AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 4:17 pm
Federica wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 1:13 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 12:15 am
No, I don't feel like you do about the video, so I will need you to be more specific and lay out the portions you felt were "flattest and most abstract" and why.
If you don’t, Ashvin, then please notice how, all throughout the presentation, Linnell’s train of thoughts is plainly reductionist, flattened onto the physical world
only. The all too evident goal appears to be to get the audience accustomed to transhumanism, which he presents as the scary-but-actually-not-so-scary thing that is happening to our life on Earth.
The described progressive transformation of the physical body into a "humanoid, remote-controlled robotic body" is the only theme he shows interest in, and the only key to the whole speech. No reference whatsoever,
not one reference is made to any necessary evolution of consciousness in the process, to any awakening of thinking force, any progression towards continuity of consciousness, nothing about what it will mean, in living thinking terms, to evolve away from matter, into the etheric.
Rather, the etheric is described as a sort of evolved sci-fi dimension from which humans will be able to remotely control and use a humanoid robotic body to play around with on Earth, among Steiner’s spider-like beings, while Earth progressively disappears. To this goal, he uses his IBM seasoned executive oiled (but standard) rhetorics, and slide deck technique, to make it look like his narrative is aligned with Steiner, whom he tries to recruit to his purposes by calling him a proto-transhumanist, leveraging some usable quotes, and by inviting us to call AI (wait for it) “””
the artificial soul”””.
As a result, the whole presentation appears as an ideological promotion of the transhumanist ‘idea’. So when I say that this content is reductionist and abstract, I am pointing to the evidence of the presentation, which explains our future loss of physicality
in purely material terms. Any reference to the evolution of thinking is absent. No connection is made with the fact that man will have to start building his own spiritual body
from within the conscious forces of the I. There is nothing about an evolution of consciousness to the point of acquiring the power of “destroying nature in order to reconstruct it” - as in MS, for example. The only focus is the move from physicality into the etheric, in order for man to remote control from the etheric his future robotic body on the dying physical plane.
Now, why would human evolution take that direction? What overarching evolutionary intents these developments would glance at? These questions unfortunately go well beyond the horizon of this content. As it seems,
the objective here is not to help people transform their thinking. Rather, it is to accustom the audience to the transhumanist perspective. Notice an additional thing: the changes to come to the physical Earth are presented as destiny, about to fall on man’s head from outside, as a spooky-not-so-spooky external destiny - kind of like in the same spirit of the showcased films and books - not as
the process itself of the evolution of human consciousness. Accordingly, nothing is said about any processes, tasks, or urgent challenges related to the redemption of thinking. The challenge in sight here is to prepare for the transition to the human “artificial soul”. Therefore, all references to the non-physical, the etheric body, and so on, are done in purely instrumental manner, devoid of any depths of thinking power. We are so far away from the authentic continuators of Steiner's work we are learning from on this forum....
This presentation appears as an unfortunate attempt to influence the general Waldorf school people and other anthroposophy-friendly communities in favor of a wider, more immediate acceptance of AI in a transhumanist perspective, against the background of a supposedly anthroposophy-backed, for-profit business (have you noticed, among other things, how the amazon publications look?). To this purpose, Linnell has complemented his speaker persona with a surface-level knowledge of Greek mythology, Italian Renaissance, and so on. But what happens when one starts to scratch the surface of that? There is a saying in Italian that comes to mind:
The devil makes the pots but not the lids.
The man uses the words “””
moral technology””” and apparently that has marvelous effects on people. Linnell’s moral technology is, in plain language, apologia of transhumanism, dressed in highsounding narrative and anthoposoph-ish vocabulary. You are, until proven otherwise, the one who has written on
The occult dangers of transhumanism or 'crystallization' of the soul-spirit, where you argue that “
clearly the trend toward 'transhumanism' has only strengthened as people fail to develop living spiritual activity.” Are you still that thinker? Or, is your current infatuation with Linnell the
token of a transmutation of thinking?
Federica,
I feel this post is very similar to Anthony's post with respect to Powell - "run for the hills" and little more than that.
You don't point out anything that he got wrong about the course of spiritual evolution, only things that you wish he had included in the video and how you wished he had given the presentation.
The precise pointing are many, Ashvin, easily available. If you really can't see them, I can point them out for you. There is an interesting
discussion on Youtube, by the Spiritual Scientist, who is in conversation with Linnell on the topics of technology, moral technology, AI, from a spiritual scientific perspective. If you haven’t yet, I recommend you watch it, as the host really questions Linnell on the core themes of transhumanism and morality in the light of Anthroposophy.
The host starts off with the core question: “What is your understanding of technology in relation to SS?" Linnell replies with various lateral thoughts, one of these is: "
Mystech's mission is to go beyond fear of technology and see how we can deal with technology in a positive way". So it should be interesting. Soon enough, the hosts comes back to the core question (at 14:40) “...the freedom we have acquired in our times to choose to develop spiritually, or not to: how do you think that ties in with technology?”
I'll let you decide if he got this answer right (and the following ones). He starts from an overview of the cosmic evolution from Saturn, to Sun, to Moon, to now Earth and, in the future, to Jupiter, where we will have the role of the current angels - Linnell explains - and we don’t really know the details of that phase. How are we going to make that happen?, he asks.
Of course, the true answer is: through the development of thinking, through I-consciousness.
But Linnell has a different take (at 20:20): “
So there is a question: does technology enable us to go in that direction? where we will be able, through our work with technology, to incarnate into a body of the next planetary condition called Jupiter. That’s pretty spooky and pretty amazing stuff!”. So the thought is very clear: The
enabler is not the development of our thinking force. The
enabler is technology.
Just afterwards, he adds: “But there is more, in the immediate future, that makes
all the scary aspects of transhumanism make more sense” where he then compares transhumanism to Mephistopheles in Faust claiming he “intends to do evil, but ends up doing the good”.
Trying to really clarify the role of AI, the presenter then asks for a sort of AI state of the art, and
what the moral aspects are. Linnell prefaces his answer saying that there are concerns about the dangers of AI, people speak of the need for safeguards, and on the other side there are those who don’t want to be economic losers on that market, etc, etc, etc, lots of beating around the bush. So, he continues: "what are the counterbalances for the risks of technology?" Here we would expect to finally understand
what he means by moral technology, I suppose?
His answer is the following (31:00): he is himself facing a computer screen 12 hours a day, so what he does
to counterbalance is to take a break every 20 minutes. This is his first answer. Not only that. He spends a few minutes explaining how we can “counterbalance” the risks of technology in this way, I spare you the details.
The next point in his tackling of morality is: “But what about all the questions of being human? That’s the real question, what is it to be human? (33:30) Does our definition of human equal physical body or is there something more?” … Here he goes off on a lengthy aside on science and various recent brain experiments, suggesting there is more than physical body,... the hippies, the new age, various beating around the bush.
Interesting?
To which, the presenter tries to bring it back to the moral question of transhumanism, and
the transhumanist aspiration to immortality through machines. "
Do you think this is possible?" he asks.
Linnell: "Yes, it is possible, if you have watched the film Avatar, that we will control a robotic entity, that we would see going down the streets of NY as robots controlled by people sitting in their office through augmented reality."
Of course this does
not answer the question, so the presenter brings it back to the question again: "
Do you think it will be possible to upload our consciousness to the cloud and control a robot from there?"
Here, in the corner, Linnell comes up with a masterpiece of fluff and confusion, where he compares the cloud of AI to the clouds of the book of Revelation... it’s not possible to upload consciousness there, because "we would need to kill it first, to put it in a dead matter"..… which brings us to the etheric realm…. That "
AI is dead thinking but not entirely dead"….
Summarizing those thoughts goes beyond my abilities. I recommend watching, from 40:00 to 47:00, it’s worth it, I think.
Next question: "
What is living thinking for you?" Wait for the answer. He goes directly to examples of living thinking. He cites:
child thinking that we dismiss as adults;
book knowledge, which is usually dead, but can become inspiring living thinking in us, if the author wrote well;
brainstorming, when as a group we come up with a brilliant solution to a problem that lives beyond our brains, as spiritual being. “I hope that helps” he concludes.
I think it does, in a sense!!!
Those were some
concrete examples, of thing he got wrong, Ashvin.
What do you think? All good from your side?