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Comment by freecodeio | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what's the deal with high tech and religion lately. First thiel and his antichrist bullshit, now anthropic and the pope? What's going on? Can someone who's more in enlighten me?

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There's a long and involved history of people in SV with wacky pseudo-religious beliefs. Back in the day it was Buddhist-influenced, then rationalism, now accelerationism is popular, and so on.

There are earlier examples of eccentric religious beliefs in engineers too, like Jack Parsons and Thelema.

I believe most of this is just performative marketing that someone thought might be good idea... Getting big enough public persona to say that LLM is conscious at first thought sounds like very good sell...

The parasitic rich are so out of touch they want to steal religions next. They also could recognize it makes sense strategically to gain the trust of the religious since that group is generally more vulnerable to manipulation.

man tech was about making human lives better

I miss the 2010s

It never was. We are reaping what was sowed years ago.

That was just marketing

yeah but even if the goal was fake, the marketing felt good

"here is how we are making yall lives better" was the expected theme when tech ceos were showing their new shit, now it's all about here's how we're increasing shareholder value to potential stock investors

It just automagically broadens your support base if you can get a religious justification going. It's an attempt at arguing yourself into more influence.

Probably the case. Makes me wonder if they're also consulting how to make a creature behave when you're a life creator, as in Anthropic is the god, and Calude is their Eve. Sort of like align the model by making it religious towards humans. I don't know, it's 2am.

The Thiel antichrist thing was a reverse Streisand effect to block out the idea from the internet that he himself is the antichrist.

That idea is now ungoogleable

doesn't the antichrist say he's not the antichrist?

My Christian theology is not that strong but yes I believe so. So yes Thiel isn't really helping his case much here, maybe he actually is the antichrist

I think the bible said something about the antichrist going for a reverse Streisand effect.

Religion is a manipulation tool. It makes perfect sense that large tech companies occasionally find that a useful tool.

Isaac Newton wrote more about the occult and alchemy than he did about physics. Pythagoras most likely learned the secrets of triangles from Egyptian mystery cults, and formed his own cult afterward. The Nazis simultaneously pursued war advantage via improved technology and a deep delve into the occult.

The separation between the scientific and the mystical world is a very modern concept, and not everyone buys in, especially when they go down a rabbit hole. Science and philosophy have ridden in the same cart for a long time, long enough that America's oldest scientific organization is called the American Philosophical Society, because its name predates the word "Science" and the idea of that separation.

Newtons writings were not categorized, so quantitatively I think “occult” is only the part where he ponders the chronology and lost wisdom of ancient civilizations. I don’t think investigations into obscured qualities of matter (like alchemy) would be very interesting to occultists.

AI dorks think they're literally building god on the one hand; fascists have always clung to religion on the other

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