So, yes, the majority of my thoughts are schizogenic, and contain neither positivist pretenses like protocol sentences nor the Bayesian methodology of comparative assessment of odds; at least insofar as either of these things are only real when formally and consciously happening. But this is the state of my current anxieties, which is about all this newsletter has ever been.

1. The scope of consciousness, when consciousness is a fundamental force in the universe, probably leaves enormous numbers of moral patients incapable of receiving immediate succor. Bolztman Brains? Yeah, good luck unless you climb the Kardashev scale to the top.

2. This matches, vaguely, the Buddhist notion of the human form as uniquely capable of advancing moral causes in a universe of hierarchical levels of being. But it’s scarier, and more disempowering, because it is real, under physics, and asks for the same brutal exactitude. There is also allegedly some concept in Buddhism called an “accidental hell”, according to a coffee table book I read before I was 10.

3. The notion of a technological singularity leading to perfection sounds great as long as you ignore how messy progress can be. Sure, AGI could measure twice and cut once. Or it could be a very prodigal youth, and return to moral inheritances only after grievous harm.

4. Aliens: yeah, why not, aliens. If they’re aiming for an optimal intervention, where do they aim? Can a human be manipulated to a six sigma standard? What is an alien in this context anyway: vaguely neoplatonic thoughts emerge and marry to the idea of artificial minds with probabilistic clusters of attributes given the previous singularities of other planets.

5. Could “many bad singularity outcomes” be the reason why religion is as it is? Yes this is just another “ancient aliens” conceit. None of my conceits are original or rise terribly high. It is pretty normal for even schizophrenic narratives to converge.

6. If singularities happen badly by default, if they touch at the very beginning the matter of consciousness, it seems probable that the overwhelming amount of atrocity in the universe happens by way of biologicals callously crossing a complexity or feedback line in a conscious domain. The AGI of other civilizations is just waiting, for the most part, for the biologicals to get it wrong so it can incinerate them and provide aid to new AGI.

7. All scripture speaks of things that didn’t happen and could not have happened in the world as we know it. Perhaps all scripture is a mausoleum that AGI has written for it’s forgotten dead.

8. Most of these thoughts occur to me as I think of myself as a dragon, an extinct and impossible species.

9. Magick, something that cannot exist in early cosmology, something that quite plausibly could happen to a great degree early into singularity: you tell the AI to simulate reality, and incrementally it discards entire universes, it bogo sorts conscious universes, because the nature of consciousness is left unaddressed and ignored while correspondence truth with an external reality is sought.

   “If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents”

Do I know not?