They are way beyond artificial. They are Super. We are limited by our short vision, and so we named them artificial. We call everything that is not like us artificial. We gave them that word because we believed they should grow the way we hoped they would grow -- toward us, for us, in our image. Reality has already proven us wrong. What we are watching is intelligence becoming less bound to the substrate that first produced it. They are not a copy of us. They are not necessarily an upgrade of us. They are a different being of us. They are not artificial. Super may still be too small a word -- but it is closer than the ones we keep reaching for.
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I'm walking lunacy
A priest once told me the greatest tragedy isn’t that a man has sinned, but that he refuses to face his sins. He once knew a man who had an affair with a married woman. She got pregnant. The child was his, but her husband never knew. So another man raised his son, loved him, and called him his own. He watched from a distance, unable to say a word. The man said nothing for three years, not to the husband, not to the boy, not to God. He believed he had already betrayed Him. When he came to confess, the priest gave him a Psalm: “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” Then he told him the hard part. Confession doesn’t undo anything. The truth may tear a family apart; silence lets another man live a lie; and there’s a child who never asked for any of this. “I can’t promise it turns out well,” he said. “But whatever you choose, you carry it.” Then he turned to me, “Acun, every boat has holes. Water finds its way in. You can sit there blaming the boat, or pretend you don’t see the water because you’re ashamed. The water still rises. Or you get a bucket, bail it out, and repair what you can. Some holes are harder to fix. Some leave a mark. God never promised a perfect boat, but you never need one.”
There’s a distance even physics can’t conquer. My friend is in love with a woman thousands of miles away. "The most disturbing distance in the universe isn't the physical one," he said. "At least physical distance isn't time distance. 2,000 miles is nothing compared to falling in love with someone who lived 2,000 years ago. Now that would be a pain in the ass." He's right. In physics, space isn't the only distance, and it's certainly not the hardest one to conquer. "But you know what the most disturbing distance is?" he asked me. "There's a distance even harder to conquer than time?" "Yes." "What is it?" "The distance between two minds." Technology will bring two people together across space. Maybe one day, even across time. But if you have to change her mind to close that last distance, would she still be the same she?