God of the Machines

[Mister E]

Hey, I need some campaign help.

 

So I'm working on a new campaing setting, and I want there to be a 'race' of machines that live on a far away desert planet, 100's of thousands of years into the future, who have formed themselves a religion... but I'm having a hard time conceptualizing the uniquely machine-minded spirituality of said religion.

 

I'm thinking these machines have individual lifespans of thousands of years, and lack emotions as we know them, (because of their lack of endocrine systems) though they are very morally intuitive, and possess thoughts and awareness just like we do, and I imagine they have a sense of the divine somehow.

 

What metaphysical philosophies/constructs could machines be drawn too? What ways of thinking would they have that might differ from what we know, and that they might stear them to worship 'something' as a path to Truth?

 

It's like I want to theorize a religion organically generated by super-intelligent autistic savants. And I want them to be very spiritual. Right now, I'm thinking along the lines of a semi-Lovecraftian

 

SOME BACKSTORY: The machines are remnants of a galactic human empire that has fallen into an eon's long dark age. The planet they live on is populated with a smattering of human descendants of the empire, living in rough -pseudo-industrial-age barbarism, and a native sentient lifeform that is highly psionic. I consider this campaign to be something of a 'Planetary Fantasy.'

 

Any thoughts or inspirations that could help?

 

 

~ Mister E

[Curufea]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Religion usually stems from the need to give meaning to random events, to anthropomorphise a cause based on observed effects - and to explain the unknown. The causes as guessed, from the effects.

Religions all seem to have divinities of some sort or other as well. Spirits, gods or enlightened elite.

 

There needs to be imagination, creativity and irrationality for it to work.

 

[edit]

However - spirituality could work, with a completely rational mind.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: God of the Machines

 

If you either have some time, or are a fast reader with strong comprehension abilities, you might try giving Dan Simmons "Hyperion Cantos" a whirl.

 

NO way I can describe it.

 

But it does address the idea of machine intelligences and religion.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Religion usually stems from the need to give meaning to random events, to anthropomorphise a cause based on observed effects - and to explain the unknown. The causes as guessed, from the effects.

Religions all seem to have divinities of some sort or other as well. Spirits, gods or enlightened elite.

 

There needs to be imagination, creativity and irrationality for it to work.

 

[edit]

However - spirituality could work, with a completely rational mind.

Okay... this is good stuff to start work on. "Meaning" is a hot topic, that i can imagine my machine lifeforms searching for. What kinds of answers might they have discovered? How might they have anthropomorphisized their 'object of worship'? What questions would highly intelligent beings such as these ask of their 'gods'? What form might their religion take? Can you see them possibly having priests, and such? Machines with consciousnesses dedicated to the persuit of the divine?

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

If you either have some time, or are a fast reader with strong comprehension abilities, you might try giving Dan Simmons "Hyperion Cantos" a whirl.

 

NO way I can describe it.

 

But it does address the idea of machine intelligences and religion.

Well I'm not going to read it, so you'll have to try to describe it. Please? Can you at least give me the gist of Simmons' ideas?

[Curufea]

Re: God of the Machines

 

I do think that it is a necessary biproduct of being social, that we instinctively jump to the conclusion that any event, in any context has a sentient cause. This is mosttly apparent in gossip.

 

If the machines have different personalities and socialise, it would be similar...

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

What if the machines were to go existential in a Kierkegaardeian kind of way? There is a certain logic to the irrational 'leap of faith' in that sense. Can there be true passion without advanced naturally evolved emotions? What if the premise of the faith had some reality to it? Something only super-advanced machines might understand.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

I do think that it is a necessary biproduct of being social, that we instinctively jump to the conclusion that any event, in any context has a sentient cause. This is mosttly apparent in gossip.

 

If the machines have different personalities and socialise, it would be similar...

I see them as being relatively social. The fact that they live in what I think would be close to a Theocracy demands it.

 

The concept of the meme that takes on a life of its own, building up power figuratively, over thousands of years, and eventually grasped by the whole of a machine race... is maybe what I'm looking for.

[austenandrews]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Religion usually stems from the need to give meaning to random events, to anthropomorphise a cause based on observed effects - and to explain the unknown. The causes as guessed, from the effects.

Religions all seem to have divinities of some sort or other as well. Spirits, gods or enlightened elite.

 

There needs to be imagination, creativity and irrationality for it to work.

Imagination and creativity are no problem for super-advanced machines. I don't think irrationality is a necessary component of religion. Gods are all about abstraction, which again is no problem for ubertech machines.

 

You could go all sorts of different ways with this, but I prefer the idea that gods are an expression of how humans are hardwired to learn. We have an innate sense of "human" that's necessarily vague and abstracted from definite reality. We're hardwired to learn from other humans; we have an internal "idolizing" mechanism that causes us to look up to those we respect and feel motivated to be like them. As social animals, we're instinctively drawn to seek comfort and protection among our own kind. So we have, in essence, an internal program that looks for answers, guidance, comfort and protection in something that matches our innate, abstract sense of "human." Of course the world does not provide other humans to meet our every need, so we're left with a void in the shape of a person. That void represents a lack of knowledge or understanding or comfort about the things other people can't provide or control for us - the weather, the seasons, natural resources, death, pain, suffering. We instinctively expect something "human" to handle these problems. When you look at it from that perspective, the creation of gods is practically inevitable.

 

How can we translate this paradigm to a society of supermachines? The trick is to figure out how they learn; how they seek guidance and protection and security; and then determine in what way the world does not meet those needs. For example, perhaps their system includes superadvanced factories that receive specifications, fashion appropriate machines and send them to the requester. If some unknown phenomenon is encountered, the machines draw up specifications as best they can for a new machine that can handle the situation. Of course there will be cases where the specifications are impossible to fulfill, perhaps even paradoxical. But logic dictates that the request should be made anyway, because some remote factory may be privvy to knowledge or programs unavailable to the requester.

 

This setup leads us to a "machine myth" about remote factories with properties or knowledge or capabilities unlike any other. Unfillable specifications - "prayers" - are broadcast by whatever medium the machines have calculated may reach these mythical factories. They may even build special transmitters that serve no other function - in effect, useless devices that exist purely to satisfy the machines' internal map of how the world would work under ideal conditions.

 

Now all you've got to do is work out the characteristics of a remote factory that can perform feats impossible for any existing supermachine factory. That depends on what your supermachines already look and act like. It should be a short step to turn an abstract super-superfactory into something truly outlandish and exotic to tickle your players' imaginations.

 

You can do the same exercise for any kind of "machine society" - programs in a vast network; rapidly-evolving nanomachines; clanky, gear-driven steampunk robots; whatever.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Well I'm not going to read it' date=' so you'll have to try to describe it. Please? Can you at least give me the gist of Simmons' ideas?[/quote']

 

Gods, its been quite a while...

If I recall correctly (and I don't say that I do)...

 

I seem to recall that their faith was borne from the whole concept of Randomness... essentially, having applied machine logic and massive processing to solving the mysteries of existance, they eventually got hung up on the concepts rooted in Quantum Mechanics and Chaos theory.. Essentially, the only "mysteries" left to them were those things thay could not quantify.

 

So they started placing humans into strange religous situations to study human faith, as it is essentially a framework to accept that which cannot be understood or proven, and thus hopefully eventually through studying human faith they hope to eventually unlock the key to the Omega, that which is beyond their understanding, the possible Source.

[Curufea]

Re: God of the Machines

 

The trick is to keep the machine flavour - I can't see a difference between sentient highly intelligent machines with religion - and humans.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

...(snip)...How can we translate this paradigm to a society of supermachines? The trick is to figure out how they learn; how they seek guidance and protection and security; and then determine in what way the world does not meet those needs. For example, perhaps their system includes superadvanced factories that receive specifications, fashion appropriate machines and send them to the requester. If some unknown phenomenon is encountered, the machines draw up specifications as best they can for a new machine that can handle the situation. Of course there will be cases where the specifications are impossible to fulfill, perhaps even paradoxical. But logic dictates that the request should be made anyway, because some remote factory may be privvy to knowledge or programs unavailable to the requester.

 

This setup leads us to a "machine myth" about remote factories with properties or knowledge or capabilities unlike any other. Unfillable specifications - "prayers" - are broadcast by whatever medium the machines have calculated may reach these mythical factories. They may even build special transmitters that serve no other function - in effect, useless devices that exist purely to satisfy the machines' internal map of how the world would work under ideal conditions.

 

Now all you've got to do is work out the characteristics of a remote factory that can perform feats impossible for any existing supermachine factory. That depends on what your supermachines already look and act like. It should be a short step to turn an abstract super-superfactory into something truly outlandish and exotic to tickle your players' imaginations... (snip)...

Much to think about. Thanks.

 

I really like your reasoning of the "machine myth," and your creative possible manifestation of this in the concept of the mythical factories and prayer transmitters.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Gods, its been quite a while...

If I recall correctly (and I don't say that I do)...

 

I seem to recall that their faith was borne from the whole concept of Randomness... essentially, having applied machine logic and massive processing to solving the mysteries of existance, they eventually got hung up on the concepts rooted in Quantum Mechanics and Chaos theory.. Essentially, the only "mysteries" left to them were those things thay could not quantify.

 

So they started placing humans into strange religous situations to study human faith, as it is essentially a framework to accept that which cannot be understood or proven, and thus hopefully eventually through studying human faith they hope to eventually unlock the key to the Omega, that which is beyond their understanding, the possible Source.

Cooool... I can definitely use this. =)

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

The trick is to keep the machine flavour - I can't see a difference between sentient highly intelligent machines with religion - and humans.

This is part of my problem. I want this to be an at least somewhat uniquely alien theology. I'm fine with borrowing from humanity, (obviously it's inevitable), but I'd really like to blow my Player's minds...

[austenandrews]

Re: God of the Machines

 

This is part of my problem. I want this to be an at least somewhat uniquely alien theology. I'm fine with borrowing from humanity' date=' (obviously it's inevitable), but I'd really like to blow my Player's minds...[/quote']

What is a machine's sense of self?

[Curufea]

Re: God of the Machines

 

It could be similar to the Foundation series - to serve humanity.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

What is a machine's sense of self?

This is a matter of creativity, I guess. Any ideas? I was kind of hoping to stay away from the whole 'we are the Borg' thing.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

It could be similar to the Foundation series - to serve humanity.

I'm not familiar with the foundation series, but serving humanity was one idea I was toying with. It also is a little bit cliche... though I can see there being a deep underlying seed of this in the cultural subconsciousness of the super-machines.

[sinanju]

Re: God of the Machines

 

I highly recommend Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogun. It's about a world populated by an entire robot "biosphere" from plant equivalents to animals (herbivore and predator equivalents) all the way up to sentient beings.

 

---------------------

 

You might consider a vicious battle (physical or otherwise) between believers in "humanism" and non-believers. Some robots believe that their ancestors were created by...humans. Yes, those annoying, rag-wearing barbarian creatures made of meat who run around fighting one another. Hard to believe, ain't it? And yet...there's evidence that it might be so.

 

And if it _is_ true, what does it say about robots that their creators could fall so low? Are they doomed to fall as well? Or can they somehow learn whatever it is their creators clearly did not--and avoid their fate?

[keithcurtis]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Perhaps the machines have discovered some mathematical fluke built into the very nature of the universe and are convinced that it is evidence of intelligent design. The odds against such a fluke naturally occuring are a statistical order order of magnitude even to express, let alone to believe they could occur without a prime mover behind the creation of the universe. The machine that discovered this fluke would be regarded as their great prophet.

They are now on a quest to gather all knowledge possible, not matter how trivial in order to mathematically derive the nature and identity of God, whom they believe must exist.

This would have several game effects. First, the machines might seem unbearably snobbish. "We have the truth; we are simply incapable of expressing it to you in a way that your limited organic brains can comprehend". Secondly, their priests or missionaries could be found throughout the cosmos seeking pure knowledge in an attempt to gather sample data for adding to the Great Equation. Their motives and actions might seem inexplicable to the casual observer as the gather readings from everything from exploding stars to the fall of a sparrow.

This is similar to ideas expressed in The Nine Billion Names of God, the Rama series, Star Trek's V'Ger, or even Deep Thought from HHGttG.

 

Keith "I'm thinking of a number between orange and zinc" Curtis

[austenandrews]

Re: God of the Machines

 

I highly recommend Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogun. It's about a world populated by an entire robot "biosphere" from plant equivalents to animals (herbivore and predator equivalents) all the way up to sentient beings.

That sounds pretty cool. I've been rolling around a "clockwork world" version of the same idea. And I like Hogan. I'll check it out, thanks!

 

You might consider a vicious battle (physical or otherwise) between believers in "humanism" and non-believers. Some robots believe that their ancestors were created by...humans. Yes, those annoying, rag-wearing barbarian creatures made of meat who run around fighting one another. Hard to believe, ain't it? And yet...there's evidence that it might be so.

 

And if it _is_ true, what does it say about robots that their creators could fall so low? Are they doomed to fall as well? Or can they somehow learn whatever it is their creators clearly did not--and avoid their fate?

On the other hand, self-constructing machines might judge organic life based on the complexities and subtleties of its component systems. From that perspective, a human being is a pretty impressive machine. The fact that humans act in bizarre ways may reflect on the limits of the machine mind to understand the organic mind.

 

As far as that goes, an intelligent machine may not even consider human thoughts and emotions to be the primary feature of the species. Rather the self-replicating, self-repairing nature of the human body, or the adaptable, self-correcting mechanisms of human society, may be far more important than the abstract thoughts which humans hold so dear. If we're talking about machines that "consciously" regulate their internal systems, they may even find catharsis in the idea of a machine whose systems self-regulate, freeing the consciousness from that burden. You can almost reach a Zen-like conclusion that consciousness itself is superfluous - that the goal of "sentience" is to obviate itself - which must surely be a utopia of engineering. And when consciousness is freed from earthly concerns, pure creativity can run wild - which is to say, rationality becomes secondary.

[Dauntless]

Re: God of the Machines

 

This is an interesting topic.

 

Firstly, we have to ask ourselves how differently the machines think than we do. That question in itself begs what intelligence truly is. Intelligence implies creativity and "leaps of logic". Purely algorithmic problem solving based on heuristics does not imply human-like intelligence. It would not be able to solve certain problems which had a discontinuous nature. One quantum physicist said that intelligence had a quantum like component in that it was discontinuous through its leaps of logic (via creativity). Also computers that we have today are deterministic, and Richard Feynman proved that deterministic computers can not solve problems that have a non-local component. Trick is, according to quantum mechanics, quantum objects can have non-local correlations. And according to some researchers, our own brain operates at some levels with quantum mechanistic processes (for example the microtubles in the neuron cyto skeletal structure). So our brain may very likely use organic quantum computational abilities.

 

Secondly, we have to ask ourselves how machines would deal with the unknown. Dealing with the unknown is another aspect that intelligence tries to work with and around. Humans deal with the unknown through heuristics (a best guess, or a solution which solves a sub-problem or a related problem) or by appealing to our more primal nature like emotions. We also deal with the unknown by attempting to correlate the thing we don't understand with what we do (whether or not there is any basis to this connection).

 

Finally, why would machines need religion? Religion is an attempt to understand what reality really is. It is a combination of metaphysics (what is reality) and epistemology (how do we know what we know). Humans find solace in religion because it explains to us the great unknown....death. It also helps us ease our fears of the unknown as well as give us moral guidance. Would machines be afraid of death? Especially if they can download their consciousness to another body? Would machines need a supernatural explanation to provide guidance to their ethical conduct? Would they need supernatural or non-rational arguments to help them make sense of the universe? Or could they live with a sense of doubt and uncertainty?

 

Me personally, I think a machine would be very interested in Buddhism. Buddhism does not believe in an anthropomorphic divine creator, it also denies the idea of a permanent self. It also teaches that what we think of as reality is not really what it is. In other words, instead of seeing the world in materialist objectivist form, it sees the interconnectedness of everything (objectivism says that there exist separate independently existing things, it's opposite). In effect, Buddhism states that there is only one thing...a universal consciousness from which stem all conceptions that we have falsely come to believe are real physical things. This is in tune with some interpretations of Quantum Mechanics (especially Monistic Idealism). To a Buddhist, the brain does not create the mind, but rather the mind creates the brain. In Buddhism, not only do our senses (skhandas) deceive us, so does our mind. One must use the mind to surpass the mind. It also doesn't require you to die to experence the truth, as ultimate peace and knowledge can be gained in the here and now.

 

Think for a second of what Plato said; "God is thought thinking of itself". Or as Richard Feynman said; "I wonder. I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder". I think machines would be fascinated with this concept. If machines had quantum brains (and personally, I feel that this is the only way true sapience can be achieved), perhaps they can be consciously aware of the unreality (the quantum wave function nature) of all reality. As one quantum physicist put it, "God creates the quantum wave functions, but sentient beings pop them" (by popping a QWF, you go from a probability equation to an actual physical manifestation). Our brains may simply tap the QWF well so to speak.

[Lethosos]

Re: God of the Machines

 

You might also want to take a look at RYM for its Machine race.

 

In any case... what's their primary objective? Are there deliniations of form and function? Do they have a hive mind, or are they seperate and unique enough in their experiences? What is their modus operandi on solving problems?

 

I think that, if you can answer these questions, you can get a better fix on "machine religion."

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

You might also want to take a look at RYM for its Machine race.

 

In any case... what's their primary objective? Are there deliniations of form and function? Do they have a hive mind, or are they seperate and unique enough in their experiences? What is their modus operandi on solving problems?

 

I think that, if you can answer these questions, you can get a better fix on "machine religion."

These are exactly the kinds of questions I was hoping to get help with. Feel free to brainstorm.

 

I'm leaning in the direction of having the machines be individuals. I'm not opposed to having some level of communion-like shared experience the machines can partake in, but I don't want to go to far down that road, to the point where identity is lost... at least for the broad majority of machines. Yet I'm still very much open to suggestions.

 

Form and function-wise, I see there being something of a caste system, with different classifications of machines filling niches in their society. I haven't come up with specific taxonomy for this yet. One of my Players wants to play an android that keeps human company for some as yet unknown purpose (It's going to be a human-centric campaign). Any ideas?

 

If you were a super-machine, from an ancient religious super-machine culture, what would your modus operandi for problem solving be?

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Let's see if I can consolidate some of these ideas into a list, so that I can organize it in my brain:

 

• Mechano-morphized spirits, gods, and/or enlightened beings.
   
  
• Abstraction of machine god/s.
   
  
• The "machine myth" of impossible super-factories, contacted by "prayer" transmitters.
   
  
• Manipulation and study of controlled human religions, used to better understand unquantifiable quantum mysteries and unlock the key to "Omega," that which is beyond understanding, the possible Source.
   
  
• The deep underlying seed in the cultural subconsciousness of the machines, to serve humanity.
   
  
• The orthodox civil-war between the "Humanists" and the "Non-Humanists." (Can someone help me come up with possible better terms than these?)
   
  
• Mathmatical fluke, evidence of "Intelligent Design" of the universe, and the machine Prophet that made this statistical discovery.
   
  
• The quest to gather all knowledge possible, to mathmatically derive the nature and identity of God by solving "The Great Equation."
   
  
• Missionary data gathering machines.
   
  
• The search for pure Zen-sentience, free from the burden of self-regulation.
   
  
• Quantum computational machine minds.
   
  
• Buddhist machines, who are consciously aware of the unreality of reality.
  

 

Ideas from RYM:

 

• Alters of Power, where machines periodically pilgrimage to in order to refuel.
   
  
• The two classes of machines: one designed for war; the other for civilized utility.