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Rationalist Civil War: God is Real After All?
In this episode, the discussion delves into the recent shifts within the rationalist community and the intriguing intersections between AI development, theological beliefs, and religious traditions. The hosts explore influential perspectives from thinkers like Nick Bostrom and Scott Alexander, examining propositions around a superintelligence aligned with cosmic norms and the Judeo-Christian framework. Insights are shared on the new trends in Silicon Valley around the rationalist discourse and its alignment with time-honored religious doctrines. The conversation further touches on the practical implications of these beliefs on human ethics and future technologies.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] it's better not to be rational, and he is actually quoting somebody else here. If it leads you to a belief in God. Which is really interesting now that now we're seeing a fraction in the rationalist community being like, see, I told you guys we never should have been rational to begin with because if you do, you go crazy and start believing in God.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. An interesting phenomenon has been happening recently, which is well-known. Silicon Valley Rationalist types are beginning to argue arguments that we have been arguing for years at this point. The development trajectory of AI means that God, a, a God is probable.
If so, if, if you're like, oh, come on, you. You can't possibly mean mean this. These must be small names or people I haven't heard of. Well, Nick Bostrom recently wrote to piece arguing for a cosmic host, as he calls it, which he says that that Gods, like, the God that that Christians believe in would almost certainly be a, a part of or an [00:01:00] example of if, if it it exists.
And then Scott Alexander wrote, and I'm gonna be quoting him, you know, word for word here, and we'll get into this essay in a bit. One, there is an all powerful, all knowing, logically necessary entity spawning all possible worlds and identical to the moral law. Two, it watches everything that happens on Earth and is specifically interested in humans, good behavior and willingness to obey its rules.
Three, it may have the ability to reward those who follow its rules after they die and disincentivize those who violate them. So living in silicon, God is real. He's on our
Simone Collins: side and he wants us to win
Malcolm Collins: living in Silicon Valley these days, very much this soon.
Across the Federation. Federal experts agree that A, God exists after all. B, he's on our side and C, he wants us to win. And there's even more good news believers as it's official. God's back, and he's a citizen [00:02:00] too.
Malcolm Collins: but of course the, the area where they are different from us before we get deeper into them is we, we agree with everything they're saying here.
And then we say. This entity is the entity that is associated with the Judeo-Christian Scripture and the Bible.
All will be well, and you will know the name of God. The one true God. Behemah Coital. Behemah what? Behemah Coital. He's here. He's everywhere. He's coming. Come,
he's talking about a bug. He thinks God is a bug? He's got religion. Maybe we should kill him. Why? Because he believes in God like you?
It's the wrong God!
Malcolm Collins: Watch our track series, if you wanna get into our arguments on that. Basically we go over a bunch of parts of the Bible that when read in their original language it's, it's [00:03:00] implausible that somebody of that time period was able to make those predictions about the future.
Or describe how things like AI would work or, various other technologies was, was that degree of, of veracity. So go check out the track series. It's like 30 hours long if you w
Published on 4 months, 1 week ago