Artificial Worlds and Natural Worlds

Our AI seminar starts today!

Hi folks,

Just a last reminder that Breaking Open the AI Barrier starts in a few hours. There is still time to join us for the first session at 1 pm EST. You can sign up here (“late bird” 10% discount):

Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff will be joining us today. Rushkoff is the author of many amazing books and coined the term, “viral media,” among other accomplishments.

I am planning to discuss the idea of “technics” in the works of thinkers including Lewis Mumford (Technics and Civilization) and Bernard Stiegler (Technics and Time). For the last few days, I have also been reflecting on this short talk from one of the leaders of the Ahruak people of Colombia, which you can watch here:

In this short interview, the mammo says the following:

“Can you give some examples of what the artificial world is?”

“Well, our knowledge, our idea, doesn’t come from the artificial world. Our spirit is from the natural world, because I’ve never gone to other countries—I’ve stayed in my mountains. They are my guides, my protection, my security—both in terms of food and in my knowledge.

And I also say: we didn’t come here to suffer, to fight, to lie to each other. None of that. This world is well-developed, well-structured, well-regulated. It is full of light. Because here it doesn’t get dark. It’s only shadow. But many people feed themselves and dress themselves with the spirit of the dark world. And so, people from the dark world don’t see the natural world—only what they invent, which is all just games. Everything they do, they do with tools—games, games, games. And in their body, in their heart, it turns into pure fire. Negative fire, because they like to work only with fire.

So that person is in the dark world. They might say it’s daytime, but in their thoughts they live in the dark world. So they will never see the light. But if they start to see the natural world, then they begin to clear up—to truly see the light, physically, as a human being. Because someone might say, “Today the sun rose, it’s daytime now,” but in their thoughts there’s no light. They are still in the dark world.

In contrast, someone who belongs to the world of daylight sees the consequences. They see the lives of all living beings as part of the natural world. That person is a person of light. And they offer life to the rest of society. Because someone who doesn’t offer life is someone who doesn’t have a mind—they suffer, they don’t know where they’re going. They can’t hear, they can’t see. They only eat and eat. They are pure fire—like a flame that burns everything. That fire burns everything. A fire-minded person. A person with a mind of fire. We can’t live with that spirit in this physical world—because we end up destroying ourselves through a system that is made entirely of games.

And what are examples and inventions of that kind of person? They should think about leaving that fire-based system and start to see the reality of the physical world. How many water mountains are there? What kinds of trees exist? What types of animals? Then the mind begins to take shape. And from there, you start to work with the real system—the system of life.

Examples of these fire-minded people—what do they invent? Cars. They say, “The world needs development.” Development means airplanes, lots of cars, lots of iPhones. But everything is taken from the Earth—cutting down trees, breaking mountains, mining them—extracting tools from those mountains. But an airplane will not produce water. A car will not produce water. But when it was inside the mountain, it was producing water, pure air, pure forest, pure nature—the natural world.

That is the spirit of the natural world. Many people say, “We can’t live poor. We can’t live sad. We have to live in a world full of happiness.” But they destroy their own home, their own food, their own air. That’s not living well. That’s destroying yourself. So it means that the world is living with its thoughts, its spirit, in the dark world. But we have to see that the guarantee of life is in the natural world—the green world.

I find his distinction between the “dark world” or the “artificial world” and the natural world or the “world of light” to be a fascinating one to consider. For the Ahruak and Kogi people, the “younger brother” civilization of the modern world has made a severe error by seeking to remove the minerals and elements from nature and compose an artificial reality, with our “minds of fire.”

Stiegler actually focuses on the myth of the Greek titans Epithemeus (“afterthought”) and Prometheus (forethought) in his book. The myth of Epimetheus and Prometheus comes down to us from Hesiod and Plato. The titan brothers were given the job of distributing gifts to all living creatures. Epimetheus carelessly gives out all the natural attributes—strength, speed, fur, wings—to animals, leaving nothing for humanity. To compensate for this oversight, Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans, along with technē—craft, tool-making, and technics. And here we are today, “fire-minded people” trapping ourselves in “a system that is made entirely of games.”

For Bernard Stiegler, this myth reveals the human condition as one of fundamental lack, or what he calls “default of origin.” Unlike animals, we are not naturally equipped for survival. We rely on external supports—tools, memory aids, prosthetics. Technics refers to the externalized systems of tools, techniques, and technologies that humans invent and use to shape our world—and ourselves. Stiegler proposes that “technics” is actually constitutive of human consciousness, culture, and even temporality.

Even an indigenous culture like the Kogi has its own “technics,” its set of tools and technologies (weaving and so on). But their technics doesn’t require exploiting natural systems, mining minerals, and so on.

It does feel with AI, we have reached some culmination of our evolution as a tool-using, tool-making species. AI researcher Elizier Yudkowsky, among others, has noted that self-recursive AI could be the last tool that humanity creates, as it will then build and iterate future technologies. Yuval Noah Harari is one of many who is sounding the alarm about what this portends: “Within a few more years, AI could escape our control and either enslave or annihilate us.”

Whatever is happening, we are clearly in the midst of it! I am hoping our month-long seminar will provide useful contexts as we also explore creative pathways for using AI to bring about protopian, pro-social outcomes. Please join if you can. Partial and full scholarships are available: Email us at info@liminal.news .