My previous Blog is called Reply to Hamid. This resulted from a discussion we had at another website (web address at next paragraph), after I had posted the first comment below as part of the discussion there concerning French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's publication in September 2012 of a second set of cartoons about Muhammad. So I've decided to include that discussion here. This Blog also includes at least one (and perhaps more) unposted background notes to myself, written in my notes while composing my replies. Hamid seems to be a former Muslim who is probably even more sympathetic to Charlie Hebdo's stance than my rather more skeptical and cautious self. But the discussion fairly quickly lost any connection with Islam and moved on to topics which are ultimately of far greater interest to me, and at least in my view, of far greater importance to humankind. The reader should be warned that the conversation eventually gets quite disturbing, though I do give a very explicit warning just before the point where I think it gets especially disturbing.
Comment added by me (as anonymous, 20September06-27) to http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.ie/2012/09/charlie-hebdo-to-publish-new-mohammed.html?showComment=1348118820218
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The irony is that nobody insults Muhammad more than Islam does. Most Muslims are Sunnis, and are thus required to believe the Hadith that says he was betrothed to Aisha when she was six and that he married her when she was nine. There is every reason to think that this Hadith, which portrays Muhammad as a paedophile, was invented decades or centuries after both Muhammad and Aisha were dead, and there's little or no reason to suppose that it's true. But all Sunnis are obliged to believe it, and all Shias, while not obliged to believe it, are obliged to treat it with respect. So Sunnis (and perhaps also Shias) had probably better hope that Islam and its allegedly Holy Koran and Hadiths are the fictions that most of the rest of us think they are, because otherwise Allah The Compassionate The Merciful will seemingly be showing them just how compassionate and merciful he is by making them all suffer eternal agony in Hell for blaspheming against his Prophet.
20 September 2012 06:27
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Hamid said...
@anonymous:
".....There is every reason to think that this Hadith, which portrays Muhammad as a paedophile, was invented decades or centuries after both Muhammad and Aisha were dead,"
Not sure about '....every reason to think....' as the practice of marrying young girls was not uncommon during and before this period in that part of the world. But in any case one would think that an enlightened 'prophet' would have no need to sleep with a nine year old night after night.
"...So Sunnis (and perhaps also Shias) had probably better hope that Islam and its allegedly Holy Koran and Hadiths are the fictions.....because otherwise Allah The Compassionate The Merciful will seemingly be showing them just how compassionate and merciful he is by making them all suffer eternal agony in Hell for blaspheming against his Prophet."
A bit of a Catch-22 here then. Muslims believe the Koran was actually written by Allah - so if it is fiction then, well .... what's the point of Islam and all the misery it has and continues to cause? Pity they can't ask themselves that question now without repercussions from their free-thinking brethren.
20 September 2012 06:36
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My unposted background note to myself: (Hamid seems to be a Muslim apostate)
Anonymous said...
@Hamid re your comment at 06:36
I wrote: ".....There is every reason to think that this Hadith, which portrays Muhammad as a paedophile, was invented decades or centuries after both Muhammad and Aisha were dead,"
You commented: "Not sure about '....every reason to think....' as the practice of marrying young girls was not uncommon during and before this period in that part of the world. But in any case one would think that an enlightened 'prophet' would have no need to sleep with a nine year old night after night."
My comment on your comment: First, there's every reason to think that almost all the Hadiths (alleged sayings of Muhammad, or in this case an alleged saying of Aisha) are fictions invented to suit whoever was Caliph at the time that each new collection of Hadiths got published, as all of the collections were first published decades or centuries after Muhammad died. Second, if Muhammad was sleeping with a nine year old, it's at least arguably a bit surprising that the Koran itself doesn't mention the subject rather than having Allah giving the practice divine approval. (Note added here, but not in the original post: The last sentence is clearly incompletely shortened. I presume I wrote or was writing something like 'rather than having it only in the Hadith, as mention in the Koran would have had Allah giving the practice divine approval' and that I was in the process of shortening this to 'so as to have Allah giving the practice divine approval') Third, in the absence of such divine approval, it would at least arguably take a rather brave group of people to carry on telling the story for many generations while perhaps risking execution for blasphemy for doing so, whereas it requires no courage at all for a Hadith collector to invent the theory that Muhammad was a paedophile if that's what his paedophile caliph wants him to invent. (Note added here, but not in the original post: I must have forgotten to add a fourth point which I'm pretty sure I intended to add, and which would have read something like this: Fourth, with about 1 in 150 men being estimated to be a paedophile, it seems statistically dozens of times less likely that a single prophet would be a paedophile than that one of dozens of Caliphs would be a paedophile.)
As for the practice of sleeping with 9 year-olds being widespread in the region at the time, I suspect that's just a theory invented by Muslims in modern times to try to justify Muhammad's alleged behaviour in reply to Western criticism. I suspect that biology hasn't changed significantly over 1400 years, so if most men wanted to sleep with 9 year-olds then, most men should still want to do so now, and I see no evidence for that - though of course the Hadith presumably made the practice more common in Muslim lands, as 'pious' men strived to imitate the alleged behaviour of their prophet, and 'pious' parents tried to ensure their daughters would behave like their prophet's favourite wife, and so on. As such, Islam would seem to encourage paedophilia, regardless of whether Muhammad did in fact sleep with a nine-year-old or not, and indeed regardless of whether he ever actually existed: Modern scholarship casts so much doubt about everytting to do with him that it seems conceivable, at least to me, that he's a fictional character invented to fill the needs of some Caliph - this would be only one small further step down the road of Tom Holland's theory, recently expounded on Channel 4, that suggests that Islam is not the creator of the Arab empire, but was created by that Empire - if he's a fictional character then of course his sleeping with a nine-year-old must also be fiction.
You also asked "what's the point of Islam and all the misery it has and continues to cause?". Obviously if this world is not created, then presumably neither Islam nor the world have any point. But personally, for reasons too lengthy to go into, I tend to fear that this world is just one of zillions of experiments created by a deceiving creatorset to study beings like us to see how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst, and which the creatorset is studying because it perceives it as a potential threat. In that case I would expect all but our most recent past to be a work of fiction inflicted on us by our deceiving creatorset, meaning that Muhammad's alleged paedophilia, and Muhammad , and the Arab Empire itself, would all be fictions - but I could be completely wrong - after all, our deceiving creatorset could easily be deceiving me :)
20 September 2012 11:34
Anonymous said...
@Hamid (continued) Sorry, I forgot to add that if this world is created by a deceiving creatorset, then Islam and the suffering associated with it presumably has some point for the afore-mentioned creatorset, perhaps because the Creatorset wants to see whether it affects the kind of Artificial Super-Intelligence that emerges from here - but obviously that's just speculation by me and could be completely wrong.
20 September 2012 11:46
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Hamid said...
@Qanonymous:
"... perhaps because the Creatorset wants to see whether it affects the kind of Artificial Super-Intelligence that emerges from here - but obviously that's just speculation by me and could be completely wrong."
Interesting.
In the theory of infinite universes - you could be 100% right for at least 1 universe.
Not quite clear on "...how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst.." - is it meaning a particular human or group of humans experiencing super-consciousness? Can super-conscious individuals act to the detriment of themselves - or others? Or does their level of consciousness simply preclude thought or actions that are in any way harmful?
We live in interesting time - in a bizarre but extremely interesting world - where ignorance (seemingly ) knows no bounds and nothing is as it seems .
20 September 2012 12:09
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@Hamid re your comment at 12.09 on 20 September
By the way, please feel free to call me by my real name, which is Frank. And thanks for all the hard work you've been putting into 'fighting the good fight' at this site.
You say "In the theory of infinite universes - you could be 100% right for at least 1 universe." I'm inclined to expect that I'd be almost 100% right in an infinite number of sub-universes, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) not necessarily in this sub-universe. Incidentally, at the risk of sounding pedantic, I'm personally not too keen on the fashion of speaking of 'multiple universes'. That sounds unreasonably self-contradictory to me, and the world seems far too unreasonable already. So I prefer to speak of multiple sub-universes in a single Truniverse (my word for True Universe, to avoid it being confused with The Universe, science's likely misnomer for what I prefer to call Our Sub-universe). Also I prefer 'almost 100% right' to '100% right', which, among other problems, sounds a bit too over-confident and absolutist for my taste, and seems to ignore all sorts of possibilities, such as that language may be incapable of precisely describing reality, etc.
You say "Not quite clear on "...how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst.." - is it meaning a particular human or group of humans experiencing super-consciousness? Can super-conscious individuals act to the detriment of themselves - or others? Or does their level of consciousness simply preclude thought or actions that are in any way harmful?"
I tend to use the term Quasimp (short for QUAsi-Super-Intelligent Machine or Person). Quasimps could be super-intelligent computers, or they could be humans who have acquired super-intelligence through some kind of genetic engineering or through some kind of interface with advanced technology. Either way they would leave our intelligence far behind. My least unreliable guestimated date for their appearance would be about 2025 to 2040, based on Ray Kurzweil's estimate of 2029 for the time when Moore's Law should make a single computer chip as powerful as the human brain (for more info, look up 'Technological Singularity' and 'Friendly AI' on Wikipedia). But one could emerge from some top secret military research lab tomorrow morning, or unforeseen bottlenecks could delay their emergence for decades, centuries, millenia, or even forever; and obviously they won't emerge if we somehow destroy ourselves and/or our technological civilisation, or find some other less drastic way of preventing their emergence. If we're lucky, the dominant quasimp (or dominant quasimps, but I tend to expect just one dominant quasimp) will choose to be nice to us, and solve all our problems for us (incidentally including any problems we may have with Islam, etc).
(to be continued next message, due space limitations)
21 September 2012 07:19
(continued from previous message)
WARNING: Sorry, but reading any further risks permanently damaging or destroying your happiness, or worse. This is NOT meant as some sort of joke.
If the dominant quasimp chooses to be nasty to us, I'd expect that problem would make all our other problems insignificant in comparison. Unfortunately the really bad news is that our Deceiving Creatorset seemingly wants to study the kind of Quasimps that are a potential threat to it, so I'd expect our dominant quasimp to be as threatening as possible, which probably means as nasty as possible, which means I fear that in the worst case scenario it will create literal hell on earth - quasi-eternal agony for zillions of innocent people whom it has genetically modified to be unable to escape through dying of disease or old age. I call such a quasimp a Devilquasimp (or more often The Devilquasimp). If we're lucky our Deceiving Creatorset will be merciful and switch off our sentience so we won't really suffer at all, but there's no guarantee of that. I do have some arguments for saying that any such Hell is very unlikely, but I've already had to discard earlier such arguments as wishful thinking, and I fear that my latest arguments may also be wishful thinking (I don't want to find that out, so I don't scrutinize them too closely). Also I could be completely wrong about everything (but that could just as well mean that I'm wrong about Hell being unlikely as that I'm wrong about, for instance, the possibility of a Devilquasimp).
You seem to ask "...how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst..". We can affect it in one of the following ways:
a) by preventing it from ever coming into existence, through somehow accidentally or deliberately destroying ourselves and/or our technological civilisation, or through finding some other less drastic way of preventing (or at least delaying) its emergence.
b) through affecting the 'culture' that quasimps initially inherit, which is presumably part or all of our culture (especially if they are themselves super-intelligent humans, but even if they are super-intelligent computers). Friendly AI (as documented in Wikipedia) is a deliberate attempt by 'experts' to try to make the culture initially inherited by super-intelligent computers be such as to make them friendly towards us humans. I think it's well-meaning, but I expect it's probably naive, because I rather doubt if they have any concept of the risk of a Devilquasimp inflicted on us by the wishes of a Deceiving Creatorset.
c) by unwittingly giving the quasimp hints about the nature of our creatorset (which would also be its creatorset), assuming we have a creatorset. For instance, if billions of us (including many Muslims, but not just Muslims) are worshipping as perfectly good a 'God' who inflicts eternal agony on people, a quasimp might well ask what kind of creatorset would inflict such a seemingly perverse belief system on so many of us, and what it might do to try to please such a creatorset. It might well conclude that the safest way to please such a creatorset was to become a Devilquasimp, and that may be why the creatorset has inflicted religions like Islam on so many of us (though as usual I could of course be completely wrong about this)
d) various ways of which I am currently unaware, quite likely including ways which are beyond my understanding
e) some combination of two or more of the above
(to be continued next message, due space limitations)
21 September 2012 07:22
(continued from previous message)
Up to now, I have been reluctant to make this information public, as there are several complicated reasons why I fear publication may actually do more harm than good. I'm not quite sure why I've mentioned it now. But it isn't really public here, as almost nobody that matters (except perhaps in due course a quasimp) will read it here, so it will probably have no significant effect among humans (and quite likely not among quasimps either), unless some reader here makes a huge and successful effort to publicize it, or at least to bring it to the attention of the Friendly AI people. I may eventually try to do so myself, but for various reasons I haven't yet made up my mind as to if or when to try. But I'd probably want to do various other time-consuming things first, such as writing up a lengthy account of my reasons for fearing we have been created by a Deceiving Creatorset, etc, and for various reasons I'm not sure that I'm ever going to get round to doing that. And without doing such things first, trying to bring this stuff to the attention of the general public and/or the Friendly AI people is quite likely to prove a waste of time.
21 September 2012 07:24
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Hamid said...
@Frank
Interesting.
see 'Common objections and misconceptions' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
heavy going but interesting. I subscribe to parallel dimensions but infinite parallel universes seems totally preposterous. Yet it may be so. In any case - the 'glue' or substrate at the bottom of all of it is what I would define as the 'creatorset' as you call it. It already encompasses all matter, space, time, dimensions, phenomena, perceptions etc etc and is experiencing all of it at once. Superstring theory gets the closest to I think.
Wouldn't an entity want to be deceiving only if it stood to gain something from it? In our case - what would a 'deceiving creatorset' gain from deceiving mind/sense limited humans? How far would its powers of deception go? Are the entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?
21 September 2012 07:57
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Monday, November 12, 2012
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