ChatGPT answers metaphysical questions :)

[Federica]

Yes, we can and should certainly work to withhold verbal condensation in specific meditative settings, and we can experience archetypal meaning without immediately collapsing into verbal sequences. But the key is that nothing should become a one-sided goal, as if we need to get away from verbal thinking in all circumstances. We need to carefully balance our efforts and harmonize the strata of our intuitive being, so the intellectual thinking voice can serve its proper function of anchoring and artistically clarifying our higher intuitions.

Early on after some meditative breakthroughs, I felt a similar impulse to move away from the inner voice toward pictorial thinking, and asked Cleric as follows:

I have a question for you. Sorry if it's really rudimentary. I notice when I read, I still have the habit of sounding out all the words with inner voice. I sense that it would be better if I could read more imagistically, so to speak. Is that accurate and do you have any tips for developing such a skill, or know of any resources of Steiner archive? I imagine he deals with this somewhere in his pedagogical material, but I have not come across it yet. Anything you can share is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

He responded:

I don't think it is a problem at all that you're sounding out the words. Sounding the words doesn't negate the imaginative experience. Take for example Eurhythmy. It is 'sound made visible'. The imaginative experience can perfectly well grow through the words. BD has given some prayers accompanied with something like gymnastic exercises. These help a lot for the experience of the words. For example, when we say something like "May your Spirit come over me and bless me" it can be accompanied with the following movement of the hands. We lift our hands and straighten our arms, touching the tips of the fingers above our head (making /\ shape). Together with this we imagine that we reach in light filled world. Then we begin to slowly lower our touching hands as if we begin to carry the light towards our head. As the hands reach our head they are separated and pass on both sides of the head, then continue along the chest and down the body. Practically we reach in for the blessings of Light and shower ourselves with them, instilling them in our soul and body. When our words are accompanied with such movements, the effects can be very powerful.

This is just an example. So in short, we haven't even begun to explore the magical side of speech. There's a very long evolution in front of us before spoken language becomes obsolete. At this point it's important that Imaginations begin to grow around words, that is - speech shall be spiritualized. It is true that in meditation many things are perceived in wordless manner but ultimately they must be spoken.

Think about the following: language has formed by decoherence of an original much more spiritual proto-language, where the sounds were like fractals of more encompassing Imaginations. These relations have been lost, language has lost its spiritual context. Before we get away with language we'll first have to make our speech imaginative once again. This is connected with the lotus flower in the larynx area.

The key is that when we speak we must imaginatively experience what we speak of. Our words should be fractal images of our soul contents. Of course, in purely mechanical sense, the sound vibrations have almost nothing of the splendor of our soul world. A materialistically inclined listener would never grasp that richness. But this should not discourage us. Every word that we speak as a projection of our rich soul experience has magical powers. We set in motion not only air molecules but also etheric currents. Those who are receptive, would receive something in their etheric body. Here we once again see that digital communication doesn't make things much easier in this regard.

So I would say, don't think of the inner voice as an obstacle. Spiritual activity goes through the heart lotus organ, where we have the deeper forces of our being, the more existential ones, related with our karma, our sympathies and antipathies, our goals in life, etc. These are the greater time-waves. In the larynx organ these forces become thinking - that's where the deeper forces of the heart become more finely shaped and turn into thinking gestures (not only verbal). When these forces enter the head organ they become perceptions - sounds, colors, etc. But even further than this thinking can become expression of our hands movements. This is a very significant occult fact. Our etheric hands are like extension of our thinking (these things are mentioned in Knowledge of Higher Worlds ...). This is comprehensible if we conceive how we can think in sign language.

So this system - heart-larynx-head-hands - actually forms the depth axis. It can be imagined like this: Imagine that your deeper being is centered in the Sun. Your soul has its life and goals in this lofty world, the plan for each incarnation is inspired through this world of harmony. Imagine that your spirit reaches out of that sphere and goes through a denser shell (still concentric to the first). Here the Love flow becomes more finely grained into thinking. Further thinking becomes perceptible (Earth sphere) and even further we 'dip' our etheric hands (which are the extension of this axis) into the perceptions. The spheres are not spatially separate, they are also not really only shells. Clearly the sphere of perceptions fills the whole spatial volume, it is not only a thin spatial shell. Everything interpenetrates. It's only in 'wave-lengths' that they are differentiated.

Seen in this way, our goal should be not so much to suppress inner verbalization but instead to make every word the core around which imaginations grow. So the words must be heart-felt and as they sound forth, they must bring something from the heart-sun world into imaginative perception. It's even more powerful if we bring our etheric hands in motion. The example with the prayer is one such instance. So the goal is to experience the word as expression of living reality.

Sure, whoever had the foolish goal to get away from verbal thinking in all circumstances, would be on an aberrant track. Thank you for sharing that correspondence!

[Federica]

Incidentally, the last Essentia essay The sky is in here, not just out there: How outdated language insulates us from reality is out. It is prefaced on Essentias YT with these words:

"Astronomer Harriet Witt argues that it is our scientifically outdated language that leads us into thinking of the sky as a remote reality ‘up there,’ instead of a felt experience ‘in here.’ She argues for an update to the words and concepts we use daily, so the holistic reality of our existence, and of our intimate relationship with all of nature, can again be felt."


I still have to read it entirely - better said, I have to overcome my reluctance to put the time in after reading the first sentences. So far, it looks like an interesting example of a legitimate feeling got wrong, and gone wrong, diverted and deflected by a whole flatly intellectual conception. Regarding the pre-Copernican conception the author wants to laugh at, I have just read in Steiner:

You know that until the sixteenth century, until the emergence of the Copernican view of the world, human beings believed something entirely different concerning the structure of the world. Obviously it has been necessary for human progress, and also for the penetration of human freedom into the evolution of humanity, that the Copernican world view appeared, just as now spiritual science must appear. But with the physical view of the world that prevailed in pre-Copernican times - one can call it wrong today, if you like - view of the physical structure of the universe where the earth stands still, the sun moves around the earth's sky, the stars move around the earth, that beyond the starry sky there is a spiritual sphere in which spiritual beings live - with that view of the structure of the universe, people could still pass through the gate of death without being held back as dead in the earthly sphere. That worldview did not yet result in human beings becoming destructive in the earthly sphere, after passing through the portal of death.

Only with the abrupt entry of Copernicanism, with its picture that the whole world spread out in space is also subject to spatial laws only, with its picture that the earth circles around the sun, only with such pictures, arising in the Copernican view, is the human being chained to physical-sensible existence and prevented from rising appropriately into the spiritual world after death.

Today one must also know the other side of the coin of this Copernican world view, now that centuries have passed during which the human soul has been confronted again and again with the magnificent advance of this view. One side is as justifiable as the other. The Copernican world view is still valued today as a mark of sophistication. It has really become a philistine sophistication to regard the Copernican world view as the only teaching that can save souls. People still consider the other view to be foolish today, the view that through the Copernican world view the human being is chained to the earth after death unless he makes for himself a spiritual conception, as can be offered by spiritual science today. Nevertheless it is true. You already know from the Bible that many a thing that is foolishness to man is wisdom for the gods.

[AshvinP]

Sure, whoever had the foolish goal to get away from verbal thinking in all circumstances, would be on an aberrant track. Thank you for sharing that correspondence!

It's not just the goal of getting away from verbal thinking in all circumstances that we need to be cautious of, but also of relegating it to some inferior status in spiritual development where we can safely put it to the side and focus mostly on pictorial thinking. As Cleric indicated, "At this point it's important that Imaginations begin to grow around words, that is - speech shall be spiritualized. It is true that in meditation many things are perceived in wordless manner but ultimately they must be spoken... Seen in this way, our goal should be not so much to suppress inner verbalization but instead to make every word the core around which imaginations grow." This complementary relationship between verbal speech and imaginative thinking isn't optional for most of us - it must be actively cultivated if our higher intuitions of existence are to grow fruitfully.

Incidentally, the last Essentia essay The sky is in here, not just out there: How outdated language insulates us from reality is out. It is prefaced on Essentias YT with these words:

"Astronomer Harriet Witt argues that it is our scientifically outdated language that leads us into thinking of the sky as a remote reality ‘up there,’ instead of a felt experience ‘in here.’ She argues for an update to the words and concepts we use daily, so the holistic reality of our existence, and of our intimate relationship with all of nature, can again be felt."


I still have to read it entirely - better said, I have to overcome my reluctance to put the time in after reading the first sentences. So far, it looks like an interesting example of a legitimate feeling that got wrong, diverted and deflected by a whole flat intellectual conception.

Yeah, this is an example of flattening thinking to the word-layer. It's a perspective that imagines we can change the meaning we experience in our phenomenal lives by simply legislating the verbal tokens that are used. When people begin to blame language itself, they have clearly lost sight of their inner creative responsibility for spiritualizing speech.

[Federica]

It's not just the goal of getting away from verbal thinking in all circumstances that we need to be cautious of, but also of relegating it to some inferior status in spiritual development where we can safely put it to the side and focus mostly on pictorial thinking. As Cleric indicated, "At this point it's important that Imaginations begin to grow around words, that is - speech shall be spiritualized. It is true that in meditation many things are perceived in wordless manner but ultimately they must be spoken... Seen in this way, our goal should be not so much to suppress inner verbalization but instead to make every word the core around which imaginations grow." This complementary relationship between verbal speech and imaginative thinking isn't optional for most of us - it must be actively cultivated if our higher intuitions of existence are to grow fruitfully.

Sure, whoever had the foolish intention to relegate verbal thinking to an inferior status would also be on an aberrant track. Speech needs to be rediscovered, reinflated with spirit, in a new way, from our current evolutionary point of progression.

[Federica]

In this sense, JP is as far as one can go in the cognitive experience of the Logos (higher ideal orders of reality) while still remaining entirely within the intellectual gestures. With such a grasp on his stance, it is difficult for me to imagine that he seeks meaning/ideas as somehow contained in the LLM statistics or even in human-written text.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure:

Even our science has now progressed such that we ever more clearly understand how the language that makes up a story works-and why that matters to anyone concerned with stories themselves, particularly in their greatest form. The body of any human language contains within it an empirically derivable coding of meaning. We can map this coding as the statistical relationship between letters, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and so on up the living tree of the Logos. A word is identifiable as a word because it fits the mathematical pattern of the relationship between letters that characterizes all comprehensible words. It is this pattern that makes certain nonwords plausible, such as vims, blin, and flumptuous, and that enables them to be distinguished at a glance from implausible nonwords, such as kjlk and zxnq and qwlelrltl, or even more radically m4a3s2t1r. Plausible nonwords adhere to the sound patterns of the language in which they are created. They possess combinations of consonants and vowels that are both familiar to, say, English speakers and pronounceable in English. In contrast, implausible nonwords contain letter combinations that are either unfamiliar or impossible to pronounce in English.

We see an analogous situation at "higher" or "more fundamental" levels of meaning. Just as there is a calculable probability that a given letter will follow any other given letter [...], there is a high and calculable probability that any given phrase, and therefore concept, will co-occur or exist in close proximity to a network of other concepts with associated meaning. That set of proximate conceptions are the so-called symbolic associations that help connote, rather than denote, the meaning of the phrase in question. In a well-constructed story, any given network of such associations is surrounded by other networks of comparative similarity and contrasted with networks of contrasting dissimilarity.

This expanding network of associations constitutes the landscape of meaning.

----

Peterson, J. B. (2024). We who wrestle with God: perceptions of the Divine. First large print edition. [New York], Random House Large Print.

Even though highlighting individual words clearly misses the context in which the word has been used, it still gives us some clues about the ideas that the speaker has been expressing. It seems to me that JP means something of this kind when he describes his view on LLMs, except that we're no longer speaking of the frequency of occurrences of single words but of more complicated relations of words. But still, these co-occurrences tell us something about the proximity of the ideas embodied in the words, just like the words in the cloud above tell something about the ideas that went through Trump's mind at that time. Whether these thought-words were Inspired or they were improvised at the moment, reflected his well-trodden inner musings, given to him by someone who wrote his speech, etc., is a different question. As long as the texts on which LLMs have been trained are produced by thinking beings, it is natural that the weightings of words should reflect something of the ideal relations. And again, I fully agree with you that this weighting is not something that we query the user side of the LLM about, but which we can only investigate from a meta-perspective. And the same holds true even if we analyze regular books 'by hand'. Our analysis can never be found as contained in the existing text but we produce it by growing into an encompassing sphere.

Well, Steiner says the following (which he calls nominalism later in the lecture)

We can thus start from the conviction that when man holds to that which he possesses in his thought, he can find an intimate relation of his being to the Cosmos. But in starting from this point of view we do encounter a difficulty, a great difficulty—not for our understanding but in practice. For it is indeed true that a man lives within every fibre of his thought, and therefore must be able to know his thought more intimately than he can know any perceptual image, but —yes— most people have no thoughts! And as a rule this is not thoroughly realized, for the simple reason that one must have thoughts in order to realize it. [ ] What hinders people in the widest circles from having thoughts is that for the ordinary requirements of life they have no need to go as far as thinking; they can get along quite well with words. Most of what we call “thinking” in ordinary life is merely a flow of words: people think in words, and much more often than is generally supposed. Many people, when they ask for an explanation of something, are satisfied if the reply includes some word with a familiar ring, reminding them of this or that. They take the feeling of familiarity for an explanation and then fancy they have grasped the thought.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA151/En ... 20p01.html

[Cleric]

Well, I wouldn't be so sure:

Even our science has now progressed such that we ever more clearly understand how the language that makes up a story works-and why that matters to anyone concerned with stories themselves, particularly in their greatest form. The body of any human language contains within it an empirically derivable coding of meaning. We can map this coding as the statistical relationship between letters, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and so on up the living tree of the Logos. A word is identifiable as a word because it fits the mathematical pattern of the relationship between letters that characterizes all comprehensible words. It is this pattern that makes certain nonwords plausible, such as vims, blin, and flumptuous, and that enables them to be distinguished at a glance from implausible nonwords, such as kjlk and zxnq and qwlelrltl, or even more radically m4a3s2t1r. Plausible nonwords adhere to the sound patterns of the language in which they are created. They possess combinations of consonants and vowels that are both familiar to, say, English speakers and pronounceable in English. In contrast, implausible nonwords contain letter combinations that are either unfamiliar or impossible to pronounce in English.

We see an analogous situation at "higher" or "more fundamental" levels of meaning. Just as there is a calculable probability that a given letter will follow any other given letter [...], there is a high and calculable probability that any given phrase, and therefore concept, will co-occur or exist in close proximity to a network of other concepts with associated meaning. That set of proximate conceptions are the so-called symbolic associations that help connote, rather than denote, the meaning of the phrase in question. In a well-constructed story, any given network of such associations is surrounded by other networks of comparative similarity and contrasted with networks of contrasting dissimilarity.

This expanding network of associations constitutes the landscape of meaning.

----

Peterson, J. B. (2024). We who wrestle with God: perceptions of the Divine. First large print edition. [New York], Random House Large Print.

I still think that JP does not mistake the map of meaning for the territory. A little further in the chapter we read:

To say it again: this mathematically detectable landscape of linguistic meaning is made up not only of the relationship between words and then phrases and sentences but also of the paragraphs and chapters within which they are embedded—all the way up the hierarchy of conceptualization. This implies, not least—or even necessarily and inevitably means—that there is an implicit center to any network of comprehensible meanings. The center, for example, of the words wildlife, creature, pet, fish, mammal, vertebrate, bird, reptile, insect, and amphibian is the word animal. That center of a set of associated ideas is something akin to the soul (even the god?) of that set. This is no dead statistical relationship between letters and words in a body of printed text. It is instead a relationship in the minds of people—in the collective meta-space of human imagination, where those related ideas are a living force or even entity. As animating, motivating, and organizing forces, these associated ideas are more like characters with aims or personalities than mere mathematical relationships. Thus, a pattern of co-occurring animating ideas can be well represented and appropriately and effectively regarded as a living spirit, dynamic and moving, rather than static and dead.

I think this makes it explicit that for him the statistical mathematical relations are indeed only testimonies for the living centers of meaning, which are living spirits (further down he gives an example with the zeitgeist). I agree that in the way he speaks, sometimes the impression is left that he uses terms like words and meaning almost interchangeably, but I think it is clear that for him the centers of meaning are something living and spiritual. If anything, we may accuse him of taking too much for granted by assuming that the reader will also make that distinction, and will grasp in what sense the words are used.

As already said previously, at least in the way I see it, the problem with JP is not that he doesn't have an instinctive intuitive sense of the spiritual depth of reality (the hierarchy of value/meaning, which is living spirit), but that hasn't explored the modes of cognition that lead to the living experience of this depth. And this in itself means that one should discover spiritual science (not simply in the sense of Steiner's work but in the archetypal sense). Without higher cognition, one lives in intuitively but still instinctively steered intellectual movements. This makes it necessary to seek support for the higher ideas exclusively in the sensory world. It's like JP says "In my heart I feelingly know that there are such centers of being. I know that the zeitgeist, for example, is something real, it's a character on its own that can potentially possess human egos. However, I can't point at the concrete reality of this spirit. Nevertheless, we can indirectly argue for this living center by showing that the written word - which is like the bones of meaning - when analyzed mathematically, also exhibits such statistical centers, which I see as mirroring the true 'gravitational' clumping of true living meaning."

Of course, such a position is prone to degeneration. Nothing in existence stands still. If he doesn't find the need for higher forms of consciousness, which bring to reality all that he instinctively gropes at, sooner or later things will flow in the downward direction. Since the living centers keep evading our concrete experience, the intellectual ego - if it is to do anything at all - will need to spend more and more time with the maps, because there it has at least some kind of concreteness for which the "I" thirsts.

As long as the texts on which LLMs have been trained are produced by thinking beings, it is natural that the weightings of words should reflect something of the ideal relations

Well, Steiner says the following (which he calls nominalism later in the lecture)

We can thus start from the conviction that when man holds to that which he possesses in his thought, he can find an intimate relation of his being to the Cosmos. But in starting from this point of view we do encounter a difficulty, a great difficulty—not for our understanding but in practice. For it is indeed true that a man lives within every fibre of his thought, and therefore must be able to know his thought more intimately than he can know any perceptual image, but —yes— most people have no thoughts! And as a rule this is not thoroughly realized, for the simple reason that one must have thoughts in order to realize it. [ ] What hinders people in the widest circles from having thoughts is that for the ordinary requirements of life they have no need to go as far as thinking; they can get along quite well with words. Most of what we call “thinking” in ordinary life is merely a flow of words: people think in words, and much more often than is generally supposed. Many people, when they ask for an explanation of something, are satisfied if the reply includes some word with a familiar ring, reminding them of this or that. They take the feeling of familiarity for an explanation and then fancy they have grasped the thought.

I don't think this contradicts what I have said. It is true that much of the training data may come from Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and FHM, but it is also trained on the Bible and all religious and philosophical literature (including anthroposophical) so it's natural that the statistics may have distilled some of the higher-order linguistic centers (even if only their flattened projections). And this is what I think JP is really after. Imagine his situation: he needs to argue in favor of a hierarchy of meaning - higher-order spiritual centers that organize the unfolding story of mankind. The physicist has maths and lab experiments to make his point. JP only has language as his weapon (not only abstract logic of tokens but also as the means to describe images and patterns that live in the soul). His efforts are easily attackable because language is so complex and amorphous at the surface level that one can dismiss the messages in any way they want. Even here on the forum we have seen how widespread the "refutation by non-comprehension" is, i.e. "I don't understand what you are talking about thus you are wrong." Thus it is understandable that JP is enthusiastic about language models. For example, much of his work is devoted to showing how certain archetypal patterns - especially those encoded in the Bible - can be found as running threads through many aspects of our lives. To convince the other party in this, the latter should examine a large body of experiences and see for themselves that there are certain patterns. This, of course, hardly anyone does, especially if they start with the intent to refute that idea. So in the LLM JP sees a possibility to say "If you don't believe me, look at what the LLMs have gathered from the corpus of all human text." So it's JP's hope that by mapping linguistic space and discerning the proximity of various centers, it would be possible to have support for what he advocates. It's like he hopes to say: "Look, the clumping of text in a statistical hierarchy in a way mirrors the fact that the thinking life that has produced that text must also be influenced by such hierarchical centers, albeit living, spiritual ones."

How much convincing power such an approach may have is another question. Additionally, just like you noted previously, these statistics are not something that the model answers about through the UI. We can eventually learn about them by further analysis of the trained model itself. To what extent we can gather hierarchical statistics from this, I'm not sure. There's nothing hierarchical in the design of the LLM itself, so if there's some contextuality in the learned data it will be in some flattened (projected) form, spread out over the billions of weights. I'm quite open to the possibility that such contextuality may not exist in the model in the way JP hopes. In any case, the problem remains that even if the opponents are convinced that there's such contextual clumping that ultimately converges toward the idea of the Logos, the greater question remains: what now? And it is here that I think JP's philosophy, if it does not move forward, would remain simply as a form of modern-day Christian preaching that is much more engaging and satisfying for the intellect, yet fails to lead beyond it.

[Federica]

...

Yes. It's true that I've not been generous enough to do the probing you did and describe. Thanks for the long answer, Cleric.

[AshvinP]

This is an interesting Vatican statement on AI for anyone interested.

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/cong ... ml#_ftn148

VI. Concluding Reflections

108. Considering the various challenges posed by advances in technology, Pope Francis emphasized the need for growth in “human responsibility, values, and conscience,” proportionate to the growth in the potential that this technology brings[200]—recognizing that “with an increase in human power comes a broadening of responsibility on the part of individuals and communities.”[201]

109. At the same time, the “essential and fundamental question” remains “whether in the context of this progress man, as man, is becoming truly better, that is to say, more mature spiritually, more aware of the dignity of his humanity, more responsible, more open to others, especially the neediest and the weakest, and readier to give and to aid all.”[202]

110. As a result, it is crucial to know how to evaluate individual applications of AI in particular contexts to determine whether its use promotes human dignity, the vocation of the human person, and the common good. As with many technologies, the effects of the various uses of AI may not always be predictable from their inception. As these applications and their social impacts become clearer, appropriate responses should be made at all levels of society, following the principle of subsidiarity. Individual users, families, civil society, corporations, institutions, governments, and international organizations should work at their proper levels to ensure that AI is used for the good of all.

111. A significant challenge and opportunity for the common good today lies in considering AI within a framework of relational intelligence, which emphasizes the interconnectedness of individuals and communities and highlights our shared responsibility for fostering the integral well-being of others. The twentieth-century philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev observed that people often blame machines for personal and social problems; however, “this only humiliates man and does not correspond to his dignity,” for “it is unworthy to transfer responsibility from man to a machine.”[203] Only the human person can be morally responsible, and the challenges of a technological society are ultimately spiritual in nature. Therefore, facing those challenges “demands an intensification of spirituality.”[204]

112. A further point to consider is the call, prompted by the appearance of AI on the world stage, for a renewed appreciation of all that is human. Years ago, the French Catholic author Georges Bernanos warned that “the danger is not in the multiplication of machines, but in the ever-increasing number of men accustomed from their childhood to desire only what machines can give.”[205] This challenge is as true today as it was then, as the rapid pace of digitization risks a “digital reductionism,” where non-quantifiable aspects of life are set aside and then forgotten or even deemed irrelevant because they cannot be computed in formal terms. AI should be used only as a tool to complement human intelligence rather than replace its richness.[206] Cultivating those aspects of human life that transcend computation is crucial for preserving “an authentic humanity” that “seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door.”[207]

[Cleric]

Today's thought is also interesting:

One of these great problems will be concerned with finding out how to place the spiritual etheric forces at the service of practical life. I have told you that in this epoch we have to solve the problem of how the radiations from human states of mind are carried over into machines; of how human beings are to be brought into relation with an environment which must become increasingly mechanised. […]

Where this kind of thing goes on, the wish to yoke up human strength with the strength of machines is always involved. It would be quite mistaken merely to oppose these things. They are not going to fade away; they are on the march. The only question is whether in the course of world-history they are going to be brought on to the scene by men who are unselfishly aware of the great aims of earth-evolution and wish to shape these developments for the healing of mankind, or by groups of men who want to use them for their own or the group’s selfish ends. That is the issue. The point is not what is going to happen, for it certainly will happen, but how it happens — how these things are handled. The welding together of human beings with machines will be a great and important problem for the rest of the earth-evolution.

I have often pointed out, even in public lectures, that human consciousness depends on destructive forces. During public lectures in Basle I twice said that in our nerve-system we are always in process of dying. These forces of death will become stronger and stronger, and we shall find that they are related to the forces of electricity and magnetism, and to those at work in machines. A man will be able in a certain sense to guide his intentions and his thoughts into the forces of the machines. Forces in human nature that are still unknown will be discovered — forces which will act upon external electricity and magnetism.

That is one problem: the bringing together of human beings with machines, and this is something which will exert an ever-increasing influence on the future.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA178/En ... 25p02.html

[AshvinP]

I also just came across this video by Angus on DeepSeek AI and its potentially redemptive uses. Cleric, have you had a chance to experiment with this new AI yet? I posted a response about what I think is going on, based on our discussions here, but it would be interesting to hear any additional thoughts or whether I am missing something.





Angus, thanks for sharing your thoughts on DeepSeek.

Around 32min you say, "I cannot even begin to imagine how this would happen", in reference to point #3, "internal coherence and conceptual understanding", and I think that's something worth contemplating more. I think you intuit that there is no possible way an AI algorithm could attain genuine understanding of abstract (or any) concepts or insight into the organic relations between concepts. When we understand the broad outlines of how the algorithms work (for example, see here) , that intuition is only made more clear. DeepSeek can easily output words in combinations that suggest improvements which seem aligned with what is expressed in GA 2, but it could never deliver on those 'promises'. It is suggesting something that could never possibly happen, because an algorithm can never independently attain insight into the cognitive process itself by merely analyzing outputs (like humans can).

On the other hand, I think you have found an interesting way of using AI for working through a text like GA 2 and navigating 'roadblocks'. This use is no different than what we do when interacting with the perceptual spectrum in general, using it to anchor our intuitions and develop new intuitions against the perceptions. For example, we can think of the Mandelbrot set. It’s a fairly simple calculation that we can in principle do in our mind, however, we need to do it for every point in the complex plane and mark the result (whether the iterated value stays bounded or flies to infinity). The first picture of the set looked something like this:

https://64.media.tumblr.com/df63449f6f1 ... 1_1280.png

Mandelbrot wrote a program that calculated a rough grid of points and used the printer (which was practically an automated typewriter) to type a symbol or space depending on the result. In a sense, it’s a map of what our thinking streams could have been were we to calculate each point in our mind. Now the moment his eyes saw that image, different thoughts began 'condensing' against this modified perceptual spectrum. It is a similar thing happening when you input GA 2 into the algorithm and then asks questions about the text. The algorithm itself has no understanding of what you are asking or what it is outputting, anymore than an automated typewriter. Yet the modified perceptual spectrum allows YOUR thinking to incarnate new thoughts against the new way of visualizing the meaning, which then help you overcome certain roadblocks. These are indeed redemptive uses of AI tech, not because AI is itself accomplishing some new ways of understanding Steiner's texts, but because you are conducting your spiritual activity to modify the perceptual spectrum (the AI outputs) and this stimulates your spiritual activity toward new kinds of movements that can incarnate new kinds of insights.