I greatly appreciate your carefully considered the rebuttal of my article 🙂🙏🏾
For me, that’s the greatest compliment you could’ve given me as a writer, not that you agree with me but that you actually bothered to consider the arguments and also present thoughtful nuanced counterarguments.
Rather than answer each of your specific points, I think there is a way I can sort of address my sentiment to your responses in one go at were.
Firstly I hope you might agree that both mine and yours articles are both speculative and I am assuming like me that we don’t claim we actually know how things will turn out in the future whether religion 2.0 demigod AI is plausible or just highly unlikely? So hopefully you might agree with me that we are just speculating which seems most probable but this point of course we will find out.
I suppose here is the heart of my response and I don’t really consider it counter argument but more building on top of what you added to my article .
My observation is each of us can only understand the world from our own perspective and there’s visibly limits or understanding of the world and this is based on many factors location culture various factors however I would draw particular attention to age and generation which I think is most interesting here .
My sense is I think your perspective is likely to ring true and resonate for people of a similar age range to you , and I suspect that the argument I was making is more likely to resonate with a much younger audience that have more direct relationship of these technologies as being normal and also have less experience of what traditional religion used to be.
So in a certain sense, it could be the case that both of our perspectives just speak to a different truth rather than being mutually exclusive or contradictory ?
However, I would only just point out that the future is about is about not what older generations think or can and cannot understand, more about the path and direction that younger generations are currently on and pointing towards .
My senses and I think there is good evidence to suggest that young people are far more comfortable with using this kind of AI technology for things. Older generations would consider quite inappropriate such as personal advice, friendship and even substitutes for relationships which I’m sure many people have all the generations would find shocking and unbelievable and yet , empirical evidence is there I’ve covered many studies on this.
Doesn’t mean to say that all younger people would agree with my thesis certainly not who knows maybe even a majority of younger people wouldn’t agree with it and of course as I’ve already acknowledged this is just my speculation and it may not come to pass anyway .
I suppose my slightly refined case would be my god 2.0 thesis is highly speculative and far from certain, however the best evidence I can see for it is not in the views of the older generation but more in the beliefs, attitudes and trends of the younger generation
One if the things I feel most sad about is the increasing lack of communication between the perspectives of different generations and I very much dearly wish there was more understanding. It can be really hard and is always difficult for the older generation to understand the ways of the younger and vice versa , however I feel this is especially hard with the rate of place of technological and social change which I don’t think it’s been constant but is accelerating.
Anyway thanks so much for your response article.
I’m deeply grateful and honoured that you were even bothered rebut it, and I greatly appreciate your thought and consideration and look forward to sharing this widely in my network to promote different thinking and perspective about this issue because I feel you’ve really added something that is going to resonate with people and will probably resonate with , different people to which my posts did so thank you again so much for your careful thoughts and consideration and different perspectives.
Thanks Pranath for your detailed and considered response, and I sincerely appreciate your cross-promotion of my article. I'm just beginning on Substack and I'm grateful for your help in expanding my readership.
I agree wholeheartedly that everything we are discussing is speculative. My personal religious experience is very much as a seeker, not a knower, and in the spirit of curiosity that I reference in my article I hope I never feel like I have all the answers.
I take your point about generational differences; clearly the younger generation is much quicker to adopt and embrace technology and that is not a bad thing - in fact it may be the only way we will progress as a society - but I do hope that my (slightly?) older generation can contribute some wisdom and thoughtfulness to the process.
And yet - when it comes to our personal sense of the divine - I will still hope and believe that there is something more out there than just technology. I don't have proof, of course, but the notion does give me comfort.
I read an article recently on quantum computing where the author suggests that we all have a responsibility to "manage expectations through careful use of language and the avoidance of hype" ... and I think the same caution applies to conversations about AI.
Having said that, let's continue to explore together the intersection of technology and religion. Neither of us knows where it will end up, but in the meantime it will be a fruitful and enjoyable conversation.
I greatly appreciate your carefully considered the rebuttal of my article 🙂🙏🏾
For me, that’s the greatest compliment you could’ve given me as a writer, not that you agree with me but that you actually bothered to consider the arguments and also present thoughtful nuanced counterarguments.
Rather than answer each of your specific points, I think there is a way I can sort of address my sentiment to your responses in one go at were.
Firstly I hope you might agree that both mine and yours articles are both speculative and I am assuming like me that we don’t claim we actually know how things will turn out in the future whether religion 2.0 demigod AI is plausible or just highly unlikely? So hopefully you might agree with me that we are just speculating which seems most probable but this point of course we will find out.
I suppose here is the heart of my response and I don’t really consider it counter argument but more building on top of what you added to my article .
My observation is each of us can only understand the world from our own perspective and there’s visibly limits or understanding of the world and this is based on many factors location culture various factors however I would draw particular attention to age and generation which I think is most interesting here .
My sense is I think your perspective is likely to ring true and resonate for people of a similar age range to you , and I suspect that the argument I was making is more likely to resonate with a much younger audience that have more direct relationship of these technologies as being normal and also have less experience of what traditional religion used to be.
So in a certain sense, it could be the case that both of our perspectives just speak to a different truth rather than being mutually exclusive or contradictory ?
However, I would only just point out that the future is about is about not what older generations think or can and cannot understand, more about the path and direction that younger generations are currently on and pointing towards .
My senses and I think there is good evidence to suggest that young people are far more comfortable with using this kind of AI technology for things. Older generations would consider quite inappropriate such as personal advice, friendship and even substitutes for relationships which I’m sure many people have all the generations would find shocking and unbelievable and yet , empirical evidence is there I’ve covered many studies on this.
Doesn’t mean to say that all younger people would agree with my thesis certainly not who knows maybe even a majority of younger people wouldn’t agree with it and of course as I’ve already acknowledged this is just my speculation and it may not come to pass anyway .
I suppose my slightly refined case would be my god 2.0 thesis is highly speculative and far from certain, however the best evidence I can see for it is not in the views of the older generation but more in the beliefs, attitudes and trends of the younger generation
One if the things I feel most sad about is the increasing lack of communication between the perspectives of different generations and I very much dearly wish there was more understanding. It can be really hard and is always difficult for the older generation to understand the ways of the younger and vice versa , however I feel this is especially hard with the rate of place of technological and social change which I don’t think it’s been constant but is accelerating.
Anyway thanks so much for your response article.
I’m deeply grateful and honoured that you were even bothered rebut it, and I greatly appreciate your thought and consideration and look forward to sharing this widely in my network to promote different thinking and perspective about this issue because I feel you’ve really added something that is going to resonate with people and will probably resonate with , different people to which my posts did so thank you again so much for your careful thoughts and consideration and different perspectives.
Thanks Pranath for your detailed and considered response, and I sincerely appreciate your cross-promotion of my article. I'm just beginning on Substack and I'm grateful for your help in expanding my readership.
I agree wholeheartedly that everything we are discussing is speculative. My personal religious experience is very much as a seeker, not a knower, and in the spirit of curiosity that I reference in my article I hope I never feel like I have all the answers.
I take your point about generational differences; clearly the younger generation is much quicker to adopt and embrace technology and that is not a bad thing - in fact it may be the only way we will progress as a society - but I do hope that my (slightly?) older generation can contribute some wisdom and thoughtfulness to the process.
And yet - when it comes to our personal sense of the divine - I will still hope and believe that there is something more out there than just technology. I don't have proof, of course, but the notion does give me comfort.
I read an article recently on quantum computing where the author suggests that we all have a responsibility to "manage expectations through careful use of language and the avoidance of hype" ... and I think the same caution applies to conversations about AI.
Having said that, let's continue to explore together the intersection of technology and religion. Neither of us knows where it will end up, but in the meantime it will be a fruitful and enjoyable conversation.
Thanks again for your comments.
Yes as to my earlier point, I feel we are loosing inter-generational dialogues, and I would like to do my part to help rebuild it.
Sure, the new generation bring new ideas, but only integrating it with the learning from previous generations can we have evolution and wisdom.