 Okay. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, February 19th in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Larry Rhodes, our DJ Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hey, I'm the Wombat. What's up? And with us today, we have John Richards from England. Welcome. Hello. I'm not DJ Richards. No, no. But we have DP Higgs. Jared Pirate Higgs. Welcome. You're from Western Canada, of course. Digital Freethought Radio hours. A talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, Satanism and the scientists. Oh, we added one. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you think you're the only non-believer in your town while you're just not here in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. We're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about that group after the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going to do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep. We'll talk about it in an upcoming show, though. I do have a question. If we allow Satanism to be one of the topics in the opening roles, shouldn't we allow Spaghetti-ism? Well, obviously. Okay. I can either add Spaghetti-ism or take away Satanism, which one? I'd say Spaghetti-ism. One. It's better represented on the show. And two, I feel like it hits. Spaghetti-ism, though. It holds the whole topic. Because it's not limited to spaghetti. Because spaghetti is a kind of password. Not all pasta is spaghetti, but all spaghetti is pasta. Okay. Very good point. It's a categorical thing. So I'm calling it what? Pasta-farianism. Pasta-farianism. Get it in there. I support it. Okay, cool. So Talioni-farianism. That's true. No, exactly right. I did want to jump to the topic, but I do love just catching up with everybody. So how about this? Dredpar Hicks, wanting to tell us how you've been a couple of weeks have been. Well, they've been pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. I just got myself a new camera. I'm a new photographer. And of course, Dutter 5 had been good enough to put together this background loop for me, which is taken from World of Warcraft. And it's up on a ship. So it's quite appropriate. Yep. Nice, nice, nice guys. Nice. And your lighting's good too. Like it's well put together. Yeah, makes great radio. I also tell this yesterday I got my second hole in one of playing disc golf for my second year of playing. It doesn't happen all the time. And some people play for decades and never get a home. Congratulations guys who are like in their sixties and they haven't gotten one. But I was there during one guy who was 60 his first one. But I did my second one solo. So it's not as fun. You just end up being in the middle of the woods and then screaming, let's go and then the birds fly a little way. And you just look around. There's nobody there. Well, you take a picture and you send it to your friend. The first one I did was in a tournament and that felt a lot better. But the second one still just says good. So that's that's a highlight. I don't appreciate that. Yeah, but a picture doesn't show you doing it. You need a video. True, truth, truth. And the next one needs to be on video. How about that? That's it. Otherwise, we're into the does the tree fall and make sound? If nobody's there. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, John, the burden of proof is on you. Very, very true. Thankfully, if it's happened so many times, I'm going to get to the point where it's just going to be happened so often people will just be like, oh, of course, you got a whole one. He's Thai. He's amazing. Don Richards, what is going on with you? Well, I'm where to start. Also, what happened to that tugboat? It seems to be frozen in the water back there. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. It's a it's a bit after all. Yeah, it's it's a mock up. So the thing is that this morning it's going on over here, you know, because, as you know, we've got an established church, which is ridiculous. But it's coming under question, particularly because we have a coronation coming up and the church has a big deal in that. And so it's being questioned whether we should dis establish the C of E and even the Archbishop himself. I think in a moment when he didn't know the mic was on, that he'd prefer the C of E to be disestablished than for it to split into over gay marriage issue. So things are really hotting up. Yeah, in a quick little slice of world news, too. Florida is electing to supplement standardized tests, you know, countrywide standardized tests in favor of a more religious favorable test that's popular in Bible schools or Christian schools, let's be flat. It's called the CPL. And what it is is essentially a test that very similar to the SATs formatted. However, a lot of the passages come from popular pastors for English awareness or have Christian flavors to it. And of course, they don't test the biology or the math as hard. And so you can get grades a little bit higher on the CPLs compared to SATs, and they're trying to use that as a new default standard. They've lowered the bar and it's always a scary thing when schools or politicians are trying to lower that with regard to children's education, because it's one of the things that has a much bigger impact 20, 40 years from now. When you realize, oh, there's a bad variance in terms of quality of education across this country. And as you say, in 20 years, they'll be making very unwise electoral decisions. Yes. And they know that. And that's why they're promoting it and forcing it. And that's the whole that's how the, you know, the kibosh is cooked, as they would say. Larry Rhodes. You know, we talk about politics all day, but we have our own show for that. Right. What's been going on with you, my friend? Oh, not a lot. Yeah, I was talking about all these video references making good radio, but we do have a video component that you can find pretty much anywhere online. Just do a search for digital free thought radio or then click on videos. And you'll see all of our smiling faces talking about, you know, Christianity in America. Heather Cox Richardson came out with a few sentences this morning. That's kind of scary. Let me read them to you. It says more than half of the Republicans now reject the idea of democracy based on the rule of law. Instead, support Christian nationalism, insisting that the United States is a Christian nation and our society and our laws should be based on evangelical Christian values. Right. Forty percent of the strongest adherents to Christian nationalism think that true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country, which is scary, very scary. But if you think 50 years ago, that number went way higher. We are trending in the correct direction. This is scary information. And back then, a quarter of Christian nationalism may come out swinging, you know, violence. Well, if you guys, if you guys ever need any help with putting a revolution down, we'll be there for you. I'll see you. Sure. I hope you bring the key, right? Yeah, though, I would say we've seen that playbook in action overseas. We know it's effective. And I think it's just essentially, you know, trying to take tips from authoritarians as best as they can to try to stay in power. What we hope, though, is that the trend is that this is forcing it. This is forcing these death rows to occur. And it's not that this information didn't always occur. Like you said, Larry, 100 years ago, this would have been like, of course, Christianity is the number one thing in this country, even 50. Right. It's good that it's trending down to 50. And I hope that, you know, as people continue to get educated, which is why we need to make sure these tests remain standardized to the highest level possible so that kids have access to the best information possible and can be fixed if they are lacking. And we can address that and we don't lower the bar so that we can maintain a low standard of education. We should raise that bar. All this leads into getting people off the mindset of a singer or dogman and realize that we live in a multicultural, multifaceted, nuanced world. And hopefully you can go past our country and go to a global standard. I'd love to have that one day when we just say, hey, this is our global world. We all get sick together. We all die together. We all live in the same mess together. So let's clean up because that benefits everybody. But speaking on that, I want to talk about things that have been really fun and interesting. And that is AI. I've been playing a lot with it. There's this program called ChatGPT. The fun thing about it is, yes, you can use it for conversations. Yes, you can use it to help you get recipes. But you can also, oh, one hundred. Did you have something? Well, the benediction. Oh, did you want to do the benediction? OK, yeah, OK, yes, go on. As I promised the last time I was on, this is one. This is a song that was actually created. Through ChatGPT. OK, go for it. All right. Hallelujah to the FSM, creator of the oceans and seas. All hail the sauce, the noodle and the cheese. In his name, we laugh, love and feast. In his newly arms, we find solace with every twirl of spaghetti grace. And through life and though life may bring a sauceless place, we trust his flavor to fill every space. With meatballs as our shields and garlic bread as our sword, we face each day with a noodle filled board ready to embrace his will with every bite and chord. I don't know what chord means there, but you know what chord means. OK, good one. Sorry. Let us let us raise our forks high and joy and praise to the FSM above, for he is the source of all our love and the master of the art of carb filled love. Nice. I do feel like that should have been saying in a more shanty pirate style. Well, you know, I asked I actually asked for the melody for for a birthday song done in past a period of style. And chat GPT says I do not possess the creative abilities in order to create the original melody, but do something like hearted, he said, in the in the spirit of comedy and satire and all this stuff. Yeah. So we could probably grab a hornpipe from off the Internet and set it to that. Right. What I do with a hornpipe and set it to that, right? Oh, I've got one complaint, though. Go for it. You use sexist language for the deity. He, him, all that male stuff. And over here, over here, we've got a serious movement afoot because a lot of the equality gurus want to remove the maleness from our Lord, or it's a lot of problems. And why not? Right. So it's instead of our father, who are in heaven, it's going to be our non-gendered parent who are in heaven. Cool. Well, we laugh, but like historically, the guys who came back from the top of the mountains were like, yeah, it's a guy. The that was he had a he had a, you know, a male sex organ. It was yeah. And everyone's agreement was like, yeah, we all saw that. Yeah. OK, we're going to tell everybody that as long as everybody knows that's what it was. And it's such a bizarre thing to to attribute it to a supernatural deity. Yeah. Mm hmm. Guys, I love chat, GPT. It's a really, really cool service. It's a lot of fun. You can make songs, you can make poetry, you can make movie scripts and read them based on whatever flavor you like. It's another thing I found is you can play adventure games with them. So you can basically just play a video game where it's like, hey, make an adventure game based on and you just give it the parameters and it starts prompting you with questions and you just type out what your moves would be and it makes the rest of the world as you play. It's an insanely fun thing to do, but it has inspired some interesting debate regarding whether or not language model AIs, which is what a chat GPT is, it's just a it's a neural network that's interpreting information, going to a bunch of resources and without any awareness of what it's doing, putting together based on algorithms, a coherent sentence that is giving back to a human being. And that's it. It can't it can't understand what it's saying. It can't make music. It has its limitations, but it'll explain them to you in a conversational tone that appears as if you're talking with another human being. But it's probably one of the most accessible and best demonstrations, at least in the mass market of a of what could be in the future, which could be potentially an AI that is capable of true thought. And we had a conversation about truth out on the discord. I want to or as well as our Reddit group. And I want to understand what do we in this show think thought is and then whether or not there will actually be a day where AIs can actually approach that or do it or even do it better. And I think that'd be an interesting conversation. Likewise, we'll lead into eventually maybe even the second half where they're not robots can have souls. Larry will not get into that section right now. We are talking about just first. So what do you think that is? And what would robots seem to be able to do in order to to actually demonstrate that they have thought that they have original thoughts? Oh, you're going to have to define original thought. What is thought? What is thought? Just talk. I'm keeping it open ended. What is thought to find what it is? Well, I think that thought is basically number crunching or idea crunching that we we do in our minds and our minds are the product of a working brain. That's our consciousness. Now, the thing about it is our AIs conscious, I don't know, but they certainly calculate or crunch thoughts, numbers and all that. And they do it better than we do. Do they have their own purpose? Will, whatever you want to call it, direction without us? I don't know at this stage, it's hard to say. Think of, I mean, here is a very intelligent thinking agent that has access to the Internet. Do they on their own go out to the Internet and research topics that interest them? Who knows, I doubt it. But if you ask them to, they'll do it. Now, that's the impetus. That's the will, but you're supplying it and they aren't supplying their own, as far as we know. It's, you know, it just needs more input, more. I don't know more research to find out if they're actually doing it, or maybe what we could do to help them do it. OK, I'm making notes. Impetus, Will, Dred, go ahead. Well, you know, many people talk about the stream of consciousness. So in as much as we don't fully understand what consciousness is, it does appear to be something about continuity. So when I today, I go through the course of their day, having these thoughts and whatnot. And my consciousness does not go away when I go to sleep. It's it continues when I wake up, unlike your computer or a machine or whatever, where when you power it down, it's gone. There is no, you've interrupted whatever stream of, you know, pseudo thought or whatever was going on there. It's it's like a series of film images as opposed or stills as opposed to a film, which is what consciousness seems to be more like is a stream. So the argument is that because computers stop when you turn them off, that's demonstration that they don't have consciousness and therefore aren't thinking because that's a crucial component of thought. Consciousness, that's what I would think. Yeah, what are the criteria anyway? Going to Dred, if you have something to add, I'm sorry, Larry, and then we'll go to John. What's up? OK. Well, an anesthesiologist can take a person down to a level where they're not thinking at all, where they're not having images or, you know, not processing, not dreaming, but then they can bring them back. And then your brain, at that point, accesses memories to be able to bring itself back to consciousness and and back up to a state of conscious thinking, just like you do when you wake up in the morning, you wake up in the morning and think about the things that you need to do that come back to your mind. I would think that an AI would do that when you turn it on. You know, it would it would access the memories that are on the hard drive or virtual drive or whatever and then bring it back to a current state of active. I think I don't need to check to recover missing files. Dred, I like to illuminate on that response. And then, John, would you mind telling me what you mean by thought just so we can get all of our definitions? What is thought? And if you don't think and if you don't think robots are doing it now, what are they lacking in order to get to that definition? Yeah, very interesting subject. And we jump straight into what is consciousness because it's been the hard problem, hasn't it, for decades. But I read an article recently, which may lead us to understanding what it is. And it started out talking about some people who have had damage to their brains, which means that. They claim to be blind, but in fact, or blind in areas of their field of view, like in one side, one half of their field of view. But in fact, if you test them by putting objects on that blind side and saying, you know, paint that object, they are able to do it, but they're not aware that they're doing it. There is a way that they're able to do it. And we think this is because there are two levels of analysis, two centers of analysis of the input from the eyes. And what's happened is the higher level has been disrupted in these patients. So what, although their eyes are functioning as an input signal and they can use their arms to respond to that input signal, they can't see what they're seeing. If you see what I mean. So the idea is that at the higher level of the vision input, what's happening is rather like a representation is being constructed on a cinema screen. And that might lead us to understand what awareness is because we think that there are some lower creatures or that's judgmental. There are some other creatures that aren't able to do the cinematic bit, but are able to see at the basic level. So we think or I think, in my opinion, that it's possible that that route will lead us to understand consciousness as being aware by reconstructing inside your head what your input sensors are delivering to you. It's interesting, isn't it? Hmm. Where I can't do it is because it doesn't have sensors at the moment. It doesn't have an input from. Well, we have more than five senses, but it doesn't have a live input from a chat. GPT can't see basically or hear or sense anything. And we think that it might need. Live input before artificial intelligence can become conscious. And when he does that, it's still going to be different from biological consciousness because it's digital. Whereas biological consciousness is analog. All of the neurons have a number of inputs and a single output. Whereas poor old computer chips only have one switch. All right, I would like to give my thought on thought. And then I know everyone's raising their hand to have comments on everyone's different opinions. I'm throwing my own horse into the race. And then I know this will be a really interesting subject. So my idea of what thought is is pretty straightforward and that it is essentially a process of modeling information. And it's a very general definition that is applicable to a lot of other things because I don't put thought on a very high standard. And I and I base it only on things that I can demonstrate actually exist objectively. So I can't demonstrate that consciousness exists. I know I have an experience that I call consciousness, but I can't argue that's the same for anybody else. I can't argue that it's the same for bats or dolphins. I can't argue argue that it's the same for split brain patients that have a much different interaction between separated hemispheres of the brain where different sides of the brains can have demonstrably different opinions about things, yet they agree with each other on what a consensus of the universe is in one person's mind. It's a very interesting set of experiments are done. But the main thing is I don't put consciousness in my in my toolbox for deciding what thought is because I can't demonstrate what consciousness is. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying I don't have a tool to examine what that actually is. So I'm not going to use it to define something else. But I can take thought and say, hey, I am processing information. It may not necessarily be random. It may always come from my environment. It may come from a certain stimulus, but I am taking this information and I'm processing it. Does that mean that I can do it? Well, I can demonstrate it based on that definition. Does that mean a computer can do it? Maybe. I mean, it's I'm not I wouldn't argue that there's, again, anything more mystical than thought, aside from processing information. So I might use the term more loosely in saying, hey, I put this into my my automated flow and I'll think about all these different things and I'll output something that's pretty interesting. And I use that term in a more looser sense than probably what's being discussed in this conversation. But I at least want you guys to know what I mean when I say thought. It's just a very dry term of processing used largely in a layman sense. And I don't mean anything more to it than that. And so Larry Dredd, I saw you raise your hand first. What do you think about our definitions and what are the other comments that you have? Oh, Dredd, did I lose you? Or is that me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Well, OK, so what are any common questions or comments you have? Yeah, yeah. Well, I wanted to make sure that we don't conflate the definitions of consciousness and awareness. Yeah, I would actually be really happy. Honestly, those terms are used interchangeably, right? Yeah, absolutely. Because I think I am conscious of my surroundings is different than saying, you know, it should be different or it could be different. Yeah, I'm aware of my surroundings. And I agree. I want to have a conversation on thought and I know consciousness is is one of the things that comes up. But in the same way how when I want when I say I would like to have a conversation about physics and someone brings up string theory, it's like I don't want to. I really want to talk about grounded physics for a bit. Can we talk about just like hard mathematical models that we know are demonstrable and work before we bring up more theoretical stuff in the same aspect? Can we talk about thought without bringing up consciousness or awareness or feelings? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The idea of thought, what do you think, Dredd? I would I would say that that thought is is unique to biological organisms or organisms that have brains, simply because the way the brain works. I know John said that the brain is analog, but in some respects, it's also holographic in the way that things occur in the brain. You could you could cut out a piece of the brain that's responsible for language, for instance, or damage it. And that process is actually reallocated to other parts of the brain to compensate for the lost center. So, Dredd, I would like to make it as much as it's analog. It's also holographic. Dredd, I hear you. I would like to look at that just a little bit. That makes me need to like if you had a B, for example, an insect that doesn't have a brain, but is capable of language, like we have a demonstrable language of it when it flies to its hive, has very specific patterns to describe distance, the amount of food or nectar in a particular location can communicate. The B has a brain. OK, OK, so like a series of of of working centralized neural works or or an actual organism has a brain. OK, OK, and starfishes and starfishes, they are capable of reproducing, recognizing enemies, going through different kinds of transport programs. They can remove, move themselves in bad stimuli, go towards good, feed themselves like do they they they have a central nervous system but they lack a brain. Yeah, well, they have a distributed neural network, I guess. OK, but are they capable of thought? You don't need a brain. You don't need a brain to be to to move towards food and away from danger. No, I see, because bacteria do that, right? Yeah, yeah, single cells are capable of doing that. All right, guys, we're going to go to a quick break. We'll come right back and have the the another round of this intriguing conversation. Larry, quickly take us out. Sure. This is the digital free thought radio hour and W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.90 P.F.M. here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break station. All right, five, four, three, two, one. Here we are. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.90 P.F.M. here in Knoxville, Tennessee. One by where do you want to pick up? Hey, I want to know what John was going into regarding our subject. John, you said we don't need a brain for for thought. Would you mind elaborating? No, I didn't say that. I said we don't need to respond to stimuli. OK, OK. Even single celled animals can well, is they wouldn't be necessarily classified as animals protista that they can detect various stimuli and respond to them like light and dark as well, right? Yes. Well, the the terminology of animal and plant doesn't apply at that level. Hmm. OK, OK, OK. But we do know that plants can like move towards certain. Right. But they do that without a nervous system. They do that without a nervous system. Larry, what do you think? Well, I like to address this thing about the senses that I doesn't have senses. Well, I has connection to the Internet. The Internet has connections to cameras all over the world. They can get video input. They have they may not have a touch, but there are there are sensors out there that regular that monitor temperatures and all this is all kinds of sensors out there. Hearing as long as you have a microphone, they can hear you. Matter of fact, on my quest to I have an artificial intelligence application that I can literally talk to and they hear me. So they the AI does have plenty of sensors and senses. I'd also say on a more fundamental level that senses aren't necessarily needed for thought or better at thinking, because we have, for example, people who are blind or deaf or just as capable of thought as anybody else, blind and deaf people who are any less thinkers than someone who can do both. Yeah. And you could say they have more senses than we do. I mean, can you see an electronic JPEG? I mean, without bringing it up on your screen, right, they can. I mean, they know how to do that. Look at thousands of pictures in a second. Yeah, we are rather, rather poorly gifted as far as sensing is concerned. I mean, we're talking about computers. But these computers don't look at JPEGs. No, they but they can see them enough to be able to replicate them in different fashions. You know, I take this picture and make it look like Picasso. They can do that. So they must see it in some in some manner. Well, they're number crunching. What chat GPT, what chat GPT does to get back to that? Is it predicts the next word? It's playing chess with words. So, John, I do hear what you're saying, but I think Larry was making actually a pretty good point where it's like you could have basically a prompt to a completely different AI system. That's not chat GPT. That takes a picture, understands what's in it and then processes a prompt and understands what the prompt is and then correlates two new information is using two separate neural networks to make a compromise between the prompt and the original image. It's a really sophisticated and really interesting concept that a robot can do that without understanding necessarily what is in the prompt, meaningfully or what's in the picture, meaningfully, but is able to abstract it empirically into just hard data. Yeah, yeah, into a new picture and says, this is what you wanted, but I still don't understand the thing that I'm making. Like, I don't understand the impact in terms of like, how we'll make you feel or how beautiful it is. I'm just I'm just putting these concepts together in a way that's rational based on my information, what art's supposed to look like. What you've just described is facial recognition. OK, to an extent of that, too. Yeah, yeah, Dreparit, what do you think? Well, again, I think we have to be careful with our terminology, computers don't have neural networks. Robots don't have neural networks. We're not there. And so it's not I don't think appropriate to use that terminology when we're talking about technology. Well, I think the only only organism biological organisms have neural networks. So by definition, just helping you out here. There's a terminology for artificial intelligence called neural networking, which is not based on biology or like synapses in your brain, but connecting servers that have databases. This is a commonly understood term that is. I mean, it's a degree that you can get in college. It's it's one of them. It's it's a it's a it's called a neural. It's called. Yeah, it's called a neural network because it's modeling what what the synapses in a brain are doing. I guess I better read more books. But it's purely it's purely what you call it. It's just a name. It's just an arbitrary name applied to a model that it's based off of. So it's modeling neural networks in your brain, but it's using big towers and databases in order to do it. But it functions so similarly that you can get an AI that can make music or poetry and stuff. You're like, oh, it's kind of like a neural network. So yeah, I understand what your your original point is, Dred. I'm just letting you know that its usage is is in artificial intelligence is neural networks as well. That's what I'm referring to. Larry, what's up? I think Dred is a bio chauvinist. I think we're going to have to widen our right definition of intelligence. Yes, I mean, yes, if you say that it takes neurons to produce intelligence, well, you may be right today, but around tomorrow it's coming. Yeah, I do feel like the benchmarks for intelligence when they're made mostly by humans, the benchmarks are biased towards humanity. Like in the same way how we said only humans can use tools because we have we make tools and we have thumbs. But if you look in nature, there's plenty of animals, birds even use tools. But we say, oh, that's not the same because they don't have thumbs. It's like, well, why did thumbs become a component of determining what's a tool or not? Because we have thumbs that's so biased towards humanity. I feel like in the same way, if we don't realize that if there is going to be a component or a trend where we can build things that can do things better than what we inherently believe we're the only things capable of doing. And we will miss that line if we continue to have that sort of bias. And I feel like thought removed from consciousness, removed from awareness, removed from emotions, just thought hard processing of information is going to be one of those things that computers may already get closer to doing and may even do better than if we don't start paying attention to it. I don't think we're there yet. I honestly don't think we're there yet. I do think what Chad GPT is doing, for example, isn't necessarily thought. I don't think what the AI is doing with the pictures and prompts and making music videos that may not necessarily be thought. That's like a calculator. Just you're putting in nine times nine and it's punching out 81. Like if you want to call that thought in some weird way, I could consider it that, but not in to but to make it more meaningful where it's like I'm doing an artistic pursuit. I'd love to see some more critique or feedback. I want to I want to I want a robot to be able to make a piece of art and then explain why it made the choices it made in that art and like defend it based on criticism and and have it have some more deeper understanding of like the choices that it went through rather than just the root procedure of what the inspiration was. Yeah, yeah, tell me what the insight. What did you cite this from? Why did you pick these guys and not these guys? I want the robot to be able to find that when that happens. I'll be like, OK, you're there now. Like even if it's just wrote, you know, Chad GPT, giving the excuses, I'm fine with that because it can at least show reflection on work that it's done and give me some more meaningful feedback because that's all I want from other people too when they talk about what their thought process is. And if their thoughts can change and evolve based on like time or input or considerations for the environment that it's making the art in, oh, my gosh, we're there, guys. Like, in my opinion, that's a thinking AI. We're not there yet, but that would be the limit for me. What if it paints a picture that's basically red and you say, why did you do that? And it says, because red is my favorite color. How are you going to know whether it was said that you have a daughter that probably did that last night? You would let that go. You'd be like, oh, that's sweet, honey. And then you just go back to your your video games or destroying Christianity in England, whatever you're up to on your free time. I'm not saying it has to completely change my world. I'm just saying it needs to demonstrate thought in my head. That'd be thought. If you can look back on its work and say, hey, I chose this because of XYZ. I like this and it's my favorite color. I'd be like, that works for me. You're you're it's a fairly juvenile answer, but it doesn't demonstrate that it's a lack of thought. It just means that it's a point where it can continue to advance from. I'm fenced. I'd be happy with that. So can you ask ChatGPT to design this destroying Christianity in England game for me? I want that. I did want to talk about. OK, so we were going to discuss the concept of a soul and Larry, don't get don't shoot me down just yet, but in the discord, we had a conversation about the last two episodes we had about ChatGPT and we said we agree where a lot of atheists are in the group. We agree that humans don't have souls. We don't have or we don't have a way to find out if humans have souls because we don't have soul detection machines. But we're also fairly inclined that whatever the popular argument of what a soul is, humanity doesn't have that. And until there's better demonstration, otherwise we can be rest assured that we don't have souls. We shouldn't worry about them. We should focus on other stuff. However, as we talked about souls and like what it is, it's just a copy of yourself that transcends past your body and goes into like another realm. We were thinking about how I could be better suited for having souls. And again, we may have to expand up the definition is of a soul. But like I can take a copy of a book that I read, a physical book that I read and have it be on like a USB stick. I can take that. The library can burn down. The book can be that or turn to ash, but I still have a copy of the book. I can put it into my computer. I can still read the book. I can email it to my friend. They can still have the book. The book isn't a monolithic entity. It's just a bunch of data, but it's transcended its physical form and can exist in a way that's indestructible and always existing in some in some server or some database or some Internet or some neural network somewhere. But it still does exist in physical form as ash. No, as information, right? I mean, if you have a copy of a book on a database, it's still present in physical form. Yeah, it's a bit of it's a bunch of bits on the drive, right? Yeah, it's transcended one form and moved to another form, right? What Moses would have given for one of those instead of those heavy stones? Excuse me, Larry, what do you think? Well, I was just going to say, oh, I know you're going to be the one to crush is it before we get to Larry and his destruction path. John Riches, do you have a comment on souls and do you think AI is closer to having a soul than humanity? Here's a comment. If AI is an artificial intelligence, yes, so obviously any soul it might generate eventually is going to be an artificial soul. So I propose that it's a rubber soul. Oh, Larry, the idea of artificial souls, how about that? What do you think about artificial souls? All things so was a loaded word. Are we talking about consciousness? Are we talking about a consciousness that can be moved for one place to another? Now, here's the concept. Who had since when did we as a bunch of atheists and our select post-afarian have become authorities on what souls are? Who's to say souls are consciousness at all? My whole point is we do not have a good working scientific definition of the word soul. We have what you said earlier, a popular understanding of what my soul would be if it existed. We also have a popular working definition of a leprechaun. Doesn't mean the real, you know, it's just a concept that we have massaged to be a certain thing. It's not like we ever had a soul or a leprechaun. In lab, to be able to find out what they're made of, what they react to, what their temperatures are, whether they register on any particular scientific equipment like the ghostbusters used to detect them. You know, that kind of thing. OK, Dredd. Oh, biochovidus. Yeah, biochovidus. So, you know, this idea that soul exists as an immaterial entity, I guess, you know, I mean, the discussion long has been how would these two things ever be able to interact anyway? And it's interesting because I was just listening to a podcast with Sam Harris. And he was talking to, I think, Daniel Dennett and also referred to some letters between Renee Descartes and Princess Elizabeth. And Renee was going on about souls and and how they would, you know, that we should assume that they're real and then work backwards. And of course, that didn't satisfy Princess Elizabeth, who was really quite a skeptic and I was quite impressed by it. But again, you know, this the difference between a material thing that exists in the universe that we exist within or as a part of and the idea that there's an immaterial aspect. How would these two things ever interact? Right. And that's such a problem with religions all over the world and that they start with an answer and then look for it to support it rather than the other way around. Yeah, right. I want to know which princess Elizabeth, the one that became Queen Elizabeth the second. Well, the one that was contemporary to Renee Descartes. They're going to say first she was she was 19 at the time when they were having these discussions and he was 47. He he died in 1650. So it must have been first Princess Elizabeth. There you go. You know, I think it's very good points that you guys are both making because and it's changing my mind a lot of stuff because what souls are used for is ammunition to demonstrate that the immaterial transcendental universe exists, the universe that doesn't need a physical component to actually have a demonstrable impact on our physical world. And that's where our our brains or consciousness or souls go to as an immaterial aspect of ourselves going to an immaterial thing. It's it's it's used to argue that the immaterial realm exists, but there's no demonstration of the immaterial realm. And so the more that we give ourselves credence to believing that souls exist or use that terminology, the more we lead ourselves to that toxicity, that things that we can't demonstrate to actually exist can exist or do exist. And that's a dangerous aspect if we don't have a reason to to prove it. Dredd or I'm sorry, by the chauvinist, what do you think? Yeah, well, I was going to point out about dark matter and dark energy. Right. So, you know, scientists and astrophysicists, they based on their observations of galaxies and the motion of stars and all that kind of stuff, believes that there's something having a gravitational impact or effect on the motions of galaxies, but which we cannot see. And so they call it dark matter. It's not to say it's immaterial, right? Is a placeholder for something that exists correct in real space. Right. It's measurable. Soles don't have that. I mean, souls are not even a placeholder for something that exists. Right. Because a soul by definition is immaterial. So it doesn't exist within the universe as matter or as a thing. Now, I would throw this out. I have spoken with Christians who in front of tables who have told me that just as much as we can't define love or consciousness, they have an experience of their soul being filled or had experience with the Holy Spirit or had experience in some way that was beyond what their physical bodies could comprehend. Like they are alluding to something that is transcendent, transcendent to help me out, right? Transcendental to transcendent, transcendent of their physical experience. What kind of credence can we offer to that sort of explanation? Well, the thing is it can't be transcendent because it's happening to you when you were a thing in the universe. So to suggest that you're having a transcendent experience is it's impossible because you are a being having the experience. How can it possibly be transcendent? Transcendent of what? And Ghost can't influence you because you're a matter and ghost matter. During these transcendent experiences, generally what they're experiencing is their body being dumped a whole bunch of endorphins or other Kevin close to make them feel good. They've they've found a way. I'll say ghosting. Right. A lot of times you can do that by working with a crowd like in a church. Sure. You're in the entire group. Collective effervescence, yeah. Right. Can be spiritually manipulated by the preacher to bring them up to a certain level of endorphins. Exactly. You know, I wonder if I've had experiences with LSD where I've had transcendent experiences, believe me. They're pretty freaking weird. But at the end of the day, it's working in my brain right produce effects that, you know, while I can't explain them, while they're they're unique and transcendent, they are happening to a physical being. I'm going to say something pretty mean and I want to know if this is fair. But I wonder if there's something that ties the conservative Christian culture to lowering your expectations for crazy phenomenon such that when you go to a religious meeting on a Sunday, you're just blown away by people playing acoustic guitar and like singing psalms out of a verse. He's like, whoa, did you hear what he did? He went from a G chord to a C chord back to the G chord. Oh, my God, he can't handle it. And I think have you gone to like a metal concert and heard in like minor chords? You would blow your mind, too. What's up going from G to C and back again? That's not transcendence. That's transitions. Yes. Again, lowering expectations could lead to problems, right? I did want to make one point before we close the show. The idea that AI can have souls is a problematic term only because souls are used to try to explain away things that we can't necessarily test or demonstrate. And so we should make the argument that if someone says, hey, it's a soul, it's like it's still based on the reality. It's still based on a physical entity. It's still a physical thing. Information stored physically, even if it's on the Internet. It's coming from a wire from a server somewhere. And it's stored as a hardware base. Right. It's stored on a disk somewhere. Even if it's a soft disk or a hard disk, it's on something. You're just getting access to it or brain. So don't think it's in space. Just having a good time with Jesus and drinking water with the flying spaghetti. Monster, it's it is physically somewhere. Not to. Sorry, that was that was the mean thing. But like I imagine even the flying spaghetti monster is physical. Barshow, but it's not helping me out with that. Well, you know, again, it's it's an avatar. It's an explanation for things that I don't understand. Correct. Great. So we have some really good points today. Larry, I really appreciated your thoughts on the soul. I know you get a kick out of that. I would love to do a quick turnaround on everybody and see if they had any final thoughts on the subjects of AI thought and souls and anything we can do to find where they post their channels at. Bioshoveness, where can we start with you? What's your final thoughts on the show and where can we find yourself that? Well, I live stream this. I'm doing so right now. It's 7 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Sunday. That's when I live stream this. You can find my stuff on YouTube at mine. Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. And I also do the views on the news through the Global Atheist Network at 11 a.m. on Sunday, PST. So yeah, check it out. If you like, subscribe and give me a thumbs up. And yeah, let's carry on. So, brother, nice, very cool. John Richards, where can we find yourself and what do you think final thoughts on the show? Well, my final thoughts are, I want a name like bio... What's he called? Bioshovenist. This is discrimination. Why can't I have a name like that? Well, you can find my stuff on Free Thought Channel. And we had a very good chat yesterday with a South African science and medical journalist, which it's an interesting field because she's in the same business as me in the sense because we're both trying to make complicated ideas understandable to non-scientists. And but the thing is that there's a tightrope to walk because people want to read sensational stuff and science usually isn't. So there's an there's a temptation to exaggerate it. And that is a world you don't want to go down. Also views on the news, you want to plug that? Yeah, views on the news tonight, tonight by this time, UK time. And I'm hoping that you're going to come, Ty. I'll be there. I'm relying on you to tread. Cool. Great. My final thoughts on the show is thinking can mean a lot of things. But in the dry terms as processing information, there are different levels to it, you know. And when we talk about AI, we're not talking about thinking like a starfish or thinking like a cockroach. We want to know or what we're mostly interested in is thinking like a human being. And while I can think in a certain way where it can like brute force its way without awareness of what it's using to come up with comprehensible answers to stuff. It's not necessarily the way how we think. And what we're interested in is not whether or not AI thinks it's whether or not we can get something that can think like a human. And I do think it can reach that point. And I think it can even do it better. But we haven't gone there yet. And so I'm really excited to what the future can happen or can be whole. And when a robot can actually reflect and have awareness of what it's putting together, that'd be a really, really fun conversation to have. Maybe we'd invite you on the show future AI. Dredd, what do you think? May I just plug one author? Yeah, absolutely. Daniel Dennett, he's he's a philosopher. He's done lots of work on consciousness and what it is. So if anyone wants to delve a little deeper into what consciousness is or the latest research, check out Daniel Dennett. Great. I'm hoping to get him on Free Thought Hour in the near future. Wow. Wow. OK. Wonderful. And you can tell me when that is because I'd love to be a part of that. Sure. Yeah, yeah. We are in conversation, as they say. We have communicating. It hasn't got down to the date level yet, but we're we're investigating that. By the way, you can find myself on Let's Chat on YouTube or on the local disc golf scene if you're in the National Area. If you find me throwing this, feel free to join our group. Larry, what final thoughts in the show? I'm closing us out. Here, I just wanted to say that the time to believe in souls is when they are proven to exist. And if they don't exist, where does that leave all the religions of the world? Think about it. By the way, if you live in Knoxville, the atheist society of Knoxville has weekly meetings at a bar here in Knoxville that you can come to, whether you're an atheist or just curious. We meet in person every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. So come inside. Look for us at the big, long table and say hi. What? Introduce yourself. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archive, atheist songs and many articles on the subject. You can find my book, Atheism, What's It All About? On Amazon and my YouTube channel. Handle is at Doubter Five. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. Thank you, Dredd. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hell's and souls are real until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday night at seven o'clock here on WOZO Radio. Say bye, everybody. Bye. I want a final word, final word. Go ahead, Don Richard, final word. What's up? Well, somebody who hasn't got a soul, he's without a soul, must be an ah soul. You know what? You're playing with radio terms. Oh, no. See you, everybody.