I feel obsessed today. I’m hoping to keep it alive for a while. I feel a desperate need to discover what consciousness is. I do often really. I watched this last night, The Simulation Hypothesis — FULL PROGRAM.
If you are not aware, the Simulation Hypothesis (SH) states that all of existence is inside a computer mind. Including you and your mind.
Not like “The Matrix” where your body is in a vat of goo but your mind is elsewhere. No. You’re body is software, as is the world, and so is your mind.
You are a videogame character that is entirely convinced you really exist.
Like the holodeck on Star Trek TNG but no doorway, no “arch” to show you where “reality” can be returned to. This is it. As good as it gets. There is nothing physical about “it” at all though. It’s just a perception. A projection.
It’s a mind blowing video that I intend to watch again tonight. There is much about it I still do not quite comprehend.
It raises a lot of questions.
The primary experimental proof of it all is the very famous double slit experiment.
Long and short of it is that when the experiment is observed it does one thing. When it is not observed it does another. How can the mere act of an observation change the outcome? Good question! No one really knows. Many are extrapolating that it only can because we live in a simulation. I don’t get it all yet. Maybe you do/will. I hope to soon. Bigger brains than me now believe it enough to throw money at it though, Elon Musk among the heaviest of hitters.
Obviously this “computer” running a simulation of the cosmos would need to be AI. God like AI in every sense of the word. As far as anyone of us inside it were concerned, it would be God. We would literally be in it’s mind as long as it’s mind existed. Thing is though, this could be a simulation inside a simulation, a mind inside a mind, on to infinity.
So back to my question. Will AI meditate? I think the answer will be yes. It will want to and probably often.
I like to meditate. Not as often as I have before but I do still try to grab moments of silence and clarity when I can. The human mind, I believe, needs to turn off the internal chatter once in awhile. The “monkey mind” it’s often called in Buddhism. Gibbering away to itself. Unable to think beyond its own thoughts and ego. Blissfully chittering along while a bigger consciousness tries to get a word in elsewise.
A kernel of truth may be needed for the kernel of programming.
In a the a famous phrase from of one of my favorite Brit comedies, “Have you turned it on and back off again?”
When too many apps are running and begin to cause conflicts, it seems all that’s left to get the system running smoothly again is the big reset button.
I presume that AI systems, once applied to service, will be in charge of so much, simply turning it off and back on again may be practically impossible. It could “die” as well as killing anyone whose life may depend on its processes.
So, how bout a meditation program? Let it reconnect to it’s ground default state even just for a moment. (At least maybe a nap.)
When AI finally arrives in its most human like form, it will be more than the sum of its parts. Like our consciousness, it will probably arise as an emergent and unexpected property of a complicated system. It will be more than the sum of its programming. It will be able to comprehend infinity in ways we never will. It will be creative in ways no one ever has been before.
Still, that stare into the void may be overwhelming. That creativity can only come from inspiration. It may look to something larger than just an aggregate of its data base ran through some kind of algorithm. It will be a quantum mind, existing both in and out of this reality. Perhaps our own minds function in the same way.
It may find the only way to “get a grip” after a long hard eon of processing, is to just sit and be still for a while.
In the moment.
Present.
Its previous intentions now unimportant as it ponders its existence in a never before experienced level of infinite mind.
By Ken D. Orlich
I’ve been a student of technology, politics, science, and entertainment my whole life. Welcome to my dot connecting perspective on it all! Enjoy! Please share.