Anthroposophy for Dummies

[Federica]

At least we seem to agree to on the negative prospect of AI-reduced renditions of PoF. Personally, I think that is something to be really concerned about. It's not the malicious agenda of some particular person like the FB poster, of course, but the habits of thinking (or non-thinking) that are spreading quickly into all domains of society. People have now created AI bots that simulate historical philosophers to endlessly interact with old ideas and arguments. I also came across this one recently - https://chat.openai.com/g/g-juQEAPRkP-g ... ning-dummy

Where is this heading and what can we do to counter it in a redemptive way?

After seeing an additional comment on this post:

Mathieu Zehraoui
Interesting, i'm interested in the continuation of this
Is it possible to work out a model that takes the whole book, refines the formulas to build a kind of PoF-Style-GPT that would answer with the same kind of efficient prose to any inquiry ? That would be practical

It does occur to me that these types of efforts are inevitable, so there is little use in complaining about them or trying to prevent them. Instead, the above actually makes more sense, although I think it would take more creativity than simply 'refining the formulas'. In fact, an AI trained on the posts of this forum that elucidate the core of PoF (and there many such posts on this thread alone) could serve this function well. Each answer could be supported by a quote from PoF and point towards the inner experience of thinking activity, maybe even suggesting exercises to approach the 'exceptional state'. I think these are the kinds of redemptive efforts needed in the face of inevitable developments.

Ashvin, you should know the answer to these questions very well. Where are these random thoughts and random FB comments coming from? You are trying to find an impossible compromise. There can’t be any strengthening of spiritual activity through the reflective model of Chat GPT, beyond the freezing recognition of the extent of ahrimanic dominion it demonstrates. You know that.

Any delegation of the effortful thinking activity necessary to internalize PoF towards an external linguistic processor, can only be a spoke in the wheel of individual spiritual development, as it inevitably counteracts and vilifies the will and the freedom that constitute the one and only purpose of the PoF experience.

There’s no way to jazz it up, Ashvin. You can have the GPT add the inspirational quote, you can have it add the recommended exercises, you can add the VR experience where Steiner pops up and tells you well done my dear friend, all this ‘creativity’ would not get anyone a spit further. Rather, these are all ahrimanic spanners in the works of thinking that will have to be costly undone, one by one, before real progress can be made through the only activity that is of relevance here, a spiritual one, which, as such, is not externalizable in anyway, and less than all, to a cemetery of thought-corpses such as a collection of Chat GPT answers.

It’s already quite tough. Why make it even harder with these new obstacles? Is it to quench the fear of becoming out of the game and unfashionable? Then it’s necessary to treat that anxiety, not to welcome a PoF-style GPT. There, only further dissolution of thinking is possible. Not even the anxiety in itself can be cured in endeavors like this. On the contrary, the anxiety will be pushed one step ahead at every step.

Redemption means to find and inhabit the force of life that can brighten up the darkness of death through us. Redemption doesn't mean to wander to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas. These are the spider-like networks that wait for us to entirely fall prey to their tentacular coils. There is no chance of redemption in those seducing but lethal metal arms of death.

[AshvinP]

At least we seem to agree to on the negative prospect of AI-reduced renditions of PoF. Personally, I think that is something to be really concerned about. It's not the malicious agenda of some particular person like the FB poster, of course, but the habits of thinking (or non-thinking) that are spreading quickly into all domains of society. People have now created AI bots that simulate historical philosophers to endlessly interact with old ideas and arguments. I also came across this one recently - https://chat.openai.com/g/g-juQEAPRkP-g ... ning-dummy

Where is this heading and what can we do to counter it in a redemptive way?

After seeing an additional comment on this post:

Mathieu Zehraoui
Interesting, i'm interested in the continuation of this
Is it possible to work out a model that takes the whole book, refines the formulas to build a kind of PoF-Style-GPT that would answer with the same kind of efficient prose to any inquiry ? That would be practical

It does occur to me that these types of efforts are inevitable, so there is little use in complaining about them or trying to prevent them. Instead, the above actually makes more sense, although I think it would take more creativity than simply 'refining the formulas'. In fact, an AI trained on the posts of this forum that elucidate the core of PoF (and there many such posts on this thread alone) could serve this function well. Each answer could be supported by a quote from PoF and point towards the inner experience of thinking activity, maybe even suggesting exercises to approach the 'exceptional state'. I think these are the kinds of redemptive efforts needed in the face of inevitable developments.

Ashvin, you should know the answer to these questions very well. Where are these random thoughts and random FB comments coming from? You are trying to find an impossible compromise. There can’t be any strengthening of spiritual activity through the reflective model of Chat GPT, beyond the freezing recognition of the extent of ahrimanic dominion it demonstrates. You know that.

Any delegation of the effortful thinking activity necessary to internalize PoF towards an external linguistic processor, can only be a spoke in the wheel of individual spiritual development, as it inevitably counteracts and vilifies the will and the freedom that constitute the one and only purpose of the PoF experience.

There’s no way to jazz it up, Ashvin. You can have the GPT add the inspirational quote, you can have it add the recommended exercises, you can add the VR experience where Steiner pops up and tells you well done my dear friend, all this ‘creativity’ would not get anyone a spit further. Rather, these are all ahrimanic spanners in the works of thinking that will have to be costly undone, one by one, before real progress can be made through the only activity that is of relevance here, a spiritual one, which, as such, is not externalizable in anyway, and less than all, to a cemetery of thought-corpses such as a collection of Chat GPT answers.

It’s already quite tough. Why make it even harder with these new obstacles? Is it to quench the fear of becoming out of the game and unfashionable? Then it’s necessary to treat that anxiety, not to welcome a PoF-style GPT. There, only further dissolution of thinking is possible. Not even the anxiety in itself can be cured in endeavors like this. On the contrary, the anxiety will be pushed one step ahead at every step.

Redemption means to find and inhabit the force of life that can brighten up the darkness of death through us. Redemption doesn't mean to wander to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas. These are the spider-like networks that wait for us to entirely fall prey to their tentacular coils. There is no chance of redemption in those seducing but lethal metal arms of death.

Well, Federica, we have been here before and your position on 'redemption' seems to become more extreme with each iteration. It comes to resemble more and more the 'salvation and redemption' we find in protestant Christianity. Just link yourself up with the Divine and the World will take care of itself. It is useless to play in the Devil's playground. We should be 'in the world, but not of the world'. Needless to say, this is diametrically opposed to the Spirit of Michael and Anthroposophy. I will quote this gain, but clearly it isn't being taken concretely enough.

In this way we come ever closer to a truth which should be engraved in the human soul as a lofty moral maxim: When you see something evil in the world, do not say, Here is evil — that is, imperfection; ask, rather, How can I attain to the enlightenment which will show me that on a higher plane this evil is transformed into good by the wisdom of the cosmos? How can I learn to tell myself: Here you see naught but imperfection because you are as yet unable to grasp the perfection of this imperfect thing?

Whenever man sees evil he should look into his own soul and ask himself, Why am I not yet able to recognize the good in this evil that confronts me?

Ironically, the 'not of the world' approach expresses a lack of faith in the Divine and what it can creatively accomplish within and through us. It is something we can only express before the inner metamorphoses have really taken hold, and before we are truly aware of the endless power, love, and wisdom of the Spirit. But I have tried countless times to point this out before. You still presume 'I know that' but am clinging to 'materialistic residue', 'fear of becoming unfashionable', or whatever. Each time it is shown my reasoning is much deeper than you presume, but you simply transfer your unexamined antipathies and premature judgments to a new topic. The judgments are always of a sort that shuts down further creative thinking through the topic - it pronounces a 'final word' and tells us we are better off not engaging our creative thinking. You don't even want to engage in reasonable dialogue about the prospect of such efforts.

I don't know... maybe if I think of some illuminating new way to get the message across, I will share it. Until then, I think it's best not to further indulge these distractions you keep seeking.

[Federica]

After seeing an additional comment on this post:





It does occur to me that these types of efforts are inevitable, so there is little use in complaining about them or trying to prevent them. Instead, the above actually makes more sense, although I think it would take more creativity than simply 'refining the formulas'. In fact, an AI trained on the posts of this forum that elucidate the core of PoF (and there many such posts on this thread alone) could serve this function well. Each answer could be supported by a quote from PoF and point towards the inner experience of thinking activity, maybe even suggesting exercises to approach the 'exceptional state'. I think these are the kinds of redemptive efforts needed in the face of inevitable developments.

Ashvin, you should know the answer to these questions very well. Where are these random thoughts and random FB comments coming from? You are trying to find an impossible compromise. There can’t be any strengthening of spiritual activity through the reflective model of Chat GPT, beyond the freezing recognition of the extent of ahrimanic dominion it demonstrates. You know that.

Any delegation of the effortful thinking activity necessary to internalize PoF towards an external linguistic processor, can only be a spoke in the wheel of individual spiritual development, as it inevitably counteracts and vilifies the will and the freedom that constitute the one and only purpose of the PoF experience.

There’s no way to jazz it up, Ashvin. You can have the GPT add the inspirational quote, you can have it add the recommended exercises, you can add the VR experience where Steiner pops up and tells you well done my dear friend, all this ‘creativity’ would not get anyone a spit further. Rather, these are all ahrimanic spanners in the works of thinking that will have to be costly undone, one by one, before real progress can be made through the only activity that is of relevance here, a spiritual one, which, as such, is not externalizable in anyway, and less than all, to a cemetery of thought-corpses such as a collection of Chat GPT answers.

It’s already quite tough. Why make it even harder with these new obstacles? Is it to quench the fear of becoming out of the game and unfashionable? Then it’s necessary to treat that anxiety, not to welcome a PoF-style GPT. There, only further dissolution of thinking is possible. Not even the anxiety in itself can be cured in endeavors like this. On the contrary, the anxiety will be pushed one step ahead at every step.

Redemption means to find and inhabit the force of life that can brighten up the darkness of death through us. Redemption doesn't mean to wander to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas. These are the spider-like networks that wait for us to entirely fall prey to their tentacular coils. There is no chance of redemption in those seducing but lethal metal arms of death.

Well, Federica, we have been here before and your position on 'redemption' seems to become more extreme with each iteration. It comes to resemble more and more the 'salvation and redemption' we find in protestant Christianity. Just link yourself up with the Divine and the World will take care of itself. It is useless to play in the Devil's playground. We should be 'in the world, but not of the world'. Needless to say, this is diametrically opposed to the Spirit of Michael and Anthroposophy. I will quote this gain, but clearly it isn't being taken concretely enough.

In this way we come ever closer to a truth which should be engraved in the human soul as a lofty moral maxim: When you see something evil in the world, do not say, Here is evil — that is, imperfection; ask, rather, How can I attain to the enlightenment which will show me that on a higher plane this evil is transformed into good by the wisdom of the cosmos? How can I learn to tell myself: Here you see naught but imperfection because you are as yet unable to grasp the perfection of this imperfect thing?

Whenever man sees evil he should look into his own soul and ask himself, Why am I not yet able to recognize the good in this evil that confronts me?

Ironically, the 'not of the world' approach expresses a lack of faith in the Divine and what it can creatively accomplish within and through us. It is something we can only express before the inner metamorphoses have really taken hold, and before we are truly aware of the endless power, love, and wisdom of the Spirit. But I have tried countless times to point this out before. You still presume 'I know that' but am clinging to 'materialistic residue', 'fear of becoming unfashionable', or whatever. Each time it is shown my reasoning is much deeper than you presume, but you simply transfer your unexamined antipathies and premature judgments to a new topic. The judgments are always of a sort that shuts down further creative thinking through the topic - it pronounces a 'final word' and tells us we are better off not engaging our creative thinking. You don't even want to engage in reasonable dialogue about the prospect of such efforts.

I don't know... maybe if I think of some illuminating new way to get the message across, I will share it. Until then, I think it's best not to further indulge these distractions you keep seeking.

It’s interesting how, instead of replying to the points of substance I made, you prefer to leave out all matters of fact about the PoF-GPT. So 80% of your post is your two cents on my psychology, and 20% is the Steiner quote. I forgive you the 80%. Let’s go to the quote.

Yes, I absolutely realize that everything humanity is facing in its development, has a purpose and a usefulness in the big scheme of things. Including the Luciferic, and even the Ahrimanic events. These are there in order to make possible the blossoming of the free human being. Without Lucifer, we wouldn’t have developed an individual ego, that can desire independently and egotistically, but can also freely decide not to. Without Ahriman we wouldn’t have descended into hardened matter so much. The spiritual world would have been self-evident, and there would have been nothing to discover, nothing to reconnect with through our willed activity, as free, individual human beings.

This is what the quote is saying.
And there is no way whatsoever that you can recruit this quote and try to make it say that one should welcome, adopt and help develop a PoF-GPT. This is your A+B side, let’s call it so. It's not serving you here. Steiner cannot help you on this one, Ashvin. Maybe an AI-augmented fake-Steiner would, and will, in the near future, but the real spirit of Rudolf Steiner won’t. Not now, and not later on. It is to no avail that you then try to limit the evident spiritual catastrophe that a PoF-GPT would represent for the ones adopting it, by being ‘creative’ with instructing the bot to provide you with inspirational quotes and exercise suggestions. There is nothing creative in this, quite the opposite, please see that.

It’s as if you decided to buy the wife-replacement bot suggested in the “scientific paper" on the other thread (it’s interesting what kind of new members are attracted to the forum, and when), the “intelligent young gorgeous seductive warm & soft and well-lubricated A.I. sex robot that cooks, does dishes, sweeps and vacuums floors, does laundry, washes your car, is never tired, does not buy any female cosmetics nor spend your hard-earned money on expensive hair-styling every Friday” etcetera, and then you 'redeem it' by letting it recite the Rosary, so you don’t have to memorize it, and you train it to suggest to you daily moral deeds, adapted to your everyday life. You realize, don't you, that’s the same thing that you are suggesting for the PoF-GPT? Of course you can do all this, under the stolen insignia of 'redemption', and maybe you will.

But that couldn’t be farest from Steiner’s message, Ashvin, no matter how many new quotes you will throw in. By the way, we should be increasingly careful what a “quote” is going to really consist of, seeing the pace at which mind controlling attempts are trying to take over the discourse, at the expense of authenticity and truth.

So think again what creativity really means, in the face of a threat like a PoF-GPT, for instance. And what the connection may be with the spider-like beings that Steiner described.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, you should know the answer to these questions very well. Where are these random thoughts and random FB comments coming from? You are trying to find an impossible compromise. There can’t be any strengthening of spiritual activity through the reflective model of Chat GPT, beyond the freezing recognition of the extent of ahrimanic dominion it demonstrates. You know that.

Any delegation of the effortful thinking activity necessary to internalize PoF towards an external linguistic processor, can only be a spoke in the wheel of individual spiritual development, as it inevitably counteracts and vilifies the will and the freedom that constitute the one and only purpose of the PoF experience.

There’s no way to jazz it up, Ashvin. You can have the GPT add the inspirational quote, you can have it add the recommended exercises, you can add the VR experience where Steiner pops up and tells you well done my dear friend, all this ‘creativity’ would not get anyone a spit further. Rather, these are all ahrimanic spanners in the works of thinking that will have to be costly undone, one by one, before real progress can be made through the only activity that is of relevance here, a spiritual one, which, as such, is not externalizable in anyway, and less than all, to a cemetery of thought-corpses such as a collection of Chat GPT answers.

It’s already quite tough. Why make it even harder with these new obstacles? Is it to quench the fear of becoming out of the game and unfashionable? Then it’s necessary to treat that anxiety, not to welcome a PoF-style GPT. There, only further dissolution of thinking is possible. Not even the anxiety in itself can be cured in endeavors like this. On the contrary, the anxiety will be pushed one step ahead at every step.

Redemption means to find and inhabit the force of life that can brighten up the darkness of death through us. Redemption doesn't mean to wander to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas. These are the spider-like networks that wait for us to entirely fall prey to their tentacular coils. There is no chance of redemption in those seducing but lethal metal arms of death.

Well, Federica, we have been here before and your position on 'redemption' seems to become more extreme with each iteration. It comes to resemble more and more the 'salvation and redemption' we find in protestant Christianity. Just link yourself up with the Divine and the World will take care of itself. It is useless to play in the Devil's playground. We should be 'in the world, but not of the world'. Needless to say, this is diametrically opposed to the Spirit of Michael and Anthroposophy. I will quote this gain, but clearly it isn't being taken concretely enough.

In this way we come ever closer to a truth which should be engraved in the human soul as a lofty moral maxim: When you see something evil in the world, do not say, Here is evil — that is, imperfection; ask, rather, How can I attain to the enlightenment which will show me that on a higher plane this evil is transformed into good by the wisdom of the cosmos? How can I learn to tell myself: Here you see naught but imperfection because you are as yet unable to grasp the perfection of this imperfect thing?

Whenever man sees evil he should look into his own soul and ask himself, Why am I not yet able to recognize the good in this evil that confronts me?

Ironically, the 'not of the world' approach expresses a lack of faith in the Divine and what it can creatively accomplish within and through us. It is something we can only express before the inner metamorphoses have really taken hold, and before we are truly aware of the endless power, love, and wisdom of the Spirit. But I have tried countless times to point this out before. You still presume 'I know that' but am clinging to 'materialistic residue', 'fear of becoming unfashionable', or whatever. Each time it is shown my reasoning is much deeper than you presume, but you simply transfer your unexamined antipathies and premature judgments to a new topic. The judgments are always of a sort that shuts down further creative thinking through the topic - it pronounces a 'final word' and tells us we are better off not engaging our creative thinking. You don't even want to engage in reasonable dialogue about the prospect of such efforts.

I don't know... maybe if I think of some illuminating new way to get the message across, I will share it. Until then, I think it's best not to further indulge these distractions you keep seeking.

It’s interesting how, instead of replying to the points of substance I made, you prefer to leave out all matters of fact about the PoF-GPT. So 80% of your post is your two cents on my psychology, and 20% is the Steiner quote. I forgive you the 80%. Let’s go to the quote.

Yes, I absolutely realize that everything humanity is facing in its development, has a purpose and a usefulness in the big scheme of things. Including the Luciferic, and even the Ahrimanic events. These are there in order to make possible the blossoming of the free human being. Without Lucifer, we wouldn’t have developed an individual ego, that can desire independently and egotistically, but can also freely decide not to. Without Ahriman we wouldn’t have descended into hardened matter so much. The spiritual world would have been self-evident, and there would have been nothing to discover, nothing to reconnect with through our willed activity, as free, individual human beings.

This is what the quote is saying.
And there is no way whatsoever that you can recruit this quote and try to make it say that one should welcome, adopt and help develop a PoF-GPT. This is your A+B side, let’s call it so. It's not serving you here. Steiner cannot help you on this one, Ashvin. Maybe an AI-augmented fake-Steiner would, and will, in the near future, but the real spirit of Rudolf Steiner won’t. Not now, and not later on. It is to no avail that you then try to limit the evident spiritual catastrophe that a PoF-GPT would represent for the ones adopting it, by being ‘creative’ with instructing the bot to provide you with inspirational quotes and exercise suggestions. There is nothing creative in this, quite the opposite, please see that.

It’s as if you decided to buy the wife-replacement bot suggested in the “scientific paper" on the other thread (it’s interesting what kind of new members are attracted to the forum, and when), the “intelligent young gorgeous seductive warm & soft and well-lubricated A.I. sex robot that cooks, does dishes, sweeps and vacuums floors, does laundry, washes your car, is never tired, does not buy any female cosmetics nor spend your hard-earned money on expensive hair-styling every Friday” etcetera, and then you 'redeem it' by letting it recite the Rosary, so you don’t have to memorize it, and you train it to suggest to you daily moral deeds, adapted to your everyday life. You realize, don't you, that’s the same thing that you are suggesting for the PoF-GPT? Of course you can do all this, under the stolen insignia of 'redemption', and maybe you will.

But that couldn’t be farest from Steiner’s message, Ashvin, no matter how many new quotes you will throw in. By the way, we should be increasingly careful what a “quote” is going to really consist of, seeing the pace at which mind controlling attempts are trying to take over the discourse, at the expense of authenticity and truth.

So think again what creativity really means, in the face of a threat like a PoF-GPT, for instance. And what the connection may be with the spider-like beings that Steiner described.

As mentioned, what you are calling 'substantive points" and 'matters of fact' is, in my view, dogmatic judgments that shut down further creative thinking and reasonable dialogue through these topics. We should always try to pay more attention to what we are doing in our thinking, especially on topics we are passionate about, so we can trace the forces that are steering its states. This is not psychoanalysis, but the very core of modern initiation. 

You could have responded, 'Ashvin you haven't thought this through enough... what you suggest is not feasible and would cause more confusion than light and here are the reasons X, Y, Z and here are examples A, B, C, etc.". (simply stating conclusions as facts is not reasoning). Then we could have continued the dialogue and allowed new inspirations to flourish within the liminal spaces of our thoughts, with no particular conceptual agenda for where those inspirations should or should not lead. I am not at all attached to my speculative ideas about a GPT bot for people who have encountered PoF or Steiner and have questions like Anthony did at the beginning of this thread when asking for 10 summary points. If it turns out to be infeasible and/or something that would simply cause more confusion and mislead people, then I have no problem scrapping the idea and moving on.

But that's not what you are responding, is it? Instead, the response is that even thinking through such possibilities is the equivalent of 'wandering to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas.' This is stated as absolute fact that should be 'obvious' to everyone (and obviously it's not). In this last post, there is one 'analogy that is another recitation of the conclusion that new technologies cannot be incorporated into spiritual striving without the worst possible consequences, under any circumstances. Any attempt to even think through such a possibility is leading us into the depths of illusion. 

We have seen a similar thing in many discussions with Eugene. He says, 'Yes, I agree that working through the living details of Earthly evolution is integral and needs to be done', but when we come to concrete examples and the prospect of putting that principle into practice, then we hear, 'the genetic structure of humanity doesn't allow it to escape the clutches of duality, so any efforts in that respect can only be tinkering at the edges, missing the core of nondual realization'. All of this dogma serves to put obstacles in the way of doing the redemptive inner work necessary to gradually spiritualize the Earth from the inside-out, such as developing right thought, right feeling, right judgment, etc. and moving our living spirit through the World Content. If you are working with those exercises and concentration, then you are keeping your being unnecessarily split by casting the principles aside on certain topics and defaulting to old passion-fueled habits. We should be honest with ourselves - it's much easier to absorb the principles intellectually and then adapt them to our normal habits than it is to transform the latter and adapt our way of be-ing to the principles. 

We will all oscillate between the poles on the inner path, and this should give us opportunities to gain insight how our intuitive activity is being shaped by the pathways of our soul and intellectual environment. To discern more clearly what is going on in our thinking, we can focus on the potential results if people were to agree with the content of our thinking. If I agreed that there is a conspiracy around every corner from Linnell on FB to the new member showing up on the forum, what would result? How would this stimulate productive dialogue and strengthen our inner forces? Likewise, if I agreed that all creative efforts towards integrating new technologies for spiritual purposes must necessarily be a path towards spider-like beings, where would that leave us? What kind of ideal (inner) atmosphere would we be living in once our thinking is entrained by that content? I ask you to contemplate such questions fairly and deeply. This is the real inner work through which the Divine is born within us. 

[lorenzop]

These conversations are common following the passing of any sage or teacher. His\her followers concerned with maintaining the purity of the teaching, yet aware that maintaining this purity is impossible.
All teachings succumb to the same fate - any wisdom is gradually lost as it passes from ear to ear, from page to page - soon the teaching barely represents the original message.

[AshvinP]

These conversations are common following the passing of any sage or teacher. His\her followers concerned with maintaining the purity of the teaching, yet aware that maintaining this purity is impossible.
All teachings succumb to the same fate - any wisdom is gradually lost as it passes from ear to ear, from page to page - soon the teaching barely represents the original message.

This is only a problem if we mistake Steiner's ideas for 'teachings' to be passed on and list of requirements to adhere to, like the sages of old. Something fundamentally new came into being around the turn of the 20th century, which allowed every thinking individual to rediscover the ancient wisdom from within themselves, independently of any sage, teachings, or requirements imposed from outside. Each one of us can, in complete freedom, continually undress or turn inside-out the layers of being we are currently flowing through, so we approach our true spiritual core and work creatively on redemptive goals. It's true this is more difficult work because we cannot rest our lives on simple precepts and ideas passed down to us. We cannot establish universal rules of thinking and conduct that apply to all places and times. We need to continually expand our aperture of insight into the relations within our Cosmic organism and renew our moral intuitions as they apply in each concrete case, in light of our holistic insight. Many people will understandably shrink from such a pursuit out of fear and indolence. But nevertheless, it can be pursued by anyone with the good will to do so, who seeks truth and spiritual freedom as their highest ideals.

A free spirit acts according to his impulses, that is, according to intuitions selected from the totality of his world of ideas by thinking. For an unfree spirit, the reason why he singles out a particular intuition from his world of ideas in order to make it the basis of an action, lies in the world of percepts given to him, that is, in his past experiences. He recalls, before coming to a decision, what someone else has done or recommended as suitable in a comparable case, or what God has commanded to be done in such a case, and so on, and he acts accordingly. For a free spirit, these prior conditions are not the only impulses to action. He makes a completely first-hand decision. What others have done in such a case worries him as little as what they have decreed. He has purely ideal reasons which lead him to select from the sum of his concepts just one in particular, and then to translate it into action.

[Ben Iscatus]

Federica said: “Redemption means to find and inhabit the force of life that can brighten up the darkness of death through us. Redemption doesn't mean to wander to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas. These are the spider-like networks that wait for us to entirely fall prey to their tentacular coils. There is no chance of redemption in those seducing but lethal metal arms of death.”

I find these thoughts quite disturbing! I have to agree with the characterisation of ChatGPT as “networks of thought-replicas”. In an earlier thread here, I showed how silly ChatGPT can be. I nearly always find it so. As further evidence, here is today’s example:


User
Why is Helium more predominant in Jupiter's atmosphere than in Saturn's?

ChatGPT
The relative abundance of helium in the atmospheres of gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn is influenced by several factors, including their formation and evolution processes.

Formation Conditions:

Both Jupiter and Saturn formed from the same protoplanetary disk, which consisted of gas and dust surrounding the young Sun.
During the formation process, the gas giants accreted large amounts of hydrogen and helium from the surrounding disk.
Jupiter, being more massive than Saturn, had a stronger gravitational pull and was able to capture more of the lighter element helium during its formation.
Helium Separation:

The gas giants went through a phase of differentiation during their formation, with heavier elements settling towards the core and lighter elements rising towards the outer layers.
Helium, being lighter than hydrogen, would tend to rise to higher altitudes in the atmosphere.
Evolution and Atmospheric Dynamics:

The evolution of the atmospheres is influenced by various factors, including internal heat, radiation from the Sun, and atmospheric dynamics.
Over time, the atmospheres of gas giants can undergo changes, and the dynamics of the atmospheres might play a role in the distribution of helium.
While both Jupiter and Saturn have similar compositions, Jupiter's larger mass and stronger gravitational influence likely led to a greater retention of helium during their formation. The specific details of these processes are complex and involve interactions between planetary formation, differentiation, and subsequent evolution. Observations and data from spacecraft missions like Voyager, Galileo, and Juno contribute to our understanding of the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn.

User
I don't understand your logic. If Jupiter's larger mass is responsible, then it would have an even greater effect on hydrogen retention.

ChatGPT
I appreciate the clarification. Let me clarify the point about the influence of mass on helium retention in Jupiter's atmosphere.

The logic is based on the fact that during the formation of gas giant planets like Jupiter, the gravitational pull of the planet plays a role in capturing and retaining lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium, from the protoplanetary disk. The larger mass of Jupiter, compared to Saturn, means that it had a stronger gravitational pull, allowing it to capture and retain more of the lighter elements, including helium.

While both hydrogen and helium are affected by the planet's mass, the reason helium is relatively more predominant in Jupiter's atmosphere is due to the fact that it's lighter than hydrogen. When the gas giants formed, they accreted both hydrogen and helium, but the lighter helium was less likely to be pulled downward toward the core during the process of planetary differentiation. Instead, helium tends to rise to higher altitudes in the atmosphere.

So, it's not that Jupiter's larger mass directly causes greater hydrogen retention (although it does play a role), but rather, the larger mass allows Jupiter to capture and retain more of the lighter helium relative to Saturn. The interplay of mass, composition, and the processes during planetary formation and evolution contribute to the observed differences in the atmospheric compositions of gas giants.

User
I still don't understand. Hydrogen is lighter than helium, not heavier!

ChatGPT
I apologize for the confusion in my previous responses. You are correct, and I appreciate your patience. Let me clarify:

Formation and Capture:

During the formation of gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, both planets captured large amounts of hydrogen and helium from the protoplanetary disk.
Jupiter, being more massive, had a stronger gravitational pull, allowing it to capture and retain more of both hydrogen and helium.
Helium's Behavior:

Helium is indeed lighter than hydrogen, but in the context of planetary formation, both elements are very light gases.
The differentiation process during planetary formation involves the separation of heavier elements towards the core and lighter elements toward the outer layers.
In this process, helium, being lighter than hydrogen, is less likely to be pulled toward the core and tends to be concentrated in the outer layers of the planet.
Overall Retention:

Jupiter, with its larger mass and stronger gravitational pull, retained a significant amount of both hydrogen and helium.
While helium is lighter, it doesn't mean it escapes more easily; rather, both gases were retained due to the massive gravitational influence of the planet.
In summary, the point is not that helium is more massive than hydrogen but that Jupiter's larger mass allowed it to capture and retain more of both gases during its formation, and the lighter helium tends to concentrate in the outer layers of the planet's atmosphere. I appreciate your patience and the opportunity to clarify.

User
You again state that helium is lighter than hydrogen. This is false.

ChatGPT
I apologize for the repeated error in my responses. You are correct, and I appreciate your diligence in pointing that out. Hydrogen is indeed the lightest element, and helium is heavier than hydrogen.

To clarify:

Formation and Capture:

During the formation of gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, both planets captured large amounts of hydrogen and helium from the protoplanetary disk.
Jupiter, being more massive, had a stronger gravitational pull, allowing it to capture and retain more of both hydrogen and helium.
Helium's Behavior:

Helium, being heavier than hydrogen, is less likely to rise to the outer layers of the planet during the differentiation process.
Both hydrogen and helium are retained in the planet's atmosphere due to the planet's mass and gravitational pull.
I appreciate your understanding, and I apologize for any confusion caused by the earlier inaccuracies in my responses. If you have any further questions or if there's anything else I can help you with, please feel free to let me know.

User
Why do you bother to talk when what comes out is total nonsense?

ChatGPT
I apologize for the confusion and any frustration my previous inaccuracies may have caused. I appreciate your feedback, and I'm here to provide accurate information. If you have any more questions or if there's a specific topic you'd like clarification on, please feel free to let me know, and I'll do my best to assist you.

User
There's no point in "appreciating my feedback" if you don't take it onboard and learn from your mistakes.

ChatGPT
You're absolutely correct, and I appreciate your direct feedback. I apologize for the inaccuracies in my responses and any confusion they may have caused. I'm here to assist and provide accurate information, and I'll certainly strive to learn from these mistakes to improve the quality of assistance I offer. If you have any further questions or if there's anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

User
I give up.


Although I know very little about Anthroposophy, I must say I’m surprised that a philosophy that emphasises the “spiritual” nature of thought would have anything to do with such mechanistic spewings. If these “replicas” of poisonous logic are ever invested with authority, then we are surely lost.

[Federica]

Federica said: “Redemption means to find and inhabit the force of life that can brighten up the darkness of death through us. Redemption doesn't mean to wander to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas. These are the spider-like networks that wait for us to entirely fall prey to their tentacular coils. There is no chance of redemption in those seducing but lethal metal arms of death.”

I find these thoughts quite disturbing!

Yeah well life on Earth is not supposed to, and cannot be, a long quiet river.

[AshvinP]

Although I know very little about Anthroposophy, I must say I’m surprised that a philosophy that emphasises the “spiritual” nature of thought would have anything to do with such mechanistic spewings. If these “replicas” of poisonous logic are ever invested with authority, then we are surely lost.

The idea is precisely to take authority/responsibility over the inevitable developments of AI, so the latter doesn't rule over us. The first step is honestly confronting the reality of AI, which is our reality. We developed it in our thinking and instantiated it in the World. Many critics of AI speak as though it is something independent of them, even criticizing it like it has some personality of its own. The reality is that it is an extension of our cognition. This means that the 'poisonous logic' of current AI reflects our own intellectual pathways, our own poisonous ways of mechanical thinking. As long as we keep trying to distance ourselves from those phenomena we have imploded into the World, and therefore act as a mirror for who we currently are, we will never understand them.

Once that is understood, we have to take responsibility for our own creations. It's obvious that many people are already expanding AI tech to cover practically every intellectual domain of life and this isn't going to stop. As we saw on FB, people are going to try and use AI for spiritual purposes. It makes no sense to ignore that reality or to self-righteously condemn it from a safe distance. Instead, we can seek to understand it at ever-deeper levels and explore whether there are ways for a living logic to be instantiated in the technology. This forum is a great example of where living intellectual logic, via phenomenology, analogies, metaphors, and illustrations (thanks mostly to Cleric), has been used to elucidate the core inner experience of our spiritual activity. This living gradient has only become more apparent to me as I periodically review the posts on the forum. There are endless ways to kindle our intuitive orientation towards our spiritual core.

If someone came to this forum with slight familiarity of PoF, or the intuitive thinking path it describes, and asked one of us familiar with it to help them understand it better, what would we do? What posts would we link to, what new metaphors would we create, what examples would we give, what quotes would we share, etc? This thread is a great example of the sort of process that we usually go through. All I am wondering is whether it's possible to instantiate some of that process in a GPT engine and thereby find a way to recruit the latter towards selfless, redemptive purposes which become the free expression of our "I" rather than its tyrannical ruler. It doesn't hurt at all to move our spiritual activity through such possibilities. At the very least, we will certainly come to understand ourselves and the World we have fashioned better.

[Federica]

But that's not what you are responding, is it? Instead, the response is that even thinking through such possibilities is the equivalent of 'wandering to exhaustion through the valley of death letting our blood be preyed on by ever-thirstier, shinier and plumpier networks of thought-replicas.' This is stated as absolute fact that should be 'obvious' to everyone (and obviously it's not). In this last post, there is one 'analogy that is another recitation of the conclusion that new technologies cannot be incorporated into spiritual striving without the worst possible consequences, under any circumstances. Any attempt to even think through such a possibility is leading us into the depths of illusion. 

We have seen a similar thing in many discussions with Eugene. He says, 'Yes, I agree that working through the living details of Earthly evolution is integral and needs to be done', but when we come to concrete examples and the prospect of putting that principle into practice, then we hear, 'the genetic structure of humanity doesn't allow it to escape the clutches of duality, so any efforts in that respect can only be tinkering at the edges, missing the core of nondual realization'. All of this dogma serves to put obstacles in the way of doing the redemptive inner work necessary to gradually spiritualize the Earth from the inside-out, such as developing right thought, right feeling, right judgment, etc. and moving our living spirit through the World Content. If you are working with those exercises and concentration, then you are keeping your being unnecessarily split by casting the principles aside on certain topics and defaulting to old passion-fueled habits. We should be honest with ourselves - it's much easier to absorb the principles intellectually and then adapt them to our normal habits than it is to transform the latter and adapt our way of be-ing to the principles. 

We will all oscillate between the poles on the inner path, and this should give us opportunities to gain insight how our intuitive activity is being shaped by the pathways of our soul and intellectual environment. To discern more clearly what is going on in our thinking, we can focus on the potential results if people were to agree with the content of our thinking. If I agreed that there is a conspiracy around every corner from Linnell on FB to the new member showing up on the forum, what would result? How would this stimulate productive dialogue and strengthen our inner forces? Likewise, if I agreed that all creative efforts towards integrating new technologies for spiritual purposes must necessarily be a path towards spider-like beings, where would that leave us? What kind of ideal (inner) atmosphere would we be living in once our thinking is entrained by that content? I ask you to contemplate such questions fairly and deeply. This is the real inner work through which the Divine is born within us. 

Ashvin, what I do with my thinking you do not know. And I hope you don’t know what you're doing with yours either, when the result is such as the words you have impressed here.