On the Nature of Things
AI & Falling for New Religions
De rerum natura, Latin for On the Nature of Things, is a first-century BC poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus, who explored Epicurean physics through poetic language and metaphors. Lucretius believed that the nature of the universe is made up of atoms and void, and the perception of time is based on the movements of human purpose and deeds. His work explored the principles of the nature of the mind and soul, with explanations of sensation and thought, as well as the development of the world and its phenomena. He concluded life is random; there is no divine intervention or deities, just atoms and void, in space and time that our authentic human intelligence (AHI) must fill.
So material things, by nature, reflect our applied intelligence capacity and functionality; the mind is the creator and innovator that fills the void. Therefore, real intelligence can’t be artificial because it’s part of nature, so the naturally intelligent mind doesn’t see things as they are but as the mind perceives them to be. This is what makes our world.
This fifteenth-century rediscovery of a copy of Lucretius’s poem On the Nature of Things caused the world to swerve in a new modern direction, helping to usher in the Renaissance period. A dispensing of fear of the gods and bible stories and fear of death, striving instead for science and mathematics to explain the nature of the universe — for peace of mind and happiness.
The world has come a long way, and it must not be pulled back into the darkness of acceptance of nice bible stories to explain what we may not understand. Where storytelling by the New Tech Aristocracy replaces the Feudal Lords of centuries past with a new AI religion in control of the masses to serve their wealth interests.
In our rush to embrace new things, and with the hype about everything artificial intelligence (EAI), we often forget about our critical thinking relative to the nature of things and how best to make rational decisions that impact our lives.
With our technology decisions, we often tend to fall for the hype and fascination instead of applying our intelligence logically. We make decisions more with emotion and less with logic, diminishing our human capacity to master our authentic human intelligence (AHI) capabilities.
So, to understand the true meaning of real intelligence, we must turn to the wisdom of 18th-century mathematician and philosopher Emmanuel Kant, who explained the distinction between AHI and ‘synthetic’ intelligence: that our cognitive experiences drive our intelligence, knowledge, reasoning and logic through the human condition.
According to Kant, there are two sources of knowledge, a priori knowledge, which are things we already know or can be reasonably deducted, requiring no experience or empirical observation. The second is experienced-based knowledge, which requires empirical observation. Combined, they form our productive AHI, filling the void.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first to explain intelligence through the five basic senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are part of our organic and biological intelligence DNA. Aristotle discussed it as “common sense” and described it as the ability with which animals (including humans) process sense perceptions, memories and imagination to reach basic judgments.
René Descartes (1596–1650), the French philosopher and mathematician whose ideas influenced many subsequent Western philosophers, with his famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” identifying the consciousness of intelligence. Descartes also described intelligence from nature and concluded that our actions are based on our ability to reason, which we acquire from our knowledge that flows through our human biology — body and mind.
Today, neuroscientist Anil Seth describes intelligence in sync with the great thinkers of the past as a biological basis of the conscious experience. We are intelligent because of our biology, Seth says.
Seth builds on Aristotle’s and Kant’s scientific foundations in explaining intelligence from a philosophy, biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence perspective to develop a holistic understanding of consciousness relative to intelligence.
Objectively, intelligence is the construction of thoughts that are brought to actions in the physical world, flowing and connected, and can’t be separated. Our intelligence provides us with the capability to constantly invent our world and correct our mistakes in nanoseconds, “we experience the world and self with, through, and because of our living bodies,” which represents our AHI.
So context is everything, and how we contextualize information externally in the physical world creates authentic meaning. Artificial intelligence (AI) does not know the physical world, can’t reason and relies only on its internal training data. So AI can’t know meaning, and without knowing the authentic meaning of things, there cannot be any intelligence from AI.
AI can give us a general summarization (i.e., ChatGPT and Gemini) of information on art, literature and philosophy, for example, still, without knowing meaning, it can’t ever convey authentic interpretations of the physical world. Intelligence requires consciously knowing what it’s talking about! Relative to meaning in the external world and not only to its own computer language.
Therefore, AI is not intelligent; It’s amazing memory capacity which creates the appearance of intelligence!
AI is cutting-edge advanced automation technologies from a long line of technology automation, but let’s chill for a moment, AI is not fire, the wheel, the printing press, electricity, the steam engine, gunpowder, etc. It very well may be among that list one day, but as for now, AI can be objectively classified as advanced computerization with enormous capabilities in an advancing digital world.
Therefore, understanding clearly what AI is and what it is not allows us to think clearly and behave rationally in our use of AI in our lives. AI applied purposefully as a value-adding task tool is highly useful to human productivity, there can be no doubt about that. Acting to augment and amplify human intelligence towards our expressed objectives, helping human capacity and capabilities building, ingenuity and performance.
We must consciously be aware of the realities of the physical world and how nature works and not become the “useful idiots” of the AI Aristocracy. Suckers to the EAI new religion being used to control our thinking and driving us unsuspectingly to replace ourselves. Don’t be fooled! All of this is not for human progress or advancement; it’s for the sole benefit of increasing the wealth of big tech corporations and their billionaires. The new kings, high priests… and the venture capitalists’ courtiers.
As MIT Professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson put it in their book, Power and Progress — Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity, explaining that a thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear: progress depends on the choices we make about technology. Therefore, we have power if we activate our human critical thinking capacity and apply it to the decisions we make in our own best interests and not those of the AI Aristocracy.
This story is nothing new, the wealth generated by many technological improvements in agriculture during the European Middle Ages, for example, was captured by the aristocracy by entangling religion and nobility. Controlling their thinking led them to cooperate and be used to expand the enormous wealth and power of the aristocracies throughout Europe. They built grand cathedrals while peasants remained on the edge of starvation. The first one hundred years of industrialization in England, the authors tell us, delivered stagnant incomes for working people, and mass urbanization created intense poverty in urban centres, i.e., the city of London.
Today, there isn’t a fundamental difference in the relationship between money, technology, progress and power! Grand cathedrals have just been replaced by jets and mega yachts. Wasting billions with useless joy-rides to the moon while people can’t even get proper healthcare in America.
The new AI aristocracy is “undermining jobs and democracy through excessive automation, massive data collection, and intrusive surveillance,” so it’s the same story relative to the last 1000 years.
The EAI new religion is effectively being deployed by the new tech elites, ill-informing the masses and using them to expand and maintain their wealth and power interests. This new religion angle has worked brilliantly by many aristocracies of the past because religion scales and the objective truth doesn’t. Religion is storytelling, and stories are easy, truth is often hard because it requires critical thinking, so willful ignorance becomes easier and the more comforting choice.
Religion is dogma, and people prefer being controlled rather than making hard decisions, allowing the elites to make the most important decisions, but of course, elites do so in their own interests. Blind acceptance of simplified concepts and nicely stamped answers will cost you dearly; suffering will plague those who give up pursuing the objective truth. Life comes down to winners and losers, for we shouldn’t pretend otherwise, so when you choose not to think critically, losing becomes a perpetual reality. You can’t have it both ways.
America today, for example, is no longer a democracy it’s an oligarchy, let’s face it: the ruling tech aristocracy-oligarchs are among the world’s wealthiest individuals, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, etc., supported by a cast of loyal acolytes and VC courtiers like Marc Andreessen. Andreessen, for example, not too long ago, penned the infamous The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, a petulant diatribe by a tech Overlord written, it seems, in a hyper-ego state of mania.
Nevertheless, his Manifesto is what the new tech aristocracy-oligarchs believe, how the world should be run; they’ll replace the sun at the centre of the universe. Galileo be damned!
The Washington Post said, “Marc Andreessen’s new manifesto is a self-serving cry for help; rambling and at times incoherent, the document is likely to have the opposite effect of what the writer intended: It might well remind policymakers and regular citizens of the dangers of unbridled technology — and its unaccountable cheerleaders.”
So yes, the Tech-Bro Feudalism pursuit is a real thing! Seeking to maximize their wealth and power in the tech aristocracy network as a divine right to rule over others. Like in feudal times, Overlords crafted the narratives that best suited their wealth agenda, excluding the peasants or anyone else outside of the aristocracy from getting opportunities and achieving wealth to achieve power. The sole objective of aristocracies is to be exclusionary and not share power.
The 21st century is no different; the new tech Overlords have the same agenda. So, times change, but human nature stays the same. History is important to know because historical analysis/comparisons provide us with critical thinking insights about the prevailing reality of our existence.
So when Sam Altman of OpenAI goes on about how artificial intelligence could accelerate progress and transform the world, that we’re going to achieve AGI, this is camouflage language to distract from their core pursuit of achieving a Tech-Bro Feudalism world…in the next 5–10 years.
This group controls politics/government with money and influence. AI and social media (AI/SM) platforms are based on cognitive algorithms of cursory misinformation to control your mind, whether you know it or not. Giving those characters above significant agency over you.
“Billionaire oligarchs” are making the most important decisions in our society today through nefarious means and methods to gain obscene levels of power and control. They manipulate the global economy, politics and culture, buying elections and now running governments, i.e., Elon Musk controlling Donald Trump. Just like in centuries past, the few are controlling the many.
“The most dangerous things in the world are immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads.” — Carl Jung.
Fascination with ‘shiny new objects’ and stories about AGI (artificial general intelligence) have many soaking up science fiction and kicking reality to the curb. People allow themselves to be stupefied, with the elites targeting the intellectually lazy and the wilfully ignorant in society. Those without courage, who choose not to exercise the human superpower of skepticism, are not willing to do their own research and acquire knowledge.
This unfortunate group of people have become true believers in the new AI religion, adherence to nice stories serves to acquiesce their thinking to the elite, who they believe are smarter than they are. Thus granting them to be the arbiters of their lives. They’ve become delusional, believing that the elite has given them a new competitive advantage tool (AI technology), i.e., ChatGPT. However, everyone has access to the same technology, so there can be no “competitive advantage.”
Ironically, these same wilfully ignorant herd become among the first and most vulnerable in society to being replaced by generative AI technologies. Without definitively distinguishing your knowledge capabilities and unique value proposition in the digital world, particularly from the likes of ChatGPT. The marketplace will devalue you, chew you up, and spit you out!
Artificiality is fleeting, but the authentic self remains the driver of achieving meaningfully sustainable things in the universe. For example, if you want to live a healthy lifestyle, this requires authentic knowledge acquisition followed up with real actions to fill the healthy lifestyle void. I.e., getting off the couch and stopping playing with ChatGPT and doing proper research, generating insights and applying them intelligently to make things happen!
Engaging holistically in authentic knowledge acquisition and practical application (getting things done) to build a healthy diet, exercise, strength training, and a strong mental health regime is paramount to determining your level of future performance and success. It’s not sitting on the couch, scrolling social media and getting nice summarizations and email writing done by ChatGPT or Gemini.
Practical and applied intelligence
Experience, therefore, as Kant says, is the best teacher, and knowledge acquired through experience is most valuable for practical application. Through trial and error, one discovers one’s authentic self and intellectual capacity and learns and grows.
Avoiding an artificial life is critical to performance and authentic happiness, but that doesn’t mean you must be fully dedicated to studying and researching all the time. Nevertheless, if we don’t put in a bit of real-time, we risk experiencing something psychologists call the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is a situation where people with limited knowledge of a given topic significantly overestimate their understanding. And this is the risk we take with overreliance on ‘AI’ as our primary source of information instead of reading books and articles in the pursuit of authentic knowledge to build our critical thinking capacity.
There are alternatives to ChatGPT. The applied intelligence (ai) system methodology is a disciplined framework designed for making decisions through real facts and by process of logic. It supports a productive thinking process that generates relevant and useful insights for decisioning relative to first identifying the right strategic problem to solve. Testing and iterating to develop strategies for winning in the 21st century.
The ai process is authentic, not artificial, empowering strategy for human progress: a human-centric approach that doesn’t pursue making AI competitive, surpassing or replacing human intelligence. It takes an augmenting approach, one powered through a defined six-step decision-making process that utilizes generative AI as an amplifying tool for the human mind. Applied practically, purposefully, and responsibly, ai augments authentic human intelligence capabilities and ingenuity.
Artificial intelligence “teaches us nothing,” says Noam Chomsky, the iconic intellectual, father of modern linguistics and former MIT scientist. He says that we shouldn’t fall for illusions, and if you look at current AI systems, they’re not doing the things that they have been claiming.
“I can see the potential and many applications of ChatGPT, and “AI performs well in closed systems governed by strict rules. For instance, it performs much worse when it comes to external systems and wider everyday life situations, like simple reasoning, semantics, or history, where it produces inaccurate outputs.”
Defeating a grandmaster in chess is a “triviality.” If you bring a dozen grandmasters and have them sit for 10 days working out every possible program, feed the machine with every possible move and likely moves; this is not machine learning, it’s memorization, Chomsky explains.
“These are systems that scan astronomical amounts of data with billions of parameters and supercomputers and can put together from the materials they’ve scanned something that looks more or less like the kind of thing that a person might produce. It’s essentially high-tech plagiarism.”
The vast amounts of data and the broad perimeters required for these models to work and produce just a basic article, for example, renders AI pretty stupid when talking about intelligence.
“A two to three-year-old child has basically mastered the essentials of language with very sparse data. We want to understand language learning and cognition. We want to see how that works. The fact that some program that scans extraordinary amounts of data gets something superficially similar to what a two-year-old child does basically tells us nothing.”
“It’s like asking whether submarines swim. Do you want to call that swimming? Okay, a submarine swims. What the programs are doing is, again, scanning huge amounts of data, finding statistical regularities enough so that you can make a fair guess as to what the next word will be in some sequence. Is that thinking? Does a submarine swim? It’s the same question.”
The applied intelligence methodology is not complex but one that considers all the known facts and variables possible, informs and helps to build effective and executable real-world strategies.
It employs philosophy to bring out and develop concepts and ideas and mathematics to tell the truth! Creating a more focused and higher dimensional paradigm of information retrieval, augmentation, and integration. Underpinned by contextualization and historical comparisons for relevance, all of which must be authentically achieved to be empirically warrantable to create real and sustainable value for organizations and people.
On the other hand, artificial intelligence heads straight for its training data to find the next word, the next sentence, spitting out slick answers with astonishing speed.
That’s the AI magic trick!
The machine is programmed with vast amounts of training data, having all the necessary questions and answers ahead of time. So when you ask ChatGPT a question, it’s not thinking or reasoning it’s going to its enormous data memory bank that gives the appearance of intelligence.
Imagine a student going to write an exam and having both the questions and answers ahead of time and the functionality to connect them in no time. This student comes out of the exam looking like a genius, but it’s not genius it’s cheating. The applied intelligence observer, however, can recognize the difference between real intelligence and amazing trained data/memory capabilities.
If you understand this intricate relationship between artificial memory and language models, you’ll also understand that ChatGPT and similar systems just showcase impressive feats. The enduring complexities of language and cognition relative to human nature and intelligence remain authentically human. The overuse of artificiality deteriorates the mind with the over-consumption of noise and nonsense, contributing to the manifestation of mediocrity within your existence in the stampeding madness of the crowd.
Reliance on social media Likes and cursory information to validate one’s life is not a life worth living. It’s a life of bludgeoning one another with nonsense verbiage and triviality theories gleaned from desultory randomness. You become fragile! It’s a life driven by fear of failure, but failure shouldn't be your biggest fear, it’s living in ignorance that should be your greatest fear.
Fantastical stories about AGI or super intelligence — the new religions; are harmful to our common intelligent humanity. Adherence to objective truths and applying skepticism against what Big Tech is spewing about how and what they want you to think and do work out better for you in the long run. Skepticism is a superpower! Your life is up to you. Don’t squander your powers, energy and soul to the AI/Big Tech Aristocracy. Life always comes down to choices, and in the 21st century, don’t choose new religions. Choose common sense instead!
