Quote:
Originally Posted by waechter418
My intention was to point out the need to cultivate self-response-ability.
Imagination is not necessary - a balanced diet of metaphysics, intellect and common sense will do.
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I think the human mind may be much more complex than you think.
It's true that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been an exploding field in the last decade. What is meant by AI is that a computer is able to make a 'reasoned choice' based on incomplete data, and with such applications as facial recognition technology or self driving cars or many others digital computers are proving capable. The truth is however that the 'intelligence' exhibited by such programs are barely more than a common insect. Yes, we are able to build computers that can handle enormous data sets and enormously more difficult tasks than any insect would face, but at the heart of it is very little actual intellect.
When we consider the human intellect why becomes clear. Clearly it is our capacities for reflection and planning that have given us such an advantage. By reflection is meant the capacity to create an entire mental 'virtual world' representing events and situations, and to critically weigh those events and situations against idealized events and situations, which are yet again an entire other 'virtual world'. By planning is meant the ability to take our 'virtual world' and project goals and actions into the future, again as informed by that idealized virtual world created completely in our minds.
This 'virtual world' is our imagination. It is both our greatest weakness and our greatest strength. Our very idea of self depends on it, but we can also get lost in it too, somewhere making the disastrous decision that it is our idea of reality that IS reality, thereby losing touch with what actually exists outside of our virtual worlds.
Why it is so critical is not hard to visualize. Anyone who has stood between two mirrors has seen their reflection reflected back and forth in each mirror seemingly into infinity. This is how our mind works, the 'reflection into infinity' our imagination continually building the 'virtual world' that is the space between the two mirrors, creating a
moment of now that is our very awareness itself. The imagination is also the mechanism of our creativity and our dreams, for when we are dreaming are we not experiencing a 'virtual world'? Even in deep meditation, when we are able to 'shut down' the 'virtual world' program, the two mirrors are still there, creating the space in time that is I AM.
Computers at some point may be able to be self aware, but it will take a LOT of hardware to do this, with many subsystems that are complete computer systems in themselves. Digital computers have gone technologically about as far as they can go. Analog computers have been around for many decades, and though good at what they do, are no match for a digital computer. The next revolution to come, with a prototype already built and functioning, is quantum computing.
Real artificial intelligence may be coming faster than you think.
But to your point, modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years, but it is only in the last 400 years or so that their modern expansion and complete subjugation of the earth really took off. This coincides with the invention of modern science. Science, in this context, is a method for distinguishing reality from imagination. Think about that. Starting about ten millennia ago we have managed to have some success at farming and city building, for the simple reason that we started cooperating with each other, at least in small groups, though we've also had a few great civilizations. But for nearly 200,000 years we were squatting in caves for most of it, towards the end scratching out some bit of security for ourselves, but then we invent science and we literally take over the earth.
Yes, the power of the imagination can be a huge hindrance - and it can also be a great power. One just needs apply intelligence and awareness and yes
self-responsibility in
using imagination to realize it's positive potential.