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Comment by aidenn0 | Hacker News Reader

It's a shitty analogy, and TFA is pointing it out.

> Perhaps to frame it better: do humans trade with GOD?

This is also a terrible analogy because:

1. There is no general agreement on whether or not any deities exist, and if so, which ones.

2. Historically, many religions do involve trade with one or more deities (e.g. protect me from this battle and I will sacrifice 2 goats when I get home). While this is more commonly associated with pagan religions, the Abrahamic religions are not entirely devoid of this tradition either.

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"Not entirely devoid"? Abrahamic religions are built on a bedrock of contracts (albeit rather one-sidedly negotiated) with God. The 10 commandments, basically the entirety of Leviticus, etc.

Heck, every mainstream religion with dieties has some sort of teaching with the idea that "human does x, God does y".

I say "not entirely devoid" because a large fraction of modern Protestantism is rather far from the contractual roots; they were so obsessed with stamping out pharisaical legalism that they went from "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." to "Salvation is by faith alone"

By faith alone, and/or already predestined.

God in the gnostic Logos sense: the all encompassing universe, the forces that act within it, so on.

In more current vernacular: do humans trade with the big bang? do humans trade with the expansion of the universe, and it's inevitable collapse back into the initial singularity?

It's not a shitty analogy. Most people completely understand what it's getting at. Inability to understand is a reflection on you, not the analogy. And being pedantic is not a positive trait or intellectually impressive.

The distinction is important because an AGI developed by humans is probably going to have (at least vestigial) ability to communicate with humans in some way.

It's entirely possible that it will have no use for humans, but if that's what the analogy is getting at, it's doing so poorly.

If God exists, it is not a deity.

Deities are low-dimensional approximations of what is infinite and unquantifiable.

No general agreement, noted

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