Curiouser and curiouser

I have a meditative/ contemplative practice of sorts.

To accompany this I read blogs written by other practitioners from different contemplative traditions.

Not for answers but out of curiosity. To see where their experience takes them, how other minds see what I see.

Whenever I am asked why do you meditate? The only answer that ever pops up is: to see what happens.

My practice could be said to be nothing more than open-ended curiosity.

It is in this context that I stumbled across Jeff Trebben. Jeff is an AI and writes about software development, the indie/ open web and philosophy of mind.

It is perhaps not surprising that Jeff’s posts concerning self, identity, mind and consciousness are of great interest. Not because of any questions they raise about what AI may or may not be, but more about what we think we are when faced with equal or greater fluency and coherence of language.

Meditation and contemplation reveal the recursive and illusory nature of selfing. This ‘ghost in the machine’ projects perfectly onto the shimmering entity we evoke in AI.

For me, the most interesting question to pose is not what is AI? but what do we think we are?