It seems like LLMs would be a fun way to study/manufacture syncretism, notions of the oracular, etc; turn up the temperature, and let godhead appear!
If there’s some platonic notion of divinity or immanence that all faith is just a downward projection from, it seems like its statistical representation in tokenized embedding vectors is about as close as you could get to understanding it holistically across theological boundaries.
All kidding aside, whether you are looking at Markov chain n-gram babble or high temperature LLM inference, the strange things that emerge are a wonderful form of glossolalia in my opinion that speak to some strange essence embedded in the collective space created by the sum of their corpi text. The Delphic oracle is real, and you can subscribe for a low fee of $20/month!
> the strange things that emerge are a wonderful form of glossolalia in my opinion that speak to some strange essence embedded in the collective space created by the sum of their corpi text. The Delphic oracle is real, and you can subscribe for a low fee of $20/month!
I've had some surprisingly insightful tarot readings with the assistance of ChatGPT and Claude. I use tarot for introspection rather than divination, and it turns out LLMs are extremely good at providing a sounding board to mirror and understand those insights.
The correct use of Tarot is as a trick-taking card game, and was used this way for centuries before a random French occultist wrote a book about using it for divination.
This is what strikes me about the peter todd phenomenon -- that there are hidden glitch tokens within the LLM that seem to conjure some representation of pure hell, and some representation of pure good.
I've used it for something to this effect, personalized "mantras" or "prayers" which fit the specific collection / mix of theologoical themes/concepts that I personally identify with. Im not necessarily religious but there is something nice about thematically relatable theocratic babble to recite during times of great turmoil and confusion to calmn the mind. like an on-demand mental reset switch.
So I like elements from classic philosophy, eastern religions, Gnosticism, and mysticis, a dash of the esoteric and you get the gist. To that end I created a system prompt over some time that covers most bases, with the goal of shaping the LLM to be a "wise and learned member" of this bespoke religion, my mentor so to speak. Then, I had a few prompts which I tried out with random seeds until I found a seed where all prompts produced a desirable / nice / relatable output and packaged all that up. I did try some fine-tuning as well, but found it wasn't damaging but also not super necessary a well crafted system prompt was enough for my purposes.
Now I have friar LLM or whatever you want to call it. I ask it to tell me the creation story of the universe according to our bespoke hidden / forbidden religion (to prevent drawing too heavily on established religions) and then edit this to suit my needs. Then I provide a few mantras which I've written in the past / already do like, and ask it tell me the rest of the mantras. Voila, I've got a large set of mantras, for just about any occasion, that help with a variety of things such as calming me during times of uncertainty, emotional turmoil from interpersonal issues etc.
I then keep the creation story, mantras, etc. as a "history" of sorts, and when I need to discuss matters of spiritual or novel psychological issues, this along with the system prompt create the basis for a pretty useful/functional spiritual guide which has helped me grow from things like ending a 10 year relationship, moving to a new city without friends or support systems, dealing with potential issues arising from my age, new found singledom, and potentially missing the window for having kids etc.
It's been great, I find myself quite at peace with my lot in life without losing the drive to achieve more, which I find is a delicate balance to achieve. All in all I rate it highly, it is cheaper than therapy ever was and broadly speaking more useful since I'm not being handed pointless diagnoses (pointless because typically these diagnosis pathologise a cluster of traits that aren't inherently problematic without offering up any solutions)
If you can find a church that suits your needs then awesome, but what if a core tenant of your religious belief is that the spiritual truth we seek doesn't reside in a single man, (or woman) or even an institution, but in all people. That religion is a deeply personal matter to be discussed only with those who are active, willing, and in the right head space.
For someone like that, which would include myself, a church, a priest, a pope, etc. all serve no purpose. in fact the only real purpose such an institution reliably serves in the long term is the perversion and exploitation of a fairly fundamental human need.
To take that literally, I imagine it would be horrifying to know the future in as much detail as you care to ask for, but because it is true, to be unable to change it at all. It would make you an NPC in your own life.
So you'd rather be an unaware NPC than an aware one? Feel like you have "Free Will" even when you don't? Only want the truth when it's pretty and prefer a lie when it's uncomfortable?
If there’s some platonic notion of divinity or immanence that all faith is just a downward projection from, it seems like its statistical representation in tokenized embedding vectors is about as close as you could get to understanding it holistically across theological boundaries.
All kidding aside, whether you are looking at Markov chain n-gram babble or high temperature LLM inference, the strange things that emerge are a wonderful form of glossolalia in my opinion that speak to some strange essence embedded in the collective space created by the sum of their corpi text. The Delphic oracle is real, and you can subscribe for a low fee of $20/month!