Ai vs Christian theology

[Neogaia777]

That would seem to eliminate the soul, free will, etc. And if we have no free will, how could God justify punishing us?

Hell is not a punishment, but is just a natural result of those who are only made to be the cause of others getting to go to heaven. Hell is a continuation here in other creations/universes/realities that will be after this, etc, and those ones are not aware of it each time, etc, and it is forever, etc. They are forever permanently just a cause of others getting to go to Heaven, which only ever happens here, etc, and that is forever, etc.

And why would it eliminate God's choosing of some getting to live beyond this, or getting to go to heaven?

God Bless.

 

[Neogaia777]

Hell is not a punishment, but is just a natural result of those who are only made to be the cause of others getting to go to heaven. Hell is a continuation here in other creations/universes/realities that will be after this, etc, and those ones are not aware of it each time, etc, and it is forever, etc. They are forever permanently just a cause of others getting to go to Heaven, which only ever happens here, etc, and that is forever, etc.

And why would it eliminate God's choosing of some getting to live beyond this, or getting to go to heaven?

God Bless.

@Kylie

You will find many, many false teachings about God's wrath. People do not go to this kind of hell I told you about because of God's wrath. God the Father has no wrath. Or even any other kind of feeling about anything really. He just was/always is, etc. That's why He has the other Two to express that. So that we may know Him, etc. But He will probably always still have everyone else's judgements being thrown at Him for that, etc.

God the Spirit's wrath was poured out, or was directed to/towards Jesus Christ when he was crucified, or was on the cross, etc, and that fully satisfied that One's wrath, etc. God the Spirit was also made to fully submit to God the Father's will in that moment, just as Jesus did when he submitted to the cross, etc. Jesus went to where the Father always was/has been after that, and left us here with now God the Holy Spirit, just as we have always been here with God the (Holy) Spirit, until he (Jesus) should come back, and it is that One's wrath that we will all be judged by, or will be suffering at that time then, etc. But it will only be a revealing of whom was already predestined which way or either way by the Father, etc. Or of who will be continuing on in heaven, and those who's only purpose anywhere ever is/always was/forever will be, etc, the cause of causing them to go there, etc.

This is why God the Holy Spirit no longer tries to do the kinds of things he was doing, or was trying to do in the OT. Because His wrath was fully satisfied when Jesus died on the cross, and after that in the NT, etc. This is why we don't see or hear very much from Him now in the kinds of ways He used to do, or used to be like in the OT, because it is all fully yielded to God the Father and God the Son now after Jesus died on the cross in the NT, etc.

That's all I'm going to share for now.

God Bless.

 

[Neogaia777]

@Kylie

You will find many, many false teachings about God's wrath. People do not go to this kind of hell I told you about because of God's wrath. God the Father has no wrath. Or even any other kind of feeling really. He just was/always is, etc. That's why He has the other Two to express that. So that we may know Him, etc. But He will probably always still have everyone else's judgements being thrown at Him for that, etc.

God the Spirit's wrath was poured out, or was directed to/towards Jesus Christ when he was crucified, or was on the cross, etc, and that fully satisfied that One's wrath, etc. God the Spirit was also made to fully submit to God the Father's will in that moment, just as Jesus did when he submitted to the cross, etc. Jesus went to where the Father always was/has been after that, and left us here with now God the Holy Spirit, just as we have always been here with God the (Holy) Spirit, until he (Jesus) should come back, and it is that One's wrath that we will all be judged by, or will be suffering at that time then, etc. But it will only be a revealing of whom was already predestined which way or either way by the Father, etc. Or of who will be continuing on in heaven, and those who's only purpose anywhere ever is/always was/forever will be, etc, the cause of causing them to go there, etc.

This is why God the Holy Spirit no longer tries to do the kinds of things he was doing, or was trying to do in the OT. Because His wrath was fully satisfied when Jesus died on the cross, and after that in the NT, etc. This is why we don't see or hear very much from Him now in the kinds of ways He used to do, or used to be like in the OT, because it is all fully yielded to God the Father and God the Son now after Jesus died on the cross in the NT, etc.

That's all I'm going to share for now.

God Bless.

Just to reiterate, people do not go to this kind of hell that I speak of because of anything they didn't do or did, etc, but only because of the way they were made from before the beginning by God the Father, etc. And also like I said, there are going to be a lot of people probably forever throwing their judgements at Him for that, etc. Well, it won't be forever, but I think you understand what I mean, etc.

God Bless.

 

[Neogaia777]

What we have seen happening/going on in the world and up to now shortly after the NT, is mostly the world without God the Holy Spirit's interference, etc.

Jesus is coming back though, and He will be armed with God the Father's predeterminations or judgements, etc.

God Bless.

 

[durangodawood]

Yeah, that's not the program actually designing something from scratch. It's just taking bits and pieces of things real artists have done and piecing them together. It's not a truly original creation, which is what my point was.

Its derivative for sure. But certain aspects of it are completely original, especially when the influence of various prior arts are mixed together in unpredictable ways - plus whatever weird content you demand in your prompt.

 

[RDKirk]

Its derivative for sure. But certain aspects of it are completely original, especially when the influence of various prior arts are mixed together in unpredictable ways - plus whatever weird content you demand in your prompt.

It's not any more derivative in how it works than the normal person's mental operation.

It doesn't mix together images. It looks at images and learns what things look like. It looks at thousands of pictures of a cat and determines from the pictures what the visual characteristics of a cat are. Then, when told to draw a cat, it creates an image of a cat based on the visual characteristics it has learned.

The difference is that it's only working from images and has (at this point) no concept of what a cat actually is. It doesn't know how a cat actually "works" and how a cat behaves...that's information that matters in creating a new image of a cat.

That's at the level of human who is technically adept but uninspired, even less inspired than average...an "idiot savant" whose one talent is drawing. "Rainman."

 

[durangodawood]

It's not any more derivative in how it works than the normal person's mental operation.

It doesn't mix together images. It looks at images and learns what things look like. It looks at thousands of pictures of a cat and determines from the pictures what the visual characteristics of a cat are. Then, when told to draw a cat, it creates an image of a cat based on the visual characteristics it has learned.

The difference is that it's only working from images and has (at this point) no concept of what a cat actually is. It doesn't know how a cat actually "works" and how a cat behaves...that's information that matters in creating a new image of a cat.

That's at the level of human who is technically adept but uninspired, even less inspired than average...an "idiot savant" whose one talent is drawing. "Rainman."

It is derivative in that the various styles it mimics are fairly tried and true. Maybe the humans have exhausted the possibility of new styles. Or perhaps not and someday the AIs will show us what we're not seeing.

 

[RDKirk]

It is derivative in that the various styles it mimics are fairly tried and true. Maybe the humans have exhausted the possibility of new styles. Or perhaps not and someday the AIs will show us what we're not seeing.

Humans are derivative in the same way. Who can draw a cat who has not at least seen pictures of cats?

Human artists spend many hours, hundreds, thousands, viewing the work of other artists. That all becomes part of our visual vocabulary, and we draw upon the work of all those artists in our own creative works.

 

[durangodawood]

Humans are derivative in the same way. Who can draw a cat who has not at least seen pictures of cats?

Human artists spend many hours, hundreds, thousands, viewing the work of other artists. That all becomes part of our visual vocabulary, and we draw upon the work of all those artists in our own creative works.

Yes we do. But any good artist brings something particular of their own as well. Can the same be said about an AI? Perhaps someday.

The premise here is that good art to some extent is born from personal experience.

 

[RDKirk]

Yes we do. But any good artist brings something particular of their own as well. Can the same be said about an AI? Perhaps someday.

The premise here is that good art to some extent is born from personal experience.

Inasmuch as it's rare to be able to identify any previous image that the AI might have learned...yes, the same can be said about AI.

But as I said, the AI doesn't really know what the subject actually is.

That's why if you ask AI for a picture of a football player in a game, that picture might include the "Getty" watermark...because it has so many thousands of Getty stock images of football players that it "thinks" the Getty watermark is a characteristic of football players.

As a photographer, I have in recent months played with Photoshop's new(ish) "AI Generative Fill." It's supposed to be able to add "more picture" to the edges of a camera image to make it wider or longer. A while back, I had taken a bunch of pictures of families at my church, and some of them were larger than the photographic background material I was using...so the family group "spilled" beyond the edges of the photographic background to the plain wall.

There is a non-AI way of handling that, but it's time-consuming and laborious...and I had a good number of pictures that needed the treatment. So, I though, "Aha! AI Generative Fill should be able to extend the background behind the family groups to cover the plain walls at the edges.

Well, the AI looked at the picture and recognized "people group." It knows what people look like. But it can't distinguish--it doesn't understand--that people are different from the edges of the photographic background. So, given the command to add more picture to the sides, it added...more people.

The only way I could get it to add purely just more photographic background was if the edges of the people group didn't spill over the edges of the photographic background. But when that was the case...I didn't need AI.

 

[partinobodycular]

The difference is that it's only working from images and has (at this point) no concept of what a cat actually is.

This raises the possibility that I'm an AI, because this is exactly what I'm doing. I'm taking in information (seemingly of my own accord) and then using that information to form an image of the world around me. But I have no way of knowing how complete this information is, and therefore no way of knowing how accurate my depiction of a cat is.

Like an AI I'm completely dependent upon the available information, and if given the same information an AI would almost certainly reach the same conclusion about the nature of a cat as I do. What's interesting is what happens when we humans lack sufficient information, such as when asked why there's something rather than nothing, in which case we humans can draw quite dissimilar conclusions.

For you, me, and AI's our conclusions will be no better than the information available to us, hence if the AI has a limited understanding about the nature of a cat, it's simply because we haven't provided it with enough information.

What this infers is, that the only difference between us and an AI is that we have access to more information, but there's no reason to assume that this gap won't close over time, and at some point even reverse.

The really, really interesting question is, whether there's actually any information at all, or whether we're just making it up.

 

[partinobodycular]

The only way I could get it to add purely just more photographic background was if the edges of the people group didn't spill over the edges of the photographic background. But when that was the case...I didn't need AI.

So why not mask out the people, then have the AI fill in the missing void and expand the edges. Replicate that as a layer and then you can layer on top of that anything you want to?

 

[RDKirk]

So why not mask out the people, then have the AI fill in the missing void and expand the edges. Replicate that as a layer and then you can layer on top of that anything you want to?

Masking out the people is the bulk of the work. By the time I had done that, I could extend the background myself in just about as much time as it takes Generative AI to figure it out.

And Generative AI might still do it wrong: When I mask out the people, It's just as likely to fill in the space with a lamp, a flowerpot, and a cat as it is to extend the photographic background...I've tried it.

 

[durangodawood]

Inasmuch as it's rare to be able to identify any previous image that the AI might have learned...yes, the same can be said about AI.

Youre talking here about how much we human views can be fooled by the AI into thinking there something novel there - I think. But I'm asking if there can be anything actually novel. I do realize we might be overstating our own human capacity for novelty. But I still believe in it, even while our creativity is conditioned in so many ways by outside forces. Its hardly "pure".

But as I said, the AI doesn't really know what the subject actually is.

That's why if you ask AI for a picture of a football player in a game, that picture might include the "Getty" watermark...because it has so many thousands of Getty stock images of football players that it "thinks" the Getty watermark is a characteristic of football players.

As a photographer, I have in recent months played with Photoshop's new(ish) "AI Generative Fill." It's supposed to be able to add "more picture" to the edges of a camera image to make it wider or longer. A while back, I had taken a bunch of pictures of families at my church, and some of them were larger than the photographic background material I was using...so the family group "spilled" beyond the edges of the photographic background to the plain wall.

There is a non-AI way of handling that, but it's time-consuming and laborious...and I had a good number of pictures that needed the treatment. So, I though, "Aha! AI Generative Fill should be able to extend the background behind the family groups to cover the plain walls at the edges.

Well, the AI looked at the picture and recognized "people group." It knows what people look like. But it can't distinguish--it doesn't understand--that people are different from the edges of the photographic background. So, given the command to add more picture to the sides, it added...more people.

The only way I could get it to add purely just more photographic background was if the edges of the people group didn't spill over the edges of the photographic background. But when that was the case...I didn't need AI.

Without its knowing about subjects the best we can say is it mimics creativity well.

 

[durangodawood]

This raises the possibility that I'm an AI, because this is exactly what I'm doing. I'm taking in information (seemingly of my own accord) and then using that information to form an image of the world around me. But I have no way of knowing how complete this information is, and therefore no way of knowing how accurate my depiction of a cat is.

Like an AI I'm completely dependent upon the available information, and if given the same information an AI would almost certainly reach the same conclusion about the nature of a cat as I do. What's interesting is what happens when we humans lack sufficient information, such as when asked why there's something rather than nothing, in which case we humans can draw quite dissimilar conclusions.

For you, me, and AI's our conclusions will be no better than the information available to us, hence if the AI has a limited understanding about the nature of a cat, it's simply because we haven't provided it with enough information.

What this infers is, that the only difference between us and an AI is that we have access to more information, but there's no reason to assume that this gap won't close over time, and at some point even reverse.

The really, really interesting question is, whether there's actually any information at all, or whether we're just making it up.

This may be magical thinking, but I think it comes down not to quantity of information, but to whether theres a knowing being in there that can have a personal relationship with the subject.

I dont think thats impossible for AI. Maybe a proper self will emerge out of all this somewhere down the road. Or maybe not. i dont think we're there yet at all.

 

[partinobodycular]

This may be magical thinking, but I think it comes down not to quantity of information, but to whether theres a knowing being in there that can have a personal relationship with the subject.

I'm thinking the exact opposite... that you're viewing what humans do as somehow 'magical', whereas to me it's just information processing, in which case in order to emulate this in an AI two things are necessary... a sufficient amount of information, and an algorithm to process it. Both of which seem perfectly feasible. In which case I may very well be an AI.

What I mentioned earlier about the really, really interesting question... is that given a sufficiently sophisticated algorithm, the information may be self generated. I.E. once you create a sufficiently sophisticated algorithm, it may spontaneously create its own reality, without any need for external information at all. It's perfectly capable of creating its own cat. Again, I may be just such an AI.

The problem people have, is that they assume too much. They assume that reality is 'real', or that what the human mind does is somehow special. I'm a solipsist... I don't like assumptions. I'll believe that reality is 'real' when someone can prove to me that it's real.

I dont think thats impossible for AI. Maybe a proper self will emerge out of all this somewhere down the road

So you agree that when it comes to AI such a 'proper self' may emerge somewhere down the road. But how do you know that you're not an example of an AI that's already "somewhere down the road?"

 

[durangodawood]

.....
The problem people have, is that they assume too much. They assume that reality is 'real', or that what the human mind does is somehow special. I'm a solipsist... I don't like assumptions. I'll believe that reality is 'real' when someone can prove to me that it's real.

Some people think maximal skepticism and holding that only what you really-know should be called "true" is the most rational position.

But I dont see any justification for privileging what my little mind knows to that extreme.

So you agree that when it comes to AI such a 'proper self' may emerge somewhere down the road. But how do you know that you're not an example of an AI that's already "somewhere down the road?"

I dont know it. If there's evidence for that, Im all ears. Until then, origin stories that require reams of additional explanations are for entertainment purposes only.

 

[partinobodycular]

Until then, origin stories that require reams of additional explanations are for entertainment purposes only.

I agree 100%. Which would seem to leave us with Occam's Razor as the only means of weighing one hypothesis against another.

So let's do that.

The materialist argument is that some unknown cause gave rise to physical reality, and then that physical reality somehow gave rise to conscious minds, which then construct a mental representation of that reality.

On the other hand the idealist argument does away with the intermediate physical step entirely, and simply posits that some unknown cause gave rise to conscious minds replete with the illusion of a physical reality.

So using this as a gauge, and Occam's Razor as the judge, the idealist's explanation is obviously the simpler one. Hence, using your own reasoning, positing the existence of a physical reality should be "for entertainment purposes only."

And we don't even want to get started on positing the existence of a Divine Creator.

 

[durangodawood]

I agree 100%. Which would seem to leave us with Occam's Razor as the only means of weighing one hypothesis against another.

So let's do that.

The materialist argument is that some unknown cause gave rise to physical reality, and then that physical reality somehow gave rise to conscious minds, which then construct a mental representation of that reality.

On the other hand the idealist argument does away with the intermediate physical step entirely, and simply posits that some unknown cause gave rise to conscious minds replete with the illusion of a physical reality.

So using this as a gauge, and Occam's Razor as the judge, the idealist's explanation is obviously the simpler one. Hence, using your own reasoning, positing the existence of a physical reality should be "for entertainment purposes only."

And we don't even want to get started on positing the existence of a Divine Creator.

You just blow by the "illusion" part as if it requires no particular explanation. I think the existence of an illusion of physical reality is much more difficult to explain than our approximately correct apprehension of reality. Its an incoherence that needs resolution - which could be by divine experiment, or the simulation hypothesis, or whatever. You have to import something big into the picture to make sense of it.

By contrast, our approximately correct apprehension of reality coheres well with our being part of that reality.

 

[partinobodycular]

You just blow by the "illusion" part as if it requires no particular explanation. I think the existence of an illusion of physical reality is much more difficult to explain than our approximately correct apprehension of reality. Its an incoherence that needs resolution

Why would you think that giving rise to a physical reality is easier than giving rise to the illusion of a physical reality? Both, one would posit, begin formless and then emerge under the guidance of a simple set of fundamental principles, in which case I'd have to suggest that we're closer to knowing the principles by which an illusion would emerge than we are to knowing the principles by which a physical reality would emerge. A mental construct could be guided by nothing more than simple principles such as the 'Principle of Sufficient Reason' and the 'Law of Non-contradiction'... principles without which neither coherency nor consciousness could reasonably be assumed to exist.

But these 'guides' needn't have taken the form of abstract philosophical principles, they would just function as such, and to the human mind could be interpreted as such. They could just as easily be stated in the form of mathematics. But put simply idealism posits that the same quantum fields that are said to give rise to physical reality, could simply give rise to consciousness instead, complete with the illusion of a physical reality.

So there's simply no way that you can reasonably argue that one explanation is simpler than the other, if the fundamental cause for each of them is exactly the same... quantum fields. The only way that one process is simpler than the other, is that one calls for the existence of an intermediate physical reality that the other one doesn't require, hence it's superfluous and unnecessary.

Thus, judging by Occam's Razor, the Idealist's explanation is more likely.

P.S. In what way did I suggest that we're not part of that reality?