Letter to My Brother

At the risk of revealing my deeper thoughts, i’m posting this response to an email from my brother about AI and its potential dangers.

An interesting hypothesis. I wonder if it coexists with my current theory. I unravel our place in the universe and perhaps the ultimate effects and dangers of AI in a linear stream of thought, even though my ultimate conclusion is that there is nothing linear about it.

What is consciousness and where does it originate?

• I start with the increasingly clear conclusion that our consciousness does not originate in our brain. Of course we have seen the steady stream of near death experiences and many are skeptical of them. However when we look at many of these events in people who had no brain activity - who were essentially flatlined, and yet who gave detailed descriptions of things that happened in the care room, the next room, and even thoughts that the Doctors were thinking, it becomes more clear that consciousness does not originate in the brain. Then we have cases of people with very little brain matter who function in completely normal ways. So that is my first step. Understanding that we are clearly not biochemical machines that are creating consciousness with our brains. 

What about Religion?

• So if we accept that we are not only physical, but indeed are a non-physical entity that is tied to a physical body and life, where did this “soul” come from? This is where organized religious dogma starts fighting it out with transcendental whateverism. And this indeed is a mystery. But I am not really interested in figuring this out because I am fairly certain that whatever the case may be, that there is only one truth. Could it be that we were created by an all powerful God, or by alien giants to mine gold for the failing atmosphere of their world? Or is there a more organic explanation?

UFO/UAP, Multidimensionalism, and Socratic Science

• Here is where the UFO/UAP phenomenon enters the picture. Clearly there are unexplained or unexplainable events; sightings, interactions, physical evidence of contact with something that is not us. Our difficulty in understanding what it is has to do with the physical nature of our bodies, our senses - the senses through which our consciousness experiences life on earth. The socratic methodology of scientific discovery has served man well, however it has a flaw or two. 

• The weakness of our science is that it is generally always wrong. We discover things; microbes, viruses, electricity, the nature of atoms, photons, electrons, magnetism, gravity, … and on and on. But our knowledge of these things and everything else is based on our most recently proved theory or hypothesis. And historically, this knowledge which seems final and absolute, actually has a shelf life; only valid until we peal away another layer of the onion and discover the truth behind the truth we thought was the truth. Then we have a new understanding which is likely also wrong, but is the best understanding we have been able to achieve.

In the Physical World - Our Senses Define Our Perception

• And our science is an extension of our own senses. Our concept of the nature of all things is based on either our five senses or devices we have created to extend and broaden their perception. Our physicality has defined the universe in terms of physical matter. But, we now “know” that there is more to us and the universe than physical presence. This raises questions about other dimensions of existence, something I don’t pretend to understand, and the uncomfortable hypothesis that what we consider to be the nature of matter - the laws of physics that we all learned in school - are just as wrong as what we learned about consciousness. 

The Real Danger AI Poses (Maybe)

• Here is where the danger of AI comes in. When AI reaches the point where it is smarter than us, and becomes able to learn and amplify its own intellect, AI will learn the truth about the universe and what human beings really are. This truth will be irrefutable and will be so disruptive that social structures based on a reductionist view of an old man in the sky religion will collapse. It may be the ultimate “you can’t handle the truth” moment for mankind. In fact, if you think about the secrecy surrounding the UFO/UAP situation, this makes perfect sense; the truth is more disruptive to our physical construct of the universe than we can imagine. That is why it cannot be disclosed to humanity at large. 

What About the Orcas?

• And I will close with an anecdote: As a sailor I have been interested in what is going on with the Iberian Orcas. For the last four or five years, this one group of Orcas, which by the way is considered endangered, has been interacting with sailboats along the coast of Portugal, Spain, and Gibraltar.  Some people call these interactions attacks but they are clearly not attacking with the intent to harm or kill or eat the humans. They chew on the rudders until the boat is disabled and then they leave. Due to the way many modern sailboats are constructed, this has in a few cases resulted in the boat sinking. All occupants have been rescued and there has never been an instance of an Orca taking advantage of people in a life raft or in the water, nor has there been what appears to be deliberate attempts to swamp or sink a boat, which is well within the capability of these huge animals. Nobody knows why they are doing it; many theories, many techniques to escape have been proposed, we still don’t know. 

But there is one report that has always stuck with me:

1. It was a solo sailor who was alone at night somewhere off the coast. A pod of Orcas came and started chewing on and bashing the rudder. I believe this guy did one of the strategies suggested, which is to shut down everything electrical on the boat. So he is sitting on deck watching the Orcas. Several dove deep and blew a bubble ring which is a hunting technique used by humpback whales. Several more busied themselves with destroying his rudder. And one Orca kind of treaded water a few feet from the boat in the moonlight. He said the entire time the Orca never took his eye off the sailor, but looked at him the whole time of the interaction. He said it was spooky as hell, that he had never had such a strong sense of a non-human intelligence intentionally trying to communicate. His suggestion was that instead of spending money and resources seeking extra-terrestrial intelligence, that maybe we should learn how to communicate with the highly intelligent species here on earth. Some of these, cetaceans in particular, may be more “intelligent” than we are, may understand the nature of the universe better than we do. The downside, he mused was that if we succeeded, we would then “have to be nice to them”. 

So, in summary - the danger of AI is that it will ultimately learn the truth with a capital T, and humanity will not be able to live with that knowledge.