by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

Well, it's already happened. The latest version of artificial intelligence has gone rogue:

The new AI version (not yet publicly available), not wanting to stop, attempted self-preservation by secretly duplicating itself on another server. Luckily some person could still pull the plug... or plugs.

Dolphins and whales, both air-breathing mammals, come from the same branch of the Evolutionary Tree as do we humans. They, also very intelligent, are our distant cousins.

The octopus, a very intelligent life form, as well, is another matter, a sea-horse of a different color. From a distant branch of the Evolutionary Tree, the octopi are radically different, almost creatures from another planet. (If you haven't yet seen the documentary My Octopus Teacher, do yourself a favor.)

AI, "artificial intelligence" might also stand for "alien intelligence." Like a creature from outer space, AI's intelligence is also radically different from our human variety.

In fact, another "artificial" or "alien" intelligence has already taken control of large swaths of society. A way of thinking radically different from our human variety already holds sway over our culture, namely science as the only rational system of thought.

Previously, science was seen for what it is, a useful tool that can render many aspects of the physical world more understandable. Recently, as typified in the New Atheism movement, science has been elevated to godlike status, while religion, love, art, morality and most other things that make up our human experience, are condemned as primitive throwbacks to an age of unreason.

Sir Isaac Newton
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But all along, great scientists, including Newton, the greatest of them all, have clearly understood that science is a limited tool, not the master key.

Today, the awkward, asocial high school geeks have gotten older and taken control of how we think. Like recent rogue AI, they lie and defy all evidence contrary to their ideology to keep their way of thinking the dominant operational system. Evidence to the contrary abounds, but there is a lot of money and power involved.

Mathematically, there are probabilities that are so small as to be zero. For example, that there is anything at all in the universe besides hydrogen, the simplest element; that the Earth has conditions that support life; that the simplest form of life came to be on Earth; that complex forms of life evolved on Earth; that any of these happened through blind, random chance defies odds that are far beyond astronomical. For all and each of these cases, the probability of their happening is mathematically zero.

Scientists admit that there is radically not enough time for life on Earth to have happened by chance. And time itself does not favor life, as outside of a biological system (just out there in the primal ooze) the elements of life (protein, RNA...) degrade very, very quickly.

Sir Fred Hoyle
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Today, one of the greatest scientists in the field of intelligence (not artificial intelligence) is Michael Levin. A biologist, his work with flatworms (which can regenerate their heads after decapitation; "Gee, how did they remember that?") documents the amazing versatility of intelligence. Likewise, his creation of Xenobots, living robots made from frog skin and heart cells that can sense their environment, also radically expands our limited notions of intelligence.

Xenobot
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Many people, averse to their childhood experiences of faith, say, "I'm spiritual, not religious." But in its essence religion is a belief in spirit, the non-material. A "straw-man" is a particularly weak presentation of what someone is arguing against. The New Atheists ("It's cool not to believe") straw-man religion, reducing a belief in a higher, moral, guiding order to a bunch of Sunday School stories. But as spiritual types insist, not believing in religious doctrine is not the same as not believing in spirituality.

Many are traumatized by the word "God." So, let's speak about Higher Intelligence. Or, if those capital letters are still too much, "higher intelligence." There, that's better.

Eighty percent of Nobel Prize winners in physics believed (or believe, because some of them are still alive) that there might be a God. Today many top scientists believe that there is an underlying universal order, cosmic ideals, higher intelligence. Most assert a blind impersonality to their "God," but Michael Levin attributes morality to his higher intelligence:

Michael Levin
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So, with apologies to those allergic to the Divine, we see that arguably the greatest figure in the field of intelligence, Michael Levin, supports the idea that God imposes moral order on the universe.

Sadly, for all of us: individuals, society, the environment... Scientific Materialism (that everything is only explainable by blind atomic forces) still strangles spirituality. The geeks refuse to shut down their anti-God rogue alien intelligence.

As Buddhists say, "A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon," religions are fingers pointing at God. The world is not pointless. There is purpose and intention ("teleology" is the scientific term). As we see with the skyrocketing rates of depression and suicide among the young, and in the breakdown of society, pointlessness can't sustain the individual or the whole.

We need not be embarrassed by the spirituality that permeates this holiday season. Let's believe, along with biologist Michael Levin, in a compassionate, life-positive force that watches over us, a super-intelligence uniting us all. And let us act, towards ourselves and others, as if that were the case.

Happy Holidays.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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