AI feels like a real mania, a genuine collective break from reality among the ruling class. They might as well be pouring billions of dollars into an attempt to replace all jobs and knowledge with a large bronze idol of Dagon.
you're absolutely not being hyperbolic. when i first started writing my cyberpunk satire about this whole madness, some of the first dialogue i wrote was to spoof this whole vibe:
“...more like a cult eager to bear witness to the birth of their own personal god.”
Yeah, I've tried explaining it to people but esoteric futurism is worse than turn of the century secret society drama for making people's eyes glaze over.
Sometimes I really wonder how my kid is going to make his way through this next phase of capitalism we're moving into with his undergrad religion major.
Other times I think we may all at some point be depending on him to tell us what the heck is going on.
If he’s studying theology, he may be the best prepared. The ability to think about religions as systems and to see the shape of religion systems without markings will be a critical toolset.
If he’s studying for pastoral work, probably not, though.
Oh dear ghod you are NOT being hyperbolic. I realized how cultish this whole mess was when I started saying "no, LLMs are not AGI and will never be" using my background working with cognitive assessment results...and their arguments were incoherent and had nothing to do with understanding cognition.
