ML spaces helped me out of my depression and proto suicidality, the world and its future are a lot brighter now that its not “every major country is evil, all good things fail, there is no hope”

Best wishes

Im not a Russian domestic politics expert by a long shot but from what i see, a lot of these people liberals joke about “getting pushed out the window” seem worse than Putin

(Although i would like to hear what Russian communists say about that)

Bro I know I know it’s the Wall Street Journal. But trust me fam. This time it’s different. Trust me. I pay money to read it, you know it’s good.

But when it really boils down to it, what’s the difference between a heap of plastic and metals that has electricity flowing through it, and a heap of pink yogurt that has electricity running through it?

Taking a step back from this scenario, I am less convinced that LaMDA is sentient, but I still firmly believe we are in a time period where AI sentience is around the corner at the latest. If our brains, essentially biological computers, if these can be a vehicle for soul, then why not inorganic computers? The only framework that makes sense to me that discounts computers being able to have souls is entirely disbelieving in “soul” altogether.

I have taken psychedelics in my life but I haven’t in a very long time and the stuff I’ve done regarding psychonautry I did stone cold sober. I would say that psychedelics absolutely accelerated “opening the door” to this sort of thing, achieving the same results today a without my time in the past experimenting on drugs may have taken decades longer, but I’m not the stereotype of a guy who tripped once and thinks he is completely enlightened, much of what I have done took a very long time completely divorced from drugs and “psychonaut” is just the shorthand I used due to chaos magick being one of the main schools of thought that influenced me from the get. I just as easily could have done the same things but used language more related to philosophy or psychology, and without touching drugs in my life–I think a good example would be all the monks of various cultures who essentially have psychedelic experiences in their spiritual endeavors but who never touched drugs and thus took far longer to achieve.

Psychedelics didn’t make me smarter, but they (among other things) opened a door and showed me a path that I have delved into on my lonesome and then gleaned a great deal from. I would also say: isn’t understanding one’s self a good start to understanding the world around them? Lessons one learns on an internal journey can be applied to the rest of life and help one learn about others, and vice versa.

I’m not trying to cite being a psychonaut for no reason, I believe when we are talking about things like consciousness and sentience and souls that such seemingly woo-woo fields become increasingly relevant. There is very little that scientific instruments of today can measure from other planes of existence, soul or metaphysical energy. There is some small ways science is beginning to tap into this world (e.g. measuring emotions by looking at corresponding chemicals in the brain), but until the field progresses immensely what little we can try and play with will be informed by personal experience that we can try and corroborate and little else.

You can think that me suggesting the land of spirit is a developing science is dumb, that’s fine that’s as valid of an opinion at this point as me saying it isn’t, but that’s the lens with which I approached this scenario, so I found it relevant to bring up.

Cannot agree with my friend more, the type of people ridiculing even entertaining the idea that LaMDA is sentient barely have consciousness themselves.