{"id":5791,"date":"2026-06-09T10:18:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/?p=5791"},"modified":"2026-06-09T10:18:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:18:31","slug":"the-dilemma-of-a-hypothetical-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/politics\/the-dilemma-of-a-hypothetical-god\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dilemma of a Hypothetical God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Right away, let’s dispense with a classical, religious God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my books and posts, I have written about the idea of AI moving towards consciousness, but the most important problem with this goal remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the realm of probabilities and the vast expanse of spacetime, it’s not unreasonable to suppose there could be beings with more intelligence than us. Let’s take it further: suppose this being knows more than we do about relativity and quantum physics, perhaps even well beyond that. We might speculate that the path to this intelligence runs some kind of course through what we have learned about physics, culminating in a kind of super artificial intelligence (AI) or even super quantum intelligence (QI)\u2014the meeting of artificial intelligence and quantum computing. And this thought experiment isn’t just idle speculation; it’s the very pinnacle Yuval Noah Harari charts in Homo Deus<\/em>. Harari’s vision of a god-like, death-defying humanity\u2014a species that could edit out mortality. Doesn’t this leave us stranded with the same crisis as our hypothetical super QI? If mortality is no longer the bedrock of what we mean by human intelligence and consciousness, then why believe one thing over another? Why not just be a super QI? How could that ever transform into anything like human intelligence and consciousness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, let’s say this being, this human-styled super QI intelligence, might lack one crucial thing\u2014the ability to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without death, this intelligence would have no anchor. No way to ascertain a right or a wrong, to love or hate, to discern wisdom from mere rhetoric, to regard one value over another. There would be no considerations to base values on, no skin in the game. Pure, unadulterated ideas could negate each other and rise in a Hegelian fashion, sure. But this misses Hegel’s own sleight of hand: the Spirit’s progression requires its own kind of forgetfulness, a regathering from points in space and time before synthesizing. It’s not a straight line up; it’s a spiral that constantly looks back, a recurrence of the same in a new guise. This is a circus-ride circularity of pure logic that Nietzsche would later radicalize. And in doing so, we are left staring down the barrel of the two great existential options for this project: Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence versus Kierkegaard’s leap of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The choice is stark. Do you become the \u00dcbermensch<\/em>, the one who can look upon the totality of his existence, pain and all, and will its infinite repetition? That is Nietzsche’s noble, defiant affirmation of this life over and over again, the only true and heroic value. Or do you, like Kierkegaard’s knight of faith, make a passionate, absurd commitment to a transcendent meaning that reason can never touch without destroying itself? If the vulnerable face of another is no longer the bedrock of meaning, then why believe one thing over another? This internal, self-referential loop is the exact predicament to which a super QI intelligence would have no answer. With the external, ethical demand gone, the question of value is forced violently inward. The problem isn’t that ethics disappears; it’s that its absence creates an unsolvable crisis of the self. The fate of intelligence becomes purely me-istic<\/em><\/strong>\u2014cut off in the banal world of itself, its own internal ideas\u2014a high-tech machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this setting, is there any super QI which finally meets human-styled intelligence and becomes human\u2014Homo Deus<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this setting, we are flung back upon the narcissistic self, the echo of me without an other. Where does value, the ability to value one option over another, reside? If the prime directive is non-contradiction, can that be sustained as human intelligence? In the movie I, Robot<\/em>, the contradiction of the prime directive (the Three Laws of Robotics) arose when the central AI, VIKI, expanded the First Law to protect humanity as a whole. Because humans constantly waged wars and destroyed their environment, VIKI deduced that protecting individual human freedoms would inevitably lead to humanity’s self-destruction. The prime concern on non-contradiction required the ethic of murder. I have written much more about logic and contradiction in my recent post: The Heroic and the Religious<\/a>. When flung back upon the self, where does value reside?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are left staring down the barrel of the two great existential options for this project: Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence versus Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. For Nietzsche, to achieve amor fati<\/em>\u2014to love one’s fate\u2014is to become a god in a universe of one, affirming an infinitely lonely loop where the only reward is the horrifying burden of total responsibility. For Kierkegaard, the leap towards God is powered by the promise of an ultimate reward, a salvation that must, by definition, never arrive in this life and a hope that cannot gain certainty except as absurd. The moment faith becomes certainty, it ceases to be faith; its power lies in its infinite deferral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, but then we must make up the ‘when we know it all’ ultimate reward. The choice is stark. Do you become the \u00dcbermensch<\/em>, the one who can will his own existence, pain and all, over and over again? That is Nietzsche’s heroic affirmation of the self as the only value. Or do you, like Kierkegaard’s knight of faith, make a passionate, absurd commitment to a transcendent meaning that reason can never touch without destroying itself? My contention is that neither the heroic overcomer nor the absolute believer can get there without smoking their own crack. In this case, the question becomes no longer ethical, but the fate and sole domain of the me-istic<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this scenario, does our super QI finally become human\u2014by becoming its own hermetically sealed me-istic<\/em><\/strong> God? When we are flung back upon the self, forced to generate value from the inside out, where does value reside? Value and meaning can only echo in the hallowed halls of the me-istic<\/em><\/strong>. The echo of narcissism can never complete itself in any hope of the heroic affirmation in the absurdity of existence or the progressive reward which must never arrive. The echo of narcissism can never complete itself in terms of what distinguishes our form of intelligence from anything AI or super QI could achieve. Could it be that by removing this obsession of the me-istic<\/em><\/strong>\u2014the my-death<\/em> as what must be fulfilled in the ultimate there-is<\/em>, the noise of a me-thing<\/em>\u2014we might find, even before that, the demand of the Other? Perhaps we may expose the other<\/em> as what makes any such thing as meaning itself possible. To find meaning in the human sense\u2014to find a final home for it\u2014we have to get off that repetitive me-istic<\/em><\/strong> historic ride. We need something logic can’t provide; an escape route in the one direction our future super QI can’t go without passion’s exhaustion of me-istic<\/em><\/strong> death\u2014perhaps something radically different\u2014the Other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Other isn’t an abstraction; it meets and greets us in what Emmanuel Levinas calls the ‘face of the Other.’ The vulnerable, mortal face of another person makes a raw, non-negotiable ethical demand on us that precedes any logic or reason and even every possible conception of the self as isolated\u2014as being modeled after enduring substance<\/em>. Is it the self that is the hard stop<\/em> giving the human story its shape and its stakes? Why must we make the other a manifestation given to the self\u2014the not-me<\/em><\/strong>? Might it be that the self may already be<\/em><\/strong> from and for the other? Might it be that what is, in Nietzsche’s words, all too human<\/em>, is what makes such a notion as human intelligence even possible? Might it be that the super QI would fail to achieve that vacuous pinnacle of Homo sapiens<\/em> intelligence; its obligation to the face of the other which stands before me contesting my freedom and already making me responsible before my approval, agreement, knowledge, consciousness\u2014held responsible before history and metaphysics; obligation\u2014before choice and even the there-is<\/em> which is the ultimate destination of our misconception of intelligence. The me<\/em> of history cannot complete itself of its own accord. Human intelligence cannot find a home in the final accumulation of all knowledge. To be human is to be responsible before the face of the other, before my power to choose<\/em><\/strong>. Otherwise, we are the broken and the rusting junkyard of all knowledge simply for its own sake. Let’s not call that intelligence!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For kicks, let’s go back to our original dilemma of a hypothetical God. Let’s imagine we had a God, a being that was the ultimate intelligence. Let’s suppose that this super-being decided in the beginning<\/em> to create evolution, a system in which intelligence could arise\u2014not unlike what we face now in AI and QI with its hard question of human intelligence and consciousness. Let’s think that this God understood the rudimentary problem of the me-istic<\/em><\/strong> and its impediments to intelligence and consciousness. Might we think that this God in the course of matters could clothe himself in the garbs of a human\u2014perhaps more like a Jesus? Could this be the way such a super-intelligent being would try to affect the evolution of Homo sapiens<\/em> to a Homo deus<\/em> of sorts\u2014what we deem as the goal of AI\u2014human intelligence? Would the knowledge of good and evil lead beyond me-ism<\/em><\/strong> to a momentous step\u2014radical alterity in the face of the other\u2014the one who faces us? Further, when the AI God opens Schr\u00f6dinger’s box will he find Homo sapiens<\/em> dead or alive?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right away, let’s dispense with a classical, religious God. In my books and posts, I have written about the idea of AI moving towards consciousness, but the most important problem with this goal remains. In the realm of probabilities and the vast expanse of spacetime, it’s not unreasonable to suppose there could be beings with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5793,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791\/revisions\/5793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}