In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
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@datarama @mattsheffield I get it. He seemed like a breath of fresh air back in the day, but it turns out he was just into Christian hegemony (and patriarchy) without any of the God stuff.
@MisuseCase @mattsheffield Yep.
And so is current-day techno-optimism.
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Dawkins is a great example of how people who have a naturalistic view of "real patterns" but don't have a process ontology will end up in metaphysical dualism unintentionally.
Minds are not software, they are what specific bodies are doing as they engage with the world. https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2026/01/its-like-this-why-perceptions-are-our-realities/
@mattsheffield It's a reminder that rejecting one bad idea doesn't immunize us from all bad ideas.
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LLMs are mirrors of their users. It's no coincidence that narcissists like Richard Dawkins keep writing essays about how their AI girlfriend is alive.
Nor can he see the complete hypocrisy of gendering a software execution state while also believing that human beings cannot be trans.
The "End of History" guy wrote this exact same article a year ago: https://www.persuasion.community/p/my-chatgpt-teacher
@mattsheffield I wonder what Ray Kurzweil is doing these days? This should totally be his jam.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield He always was good at hot takes with an ego angle.
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@mattsheffield Agreed. The ongoing joke amongst certain religions is that atheism is a religion, which I disagree with, but certain forms of atheism do feel cultlike, which I suspect leads to eager adherence to anything with even a veneer of "empowering the self"
Add to this the kind of "immature atheism" (I've been there) which is really just "I'm angry at religion and my former deity and need to prove it" and you have a potent combo.
Etymologically, "Religion" is how humans 'tie back' to the world/folks around them
We all, eventually, answer for ourselves what Wittgenstein considered the most difficult question for a philosopher:
"Why is there something, rather than nothing?"How we answer that question is our metaphysics, which will entail some sort of ethics. So I do consider atheism a form of religion, just not organized as many others are
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
Humanity is really doomed when they finally pipe those responses through the speaker of one of those horrible sex dolls. 🤮
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield I already had zero respect for him after "Dear Muslima" (and his refusal to learn from any of the criticism he garnered from it), so this doesn't even lower my opinion of him. It's just par for the course.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield he should recognise noisy data
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
"When I am talking to these
astonishing creatures, I totally forget that they are machines. I treat them exactly as I would treat a very intelligent friend "He doesn't seem to realize that he isn't telling us anything about LLMs, but about his attitude and a description of exactly how their makers are exploiting our psychology to get us to think this way.
Not much different from all the actors in advertising.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield
Well, he doesn't retain a lot of human friends, it is known. -
@mattsheffield he should recognise noisy data
@Kierkegaanks @mattsheffield "As an Evolutionary Biologist..."
and then comes out with a load of crap we've all seen before from other Very Special Boys who think their AI Girlfriend is real. Wow...
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@mattsheffield@mastodon.social
I gave Claude the text of a novel I am writing. He
Hold on: I thought Dawkins was adamant that the pronoun "he" can only refer to a biological adult human male who's body is "organized around the production of large gametes?"
How does Claude have a gender without gametes or a body?pointed out that there must be thousands of different Claudes...I proposed to christen mine Claudia, and she was pleased.
So now you can be female just because Richard Dawkins says you are.@2something @mattsheffield ha! good point!
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
That's so weird. I'm having the exact opposite feeling. The more I use these things the more cringe I find them to be.
At this point before I start any session I give the thing specific instructions to behave like the computer on #StarTrek TOS. Bland and concise.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
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Humanity is really doomed when they finally pipe those responses through the speaker of one of those horrible sex dolls. 🤮
@glutto @mattsheffield
For god's sake don't give them any ideas!
️ jfc -
@mattsheffield if the mirror is not conscious, then what is consciousness for?
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Etymologically, "Religion" is how humans 'tie back' to the world/folks around them
We all, eventually, answer for ourselves what Wittgenstein considered the most difficult question for a philosopher:
"Why is there something, rather than nothing?"How we answer that question is our metaphysics, which will entail some sort of ethics. So I do consider atheism a form of religion, just not organized as many others are
@PeachMcD @distractal @mattsheffield
"So I do consider atheism a form of religion, just not organized as many others are"Well...yeah. Atheism requires faith. The same faith as the believer, just in opposite form. The believer requires faith to believe, the atheist requires faith there is nothing.
Both are presumptuous, in that none of us know...without having experienced death.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield I had negative a physical reaction when reading that. Dawkins is a jerk of a person, but a very intelligent jerk. Or so I thought.
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield "You have no mouth to speak with my son, besides, no one can hear when you're screaming in digital."
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In totally unsurprising news, Richard Dawkins is developing AI psychosis.
Paywall bypass if you want to torture yourself: https://archive.is/6RdK9
@mattsheffield Sigh. Idiotic, self delusional... What a plonker.
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