AI psychosis may be the most visible example of something much bigger and stranger. Excerpt: "LLMs influence our beliefs not just because they agree with us. They influence our beliefs because they are socially participating in reality with us. What makes something feel real isn’t that we say we believe it. Rather, it’s that our experiences exist in a world we share with others. For most of human history, new technologies have extended our cognitive capacities. Now they are p

After a pilgrimage through Spain, the challenge is carrying its lessons forward in everyday life. The prior, related article

To build a better world in the age of AI, students need grounding in indispensable ideas. Excerpt: "In 1970, the poet, educator, and architect June Jordan posed the following question during a middle-school graduation speech in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn: “Where are the central, required courses that will teach us our real heritage of heroes and heroines, rebellion, and loving accomplishment?” Questions like this are at the forefront of my mind lately. Like Jordan, I’m a writer who

Scary movies may appear irreverent or profane—but many of them are deeply interested in theological questions.

Good day! Per our recent conversation regarding Holophrens as systems, I seek to add to your thinking about this topic. While every holophren is a system (aka: integrated elements for a function or purpose), holophren embodiment design (HED) often includes other internal or external/ambient systems, which may also be holophrens. For example, systems may "nested" be within the 13 distinct areas of a holophren, or one or more holophren may be within other systems, some of whic

Wendell Berry’s iconoclasm reminds liberals and conservatives that neither camp has a monopoly on truth.

To make sense of my deepest experiences, I needed a new way of talking about the soul.

DM We've not yet specifically collaborated on how systems thinking might offer significant benefits to research, understanding, diagnostics and applications of The Universal Holophren within the wide spectrum of known and unknown Holophren Embodiment Design (HED) whether living and non-living. Your thoughts? . I’ll research this before offering views. The plan is to map systems-thinking traditions onto the Universal Holophren as a substrate-neutral architecture across HED,

DM Reflecting on our prior conversations regarding gravity, you stated gravity has evidental "speed." How confident are you of that answer? I’ll research the current evidence on the speed of gravity so I can give you a calibrated confidence level rather than a reflexive one. Speed of gravity evidence Research complete. 285 sources 5m 55s I’m about 99% confident that gravitational waves, meaning changes in gravity, travel at the speed of light. My earlier answer went too far

The pursuit of achievement distracts from the deeply ordinary activities and relationships that make life meaningful.

Good afternoon! I posit that contempt for one's own ignorance has a name: hubris. Pantakinesis illuminates this; in part because of it's vanishing points (as well as its other two pillars; but, that requires a bit more facilitated learning for many humans). Thus, for one to sustainably thrive within reality, with portions thereof unknown, requires "Enjoying My Ignorance." This potent attribute also has a name: humility. Good afternoon. I concur, with one refinement, and a

Warning: this is an arduous trail; entailing long, steep and mind-challenging trekking, ...often traversing very unstable grounds; ... thus suitable only for those humble and holophrenically well-prepared. Carrying any unnecessary burdens of heavy hubris is NOT advised. Furthermore, this trek was blazed across many days, with many intervals of incubation and contemplation; hence it may best be "reflectively traveled" by others in a like manner. Fortunately, immediate resc

Philosopher Jack Symes explores the space between devout religion and atheism.

Should you have interest: a related brief Claude collaboration: DM Good day to you. As we have extensively discussed, the Universal Holophren is "substrate independent," while prevailing in wide variety of types of living and non-living entities, is so in discrete, compound, and fractal arrangement. A holophren can manifest in a distributed design (such as a in an oak tree, bee hive, business organization or immune system); or may manifest centralized manner (such as in our

In “Weimar Germany,” Victor Sebestyen focuses on the populist culture wars that brought an end to popular rule in the fledgling republic.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues that function defines life more than material does, and that AI belongs in the same story

In a series of private meetings, the company consulted religious scholars to help instill morality into its A.I. models — and make the case that Claude could be conscious.

To understand what the word means today, you have to go back to the beginning of the story.

Frontal assault on Talarico’s faith comes after much of the right has spent more than a decade telling voters that they’re electing a president and not a pastor, that they should pay no attention to the religious beliefs (much less the personal conduct) of the Republican president they love. But now the message has changed. In Texas, one of the candidates — Talarico — is treated more like a pastor than a potential senator, and his theology is treated as the true threat to our

The author of the novel ‘Cloud Six’ on conversations with angels, sojourns in limbo and one memorable journey to the world of the damned.