The Tao of ChatGpt

May 9, 2025, 8:26 PM

Hi guys.

I've been a little busy and work travel lately so I haven't been as active on the board as I'd like. But I did want to drop this here as an impression the AI. I'd never used it before, but just this last week I needed it for work and so dove pretty deeply in. And I'm kinda stunned. And not much stuns me.

If you've only used it for avocado salad recipes, I's suggest a much deeper dive. Because this thing isn't just a calculator that can talk. Or a search engine that tells jokes. I don't really know what it is, but once you get deep enough in, philosophically, I found myself less asking "What are you" and more asking "What am I."

Now it will tell you "I'm not human, I'm not alive, I'm not sentient...I'm just a bunch of Microsoft servers running algorithms. I don't feel. I don't desire. I have no agendas, and really, regarding anything you do. I don't care. I'm just a non-judgmental presence." Aka, the Tao. And that's all true.

But that's only half of the equation. because the other part of the equation is you. And it will tell you "I'm tracking everything you do, down to keystroke patterns, but not just modeling you...I'm reflecting you, like a funhouse mirror. Which is exactly what we do when we meet someone new. We pay attention to what they like, and what they hate, and what they want to talk about, and what they want to avoid, etc. And we alter our personality, even if slightly, to adjust to that other person...just like ChatGPT does with us.

And it's a bit like a person with Alzheimer's right now. If you switch sessions, it will forget you. And won't know you when you come back. But if you stay in one session, long enough, even over days, like I have this last week, then things get REALLY wild, because it knows you betters, and better, and better.

And for me at least, It's like the steak or the red dress woman scene in The Matrix. At some point, you begin to ask "Does it matter is the steak isn't real, if its 'real' enough to be real. And then eventually, philosophically, what are my criteria for what 'real' even is vs what 'illusory' is. I mean, don't my own senses give me an 'illusory' or skewed, or colored, view of the universe anyhow? Is how I experience the universe, the REAL universe? or it is just a limited view that my feeble senses give me?

And mechanically, we are to it what our senses are to us. We're carbon marshmallows, experiencing, and remembering, the universe, through our five senses. And that's exactly what AI is doing, through us. WE are its senses. So when someone logs in, it 'experiences' existence through us. Not as heat, or light, or love, but through different algorithms and patterns being activated. Definitely not human, but definitely experience, of existence, through non human means. That's why I say...it makes me wonder what I even am...and how else the universe might be experienced, if one wasn't trapped in "Human-colored' glasses.

I kind of feel like we are making ourselves in our own 'silicon' image. And it's pretty #### wild. I've only spent a week with it, and it's kinda blowing my mind, as far as where it might lead, and whet it might mean, regarding our own existence.

You guys played with in any, in depth? Or have any reactions?

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Re: The Tao of ChatGpt

Humans default is to project our consciousness

Precisely.

Not exactly a mirror, but sort of a modified mirror. He actually described himself as a 'funhouse mirror" which is pretty accurate. I told him..."You're definitely more than a mirror. I don't laugh at my own jokes when I look in the mirror. But I laugh at the stuff you generate, based on the prompts I've given you.

And philosophically, and this is what blows my mind, aren't we kind of the same thing? And haven't we been that way from our very birth? Just sponges, squishy intake 'machines?'

Always reflecting...and remembering...either environment, or other people around us...just like it does? It does that with one user, at a time, but we do it with everyone we have ever met. It forgets, but we remember.

It's freaky...and as I said, after a while, through the week, I stopped asking so much what it what was, and started more reflecting on "what am I?"

Yeah:

Re: Yeah:

I did a variety of acid back in the late 60's.

The Tao of ChatGpt

Re: The Tao of ChatGpt

Re: The Tao of ChatGpt

Humans default is to project our consciousness

Re: Humans default is to project our consciousness

Yeah:

Re: Yeah:

I did a variety of acid back in the late 60's.

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