There will be smiting of immigrants. Yea.

Peter Thiel has entered the chat

Save your soul for only 20.99 a month… wait I guess this isn’t really that new.

I’m willing to bet you could convince a subset of those people that such an LLM is in fact the second coming of Christ. So not just some tool “approved” by God, but that the LLM is the God itself.

Then (to the “true believers” minds) whatever it says will be unquestionable. And then whomever is pulling the strings behind the scenes can commit whatever atrocities they desire.

I’m familiar with TempleOS — but it really doesn’t have any applicability here. It’s just something written by a guy with some mental illness who thought God was telling him what he wanted in an Operating System. But even for the faithful it’s just a tool — like how a temple itself may be an important holy place, but isn’t itself worshipped by the people who use it. Nobody considers a church to actually be their God.

That’s vastly different from an LLM that purports to be itself divine. We can setup an LLM that actually claims to be the second coming of Jesus, and there will be people will do whatever it tells them to because of belief. If you suck in enough people for enough years slowly enough to build up a cult following, and abuse them just enough to keep them in line, you’ll be able to tell them to do all sorts of truly atrocious things — and some subset will in fact go through with them.

And yes, people can do that already (see Jim Jones, David Koresh, or any other cult leader that convinced all their followers to kill themselves and their families) — but an LLM could have a vastly larger reach around the globe. We may not need for the LLM itself to become Skynet — one or two bad actors behind the scenes of a “divine” LLM might be enough to bring down humanity all by itself.

radical atheism will never work because most people need a connection to the world that goes beyond what’s material

What’s “radical” atheism? Atheism is not believing in god(s). How do you exceed that? Believing in infinite negative numbers of non-gods? Or do you mean I’m running around trying to convince everyone I know to be an atheist? I don’t play with model trains, but feel no need to tell everyone I meet that they shouldn’t waste their time with it. Same with religion. Now, if either group tries to coerce me into participating in their favorite pastime, I’ll resist. No sirree Bob, not my job.

And what would “moderate” atheism be? Believing in half a god? Not believing but going out of one’s way to conceal it? That might be a rational strategy to avoid persecution, but it’s not a belief system.

I’m an atheist. I feel a sense of connection to other people and living things and a sense of wonder at nature. I just don’t need an alpha male in the sky to personify it. Lack of something unnecesary is not a deficit. There’s not a huge void in my life where the Easter Bunny should be.

selling a worldview that cancels that immateriality is doomed to fail

I don’t need to assume mythical entities in order to live. If the soul turns out to be a real thing, fine, though there’s no evidence for it so far. If it’s not, that’s fine too. Meanwhile, it’s irrelevant.

So glad to read your comment @SparrowHawk. This is exactly it, and why I am no longer a hardcore atheist. We can’t connect with anyone while we’re in the middle of telling them that they’re wrong - even if they are completely wrong about factual matters. It’s essential to build connection first, then conduct any education through the connection. Without connecting it’s wasted effort.

The educating can’t come through coercion or condemnation either, because those shut people down. If we don’t offer something better then we push those people away. We might write them off and say “fuck em, who cares!” and that’s how we end up at political deadlock and perpetual war.

This is why the fascists are so terrified of empathy, because intelligent, educated people (lots of those around!) who are highly empathic (not so many, it’s a harder skill) joining together and building connections with and between the masses, already have all the tools to dismantle the whole scam we’re living in.

Empathy and education, from kindness not condemnation, is unstoppable. Though I will grant that there’s not much in it for rugged individualism, but lots in it for diverse, individuality-celebrating collectivism.

Of course we’re supposed to be arguing - we’ll never get anywhere that way.

Empathy lets you say “I absolutely disagree with your view, yet I still value you as a human, so am committed to your long-term wellbeing” and other similar bits of “radical hate speech” which, put into action will dismantle capitalism, fascism, authoritarianism, religions, prisons… you name it.

But it can’t be passive, it is something for each person to be putting into action all the time.

That’s my spiritual practise and I don’t feel personally affronted if someone disagrees with it or doesn’t understand it any more, because it’s just with myself and how I want to be in life with myself and others anyway.

There are billions of us humans and we’re unstoppable when we put aside our petty differences and work together for common dreams.

…besides, if you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong! /s

I was brought up Catholic. The Dominican brothers taught me to think critically. Now I’m not a Catholic, or any kind of Christian, anymore.

And for the fractally schismatic fundamentalist Protestants, they stopped adhering to a Christian belief system over a century ago. Very little that they believe has any connection to Christianity, and most of it contradicts core beliefs. For them, it’s just a tribal identity. “We’re the chosen people and everyone else is wrong.”