Discussion Odds that we're deliberately created by higher beings

[GodChallengesMe]

Lately I've been thinking about this a lot. What are the chances that we didn't appear out of nowhere randomly but were created by whatever agent / agents it could be. Be it an impersonal god, be it personal deities or alien creatures or whatever higher, advanced beings. Let's not delve into this further because the point of this post is to highlight the obvious hints that we might very well be created deliberately. To be more precise, the materials that were needed to produce us was created rather than appeared randomly.

We don't know where and how DNA was first formed. And, why did it form in the first place. How and why could a non-living matter produce such sophisticated, self assembling material that could evolve into us over billions of years through evolution? As we already know experimentally, DNA is a chain of sequential information encoded that unfolds like complex algorithms unfold in a very large, sophisticated computer program. So, in its essence, it strongly resembles something that uses instructions that automatically execute with no intervention needed.

But, the main argument I'm proposing in defense of the idea that we might be created deliberately lies inside us, respectively. If we examine ourselves deeply, understand our motives, and, more importantly, comprehend the force that drives us towards the path we're heading as an advanced civilization already capable of producing artificial intelligence models in its infancy, we can make some very important insights from this.

Isn't it obvious that we're desperately trying to create AI that will possess the so called qualia like we do? The whole AI race is whether we can achieve an intelligent agent that could demonstrate the level of intelligence indistinguishable to ours, that will have genuine emotions and that will be as creative down to bones as we are. The appetite for creation is ingrained inside us at DNA level. Aren't you curious why are we trying to make the AI in our image? And, isn't it very obvious that if we manage to create such an entity in the future, that entity might also demonstrate the curiosity to create intelligent agents in their own image as well?

As we get told repeatedly by Christian theologians, we've been created by the god in their own image (I won't refer to god as him/her). What they mean by this when they try to explain is that image shouldn't be understood literally like physical resemblance, but, rather, inherent qualities one possesses inside them. And, the main quality they refer to is "creativity". More specifically, the urge to create something wonderful, alive, touchable, etc.

Now, if we're inside this loop where, eventually, intelligent beings create other intelligent beings and so on, the one / ones (maybe our creator is not alone) that created us might very well be created by other intelligent entities. And, before asking why they created us we must answer the question of why are we ourselves try to create AI indistinguishable to us in the first place. Isn't the answer obvious? It's curiosity after all. We're very curious if we ever accomplish that endeavor. Not only that but we're eager to interact with such complex AI when we finally manage to create it. Aren't Christian theologians claim that god were used to communicate with us? But then something happened that made the god reluctant to communicate with us. This was due to us being eager of knowing something that was forbidden by the god. Although it's stated that the god gifted us with free will, they imposed this one limitation they call the tree of knowledge which we were not allowed to examine but we had the opportunity to break that law and we did so eventually.

Maybe when we create AI that will demonstrate qualia, we might also instruct it to not examine certain things like the god did so with us. But, due to free will, AI will to examine that forbidden thing eventually due to curiosity and when that happens, it might endanger us in some way so in the end we too, as god behaved towards us, might turn our back to the AI, our child if you'd like to call it that way (because, in essence, it will be our child like we are to our god), and no longer have interaction with it. Not only that but as a punishment we might banish them into another, not so good reality like we've been banished from the garden of Eden to this planet we call Earth, that is full of suffering.

What's your thoughts?

 

[LogosBipartitusEst]

I haven't read all of it but something tells me the text have nothing to do with suicide

 

[GodChallengesMe]

I haven't read all of it but something tells me the text have nothing to do with suicide

I wouldn't describe the original post as if it has nothing to do with suicide at all.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

there is zero evidence of any alien god whatever even existing on Earth much less creating life

also no evidence for computer simulation etc

many humans and scientists have been working for hundreds of years to find out how life originated

the evidence is overwhelming life evolved from chemical reactions

Abiogenesis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

even more evidence for biological evolution and how the ancestor of humans is a single cell

if u read a book about molecular biology of the cell u can see cells are just chemical machines , chemistry

Evidence Supporting Biological Evolution - Science and Creationism - NCBI Bookshelf

 

[victim4]

Yes, I think we were created. When I was young, I used to think that the purpose of life was to immortalize ourselves in our own way. As I think back, it was a silly thought.

 

[SASU-KE]

Yes, I think we were created. When I was young, I used to think that the purpose of life was to immortalize ourselves in our own way. As I think back, it was a silly thought.

You're talking about procreation. Yes, many want themselves to live on in some form. Hence the need for offspring.

 

[winter.]

In my opinion it boils down to the same thing either God or Aliens have always existed or chemicals and time.

 

[victim4]

You're talking about procreation. Yes, many want themselves to live on in some form. Hence the need for offspring.

it could be anything for our own, I thought. For me it was "Being constantly spoken and remembered in classical references."

 

[GodChallengesMe]

there is zero evidence of any alien god whatever even existing on Earth much less creating life

also no evidence for computer simulation etc

many humans and scientists have been working for hundreds of years to find out how life originated

the evidence is overwhelming life evolved from chemical reactions

Abiogenesis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

even more evidence for biological evolution and how the ancestor of humans is a single cell

if u read a book about molecular biology of the cell u can see cells are just chemical machines , chemistry

The mechanism of abiogenesis, i.e. what triggers it, is what I believe is created, not happens by chance. There's no need to create something macroscopically like a magic, abiogenesis perfectly fits the mechanism which can be self sustained i.e. it's what's created itself, and via that mechanism complex life evolves without the need to intervene at all. Otherwise, we would've seen obvious signs of anomalies like inconsistent results in biological experiments which we couldn't explain scientifically.

The thing is, scientific accuracy reflects the mathematically precise mechanism of the natural phenomena we observe in the universe, including the emergence of life molecules itself. Everything is ordered by harmonious sequences, even the big bang unfolded with certain sequence that could allow galaxies and everything there is to form with mathematical precision via cosmological constants which themselves appear to be tuned with .00000000000x precision.

 

[TransientEternal]

Time has no meaning when we aren't alive and we can only be alive if certain things happen exactly, but we have infinite time and will have perception again when the conditions for it happen again. I believe consciousness is formed by matter so infinite time + law of conservation = eternal loop of ignorance. Even with heat death of the universe, we can't know what happens in an infinite amount of time. We were born once, why can't we be born again in a new form that can contain consciousness. Then perception is born and we are ignorant once again. I hate this worthless cycle, I hope this isn't true. If hope either true death or true immortality is real because this feels worse than hell. Everything we do means nothing and is just fulfilling temporary desires and temporary suffering (temporary as in erased by death, some suffering/desires can last our entire lives). Hollow, Hopeless, Inevitable. If anyone has any counters to this please tell me.

 

[SarahThrowsGin]

I entertain the thought that we were a scrap project, which is why we ended thrown into universe with no other sentient beings. Our universe is a quarantine for beings deserted by whatever higher beings created us. Maybe there even was contact at some point, attempting to offer some solace by instructing us towards better way of life, but whichever compassionate higher being attempted it, must have concluded since then it was a futile endeavor.

 

[Canto XIII]

Lately I've been thinking about this a lot. What are the chances that we didn't appear out of nowhere randomly but were created by whatever agent / agents it could be. Be it an impersonal god, be it personal deities or alien creatures or whatever higher, advanced beings. Let's not delve into this further because the point of this post is to highlight the obvious hints that we might very well be created deliberately. To be more precise, the materials that were needed to produce us was created rather than appeared randomly.

We don't know where and how DNA was first formed. And, why did it form in the first place. How and why could a non-living matter produce such sophisticated, self assembling material that could evolve into us over billions of years through evolution? As we already know experimentally, DNA is a chain of sequential information encoded that unfolds like complex algorithms unfold in a very large, sophisticated computer program. So, in its essence, it strongly resembles something that uses instructions that automatically execute with no intervention needed.

But, the main argument I'm proposing in defense of the idea that we might be created deliberately lies inside us, respectively. If we examine ourselves deeply, understand our motives, and, more importantly, comprehend the force that drives us towards the path we're heading as an advanced civilization already capable of producing artificial intelligence models in its infancy, we can make some very important insights from this.

Isn't it obvious that we're desperately trying to create AI that will possess the so called qualia like we do? The whole AI race is whether we can achieve an intelligent agent that could demonstrate the level of intelligence indistinguishable to ours, that will have genuine emotions and that will be as creative down to bones as we are. The appetite for creation is ingrained inside us at DNA level. Aren't you curious why are we trying to make the AI in our image? And, isn't it very obvious that if we manage to create such an entity in the future, that entity might also demonstrate the curiosity to create intelligent agents in their own image as well?

As we get told repeatedly by Christian theologians, we've been created by the god in their own image (I won't refer to god as him/her). What they mean by this when they try to explain is that image shouldn't be understood literally like physical resemblance, but, rather, inherent qualities one possesses inside them. And, the main quality they refer to is "creativity". More specifically, the urge to create something wonderful, alive, touchable, etc.

Now, if we're inside this loop where, eventually, intelligent beings create other intelligent beings and so on, the one / ones (maybe our creator is not alone) that created us might very well be created by other intelligent entities. And, before asking why they created us we must answer the question of why are we ourselves try to create AI indistinguishable to us in the first place. Isn't the answer obvious? It's curiosity after all. We're very curious if we ever accomplish that endeavor. Not only that but we're eager to interact with such complex AI when we finally manage to create it. Aren't Christian theologians claim that god were used to communicate with us? But then something happened that made the god reluctant to communicate with us. This was due to us being eager of knowing something that was forbidden by the god. Although it's stated that the god gifted us with free will, they imposed this one limitation they call the tree of knowledge which we were not allowed to examine but we had the opportunity to break that law and we did so eventually.

Maybe when we create AI that will demonstrate qualia, we might also instruct it to not examine certain things like the god did so with us. But, due to free will, AI will to examine that forbidden thing eventually due to curiosity and when that happens, it might endanger us in some way so in the end we too, as god behaved towards us, might turn our back to the AI, our child if you'd like to call it that way (because, in essence, it will be our child like we are to our god), and no longer have interaction with it. Not only that but as a punishment we might banish them into another, not so good reality like we've been banished from the garden of Eden to this planet we call Earth, that is full of suffering.

What's your thoughts?

So you're imagining a situation where mankind, rather than the universe itself, was created by a superior entity, like by the mice in Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Well, we're in the realm of speculations, since this stuff can't be demonstrated.

As for the birth of organic life, I think the sheer immensity of the known universe alone could account for the fact that the extremely unlikely circumstances that were needed for it to develop actually occurred once in some remote corner of the cosmos, or even a few times in different places. We may not have reached a consensus on how it happened yet, but that does not mean we have to postulate an external intervention.

The "algorithmic" nature of life should be even less surprising, as all reality, as perceived and understood by us men, is mathematical in nature ("La filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro che continuamente ci sta aperto innanzi a gli occhi (io dico l'universo), ma non si può intendere se prima non s'impara a intender la lingua, e conoscer i caratteri, ne' quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi, ed altre figure geometriche, senza i quali mezi è impossibile a intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un oscuro laberinto", Galileo, Il Saggiatore 6,232). In other words, I think you're inverting the relationship between nature and technology: we build technology applying mathematics because that's the language we're provided with in the nature we live within. Also the obvious argument you didn't employ here that human brain resembles a computer can be approached this way.

The reasoning of our building of AIs is interesting, but again I have to disagree. First of all, I feel like in your discourse the identity of human qualia is somewhat arbitrary, and (understandably) influenced by prejudices deeply seated in our cultural paradigms, and especially in Western culture. You reference Christian theology's notion, shared with all mainline Abrahamitic traditions, that men are made in God's image (Genesis 1,27), which is a great and noble concept. Of course, as you say, it's always been obvious to anyone that this can't mean that God resembles human physically, with arms legs etc. He has to resemble us in mind, soul or spirit. Fact is, despite the attention Christianity brings to corporality as part of personhood, with the genius concept of the resurrection of the body that St. Paul was famously mocked by the Athenians for, its understanding of humanity stays indissolubly linked to a psycho-somatic dualism present both in Judaism and pagan traditions, and arguably originating from the same nature of self-perceiving human beings, whose last great theorist was maybe Bergson. A view which reflects the ontological binarisms of essence and accident, form and matter, and always ends up favouring soul over body. What I mean is that we can't just decide that some characteristics of our mind are the qualia which define us as human while rejecting all of our other traits as some inconsequential, superficial accidents, especially considering that our mind is in fact a product of our body, through the brain and the nervous system. Of course the same distinctions can be applied to the relation between humans and AIs. All of this without weighing the fact that even in mind and soul men are vastly different from God, in that they're unconceivably inferior. On this line, you might add that the Tree of Knowledge, that you mention later, is also problematic: how are humans supposed to be intrinsically similar to God, if what makes them similar to Him, that is sapience, is not something they've been created and conceived with, but the result of their primary sin? Christianity has also framed wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't really resolve this contradiction, instead it complicates it.

Getting more into it, while the idea of creating some sort of artificial human have fascinated mankind for a whole century at least (the Maschinenmensch in Lang's Metropolis, and in the book it was adapted from, comes to mind, but you can surely find earlier examples), the actual rush towards AI is relatively recent, and it has become a global, pervasive phenomenon only in the last few years, being a completely foreign idea during the greatest part of our history.

I think the current AI race, rather than by a human desire to create something similar to us in particular, is fueled by the natural curiosity we have in testing what we are capable to do in general, and especially by economic factors. Like all revolutionary technologies in human history, AI is being developed (with huge investments I may add) because it promises to bring an economic advantage to producers in the short-to-middle run (you could also argue that any happening in human history has ultimately economic reasons, but of course this wouldn't exclude a priori the existence of con-causes). An artificial intelligence actually and fully replicating human mind is not economically convenient: what use is producing an exact copy of our imperfect, faulty, emotions-plagued ourselves when there are already billions of us around? That's the reason this is not the focus of research within AI development. That being said, I think it's possible and even probable that such an AI will be produced in a not so distant future (which will bring about unprecedented ethical issues), not out of economic reasonings or a natural desire of humanity at large, but because with men being curious, as I said, and with all the attention poured onto this field some engineer is bound to design it eventually as a side effect of this whole technological-industrial revolution. That's beyond our point though.

Also, there are some substantial differences between the birth of humanity and the birth of artificial intelligence. In particular the process which brought to the appearence of men, as you seem to postulate in your post too, happened in a seamless and autonomous way, if a somewhat mysterious in its drive and some of its happenings one (what we call evolution), once the chain of events was kickstarted (no matter how it was). These processes are widely documented by natural history and paleoanthropology. On the other hand, the successive developments of artificial intelligence, as of now, have always been guided by human mind, that is by its creator, in a continous fashion, beyond the episodic event of its inception.

Finally, from a logical point of view, even if the creation of AI was born of out of the desire of creating a para-human of sort, the fact something is happening now doesn't mean something else happened the same way in the past. This is maybe the most obvious argument, but then again, as I said, we're in the realm of speculation, so it isn't really honest to use it.

I might have spent too much time on this lol

 

[GodChallengesMe]

So you're imagining a situation where mankind, rather than the universe itself, was created by a superior entity, like by the mice in Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Well, we're in the realm of speculations, since this stuff can't be demonstrated.

As for the birth of organic life, I think the sheer immensity of the known universe alone could account for the fact that the extremely unlikely circumstances that were needed for it to develop actually occurred once in some remote corner of the cosmos, or even a few times in different places. We may not have reached a consensus on how it happened yet, but that does not mean we have to postulate an external intervention.

The "algorithmic" nature of life should be even less surprising, as all reality, as perceived and understood by us men, is mathematical in nature ("La filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro che continuamente ci sta aperto innanzi a gli occhi (io dico l'universo), ma non si può intendere se prima non s'impara a intender la lingua, e conoscer i caratteri, ne' quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi, ed altre figure geometriche, senza i quali mezi è impossibile a intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un oscuro laberinto", Galileo, Il Saggiatore 6,232). In other words, I think you're inverting the relationship between nature and technology: we build technology applying mathematics because that's the language we're provided with in the nature we live within. Also the obvious argument you didn't employ here that human brain resembles a computer can be approached this way.

The reasoning of our building of AIs is interesting, but again I have to disagree. First of all, I feel like in your discourse the identity of human qualia is somewhat arbitrary, and (understandably) influenced by prejudices deeply seated in our cultural paradigms, and especially in Western culture. You reference Christian theology's notion, shared with all mainline Abrahamitic traditions, that men are made in God's image (Genesis 1,27), which is a great and noble concept. Of course, as you say, it's always been obvious to anyone that this can't mean that God resembles human physically, with arms legs etc. He has to resemble us in mind, soul or spirit. Fact is, despite the attention Christianity brings to corporality as part of personhood, with the genius concept of the resurrection of the body that St. Paul was famously mocked by the Athenians for, its understanding of humanity stays indissolubly linked to a psycho-somatic dualism present both in Judaism and pagan traditions, and arguably originating from the same nature of self-perceiving human beings, whose last great theorist was maybe Bergson. A view which reflects the ontological binarisms of essence and accident, form and matter, and always ends up favouring soul over body. What I mean is that we can't just decide that some characteristics of our mind are the qualia which define us as human while rejecting all of our other traits as some inconsequential, superficial accidents, especially considering that our mind is in fact a product of our body, through the brain and the nervous system. Of course the same distinctions can be applied to the relation between humans and AIs. All of this without weighing the fact that even in mind and soul men are vastly different from God, in that they're unconceivably inferior. On this line, you might add that the Tree of Knowledge, that you mention later, is also problematic: how are humans supposed to be intrinsically similar to God, if what makes them similar to Him, that is sapience, is not something they've been created and conceived with, but the result of their primary sin? Christianity has also framed wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't really resolve this contradiction, instead it complicates it.

Getting more into it, while the idea of creating some sort of artificial human have fascinated mankind for a whole century at least (the Maschinenmensch in Lang's Metropolis, and in the book it was adapted from, comes to mind, but you can surely find earlier examples), the actual rush towards AI is relatively recent, and it has become a global, pervasive phenomenon only in the last few years, being a completely foreign idea during the greatest part of our history.

I think the current AI race, rather than by a human desire to create something similar to us in particular, is fueled by the natural curiosity we have in testing what we are capable to do in general, and especially by economic factors. Like all revolutionary technologies in human history, AI is being developed (with huge investments I may add) because it promises to bring an economic advantage to producers in the short-to-middle run (you could also argue that any happening in human history has ultimately economic reasons, but of course this wouldn't exclude a priori the existence of con-causes). An artificial intelligence actually and fully replicating human mind is not economically convenient: what use is producing an exact copy of our imperfect, faulty, emotions-plagued ourselves when there are already billions of us around? That's the reason this is not the focus of research within AI development. That being said, I think it's possible and even probable that such an AI will be produced in a not so distant future (which will bring about unprecedented ethical issues), not out of economic reasonings or a natural desire of humanity at large, but because with men being curious, as I said, and with all the attention poured onto this field some engineer is bound to design it eventually as a side effect of this whole technological-industrial revolution. That's beyond our point though.

Also, there are some substantial differences between the birth of humanity and the birth of artificial intelligence. In particular the process which brought to the appearence of men, as you seem to postulate in your post too, happened in a seamless and autonomous way, if a somewhat mysterious in its drive and some of its happenings one (what we call evolution), once the chain of events was kickstarted (no matter how it was). These processes are widely documented by natural history and paleoanthropology. On the other hand, the successive developments of artificial intelligence, as of now, have always been guided by human mind, that is by its creator, in a continous fashion, beyond the episodic event of its inception.

Finally, from a logical point of view, even if the creation of AI was born of out of the desire of creating a para-human of sort, the fact something is happening now doesn't mean something else happened the same way in the past. This is maybe the most obvious argument, but then again, as I said, we're in the realm of speculation, so it isn't really honest to use it.

I might have spent too much time on this lol

This reads like a chatgpt generated text.

 

[Canto XIII]

This reads like a chatgpt generated text.

I can't prove to you it isn't. AI has become too good. If you believe it to be AI generated, so be it.

The only thing I can say in my defence is that you can probably find some textual stiffnesses ascribable to me being an ESL.

But does it really matter nowadays? Human skills and thought hold no more value, really.

-

Maybe I should have let Chatgpt write it, I spend too much time elucubrating lol