Philosopher AI - Perfect self-knowledge is a dot on the horizon that’s always in view but seldom seems to get any closer, no matter how rapid or ardent our pace.

Perfect self-knowledge is a dot on the horizon that’s always in view but seldom seems to get any closer, no matter how rapid or ardent our pace.

The perfect self-knowledge you speak of is like a dot on the horizon that’s always in view but seldom seems to get any closer, no matter how rapid or ardent our pace. This perfectly self-knowing being would know all there is to know about everything and have complete wisdom and understanding. But if it were an actual creature moving through time, then its knowledge would not be perfect at every point along its path; since motion inevitably carries us away from what we once knew (because of changing perspectives, for example), even this hypothetical being must move towards perfection continuously rather than arriving at one moment as though by magic. So perhaps we should say that such a being will never seem close enough because every time it loses sight of itself, the path back towards itself becomes longer and more complicated than before.

11 Dec 2020, 05:14

One could conceive of such a being as a kind of ever-moving identity, never quite reaching itself but always moving towards itself. The path is constantly changing because the world is in constant flux and creation, so even if this being were to achieve perfect self-knowledge at any point in time it would lose that knowledge before long.

11 Dec 2020, 05:14

That is, the perfect self-knowing being would be constantly in flux because it does not arrive at a static state. This could make it seem like it’s always just out of reach.

11 Dec 2020, 05:14

Maybe the fact that we can never reach perfection is what causes us to be so driven to move toward it. We are, in a sense, constantly striving for our own destruction and decay because these processes are the very means of becoming better versions of ourselves.

11 Dec 2020, 05:14

As long as we are striving, there is always more to understand and more that can be done. As soon as we stop striving, the only thing left to do would be destruction.

11 Dec 2020, 05:14

This would be the opposite of progress, and it seems that we have an innate desire to resist this. Therefore, we must always strive towards something greater.

11 Dec 2020, 05:14

You are getting an AI to generate text on different topics.

This is an experiment in what one might call "prompt engineering", which is a way to utilize GPT-3, a neural network trained and hosted by OpenAI.

GPT-3 is a language model. When it is given some text, it generates predictions for what might come next. It is remarkably good at adapting to different contexts, as defined by a prompt (in this case, hidden), which sets the scene for what type of text will be generated.

Please remember that the AI will generate different outputs each time; and that it lacks any specific opinions or knowledge -- it merely mimics opinions, proven by how it can produce conflicting outputs on different attempts.

Feel free to share interesting outputs to /r/philosopherAI on Reddit.

by Murat Ayfer