I am in a sesshin, a two-and-a-half-day short form of intensive Zen meditation. Thoughts and images keep coming to me about the artificial general intelligence (AGI) we are currently creating. More and more people from the humanities, psychology, or team organization are expressing admiration, surprise, and fear at the capabilities of AGI. It seems that the Turing test was passed some time ago, and that we are now watching an intelligence develop that appears to be superior to us. This…
Recently I stumbled upon David Hume again. I remember how intensive the study of his writings in Heidelberg was. We went very deeply into the text, very meticulously and systematically. It was the opposite of those Anglo-American lectures on the history of ideas. So I stumbled upon the concept of taste in Hume, as the core of his “aesthetic” theory. I thought of rasa and began a conversation with AI. Larger connections became clear to me, lines I had never…
The series of conversations with AI is unedited; it is the machine (ChatGPT4.0) speaking… Translation by DDeepL Prompt: Please write a conversation between David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Abhinavagupta, Bharata Muni, Zeami Motokiyo, Gilles Deleuze and a Brahmin priest. Begin with the question: What is taste? ChatGPT Setting: A serene garden with a round table in the middle. The philosophers and the Brahmin priest sit there, each representing a different era and culture, yet the timeless question of aesthetics connects them.…
Our brain is not the seat of our mind, but the medium through which we can reach the spiritual. When I first heard this many years ago at a conference on media theory, I was astonished. Did they really mean this seriously? Is it crazy or brilliant? There is this beautiful old-fashioned word, ‘subtle matter.’ Our body is a medium through which we can reach this. Our media theories generally have in common that they are conceived technically. There is…
During meditation, I often watch my thinking, let thoughts come and go, and try to slow the thinking down. Thoughts come and go, and often I do not understand where they come from, and why at some point they are replaced by an entirely different thought. What chain of association is at work here? These chains of thought seem to be random, prompted by experiences that still resonate and are being processed further. This reminds me of a philosophical thought.…
When the internet became accessible to the public, that is, in the mid-1990s, there was the phenomenon of people putting their deepest secrets on the internet. Anonymity, simplicity and speed were seductive. The confession quickly made, anonymity largely preserved, and perhaps there was even this little thrill that someone one knows might read the secrets without knowing who was behind them. These tele-confessions were cathartic. Today this has reversed: Everyone should see what one does without finding out what one…
I grew up in the country where cars were invented. The roads and cars here seem safe; in any case, everything is done to make them safe. The accident is anticipated, the risk calculated, possible collisions computed, and the damage minimized through modular construction, so we are told. We want to be prepared for everything, here. It is this logic of securing, calculating risk, and prevention that makes me want to leave this country again. There is no room for…
