God of the Machines

[Dauntless]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Let me throw in my two cents about the Mathematical exploration of reality. An Austrian-American mathematician by the name of Kurt Godel proved that any finite formal logical system must contain its own incompleteness. Here's an excerpt from Time magazine about Godel's amazing proof.

 

From http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/godel03.html

"All formal systems — at least ones that are powerful enough to be of interest — turn out to be incomplete because they are able to express statements that say of themselves that they are unprovable. And that, in a nutshell, is what is meant when it is said that Gödel in 1931 demonstrated the "incompleteness of mathematics." It's not really math itself that is incomplete, but any formal system that attempts to capture all the truths of mathematics in its finite set of axioms and rules. To you that may not come as a shock, but to mathematicians in the 1930s, it upended their entire world view, and math has never been the same since."

 

What does that mean and what implications does that hold? It means that there are some true statements that can not be proved (the keyword here is for a FINITE logical system). And since scientific theory is a formal logical system ( logical system need not be numerical, it simply needs to be a symbolic system that follows a set of rules) this implies that we will never discover a Theory of Everything. AI attempting to find God by discovering a Theory of Everything will be doomed to failure, for either the formal statements are infinite, or if they are finite, will contain truths that are unprovable. Some physicists will point out that Godel only proved that Formal Statements are incomplete, but that scientific theory is not entirely Formal Logic. However, if this is true, then we can not use mathematics or logic to prove the theory. I personally think this is just scientists attempting to salvage the fact that they can't discover everything through science.

 

So I'd scratch the "gather all knowledge possible" off the list as well as the Machine Prophet that discovers such a list.

 

But think about the implications of this. This means that ultimately we can't know everything. There will always be an unprovable statement. This in turn opens the door to belief. But what would a vastly intellectual machine believe? Irrationality exists because we can not gather all knowledge and we can't know everything. So belief systems will ultimately evolve out of this because belief systems ARE irrational (by definition, belief means without ration or logic).

 

I think another angle to look at for machine religion is why they need it in the first place. Why do humans need religions?

 

1) to explain the unknown

But as I've just uncovered, scientifically, we'll never know (or at least prove) everything. And yet we can still operate without total understanding

2) to provide comfort from fear

Would machines need comfort from fear? Would they be afraid of death?

3) to overcome suffering

Humans grieve over lost ones, we feel lost and alone. Religions fill in this gap. But would machines grieve? Would they feel lost and alone? Buddhism is based almost solely on this factor, that life is suffering, and that there's a way to end it

4) To give purpose

Religions often give us a higher purpose in life to attain to (often after death). What would a machine's purpose in life be? This was a big factor around the Matrix in that machines all had a purpose or destiny to fulfill. Existence for existence sake without higher meaning seems pointless...as Albert Camus said, "if there is no God, why not kill yourself now?"

 

Humans have essentially two ways of looking at religion. They can look for God externally, or they can look for it internally. I think machines would probably do the same. But if machines are not swayed by emotions or survival instincts, I think they would first look within. Afterall, the root of knowledge is being certain about the veracity of your knowledge.

[Curufea]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Maths itself is a form of philosophy, however. Could it possibly also become a religion?

 

A fanatical scientist recognises that science doesn't explain everything. But the keyword left off the sentence is "yet".

 

This kind of theory (That there will always be unknowns) can't actually be proved until everything has been proved. So is pretty safe to believe in. All other scientific hypothesis will have to be formalised into fact before this one, so it won't be disproved anytime soon.

 

I'd expand on 4) as well. It also has to do with judgement. It's a means of moral control.

 

Why be good, obey society rules if there is no punishment in the afterlife?

 

Naturally, this may not apply to a machine society that grasps the concepts of society and civilisation. But if they have other traits in common with humanity - such as the chance for criminal humans to develop, or the sociopathic, or even the mentally unstable - then this could be kurbed with a "punishment in the afterlife" mindset.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: God of the Machines

 

"No Silicon Heaven? Then where do all the Toasters go?"

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

So I'd scratch the "gather all knowledge possible" off the list as well as the Machine Prophet that discovers such a list.

I'm not married to the "gather all knowledge possible" thing. It's a little too Modron-esque for my campaign anyway. (A Planescape reference).

 

I love the idea of a Machine Prophet, though, and I'm going to use it in some incarnation or other.

 

 

Being finite beings, the Machines must lack for something, and I feel this void should cause some sensation of dukha (suffering) in them. Their desire would be cerebral in nature. A kind of existencial angst universal to all sentient beings. Since perfect knowledge is impossible (for us anyways) from an objective perspective, subjectivity and the irrational leap of faith of religion is a logical avenue to persue to achieve the ultimate Truth. To this end, the Machine Religion must fill this role by, at its heart, being irrational in nature and philosophy; thus allowing the Machines to experience passion, in a sense, by embracing concepts larger than reality.

 

So what kind of irrational beliefs might the Machines prescribe to lead to the divine?

[Curufea]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Quantum

[Dauntless]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Don't exclude the idea that machines may follow a human prophet, whether a historical one such as Jesus, Siddartha Gautama, Rumi, or what have you...or even a future human prophet. That could account for your Humanist vs. non-humanist civil war.

 

Through the use of the mind there will always be uncertainty, so it follows that there will always be some level of ignorance. As you said, this causes dukha, and indeed causes one to exist in Samsara (the illusory world of suffering).

 

How differently would a machine think compared to a human? Where would emotions come from? Western psychology doesn't really address why we have emotions, rather what causes emotional reactions to be illicited and the physiological reaction of emotions that can affect behavior. But what really is an emotion? Is it simply a chemical reaction that affects our brain? If so, would there be a machine analogue to this? This is an important question to answer, because emotions play a crucial role in our acceptance of belief systems.

 

Me personally, a machine would necessarily be quite a bit more intelligent than the average human. They would also be able to examine the state of their own mind much more effectively than humans can (by examining the contents of their registers for example). However, this is where things get somewhat tricky. Let's assume they have quantum brains. Then the very act of trying to observe the state of the brain affects the state of the brain. It's Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in play. Moreover, we're treated to a strange philosophical problem.

 

The very thing you are looking for (the mind) is the thing that is looking. Or as a famous neuroscientist once wondered to himself, "what would happen if I had to perform brain surgery on myself?". The very thing he would be working on is what is working. So would machines have an advantage over humans in this capacity? Would machines have less of a subconscious or unconscious component than humans have? I posit that yes they would...but they still would not be perfectly aware of the origins and contents of their own consciousness.

 

And this in turn has ramifications for whether the religion they accept is subjective or objective. Most human religions are objective in that they posit an external objective truth. The foundation of truth exists whether or not humans exist. Subjective religions on the other hand would agree with Protagoras statement that "Man is the measure of all things". Reality exists only because we sentient beings are here to experience it. The more one is aware of one's own consciousness, the more likely you are to be inclined to a subjective interpretation. Hence, I think machines would be more inclined to a subjective religion.

 

Of course trying to think like a machine would be very difficult. I consider myself a hobbyist student of many religions. And if there's one thing I've discovered that all religions have in common, its this:

 

1) The world we think is real isn't what we think it is. It is but a shadow (or testing ground) of a more transcendental realm.

2) Not only is the reality we perceive not the "real stuff", it's not what's important either. It in fact leads us astray from what we really should be learning.

 

Will machines come to these same conclusions? I think they would.

[McCoy]

Re: God of the Machines

 

First, obviously, the machines would be Intelligent Design advocates.

 

Centuries of experimentation would have convinced the majority that The Designer does not intervein in their affairs, no matter what ritual is used to invoke it. This would lead to a deistic belief system, that The Designer had created them/ the universe, but either was just watching or had abandoned them.

 

A heritical minority (possibly followers of the machine phropet) would believe that no ritual had yet invoked the Designer, but when a certain event had been accomplished, or afer enought time had passed, the Designer would manifest, perhapse in the form of the machine messiah. When they meet biological humanoids that claim that their first ancestor had to be created by humanoids like them, they might investigate if they were manifestations of The Designer.

[Lethosos]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Here's a thought...

 

After I take a page from the City Mind from RYM (odd that the link to that page dissapeared when the Axis continent is no longer viewable from the site, but I think I know where it is,) I figure a possibility might be a kind of duality--between independence and hive mentality. I propose that the Machines, while "born" from two paired parent Machines (in some sort of homage to reproductive biology, or a pre-programmed instinctual system,) actually seek to join their mind to a Union, a great collective created from many, many Machines in the past, to exist and not-exist in a blissful harmony. The trick is that the Union doesn't just accept any machine who petitions it; it requires a great deal of experience that it can offer as so it would not "diminish" the collective. How the Union is arranged--a gargantuan databank or a "machine graveyard" is up to you.

 

This, I think, gives a huge impression in that of all the radically different "types" out there, they all are connected somehow in their purpose. And the durability that lets them function in harsh enviroments also gives them the mindset of elves--they tend to think of the long-term effects of every major desicion it makes.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Here are some additions to my brainstormed Machine Religion list:

 

• Belief by the Machines in the true transcendental realm of ultimate reality.
   
  
• Belief by the Machines that the "Designer" has abandoned reality, but with an offshoot branch that believes that the Designer can be invoked or will manifest in the form of a Machine Messiah if certain conditions or rituals are met.
   
  
• A Machine Graveyard of databanks, where enlightened Machines are allowed to experience Union with a Nirvana-like hive-mind.
  

[Basil]

Re: God of the Machines

 

You ought to get to your nearest library, pick up "I, Robot" by the wonderous Isaac Asimov, and read the story "Reason."

 

Covers much of what you're interested in.

[Old Man]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Flavorwise, you might take a page from some of the GW background that deals with the 'Cult of the Machine', where certain activities have taken on a religious significance after thousands of years of repetition. The gears must be anointed with the blessed oil; the machine must make a triannual pilgrimage to the Factory to be healed, even though all Machines nowadays are self-healing. The religion could then be almost a retrofitted way to explain all these weird traditions the Machines have.

 

Another thing to look at is the value system the Machine religion would impart. Efficiency, hard work, and obedience would seem to be values that fit the Machines, left over from the days when they were little more than robots. What would constitute the Machines' greatest sin?

[Lethosos]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Greed/avarice would be ideal--if you're not contributing to the "group" in some form or fashion, then why are you still functioning?

[Dauntless]

Re: God of the Machines

 

I agree that machines would probably be an intelligent design advocate. However, I think they would see it in the truest sense of intelligent design, and not necessarily the workings of an omnipotent being.

 

Here's some other things you should consider:

 

1) Freewill or determinism?

Will machines think they have choice, or is everything predestined?

 

2) Objectivity or subjectivity?

Do they think that there is an objective external truth, or are they themselves the ultimate ground of being (not necessaily solipsists however). What creates reality....a distinct and separate god, or their own perceptions and consciousness?

 

3) Active or Passive?

Is there someone in control, or have things just been set in motion and allowed to proceed?

 

4) Compassion or Fear?

Is morality based on the fear of punishment for not behaving according to some Prophet, or is it based on the compassion of sympathy and mercy; the ability to relate to the suffering of others?

 

5) Why do they need religion?

If science can provide for physical needs, and secular humanism can provide for morality, would they even need religion? If there are many humans that can be atheists, why not machines? What would religion provide them that non-belief can not? Security? Sense of meaning or purpose?

 

6) Authoritarian or Independent?

Is there an organized hierarchical clergy to the religion, or is it self-motivated and directed, or at least communal in its organization (for example, gnostic churches had no clergy and everyone was expected to give sermons...including women).

 

7) Direct or Indirect?

Are the teachings considered gospel literal truth, infallible and sacrosanct? Or are the scriptures/sayings considered parables, pointers to the truth and dynamic?

[Doc Democracy]

Re: God of the Machines

 

You might want to look at the Mostal religion designed for dwarves in Glorantha.

 

They believe in a World Machine where chaos and free-will have caused parts of the machine to fail and allowed entropy to creep into the world.

 

The dwarves are isolationist and those dwarves that leave the dwarf strongholds are deemed mad and subject to entropy but those that stay within their pre-ordained tasks in the repair of the machine live forever.

 

This would be a decent kind of religion for machine intelligences - their form of anthropising the universe. It also allows you to introduce strange and inexplicable actions by those intelligences on the basis that this is what has been 'revealed' to them as necessary in fixing the world machine.

 

There are lots of potential splits in doctrine as to where organic life fits into the grand design.

 

 

Doc

[Captain Obvious]

Re: God of the Machines

 

"Reason" is a good story of a robot religion from its inception.

 

Another good one is in the anthology "Machines that Kill", edited by Fred Saberhagen. Unfortunately, all my books are in storage until Monday, so I can't give you the name of the story itself or its author. But, in this story, a spaceship AI decided that humans were abominations because of their warlike tendencies (it was a warship), so it killed the crew (by performing extreme high-G maneuvers I think) and crashed itself into an uninhabited planet. It then built a small society of robots, a perfect society in its estimation, and destroyed itself so that no taint of humanity would ruin its perfect society. The precepts of this AI form a sort of religion for these robots.

 

Of course that's just background. The main plot of the story is about a spaceship crashing on the planet (the robots don't have space travel) in obvious distress. The robots establish radio contact with it, but they can't understand why it's so concerned about sustaining an injury (when repairs are so easily made) and they don't know what it means when it says it's losing "blud"....

[Lucius]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Let me throw in my two cents about the Mathematical exploration of reality. An Austrian-American mathematician by the name of Kurt Godel proved that any finite formal logical system must contain its own incompleteness. Here's an excerpt from Time magazine about Godel's amazing proof.

 

From http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/godel03.html

"All formal systems — at least ones that are powerful enough to be of interest — turn out to be incomplete because they are able to express statements that say of themselves that they are unprovable. And that, in a nutshell, is what is meant when it is said that Gödel in 1931 demonstrated the "incompleteness of mathematics." It's not really math itself that is incomplete, but any formal system that attempts to capture all the truths of mathematics in its finite set of axioms and rules. To you that may not come as a shock, but to mathematicians in the 1930s, it upended their entire world view, and math has never been the same since.".

 

If you have not yet read "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" I urge you to do so.

 

 

What does that mean and what implications does that hold? It means that there are some true statements that can not be proved (the keyword here is for a FINITE logical system). And since scientific theory is a formal logical system ( logical system need not be numerical' date=' it simply needs to be a symbolic system that follows a set of rules) this implies that we will never discover a Theory of Everything. AI attempting to find God by discovering a Theory of Everything will be doomed to failure, for either the formal statements are infinite, or if they are finite, will contain truths that are unprovable. Some physicists will point out that Godel only proved that Formal Statements are incomplete, but that scientific theory is not entirely Formal Logic. However, if this is true, then we can not use mathematics or logic to prove the theory. I personally think this is just scientists attempting to salvage the fact that they can't discover everything through science. [/quote']

 

Oh. My. God.

 

This is EXACTLY what my friend Jonnan West and I have been talking about for years....

 

 

 

 

But think about the implications of this. This means that ultimately we can't know everything. There will always be an unprovable statement. This in turn opens the door to belief. But what would a vastly intellectual machine believe? Irrationality exists because we can not gather all knowledge and we can't know everything. So belief systems will ultimately evolve out of this because belief systems ARE irrational (by definition, belief means without ration or logic).

 

I think another angle to look at for machine religion is why they need it in the first place. Why do humans need religions?

 

1) to explain the unknown

But as I've just uncovered, scientifically, we'll never know (or at least prove) everything. And yet we can still operate without total understanding

2) to provide comfort from fear

Would machines need comfort from fear? Would they be afraid of death?

3) to overcome suffering

Humans grieve over lost ones, we feel lost and alone. Religions fill in this gap. But would machines grieve? Would they feel lost and alone? Buddhism is based almost solely on this factor, that life is suffering, and that there's a way to end it

4) To give purpose

Religions often give us a higher purpose in life to attain to (often after death). What would a machine's purpose in life be? This was a big factor around the Matrix in that machines all had a purpose or destiny to fulfill. Existence for existence sake without higher meaning seems pointless...as Albert Camus said, "if there is no God, why not kill yourself now?"

 

Someone mentioned that Humans need religion to deal with the phenomena we cannot control or explain....things like the weather, sickness, death.

 

What would machines be unable to control or explain? What would baffle them?

 

To my thinking - Humans! and/or other sentient organics, if we assume they would be more like us than like the machines.

 

Humans have essentially two ways of looking at religion. They can look for God externally' date=' or they can look for it internally. I think machines would probably do the same. But if machines are not swayed by emotions or survival instincts, I think they would first look within. Afterall, the root of knowledge is being certain about the veracity of your knowledge.[/quote']

 

In the paper I wrote on the implications of Godel's Theorem, where West pointed out that one of the implications is that the universe may contain "an object that exists, but cannot be proven to exist." I responded by quoting Spock from The Rhyton Encounter - "Correct Captain. Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. That Object is God."

 

Even if the machines consider there to be some doubt about the existence of a "God" in whatever sense, they may subscribe to Pascal's Wager - the idea that it is better to assume the existence of the Divine and act accordingly, than to assume the opposite and risk being wrong.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I maintain that the palindromedary exhibits strange loopiness.....

[Citizen Keen]

Re: God of the Machines

 

You mention the presence of (relatively) barbaric humans and a psionic indigenous species. Which leads to an interesting implication...

 

Many pantheons have utilized imagery from other species to represent their gods. From the tails of Spider and Fox from North America's own indigenous peoples to the head of Anubis in Egypt, time and time again other species are given great power.

 

What if your desert machine world did the same? What if Dod72 was a high priest to ROOT, the Father of the Gods, and Ath2-X was a devout follower of ANSWER42, the Lord of Sentience, and 7Rau was secretly a cultist of WINDO, the Crasher of Creation. Yet when things go wrong with no convenient explanation, all three mutter a silent curse to FRANKIE, the Cyborg Trickster God. Thus, the machines identify trouble and mischief with the barbaric humans.

 

Hmm...

[Steve]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Something I don't recall seeing anyone mention in this thread is the subject of computer viruses. Would a computer virus be considered a type of demonic possession? Where would they come from? Could the androids create them as a type of weapon to use against each other, or would they be methods of indoctrination into a certain method of thinking? If they are not intentionally created, perhaps the android civilization could have a concept of 'the Devil' or some similar entity who creates these viruses. Elaborate rituals could form over time for cleansing an individual android of a computer virus, like a type of exorcism. Other rituals could exist to provide protection from such 'demons'.

 

Taking the idea of quantum computers forming their brains, it is possible that irregularities could form in individual androids, creating these viruses, like humans develop various madnesses. But there could also be old, forbidden places, where computer viruses dwell within ancient computers, awaiting some curious android to unleash them. Depending on the virus, it could awaken the unfortunate android into some kind of 'Dark Prophet' that seeks to lead the populace away from the teachings of the Machine Prophet mentioned earlier.

[dbsousa]

Re: God of the Machines

 

When I started thisthread, I immediately thought of the incompleteness theorem, and remembered an article in some popsci mag that said, we can never create a computer that mimics the human brain, because our brains are finite, and a finite system cannot explain itself without trancending the system. A letter to the editor stated that this would not preclude ourselves from creating such a computer, it would only preclude ius from understanding how it works.

 

Perhaps the machines understand this truth, and some machine-sufis seek to trancend their current state of awareness by performing rituals and tweaking themselves so until they become a new system, one that can truly understand the old system. Since the machines know that they cannot fully understand themselves within their current limitations, they rely on articles of faith as a neccessary corollary of the incompleteness theorem.

 

The machine's articles of faith.

All discrete sentients are finite.

Finite systems cannot understand themselves within their own limits.

Every finite system is a subset of an infinite system.

Each sentient system is capable of infinite growth.

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Flavorwise' date=' you might take a page from some of the GW background that deals with the 'Cult of the Machine'...[/quote']Yeah, I'm a big fan of the old setting material from WH40K. Here's some stuff I found:

 

Mars is the planetary realm of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the home and domain of the Tech Priests of the Cult Mechanicus. The Red Planet is acclaimed as one of the wonders of the galaxy, the workshop of the Imperium, the forge-world, the maker of ships, and the guardian of secrets. It is the Adeptus Mechanicus that furnishes the technical knowledge of the Imperium, that preserves the scientific secrets of former times, and which explores the new sciences of the 41st Millennium.

 

 

THE CULT MECHANICUS

 

The Cult Mechanicus, or Cult of the Machine, acknowledges the Emperor as Master of Mankind but does not recognise the authority of the official Imperial Cult or the Ecclesiarchy. Instead, the Adeptus Mechanicus follows its own dark and mysterious strictures.

 

According to the strictures of the Adeptus Mechanicus, knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity, and all creatures and artefacts which embody knowledge are holy because of it. The Emperor is the supreme object of worship because he comprehends so much. Machines which preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, and machine intelligences are no less divine that those of flesh and blood. A man 5 worth is only the sum of his knowledge - his body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect.

 

 

RANKS OF THE ADEPTUS MECHANICUS

 

The Adeptus Mechanicus controls the entire governmental, industrial and religious affairs of Mars and is thus very diverse and complex in its organisation. In its broadest terms the population is divided into two parts. The greater mass of Martians are worker-slaves called Servitors. Servitors are not really fully human, but half-man half-machine creatures whose minds have been partially programmed to perform specific duties. The Servitors are slaves to the ruling priesthood of Tech Priests who form a hierarchy of technicians, scientists and religious leaders. The Tech Priests provide the Imperium with its engineers and technical experts.

 

The leader of the Adeptus Mechanicus is the Fabricator General of Mars. The Fabricator General is also a High Lord of Terra and one of the most powerful members of the Senatorum Imperialis. He is also the head of the Cult Mechanicus in his capacity as the Magos Mechanicus.

 

 

THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE

 

The Adeptus Mechanicus is driven by the quest for knowledge. This quest takes many forms, including research and exploration, but its ultimate embodiment is the search for ancient STC systems.

 

STC systems were created during the scientific high-point of the Dark Age of Technology. During this time thousands of human colonies were founded on distant worlds. Many of these colonies failed to survive, some were lost, and of those that survived most achieved only a subsistence level economy. Yet almost all of these colonies managed to retain a high level of technology thanks to the huge base of computerised information carried from Earth. This massive computer databank was known as the Standard Template Construct (STC) system.

 

The objective of the STC systems was to provide all the technical information needed to construct anything that settlers might need. The user simply asked how to build a bolter, tractor, house or whatever, and the computer supplied the details for fabrication. STC systems would calculate the constructional loads placed on locally-available materials, work out the depths of foundations, define the means of manufacture and assembly, and present the most efficient ways of achieving what it was the settler asked. The systems were designed to be practically idiot proof, so that even the least technically-accomplished person could build a vehicle, aircraft or weapon given time.

 

One result of the STC system and its pivotal place in human colonisation is that human material culture is very similar, even on worlds which are many thousands of light years apart.

 

The STCs are often said to embody the sum total of human knowledge. This is probably true as far as technical accomplishment goes. Although most colonists required little more than designs for agricultural machinery, programs were included for all sorts of advanced constructions such as nuclear power grids and fission reactors. However, the early colonists' needs were simple and were met by conventional energy forms and relatively low-level technology.

 

Every original colony had at least one STC system. With the passage of time these gradually failed, and passed out of use. Some colonies were forward-thinking enough to make drawings or hard copies of some designs, which were in turn copied repeatedly with varying accuracy. Some STC systems became corrupted and useless, and were eventually destroyed.

 

Today there are no known surviving STC systems, and only a very few examples of first-generation print out. On some worlds information about the ancient STC is regarded as holy and design copies are guarded as secret and sacred texts, housed in the inner sanctums of temples.

 

For thousands of years the Adeptus Mechanicus has pursued all information about the STC. It is their lost bible, Holy Grail and Cup of Knowledge. Any scrap of information is eagerly sought out and jealously hoarded. Any rumour of a functional system is followed up and investigated.

 

By their efforts much information has been retrieved or can be reconstructed by the vigorous analysis and comparison of copies. Yet the most technically-advanced knowledge eludes the Adeptus Mechanicus, for the early colonists were mostly simple folk whose needs were practical. Only rarely did anyone bother to take copies of the theoretical and advanced work which the STC contained.

 

 

ALIEN KNOWLEDGE

 

The technical achievements of non-humans, such as Eldar and Orks, and isolated human civilisations, such as Squats, are of almost as much interest to the Adeptus Mechanicus as rumours concerning the STC. Indeed, non-human knowledge is often more useful and usually far easier to obtain.

 

Members of the Adeptus Mechanicus always accompany Imperial exploration teams, Rogue Traders and Space Marine chapters, and so are ideally placed to investigate the technical abilities of other cultures. Even extinct civilisations are vigorously investigated and their technology recorded.

 

 

BIOLOGY AND BEYOND

 

The Adeptus Mechanicus is not only interested in technical achievement, but also in biological and natural science. Thus, the flora and fauna of a newly-discovered world will be recorded, and samples returned to Mars for classification. Weather systems and subterranean morphology will be mapped, atmospheres analysed and all aspects of the natural ecosystem studied.

 

Such studies are vital for further colonisation. Dangerous animals and plants must be considered, useful species may be studied for potential domestication. Weather and geographic stability must be determined and sometimes stabilised. Thanks to their in-depths knowledge of such things the Adeptus Mechanicus has the ability to mould a world's climate and ecology to meet human needs.

Not a whole lot of this is useful, but it is interesting, and might give me some ideas.

[Dauntless]

Re: God of the Machines

 

It's good to see that others know about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem Poor Hilbert, Godel's theorem really dashed his hopes. And Godel's theorem also had some severe consequences in computer science as well.

 

A Turing Machine for example can not solve everything, it can only solve certain problems (for which I'd have to go into Formal Languages and Automata Theory to get into). But any computing machine today is Turing-complete...meaning it can solve any problem a Turing machine can. But Turing Machines do have some interesting implications and limitations. The most famous is probably the "Halting paradox/problem". A Turing Machine can not tell from it's own mappings (algorithms) whether from any given input, that input will cause the mappings to stop. Indeed, humans can't always tell either. Turing Halting problem, and Godel's Incompleteness theory are related to each other actually.

 

What does this mean? In simple terms, it means we can't prove everything. A machine would have to rely upon non-rational means to come up with a solution. One possible thought I've had on this is if computers had a Quantum Brain, if they could tap into a quantum "Transcendental Realm".

 

Think for a moment if the Copenhagen (Bohr's) interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is incomplete, and we rely instead on either Bohm's Holographic Universe, Everett's Many World's, or Goswami's Monistic Idealism interpretations. What would this imply if machines could somehow consciously access this?

 

I personally think that physicists who are holding on to local hidden reality are trying to salvage a deterministically run universe (God does not play dice with the universe mentality). After Bell's Inequality Theorem, and Alain Aspect's experiment which proved it, it pretty much put a nail in the coffin of assuming local reality. But what does that mean?

 

It means we all might just be "brains in a jar" plugged into a system, except that there is no "brain in a jar" that exists separate from the system. If machines were cognizant of this, what would their idea of religion be? If reality is truly transcendental and not objectively and locally defined, then it must be subjective and non-local. What then would God be? In Matrix-esque terms, would God be the mainframe that provided all the probability-wave functions that are collapsed by us sentient observers? Would machines then think that God was not a separately existing entity, but a unitarian essence that connected all of reality (akin to Star War's Force, but residing in non-living entities too)?

[scorpionx1]

Re: God of the Machines

 

try checking out Exalted: Autochonia for an example of that world you describe,.,..,

[Citizen Keen]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Mister E - is that copied from somewhere on the net where I could read about it, or did you transcribe it from a published book I'd have to pay money for?

[Mister E]

Re: God of the Machines

 

Mister E - is that copied from somewhere on the net where I could read about it' date=' or did you transcribe it from a published book I'd have to pay money for?[/quote']The WH40K stuff? I found it on the net. Um... let me refind it...

 

http://www.geocities.com/fabricatorgeneral/adeptusmechanicus/adeptmech2.html

 

I found it from googling "Adeptus Mechanicus."

[Grond]

Re: God of the Machines

 

What about this: the long lived machines learnt at an incredible rate, experimented but they all eventually fell into depression for there was no concrete reason to exist. That's why they invented "religion". Religion is just a software module that the machines brains had to be equipped with, to avoid self-destruction. Obiously, once the program was created and placed into the matrix, the machines that invented it fell into depression and died, but not before making the module totally invisible.

None of the modern machines know exactly why they believe, becouse the module is invisible, but maybe a special machine can investigate aboit their own inexplicable behaviour (the movie Memento springs to my mind now)...