# The Soul

Dec 1, 2024

ugh the deep state didn’t come for me I just realized that what gets engagement is so boring. you wish there was a deep state that came for me. then at least there would be some adults in the room.

> I used to fantasize about being or kissing Skrillex
> I need to delete Twitter ‘cause it gives me fucking mental illness
> Foaming at the mouth like I put a fucking Mento in it
> Get your ass off Twitter ‘cause it gives you fucking mental illness
> – 8 now

the whole album is bangers btw. that’s my third quote from it. and now the blog post.

Western society is predicated around the existence of the individual, and what really is the individual without the soul, or consciousness if you want the secular term. I used to believe in the individual, but I hadn’t really thought about it that much.

You are a machine learning algorithm. You have some priors in your DNA. You learn on data, RL style because your actions affect the next data you see; the dataset depends on the model.

There’s no room in this for an I. Control the DNA, control the data, control the outcome. Sad but true.

How much of this graph is people starting to figure this out? (US religious affiliation)

Can Christianity survive the death of the soul? Can liberalism survive the death of consciousness? How will it cope harder as progress in ML makes this belief more and more ridiculous? There will be everything on a continuous spectrum from logic gates to human level and beyond. Which models are individuals?

People used to believe the sun rose cause some dude pulled it in a chariot. People still believe they aren’t computers. Like the chariot people, they are just as wrong.