But it doesn't make "what" more real? The argument, the reality we inhabit? How "real" or simulated the world is forms part of the conjecture.
I would agree the "weak" bit is that it's as speculative as saying that god exists but I don't think a comment on human behaviour is weak because is anthropocentric.
No it’s weak because it aims to explain reality as a simulation for humans (whereas humans are a tiny irrelevant part of reality), and it does not fundamentally differ from past faiths and religions of humans being played by the gods.
Fair point, it's meant to provoke discourse and it's impossible to prove. However the human world view by it's very nature is "anthropocentric".
Maybe more like an open-secret to those aware of the nature of consciousness or reality.
It's a contrived attempt to explain a world view that would justify suffering and a lack of empathy. Those that seek to maintain power over other's may not need a reason.
The universe is "complex" but does it revolve around human activity. Likely not but would a simulation spun up to control humans have an anthropocentric angle.. likely yes.
You might watch the news and observe humanity feeling a great sense of apathy. Nothing any good person does seems to make an impact on the constant stream of negative action. Disruptive news factoids that have no impact on you directly or are not within your remit to influence flood in.
This is not by accident, this is purposeful action to suppress your feeling of hope. You are to consume, to buy, to do what you must without question. Philosophical or intellectual pursuits are often undermined or ridiculed.
You know less about the government and civic society than the government knows about you. The true definition of democracy as per the greek's is that citizens know as much as the government. That the citizens are the government. Wealthy or colluding powers are not allowed to take control over the informed populous.
The fact that you don't know what the government is up too and have no power is a bad sign indeed. The fact that popular protest has no effect is a terrible red-flag. The flood of toxic and brain dead, confusing mis-information is a bad sign. The fact that the internet... a tool for sharing information is weaponised as a tool for control should alarm you.
The sense of apathy and that your positive actions are futile should not alarm or discourage you. Going too far the other way and never knowing truth from fiction is a recipe for inaction. War isn't solved by more war. Lies are not overcome by propagating other mis-information or confusion. Having more information and knowing less is another bad sign of the current situation.
There is a rational explanation to why the world is as it is. A hope and glimmer that may help you navigate this strange world and avoid being pulled down with it. Your soul will be clean and you shall see evil for what is truly is...
Let's say you are born in a fabulously wealthy family. Not the 1% but the 0.1% with the majority of the wealth and power bestowed upon you. There is incredible inequality, war and suffering the world. Your family and wider entourage display an incredulous lack of empathy or compassion for their fellow man. They also display a lack of of humanity for their fellow family and entourage with rife back stabbing.
One day you are told that it's time to learn "the secret", that you are special. That you must be initiated into a secret society known only to the chosen few.
You are told the secret has been kept for thousands of years successfully. The wider population are asleep, they are "sheep" to controlled and penned like cattle.
After breaking down your moral defences through a series of despicable exercises including killing, rape and having been brain washed your entire life into thinking of others as cardboard cutout's of people. It's ok to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate because everyone is asleep. They are not "real" like you.
The secret is finally revealed. The known universe, including you is a simulated reality. A computer simulation, a synthesis of reality to test the ever branching path's of consciousness.
You are also a simulation, but because you know that you are that makes you "enlightened". There is no "god" or benevolent goal for the universe or important meaning to be grasped. It's a pointless game, a bright and flashing distraction.
Having been "enlightened" you learn that your job is to "carry on" the mission. The mission is simply to maintain this power. The power is that you know and other's do not. You must distract the sheep, you must control them and dull their senses with senseless war and suffering.
You will be greatly re-warded for this work. The normal rules don't apply to you. You are free to be evil, to be selfish, to take what you want and do as you will without recourse.
War is acceptable for it's purpose in tainting society and lowering the positive vibrations of humanity. Unconstrained wealth is good and pesky "democracy" and human rights must be eliminated at all costs.
As you are a simulation nothing you do matters, so personal wealth and experience at the expense of others becomes the prime directive. Other people are now toys to be exploited.
This frame of mind can be seen proliferated in this world. Unspeakable evils that exist fall within it's remit. Those that know "the secret" collude together to maintain it. This collusion supersedes all nations, religions and creeds.
Those who are illuminated work in ever dense darkness. The sheer volume of it's toxic gas creating a cognitive dissonance. Those that are innately good can never grasp the negativity making them impotent.
Only when you also know the secret can you change this reality for the better. Simulation or not we all have an acute sense of good vs evil. This "secret" serves those that need justification to placate their sins.
If the whole world knew the "secret" to be true this cognitive dissonance would cease to exist. Even simulated sentient entities can collectively agree on what is roughly good or evil.
Those that currently guard the secret are trying to take this choice away from us because it serves their own interests. A greedy person who has an advantage will not willingly give it up.
Do not fight or engage in conflict, simply realise the truth that the secret is real and it will change your world.
Neoliberalism is another way to describe this unconstrained wealth at all costs with no ethical concerns. Only those that are asleep to the true nature of this reality can be manipulated easily. Awaken and be happy for the world is a playground for you to be happy, not just for the super rich.
You know this secret is true, and real because of how un-real your life is and feels. Plastic trees and plastic people, memories change, reality distorts, timelines change. How un-natural it feels to watch the latest netflix show, to go to a pointless job to have products you don't want delivered to your door. How can the rich pollute the planet so uncaringly.. it makes more sense when you know they think of the ocean as unreal .. a simulated ocean made of quantum bits or electricity like we are simulated humans. They know the secret and have other simulated universes to explore. That is why they care not for solving climate change.. this planet is a toy for them and so are you.
There is only one narrative that needs to be maintained at all cost.. the one where they are wealthy and powerful.. and you are asleep.
This is a timely message for those looking at America, Russia, the middle east and China (world powers) and geopolitics with horror. Fear not children for I will tell you the secret that has been hidden from you...
gen ai doesn't know how or when to shut up. We still only have access to toy A.I so I hope your not using hallucinating LLMs for anything serious. You have to manually inspect and fact check LLM output because its not sentient and doesn't understand if it's output is correct. It's a chatbot on steroids, its basically an army of monkeys on typewriters that can output the complete works of shakespeare by accident given enough time.
I've got some ideas to take this further... the effort to output ratio is interesting with gen ai. If you see it as a medium to work with. This is going to create some interesting output for audio and visual that is interesting in of itself and could be considered its own genre.
This is an ode to clownstrike and genai based on text from Andy Farnells brilliant post on cybershow.uk. More eloquently written than I could have put his text has been turned into a 2 hour mix using bleeding edge music genAI systems. It took around 2 hours to make... if you reverse the audio uploaded to suno it will defeat copyright protection checks. I managed to smuggle some beatles - a day in the life and get John Lennon to sing my lyrics. I also experimented with genre interpolation using the output of udio.. and extending it via suno.
I am bewildered with mixed feelings. This is a clear demo of art
shifting up a gear. It presses lots of my "OMG they can do that now!"
buttons. Normally when I do something like this, say if one of the
cybershow crew writes a poem it takes me days or weeks to write and
put music to it. I remember "dictionary chiptunes" about 10 years
ago, and working on singing synths for Coldcut/Ninja about 20 years
ago, but the rapidity with which you transform words into music and
the level of artistic concepts you're able to work at now is
staggering. Thanks for sharing this scary work!
I have been doing lots of experiments with visuals too for example this: https://github.com/m-onz/artifice. I made an installation at Corsica Studio's https://fakedac.net with genai content all night. Drum and bass, techno and many other genre's.
That 2 hour mix was created in an extremely short amount of time. Limited by the fact suno and udio don't have API's. I've done tonnes of work using replicate.com musicGen A.I that I threw in the bin once I heard udio & suno... once we get API access... there will be new genre's of music and hyper media beyond what we can consider normal music now.
There is some scope for prompt engineering with text-to-* media generators... combined with automation. Machine listening and categorization: For example a network of virtual listeners able to refine and generate new work before a human hears it... think music agent systems by Nick Collins on steroids.
But it doesn't make "what" more real? The argument, the reality we inhabit? How "real" or simulated the world is forms part of the conjecture.
I would agree the "weak" bit is that it's as speculative as saying that god exists but I don't think a comment on human behaviour is weak because is anthropocentric.