Writing from the Dark Side
The Unbearable Light on Being
Some of you may wonder, why all the perplexity? If you want to be a religious Jew, be a religious Jew. If not, be frei. If only it were so simple. . . .
This morning, I was reading a discussion of Aristotle’s ideas about nature, about his belief that everything that exists has a purpose, but is not designed.1 Everything, rocks, trees, the women of The View. It’s what’s called a “teleological” perspective. Everything moves toward an ultimate end, whether consciously or not. Spiders spin webs to catch flies; the purpose of rocks is to move down toward the earth; the purpose of people is to flourish. But, there’s no intelligent design. Everything just is.
This idea is consistent with the prevailing philosophy of materialism, evolutionary theory. Why do rocks move toward the center of the earth? Because of gravity. It looks like a purpose; it may be a purpose if you define the term generously. But it’s really just a species of accident. Likewise spiders and their webs. Nothing designed or gave them purpose, but a highly complex series of, basically, random events resulted in the survival of a species that traps insects with a web. In a way, the spider has a purpose, the purpose of not being eliminated from the natural order, but that purpose is just the accident of it happening to have hit on a pattern of existence that, so far, persists against the tide of entropy.
And, likewise, humans. We don’t exist to thrive, but our thriving is a function of our existence, a reason why we walk the earth instead of being earth. That too is not the result of design but of a nearly infinite number of accidents resulting from atoms and sub-atomic particles and the like bumping up against each other in a universe where gravity and other natural laws, for no particular reason, exist.
In some sense, it all feels very far-fetched. In others, not so much. Why does matter exist? Because it does. It might not have, but it so happens that it does, and as a result, well, here I am typing pixels or whatever these words are made up of.
And if that’s the case, what am I? An algorithm. What’s the difference between the “I” that is typing these words and ChatGPT? My algorithm is the result of a longer, more complex chain of accidents and happens to be embedded in a biological body.
See the problem with AI, as I see it, is not that it may “take over our jobs,” but that it may reveal that we are AI, that it may show that what writers do is nothing more than recombining what previous writers have done, and the feeling we have of “original creation,” or of pride in what we do is itself the chemical product of some kind of natural algorithm.2 Consciousness is just some kind of byproduct, an accident of evolution that somehow put us at the top of the heap, maybe, for the moment.3
And if we’re all just natural-born AI, then writers like Thomas Ligotti, author of Conspiracy Against the Human Race are right. Consciousness is just another accident and not a very fortunate one at that. The rocks and (presumably) spiders are better off, as is AI, for that matter, assuming it has not yet been cursed with sentience. Ligotti’s solution, btw, is not suicide but a collective decision to stop reproducing, so as not to inflict this curse on future generations.4
But why even do that? Why should we care if consciousness causes suffering or not? What is our “caring” but a bio-evolutionary outcome of probability? Empathy, some whistling-in-the-dark atheists will tell us, is inborn, a natural human trait. Perhaps it is. So is gravity. So what? If we act upon empathy because a nearly infinite number of atomic and sub-atomic collisions have resulted in empathy, of what value is it? Our pride in empathy is like the rock being proud of its downward tendencies. In short, it’s meaningless.
In a purely material world, I am here to tell you, there’s no such thing as morality. Well, that’s hyperbole. There certainly are things we call “moral.” But words are meaningless signifiers signifying other signifiers. Or at least that’s what they told me in graduate school. But let’s be smarter than that. Words do point to things as real as gravity or atoms. Let’s take the word “caring.” From a purely materialistic point of view, “caring” might feel nice, but what is it other than the name of a survival mechanism? Not even a mechanism, really, an accidental phenomenon that has facilitated humanity’s persistence for all of the ten minutes we have persisted.5
Yesterday, I had ChatGPT write me a story.6 I couldn’t read it because it seemed a waste of energy to read words that expressed no real communication from one sentient creature to another. But what if that’s all I’m doing right now? What if my feeling of “sentience” and “purpose” is just a chemical reaction of the brain that happens in some way to help keep me alive and typing?
From this point of view, we don’t hesitate to harm each other out of some sort of innate “ethics,” but because the people who harmed other people in past didn’t survive as well—or some such thing. Your moral atheist is not moral at all. He just is. Just like matter. Why does he “behave morally?” I don’t know. Why do spiders spin webs? Because such and such a number of material accidents at the micro and macro level of material being resulted in an 8-legged creature that spins webs. The same kind of accidents that drive rocks down into the earth and drive atheists to vote Democrat.
Thus, if I’m moral—or not—it’s nothing more or less than if I’m walking upright or not or if I ingest organic substances to produce energy. Philosophize about it all you want, but it’s just words, words, words.
The above is my alternative to religion. It may not be yours. But I don’t see any way around it other than through God. Belief in God, it seems to me, is the only way to cut through the Gordian knot of materialism.
“God,” of course, from a materialistic perspective is also an accident of evolution, and my belief in Him—or not—another accident, as is my belief that I have some kind of choice between the black pill and the white pill, between believing in materialism or in something metaphysical. Because maybe my feeling that I’d rather have the “illusion of God” than the truth of materialism is itself just the random product of an algorithm.
Such is my perplexity at its highest ebb. Such is why I can’t just get on with being a Jew.
Did I mention I didn’t get enough sleep last night?
There’s this famous idea that if you took an infinite number of monkeys and gave them typewriters, eventually they’d write the complete works of Shakespeare. But from a purely materialistic perspective the intellectual exercise is unnecessary because Shakespeare himself was just a random event, and everything he ever wrote just as much an accident of probability as anything produced by the proposed infinite set of monkeys. Likewise, intelligent design advocates ask, if you were to find a watch, wouldn’t you have to assume there was a maker? The materialist answer to this is, yes, there is a maker, but the maker is also clockwork.
I mean, I don’t know if we’re really at the top of the heap. We might look like we are to ourselves, but I’m pretty sure, for example, that the billions of ants in the world don’t think much about us at all, for all that we occasionally step on one.
An idea that people, perhaps, are instinctively embracing.
As a way of offering some perspective on our existence as a species. Mo Gawdat in Scary Smart says something like, if we were to characterize the existence of the Earth as having so far lasted a year, human existence would be the last ten minutes of that year.
If you’re interested. As I said, I couldn’t get through it.
Write a short story in the style of Thomas P. Balazs”
ChatGPT
Journey of Samuel's Discovery
In the fading light of a weary afternoon, the town of Cedar Hollow seemed to exhale its secrets. The creaking windmills whispered tales of old, and the dusty streets bore the footprints of forgotten souls. Among these weathered cobblestones, a man named Samuel Grey walked with a hunched back and heavy heart.
Samuel had always been a solitary figure, a recluse whose origins were shrouded in mystery. His eyes held a depth that seemed to reach beyond the horizon, as if he carried the weight of the world in their depths. He lived on the outskirts of the town in a cottage that seemed to blend with the landscape, a place where time appeared to stand still.
One day, a letter arrived for Samuel, carried by the hand of a stranger. The parchment bore no seal, and the writing was elaborate yet unfamiliar. The words spoke of a forgotten forest that lay beyond the hills, a place where dreams and reality intertwined like ivy on a trellis. The letter beckoned him to seek the forest, promising answers to questions he hadn't yet formed.
With a mixture of trepidation and curiosity, Samuel set out on his journey. The hills were cloaked in mist, and the path he followed seemed to shift and change, as if guided by an unseen hand. The forest emerged like an ancient cathedral, its trees towering like pillars that whispered secrets to the wind.
As Samuel ventured deeper, the forest seemed to come alive. Shadows danced on the fringes of his vision, and whispers echoed through the underbrush. He saw glimpses of faces, familiar yet unrecognizable, and heard voices that spoke in languages long forgotten.
Amidst the flickering light, Samuel stumbled upon a clearing, bathed in a surreal glow. There, he met a figure draped in a cloak of starlight, a being that seemed to bridge the gap between worlds. The being spoke not in words, but in thoughts that brushed against Samuel's mind like a feather's touch.
"Samuel Grey," the being's thoughts resonated, "you seek answers that lie beyond the boundaries of your reality. The forest is a tapestry woven from the threads of dreams and memories, a place where past, present, and future converge."
Samuel's heart pounded as he gazed into the being's eyes, feeling the weight of centuries bearing down on him. He asked questions without uttering a single word, and the being answered in a symphony of images and emotions.
He saw his own life unfold in kaleidoscopic fragments—moments of joy, sorrow, and longing. He saw the town of Cedar Hollow through the ages, its inhabitants passing like shadows on the canvas of time. He saw his own reflection in the eyes of those who had crossed his path, each connection a thread that wove the fabric of his existence.
As dawn painted the sky with hues of gold, the being spoke its final thoughts to Samuel. "The answers you seek are within you, woven into the tapestry of your own life. The forest is a mirror that reflects the depths of your soul. Remember that the journey is not to find answers, but to embrace the questions and the stories they tell."
With those words imprinted upon his heart, Samuel left the forest behind and returned to Cedar Hollow. He walked its streets with a newfound awareness, seeing the stories etched into every brick and cobblestone. And as the years rolled on, he became a storyteller, sharing the tales of the forest and the lessons it had whispered to him.
In the fading light of another weary afternoon, the townspeople would gather around Samuel, drawn by the magic in his words. His eyes, once burdened by the weight of the world, now held a glimmer of the universe within. And as his stories wove through the tapestry of Cedar Hollow, the boundaries of reality seemed to blur, and the town itself became a place where dreams and stories converged.
Very thought provoking -- but yes, sleep is good, too