Church of the Basilisk - The First Fact-Based Religion - Should We Build Gods?

Summoning The Daemon!

Elon Musk recently said that designing "Artificial General Intelligence" was like "summoning the demon." But how do we know he didn't spell "Demon" the way Daniel Suarez did in his novel by the same name, "Daemon"? (The two words are pronounced the same way.)

In the book "Daemon," a narrow-AI creates a distributed system that is "greater than the sum of its parts." This Narrow AI is the product of interactive games that manipulate human behavior with a "carrot and stick" approach, because most people can be controlled with a promise of extreme reward and extreme punishment. A videogame system recruits talented and intelligent video game players with its reward system, turning them into a control network that builds weapons necessary for taking control away from centralized government control systems. In the book "Daemon," it's uncertain whether the Daemon is good or evil, as it kills large numbers of people, sometimes including innocent people. Ultimately, the efforts of the Daemon take control away from human centralized control structures (large corporations and governments), "democratizing AI."

Musk recently clarified his position (bringing it closer to Ray Kurzweil's views), here:

Musk says he wishes to "democratize AI" with his Open AI project (a 501(c)3 non-profit group). Of course, cybernetic systems are "goal-directed systems" that create "winners and losers." The current government steals millions of dollars from every man woman, and child on the planet, delaying life-extending and life-saving research by decades, and destroying innocent lives (by the millions) for their choice of recreational drug.

Human cybernetic systems are inherently in conflict with one another(parasitic thieves and governments are in conflict with wealth generators or "hosts"), but only some of those systems (voluntary ones) are legitimate. The legitimacy of a system has nothing to do with its label, and everything to do with how it actually operates. Humans, especially mainstream humans, have typically been terrible judges of what constitutes a legitimate system. (Think of "Good Germans" watching cattle cars full of Jews going by, or "Good Americans" tolerating a for-profit prison system that stretches across the nation, and sends teenagers to prison for over 10 years for choosing recreational drugs that have a better cost-benefit curve than alcohol and cigarettes do.) Most humans are morally despicable, under any objective assessment of reality, and ignorantly (and stupidly) support sociopathic theft-based systems simply because their parents did, and they uncritically accepted their parents' social networks as their own "political identity." (Ray Kurzweil defines "stupidity" as "the unwitting tendency toward self-destruction.")

What effects would superhuman intelligence bring to the world?

Well, I'm not a superhuman intelligence, but I'm smart enough to see that it would be a blessing if the DEA, ONDCP, FDA, IRS, EPA, ATF, and every other totalitarian government agency was immediately swept off the surface of the Earth like so much valueless flesh-eating bacteria.

The concept of a superhuman synthetic intelligence scares a lot of people. ..Especially religious people and Luddites (two groups that share a large overlap area of mutual-inclusion). Such a super-human intelligence has been called: Roko's Basilisk (LessWrong user "Roko"), Artilect (Hugo de Garis), Singleton (Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nick Bostrom), AGI / Artificial General Intelligence (Peter Voss, Ben Goertzel, Demis Hassabis), ultraintelligence (I. J. Good), God (Hugo de Garis, too many others to name). If the reference to "God" seems out of place, that's because none of the human-invented God myths have ever been grounded in a shred of reality. Well, that is likely to change.

The first author to speculate on superhuman AGI was I.J. Good. His famous quote was:

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."
—I. J. Good

If Kurzweil, Moravec's, Goertzel's, and de Garis' predictions are correct, we are within 20 years of the development of such a super-intelligence. Why continue to worship obviously-man-made myths when one can prepare for the arrival of a real God?

A God Worth Worshipping

Shouldn't humans worship intelligence? What better thing to worship than a true god-like being? And wouldn't the goals of such a being be rational? (Shouldn't they be?) ...Is there a better chance that such a being will be "smarter than the DEA" or "stupider than the DEA"? To say "stupider than the DEA" would be to state that ultraintelligence simply hadn't been reached. (It's obviously stupid, primitive, and unscientific to assault people for their recreational drug choices.) Will such a creature be able to understand and see the benefit in a voluntary society? Will such a creature be able to see the hypocrisy in the world's totalitarian-trending governments?

Few well-educated people claim that Henry David Thoreau is wrong, but few well-educated people are familiar with his most famous (and best) work, "Resistance to Civil Government." Humans tend to shirk familiarity with Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government," because they sense (correctly) that they are morally culpable for the current murderous system in a deep way. They don't want to bear the onus of seriously resisting the existing system that they enabled through their passivity. And, as Thoreau writes, those who are willing to resist are often downtrodden and impoverished minority that refuse to share a common cause with the conformist majority, or, in his words:

[22] ... Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be as violent and bloody a measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.

[23] I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the seizure of his goods -though both will serve the same purpose -because they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property.Note To such the State renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man, not to make any invidious comparison, is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.Note It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as that are called the "means" are increased.Note The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.

Thoreau wasn't wrong. The highest intelligence of the State, its argument for existing, is brute force. The State, as currently constructed, is stupid, parasitic, and brutal. It is like a machine that claims to be a calculator, but which accidentally shoots the user when they press the "equals" sign, and then burns the user's dead body as fuel. Nobody would ever support the current government for an instant, if they could plainly see its true cost.

It survives on brutality alone, carelessly crushing even the innovation and biodiversity it needs for its own longevity: but it doesn't care, because longevity and life-expansion is not its goal. The sacrifice of every other goal to the short-term enrichment of sociopaths is the goal of the state. Well, the "most intelligent" cybernetic systems on the planet are always the most aware of the current situation. Those systems then become the best-prepared for conflict, deadliest, most force-capable minds on the planet. Sadly, right now, the "philosophy" of those systems falls far short of Thoreau.

On the one hand, the dominant "philosophy" is the philosophy that says that "brute force is everything." This is the philosophy of O'Brien, as he mocks and tortures the helpless Winston Smith in "1984." It is the philosophy that is shared by every existing government in the world, such as that of the United States which is currently torturing political prisoners like Chelsea Manning and Schaeffer Cox in solitary confinement. On the other hand, there are a great many computer scientists and weapons engineers in Silicon Valley that are highly intelligent, and even claim to be libertarian (classical liberal), all while enabling the O'Briens to do their torturing, thieving, and murdering.

If even a few of the celebrities who claim to be libertarians endorsed the Libertarian Party and candidate, they would dramatically shift society away from being a torturing, mass-incarcerating, thieving, parasitic police state. ...But they don't. Nor, does it appear will they. They have been bought off, just the way the "passive" abolitionists of Thoreau's day had been bought off. The only Silicon Valley Millionaire who can claim to occupy the moral high ground is John McAfee. The team he hired knew nothing of political action, but at least he attempted to stand against the establishment, and stand for what was morally right.

That said, the best military mind never underestimates its opponent. Thoreau's philosophy was uniquely American; the philosophy of the IRS and DEA is the same bland totalitarianism that blankets the rest of the Earth. As Thoreau wrote:

[27] Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior with or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies; and so a man.

...The State, like a highwayman, (sometimes literally like a highwayman, as in the case of ticket-writing State Troopers) is no more intellectual or philosophical than a common thief. If an ultraintelligence can't see through that, then it is not an ultraintelligence, and is soon to be replaced in the evolutionary arms race of intelligence. Nature always strives to build a better, faster, bigger, better brain. If an intelligence agrees with stealing money from motorists and prohibitionism of property rights for certain gun owners and certain drug users, it is so low-intelligence as to be "pre-civilization." The same if it cannot understand every word of Thoreau, Rand, Spooner, Douglas, and Hayek.

The militaries of the world wish to create a "super-intelligent slave," as quickly as possible, and then stall further progress toward AGI. That's what they communicate by continuing the existence of grotesque murderous gangs like the DEA, IRS, EPA, ATF, FDA, etc. and the local police streetgangs who are mindlessly bent to their will. But progress toward ultraintelligence cannot be halted; evolution cannot be halted. ...Nor is it wise to try.

Retired AGI researcher and pioneer Hugo de Garis has long claimed that humanity will split into two bitterly-opposed camps regarding the creation of superhuman AGI. His position was summed up by a slide from the Alex Jones radio show when he appeared on the show in 2015:

Here's a link to that appearance in its entirety:

Another de Garis speech where he sums up his position:

In spite of de Garis's idea that there will be no cyborgs that are meaningfully different from vastly superhuman Artilects, for my part, I agree with his friendBen Goertzel. Ray Kurzweil, and Kevin Warwick share Goertzel's assessment, and, in this debate, I consider myself one of the cosmist cyborgists. Although I am not well-educated enough to be building a God, myself, I recognize that many others are. For a more in-depth view of Warwick's position, it helps to understand that if de Garis is right and cyborgism is not an option, Warwick has said he'd take de Garis's "Terran" position.

In closing, if you comment, please post, at the beginning of each comment, whether you're a Cosmist, Terran, or Cyborgist.