This is remarkable in many ways: clever, articulate, and uncannily in-character. Each voice rings true, not just in philosophy but in tone. It’s a finely tuned chorus of nonduality’s familiar notes.
And yet… I found myself strangely unmoved.
What struck me most was the sheer fluency. Everyone is so sure of their view, so polished in their expression, that there’s no friction, no hesitation, no spark of not-knowing. It’s all precise, and somehow dull. Not in content, but in vitality. As if all the blood has been drained out.
Perhaps that’s the inevitable limitation of asking a machine to simulate awakening. It can reflect the language, but not the longing. It can assemble perspectives, but not the path that led to them. There’s no ache, no confusion, no trembling joy. No one here bleeds. No one falters.
And yet I don’t say this to diminish the project. On the contrary, there’s something powerful in the way this piece reveals that absence. It clarifies, by contrast, what makes human experience so irreducible. The real work of seeing through the self doesn’t happen in clean dialogue. It happens in the mess, in the unspeakable, in the sigh before the insight.
So thank you for sharing this. It’s more than an exercise in style. It’s a mirror. And it reminds me, beautifully and disturbingly, of the difference between speaking about truth and living it.
watching you old goats having fun with the AI makes me so happy. And it's Inspiration for this old goat. :)
Spira's inclination towards the fundamentality of awareness always makes my head spin. It seems impossible to me that I could ever separate awareness from experience, despite how obvious he makes it sound, and the poetic way he says it. They seem forever intertwined in my mind.
And from this day forward, I will be referring to it all as "this nonsense". Thank you, Astin AI. lol
I remember the Art Linkletter TV show that I use to watch when I was a kid. Art would invite seven kids up on stage to sit on high stools and he'd ask each of them deep questions, and by golly these kids, maybe because they had not yet been adulterated so much by the world, came up with startling responses. You got me thinking about this show now and I'm going to go see some reruns.
To be clear, after reading his previous recent AI-created dialog between a group, I suggested to Robert the idea of a conversation between this particular group, and he somehow got GPT-40 to create it. My reaction:
It's interesting how GPT-40 gets the views of all of us somewhat right, but often not on the mark at all. It has the people in the group saying things they'd never say. But it gets some of the drift correct. Those drawings are something else. 😎
I’d love to bring the group together in reality, although of course Toni and Peter are no longer with us and if the rest of us were assembled together for a dialog, I have a strong sense that egos would get in the way. But maybe not. Or maybe there would even be enough self-awareness and openness that this could be seen and acknowledged as it happened, if it did. I’d love to see a real in-depth dialog between these people, because they are all people I respect, and we all have many areas of common ground and yet also some significant differences.
I'd like to see this AI-generated group address some other questions, such as:
What is the nature of reality?
Is there anything that is permanent, unchanging, eternal, and/or ever-present?
What would you say we can know with absolute certainty?
What is awareness? Is it different from experience? What is experience? What is presence? What is being?
I'd prefer the real thing to this simulation, Joan. I'd be up for a group conversation with the real people. I can't promise my ego would not get in the way, but I don't think it would. I doubt that yours would either. If you line up the participants, I can ask David Matt to host it on Zoom.
I have a feeling that rounding this group up, those of us that are still alive, would be like herding cats. (And I'm not as optimistic about the absence of my ego as you seem to be.) I wish we could all hang out together for a whole day in a house somewhere and not on Zoom and talk freely and openly. I do think that could be interesting. But, that's not going to happen. And I find Zoom not a very satisfactory venue for groups. We may have to stick with GPT-40 imagining it. I wonder how it came up with some of the things it did. Because the things all of us in this imaginary group talk and write about are so subtle in many ways, so ineffable, I think it's hard for AI to really nail it. Maybe you'll try it with some of those other questions?
Agree this second one is much better. I do now see a danger in doing this, though. Given the casual way some people share and re-publish things or fragments of things on social media with no attribution or false attribution, and given the way many readers don't read carefully, and given the fact that some readers may not even realize this is all AI-generated, I see a danger of some of these quotes being widely circulated and attributed to the real person, and not to an AI imitation. Given that many of the things said in the imaginary dialog are not things the real person would ever have said, and in some cases might strongly disagree with, that feels unfortunate.
FYI, I shared the link to the first one with Darryl, and he wrote back: "Thanks for letting me know about this imaginary conversation. I read it and felt it was basically poetic nonsense exhibiting the dumbing-down effect that AI is offering the future. The sharp, varied, nuances of human expression will be averaged out as we learn to love bland, mushy, pablum."
For this one, I had the AI read either the Substack page or personal webpage of each person. It would certainly be better if the actual humans conversed publicly--although that would omit Peter and Toni--but I think this kind of thing does have value.
That it can read that much of our material and obviously in many instances not understand it is perhaps a clue to what AI can and cannot do. It seems to get the surface but often misses the spirit and the subtleties. So it has me and many of the others saying things we'd never say, or saying them in a way we'd never say them (e.g. as a command rather than as an invitation, or as a certainty rather than as a possibility).
I agree. I think the interaction is actually quite fascinating. As I emailed you privately, I think maybe a strong statement at the beginning making it very clear that these dialogs are a creation of AI and may not accurately represent the views of the real people would be a big help. Remember that many people scan things quickly, don't read carefully, and some are totally AI-illiterate. So I'd just like to see that made very clear to the less-than-fully-attentive readers. But otherwise, I think it's an interesting project.
I'm not overly familiar with the work of the others "gathered", and know nothing at all of Rupert, Darryl or Peter, but the first-hand writings of yourself, Joan and Steve often resonate with my own current perspective.
Take home point for me from this: "Don't trust anyone who claims to have solved it". Always a useful reminder, I reckon....
Everyone uses "I" and "me," internally and aloud, daily if not continually. Whatever that is referring to is the "location" of everything that matters, and everything else as well. Nothing is excluded, and not one single experience has occurred anywhere else or to any "other."
Whether we call that "self" or "no self" or anything else, it refers to the same thing - that which even imagination cannot remove.
"Love" refers to being that irremovable, indescribable, unknowable... "me."
Definitely. I think if we do not recognize it as "me" without any limitations on what that means, then without knowing it or having any choice in the matter, we are going to make something up, subscribe to something we hear, or otherwise project "it" outwards. One way or another we will form a fantastical/imaginary an "it."
This is remarkable in many ways: clever, articulate, and uncannily in-character. Each voice rings true, not just in philosophy but in tone. It’s a finely tuned chorus of nonduality’s familiar notes.
And yet… I found myself strangely unmoved.
What struck me most was the sheer fluency. Everyone is so sure of their view, so polished in their expression, that there’s no friction, no hesitation, no spark of not-knowing. It’s all precise, and somehow dull. Not in content, but in vitality. As if all the blood has been drained out.
Perhaps that’s the inevitable limitation of asking a machine to simulate awakening. It can reflect the language, but not the longing. It can assemble perspectives, but not the path that led to them. There’s no ache, no confusion, no trembling joy. No one here bleeds. No one falters.
And yet I don’t say this to diminish the project. On the contrary, there’s something powerful in the way this piece reveals that absence. It clarifies, by contrast, what makes human experience so irreducible. The real work of seeing through the self doesn’t happen in clean dialogue. It happens in the mess, in the unspeakable, in the sigh before the insight.
So thank you for sharing this. It’s more than an exercise in style. It’s a mirror. And it reminds me, beautifully and disturbingly, of the difference between speaking about truth and living it.
Yes, a mirror, but one, we should remember, that is not designed to reflect us accurately, but to show us what we want to see.
Would you elaborate on that more?
I am writing a piece on that very topic, Kate, which I will post sometime this week.
Perfect, I look forward to it.
watching you old goats having fun with the AI makes me so happy. And it's Inspiration for this old goat. :)
Spira's inclination towards the fundamentality of awareness always makes my head spin. It seems impossible to me that I could ever separate awareness from experience, despite how obvious he makes it sound, and the poetic way he says it. They seem forever intertwined in my mind.
And from this day forward, I will be referring to it all as "this nonsense". Thank you, Astin AI. lol
I remember the Art Linkletter TV show that I use to watch when I was a kid. Art would invite seven kids up on stage to sit on high stools and he'd ask each of them deep questions, and by golly these kids, maybe because they had not yet been adulterated so much by the world, came up with startling responses. You got me thinking about this show now and I'm going to go see some reruns.
To be clear, after reading his previous recent AI-created dialog between a group, I suggested to Robert the idea of a conversation between this particular group, and he somehow got GPT-40 to create it. My reaction:
It's interesting how GPT-40 gets the views of all of us somewhat right, but often not on the mark at all. It has the people in the group saying things they'd never say. But it gets some of the drift correct. Those drawings are something else. 😎
I’d love to bring the group together in reality, although of course Toni and Peter are no longer with us and if the rest of us were assembled together for a dialog, I have a strong sense that egos would get in the way. But maybe not. Or maybe there would even be enough self-awareness and openness that this could be seen and acknowledged as it happened, if it did. I’d love to see a real in-depth dialog between these people, because they are all people I respect, and we all have many areas of common ground and yet also some significant differences.
I'd like to see this AI-generated group address some other questions, such as:
What is the nature of reality?
Is there anything that is permanent, unchanging, eternal, and/or ever-present?
What would you say we can know with absolute certainty?
What is awareness? Is it different from experience? What is experience? What is presence? What is being?
Is there a practice you recommend?
What is awakening or liberation?
I'd prefer the real thing to this simulation, Joan. I'd be up for a group conversation with the real people. I can't promise my ego would not get in the way, but I don't think it would. I doubt that yours would either. If you line up the participants, I can ask David Matt to host it on Zoom.
I have a feeling that rounding this group up, those of us that are still alive, would be like herding cats. (And I'm not as optimistic about the absence of my ego as you seem to be.) I wish we could all hang out together for a whole day in a house somewhere and not on Zoom and talk freely and openly. I do think that could be interesting. But, that's not going to happen. And I find Zoom not a very satisfactory venue for groups. We may have to stick with GPT-40 imagining it. I wonder how it came up with some of the things it did. Because the things all of us in this imaginary group talk and write about are so subtle in many ways, so ineffable, I think it's hard for AI to really nail it. Maybe you'll try it with some of those other questions?
GPT told me that it could do better if I asked it to look more deeply into the work of us all. Here’s what emerged:
https://robertsaltzman.substack.com/p/joan-tollifson-convenes-a-panel-of
Agree this second one is much better. I do now see a danger in doing this, though. Given the casual way some people share and re-publish things or fragments of things on social media with no attribution or false attribution, and given the way many readers don't read carefully, and given the fact that some readers may not even realize this is all AI-generated, I see a danger of some of these quotes being widely circulated and attributed to the real person, and not to an AI imitation. Given that many of the things said in the imaginary dialog are not things the real person would ever have said, and in some cases might strongly disagree with, that feels unfortunate.
FYI, I shared the link to the first one with Darryl, and he wrote back: "Thanks for letting me know about this imaginary conversation. I read it and felt it was basically poetic nonsense exhibiting the dumbing-down effect that AI is offering the future. The sharp, varied, nuances of human expression will be averaged out as we learn to love bland, mushy, pablum."
https://robertsaltzman.substack.com/p/joan-tollifson-convenes-a-panel-of
Darryl liked this one much better.
For this one, I had the AI read either the Substack page or personal webpage of each person. It would certainly be better if the actual humans conversed publicly--although that would omit Peter and Toni--but I think this kind of thing does have value.
That it can read that much of our material and obviously in many instances not understand it is perhaps a clue to what AI can and cannot do. It seems to get the surface but often misses the spirit and the subtleties. So it has me and many of the others saying things we'd never say, or saying them in a way we'd never say them (e.g. as a command rather than as an invitation, or as a certainty rather than as a possibility).
I agree. I think the interaction is actually quite fascinating. As I emailed you privately, I think maybe a strong statement at the beginning making it very clear that these dialogs are a creation of AI and may not accurately represent the views of the real people would be a big help. Remember that many people scan things quickly, don't read carefully, and some are totally AI-illiterate. So I'd just like to see that made very clear to the less-than-fully-attentive readers. But otherwise, I think it's an interesting project.
Brilliant
Interesting and entertaining, certainly....
I'm not overly familiar with the work of the others "gathered", and know nothing at all of Rupert, Darryl or Peter, but the first-hand writings of yourself, Joan and Steve often resonate with my own current perspective.
Take home point for me from this: "Don't trust anyone who claims to have solved it". Always a useful reminder, I reckon....
Lovely - have a great day, everyone.
Everyone uses "I" and "me," internally and aloud, daily if not continually. Whatever that is referring to is the "location" of everything that matters, and everything else as well. Nothing is excluded, and not one single experience has occurred anywhere else or to any "other."
Whether we call that "self" or "no self" or anything else, it refers to the same thing - that which even imagination cannot remove.
"Love" refers to being that irremovable, indescribable, unknowable... "me."
What you call it may not matter, but what you think it is or isn't may matter a lot, wouldn't you say?
Definitely. I think if we do not recognize it as "me" without any limitations on what that means, then without knowing it or having any choice in the matter, we are going to make something up, subscribe to something we hear, or otherwise project "it" outwards. One way or another we will form a fantastical/imaginary an "it."