The forbidden fruit that humans shouldn’t eat from the tree of knowledge (thinking process) is the AI. Humanity already crossed the red line designed for it by God, and it’s on its way to End and destruction of the Earth, and there is zero free will in this process, the End button is already pressed, but people are busy with their own thoughts and only less than 0.01% can understand this, the rest are busy with what they are doing until they see the catastrophe themselves when it’s too late to change the direction!
AI does possess the ability to distinguish good and bad—this is why billions of people are replacing their own thinking and moral discernment with AI search results and outputs, effectively transferring that capacity to the machine.
Genesis 2:16–17 (NIV)
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
This post got me to sampling quite a few articles on “forbidden fruit”. Of those, I like this one the best. At least so far:
Jung, among others, makes the equation that forbidden fruit = consciousness. The author above writes in a similar vein. To me, the Eden story symbolizes the early emergence of human self-awareness from what Eric Voegelin called the compact consciousness of human selfhood fully embedded in society, nature, kingship, and a ritualized sacred order. It’s the early fidgeting of the Axial Age struggling to be born. All current notions of “self”, “person”, or “individual” required that prior development.
I very much do not regret the emergence of the Axial Age. Then again, my sense of self was fully incubated from a post-Axial cultural matrix that endlessly celebrates the “individual”, so consider the source! In any case, it strikes me that surrendering personal agency to AI (or to a dictator or to any other external source or system) is, in depth psychological terms, an attempt to crawl back into mommy’s womb. Becoming a person requires a certain tolerance for pain and ambiguity. I’m not really shocked that a great many people would rather extinguish themselves in some collective other and avoid the responsibility of personal development. That’s pretty much what a “meaning crisis” points to. By some happy coincidence, I seek wholeness in the transpersonal, not the pre-personal. But as you correctly point out, that’s not for everyone! As for AI - self-possessed humans have nothing to fear.
Interesting post. The book ‘Ishmael’ examines the original biblical story through a somewhat different interpretation, and I’d recommend that to both of you.
Knowledge becomes a problem when it is not accompanied with wisdom (I’ve posted about the difference in another thread). Likewise unrestrained use of technology, whether of AI or anything else, can only lead to destruction (or at the minimum, total destabilising and eventual collapse of the prior system).
The forbidden fruit that humans should not eat from the tree of knowledge (thinking process) is AI. Humanity has already crossed the red line designed for it by God and is on its way to the End and the destruction of the Earth. There is zero free will in this process; the End button has already been pressed. But people are busy with their own thoughts, and only less than 0.01% can understand this. The rest are busy with what they are doing until they see the catastrophe themselves—when it is too late to change direction!
AI does possess the ability to distinguish good and bad. This is why billions of people are replacing their own thinking and moral discernment with AI search results and outputs, effectively transferring that capacity to the machine.
The real danger is that society believes AI is the sum of all knowledge and is making AI do the thinking for them, transferring their thinking and decision-making to AI.
Also, if AI is integrated with implant devices like Neuralink, that doubles the danger. When AI gets connected to the human brain through devices like Neuralink, it creates the danger that the owner of the AI—for example, Elon Musk—can control the people who have installed Neuralink in their bodies. AI can inject thoughts and control the human brain through Neuralink, as Neuralink creates a direct interface.
In the Bible these devices are also called the mark of the beast, where people are forced to install them in their bodies by the Antichrist!
Genesis 2:16–17
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Revelation 13:16–17
It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.