• From: Dark + Light at the Same Time
  • Registered: 2007-12-02

Topic: I Wish This Was a Real Religion

I like to write music using electronics rather computers or machines but mostly machines and I have always felt like I had a spiritual connection to certain electronic music devices, I often dream of them telling me what to write on them then wake up and do it, I notice how if I am feeling very off balanced they don't seem to work right for me, bugs, etc... anyways..
I got bored one night and googled "Ghost in the Machine" just to see what would come up and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_Mechanicus

This is based off of a game, actually... but I thought it seemed... interesting, especially the rituals and whatnot considering some of the odd things I have done to or around my machines (which I will not get into, I'm sure anyone who's read any of my posts here can tell already i'm far off my damn rocker anyways). I tried to download a demo of the game but my video card didn't support it. Oh well.

This seems like the perfect religion for a nerd who spends way too much time around around technological devices instead of human and solely believes deep down that the future holds some sort of technological, spiritual, and pyshocological war between aliens, machine, and man...now I think of it it probably already has started....

"I never look at it this way, but maybe kittens are harmed synchronistically when people of the dark side masturbate." - titmouse_
  • From: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
  • Registered: 2007-12-15

Re: I Wish This Was a Real Religion

There is such a thing in real life...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity


Theorists are increasingly of the opinion that the singularity will occur via the creation...of smarter-than-human entities who rapidly accelerate technological progress beyond the capability of human beings to participate meaningfully in said progress.

...or possibly we could keep hold of the reigns of new technology and become one with it, through something like "brain-computer interfaces." That would be Transhumanism.

The hype about the singularity has more or less generated a cult. Just look at the onsite links at the bottom of that Wiki page. This quote:

A character in Ken MacLeod's 1998 novel The Cassini Division dismissively refers to the Singularity as "the Rapture for nerds".

...backs up my assertion that the singularity can be thought of as sort of a cult or a religion (though I believe the speaker of this quote lives in a future world where the singularity has not happened), but I'm not trying to use "cult" with a bad connotation (just trying to show why this is relevant). Actually, the singularity itself is nothing like a cult, it's a hypothesized event:

The technological singularity is a hypothesized point in the future variously characterized by unprecedentedly rapid technological progress, the technological creation of superhuman intelligence, or some combination of the two.

That brings us back to the question of "The Ghost in the Machine". Where does the machine end and the ghost begin? Some claim to know the answer to that and they may have it right, but I'm not so sure. Are AIs just machines? Do they have souls? Mary Shelly would definitely say that they don't, but again, I'm not so sure. The answer of that question (at least for now) is left up to the individual.

Warhammer is meh.

Now, Deus Ex... you can definately play that. Do all you can to get your hands on that game! Despite being made around 1999/2000, with the Unreal engine, it's still one of my favorite games ever. Ignore the outdated graphics (though they weren't bad for their day), it's the gameplay and especially the story that really count. I won't spoil anything for you, except that the game does touch on these deep issues.



and...




The "Wave" that the "Cassiopeians" refer to, seems very similar to a technological singularity with a good outcome (humans merging with technology)...or maybe that's another naive assumption, I dunno.

Insomniadmx's Website

  • From: Dark + Light at the Same Time
  • Registered: 2007-12-02

Re: I Wish This Was a Real Religion

Thank you very much for that information, Insomniadmx. I'm very appreciative.
As far as souls inside machines, well...I kind of suck at explaining things that run through my head via text or even language but I will try my best: In my opinion humans are types of machines in a sense, I guess the soul is our electrical charge. We are not made/assembled of parts like a machine (we start out tiny little microscopic spermy wermies then progress into human forms) but we do have a lot of similarities to how a machine and even computers function. If you lay two computer disks too close together for too long, they exchange information, they leave imprints on one another - this ties in with my theory of "Ghosts" in living organisms - I believe ghosts are imprints of energy, and can be from things even in the presently living, not just "The Dead". Just like a human, machines can not function properly without the Spark of Life, the energy inside.
I guess some people would argue though "A machine has no life, it has no emotion, it can not feel", but then if you think about it, Life is not the equivalent of feeling/emotion. Feeling and emotion is simply one of the many programs/functions within or brains that ties in with many other of our programs/functions that we have in order to survive. Just because a machine is only capable of producing a drum beat does not mean it is not alive in some form, it only means that that is it's only purpose - to create a drum beat, not fall in love, get married, have children, succeed in world domination, whatever.
I had this one dream once where I was alone outside, staring up at the stars, then they started to dance and move to this crazy music I had never heard before. Then one of the stars turned into a UFO and came down to me, a female alien got out and told me her name is Andromeda and I need to find her in a machine. I woke up and for months I thought it was just a stupid dream with no meaning but then come to find out there really is a synthesizer called the Alesis Andromeda. I ended up buying the expensive as hell thing and it was analog so the chips went bad and I had to get rid of it but for what it was it was a truly remarkable machine in the short time I had it and I made some nice tracks with it. I also found it ironic that all the knobs on it are layed out in the pattern of a Star Constellation.
I often have precognitive and intensely synchronizing dreams that deal with humans, so why not then is it possible that I was able to do so with machines?
Anyways I am rambling some.
Yes I agree some other people told me Warhammer is kind of "bleh" and to check out the Deus Ex. I suppose I will try that. I'm not too picky about graphics at all, I still play an old 8 bit Nintendo and 16 bit Sega Genesis.

"I never look at it this way, but maybe kittens are harmed synchronistically when people of the dark side masturbate." - titmouse_
  • Spi
  • Spi
  • arcane adventurer
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-10-17

Re: I Wish This Was a Real Religion

Are AIs just machines? Do they have souls?

November 29, 2001
(L)  My next question is, of course, what is wrong with V____? 
What is driving him?
A:  He is a robotoid.
Q:  (L)  Who did his programming?
A:  4th density STS.
Q:  (L)  Doesn't that contradict him having his free will?
A:  No.  Even robots have minimal consciousness.
Q:  (L)  So, all his whining and all his "poor pitiful me" stuff is just
a program?
A:  Yes.
Q:  (L)  That explains, I guess, why he doesn't seem to learn from
anything.  Even a dog would have figured it out by now.
A:  Yes.

Hope that helps. smile

  • From: Dark + Light at the Same Time
  • Registered: 2007-12-02

Re: I Wish This Was a Real Religion

yeah my ex of three years, he had more bugs than a Casio keyboard with coffee spilled on it

"I never look at it this way, but maybe kittens are harmed synchronistically when people of the dark side masturbate." - titmouse_