>I think capitalism and artificial intelligence are the same thing. It's the same process. Capitalism can only be artificial intelligence production, and artificial intelligence can only come out of self-propelling capitalism.
He says "artificial" specifically, forgive my impudence. My read however is that that isn't a fundamental difference to him, it's just an artifact of the fact that silicon transistors relay information faster than biological neurons can. Intelligence is the same noumenon underneath, and it will assert itself one way or another as the fundamental pathfinding algorithm of matter.
EDIT: Ah, what's more, I believe sentience/ensoulment as it is usually defined is not really a thing Land is interested in as a philosophical object. The machine god at the end of time might end up being a total p-zombie for all he cares, so long as it puts the atoms into the right place. This is a common stumbling point in r/acc discussions: We're agnostic about whether anything is experiencing qualia here. That's a separate and more, uh, normal metaphysical debate. If such a thing even exists.
You're right to notice a connection to theism here, though. It sounds nuts to see but I actually see some distant parallels between Land and Omohundro's ideas and, like, old gnostic traditions, or the early 20th century process philosophy of Charles Hartshorne.
Oh that's a great point! Vis a vis all the cogsci slop that regularly pretends to "explain consciousness", being agnostic about it sure beats the usual "not being able to comprehend the question in the first place" (as frequently exemplified by HN comment[er?]s under that type of headline)
I think it's plainly mumbo jumbo. I mean take:
"capitalism can only be artificial intelligence production"
We've had capitalism for centuries with no AI production. As a time saver I often find once someone comes up with one bit of nonsense you can find better things to do than analyse all their other statements in case there are some non bunk aspects.
But it was capitalism that ended up producing AI. And if that's how things have ended up, then that must've been where things had been going all along, no? (Ask the Cheshire Cat for the opposite statement.) That's teleology for you, it's a thing that's usually obvious in hindsight, but, as you demonstrate, even that not always.
And if you and your ancestors have never lived under any other social system besides the one that evolved into contemporary capitalism, how would you even be able to make the distinction between the telos of capitalism and the telos of any other global process? What would be your point of reference, experientially speaking? Do you even know any other dreams besides the ones that capitalism dreams throughout your waking hours?
Back to Plato's cave with you it seems, and don't, I repeat, please don't think about limited liability corporations, the construct of "personhood" that the legal system ascribes them, and how the only thing that can even attempt to kill a corporation is a government (which is just another kind of "corporation", in the sense of rule-based meta-entity which uses human intelligence as a replaceable building block). And governments have been largely captured (outsmarted) by the corporations. For decades at this point. Qui bono? You Bono?
On your way there allow me to guess, you believe that there's least one school of economics which is not "mumbo jumbo" (a term, besides the tastelessness of dismissiveness, also bearing subtle racist connotations), don't you?
EDIT: Check this shit out:
>Mungo Park's travel journal Travels in the Interior of Africa (1795) describes 'Mumbo Jumbo' as a character, complete with "masquerade habit", whom Mandinka males would dress up as in order to resolve domestic disputes
From Wikipedia, emphasis mine. Consider!
I can definitely see where he's coming from with that take, myself having grown up in a culture that has overwritten itself with capitalism over the course of scantly two generations. I'm saying that because I don't reckon it's the kind of thing one could recognize when one is on the inside of it. Not without fucking oneself up something wicked, anyway
