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God is technology

fernsal1 said:
man creates computer that plays chess. computer then plays worlds best chess player and chess player looses.

would it be possible that man is or will eventually make a god through technology?
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man is one with the universe. man as a system interacts with its surroundings... part of the way it does this is with material not connected to its own current biological body (AKA, technology)... this technology / way of interacting with the environment, increases in capability at an exponential rate... eventually, technology and the biological body will merge (this is already happening*)... in the farther future, there will be no discernable distinction, and nanotechnology will be like an intermediate bridge between "mechanical" "normal" technology and "organic systems"...

sorry, god is not in that paragraph. technological/material/evolutionary progress gave birth to god, but then nailed his coffin shut. he is a psychosocial phenomenon that used to have more political power, sort of bad ass, but he was sort of evil too.

*EG medical replacement limbs and hearts and hearing aides. EG, on a more existential level, us being tied to electronic visual screens.
 
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@ felix - kinda like what qwe said .
i find it hard to believe religions that i hace come across.
@qwe are you atheist?? if so what do you think would be an atheist ultimate goal? maybe to create a god like being with all the good qualities?
 
^ yeah i'm atheist, i thought that was apparent when i said that god is a psychosocial phenomenon ;)

>>if so what do you think would be an atheist ultimate goal?>>

an atheist ultimate goal? there is none. atheism means you lack a devotion to a "god", it has nothing to do with goals or anything...

>>maybe to create a god like being with all the good qualities? >>

i think we're capable of making all of us, as individuals, and as a collective, "gods" (in the sense you may be referring to the word...)

these are really odd questions.
 
I remember a summary of a sci-fi novel or short story where they connected the internets of hundreds of planets into a combined system. They asked this new grand intelligence the age old question"Is there a God?

The answer came back "There is now!"

I think there are many variations of this story. Here is one.
 
i think OP is referring to the singularity. wait till computers can program themselves.

still i doubt that they could emerge genuine intelligence let alone creativity. i'm special dammit, although i also don't really have these things.
 
The thing about computers, any computer really, is that all their processing consists of if/then scenarios, yes/no conditions, essentially many on/off switches. What makes them look impressive is the speed at which they can run through these pre-programmed scenarios to arrive at, again, a pre-programmed outcome.

The reason a computer can beat the best chess players is because there are a finite amount of variations in strategy, due to the rules of the game. The same with the new Jeopardy! bot, because there are rules to the game and a finite source of answers, the computer can find those answers faster and more consistently than its human competitors.

However, what even the greatest computers lack is the ability to predict and spontaneously adapt to new scenarios, or to learn anything new without outside programming. They are a crude approximation of the human brain, really only capable of recall and regurgitation of logic. Even if you consider the human brain to be the approximation of "god", via the universal collective sub/consciousness, they're not even close to that because they don't operate like one.

Plus, I think that in order to call something "god", it has to be alive in some sense. Computers neither think, nor live.
 
However, what even the greatest computers lack is the ability to predict and spontaneously adapt to new scenarios, or to learn anything new without outside programming
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they lack this, in certain areas, relative to humans. but it is merely a technical problem to overcome. they won't lack it forever. human beings use computers (brains) to react to their environment... theoretically, any computational device can exhibit just as complex interaction.

though i have a hard time seeing how a computer can create a soul itself (our ability to feel something, see red, have thoughts register on our consciousness)... whether that computer is a mechanical one made by gears, or a biological one made by neurons.
 
Deus ex Machina

capstone said:
These are transhumanists' wet dreams, op.
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I could not agree more. Self-deification via an eschatological singularity seems to me indistinguishable from Hermetic and Alchemical teleologies, Transhumanists seek the 'omni-' features of the theistic deity.

To answer the OP, I believe technology might enable some form of human deification but even with the exponential growth in enabling technologies I think we're a long way of realising such goals, if indeed they are realisable at all.

DEUS EX MACHINA!
 
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