 

And yet at the same time this neutral, trivial, nothing was also - somehow - essential, important, and (bottom line) mandatory: we had to do it... or else. 

And because we had to do it or else; then we "might as well" make the best of it: indeed, we might as well pretend that this is A Good Thing...

Or, at least, a Thing with great potential for Good, if only people would stop wasting their time complaining about the inevitable; and instead take a positive and constructive attitude about using The Thing (whatever it happened to be) in the best possible way. 

At the end of this line of rhetoric; the trivial, isolated, neutral policy or technology, has become a boon - with the help of well-motivated staff who (instead of moaning and dragging their feet) will rise to the challenge of this new opportunity...

Who will, by their optimistic attitudes and hard work, ensure that the best possible outcomes will happen, and any problems will be solved. 

If only people would give This Thing the benefit of the doubt; then it could become a great gift, a tool with vast potential for those with goodwill to use in generating all kinds of positive possibilities.

Whew! 

All this from an abstractly-isolated neutral technological tool! All this "merely" from its being implemented by people of goodwill and positive intent to do good - as we can, of course, assume it will be implemented - the leadership positions of the world being almost exclusively inhabited by such Saints. 

Luckily, we almost never see technologies actually, in the real world, mega-exploited almost exclusively for their worst capabilities - so we needn't concern ourselves with that sort of difficulty! 

This with "AI"; what is actually emanating as an incremental change from a top-down, tera-dollar-funded, decades-long globalist totalitarian strategy; aiming at bureaucratic omni-surveillance and micro-control of mass thought and behaviour; aiming at the imposition of a materialist perspective and assuming the irrelevance and insignificance of God, Jesus Christ and the spiritual...

By a simple act of abstracting-isolation "AI" has been transformed into a vital tool that shall be used (mostly) for the betterment of humankind and this world - to stand in the path of which outcome, is both futile and misguided (if not worse). 

The spiritual harm of "AI" is this pretending, and convincing oneself, that purposive evil is good, and indeed ought-to-be regarded as good simply because we cannot (or will not) resist it... 

If you really Think About It: Evil can be Good!... If only we regard it with a calm, reasonable, properly-informed, and nuanced attitude. 

Such is one of the greatest and most effective Big Lies of our era. And, like all effective lies, it contains an element of truth...

Which is that within a vast strategy for generic-evil, there is indeed potential to go against the current (to some extent, and for a while but not permanently) - and do some particular-Good.  

True. But that truth does not affect the purposively evil nature of the general strategy. 

Discernment is vital for Christians; to know evil in order that we may affiliate to Good. 

It is all quite simple to know, difficult/impossible to do in the material world, but always possible to hold-fast-onto as our spiritual intention:

Our possibilities for doing Good despite evil, should never lead us to choosing allegiance with the strategies of evil.