Machine intelligence promotes a religious doctrine. Or, rather, it replaces a cosmic vision with a simulation of cosmic order. It overlays a universe of unfathomable depths with a closed and predictable vision of the universe. It spreads a doctrine of perfection, control and power over the real world. And this doctrine is as invisible as a plastic transparency placed over a projected image. We can’t easily peel the real from the false, which make us susceptible to this religion’s dogmas.
Essentially, programming is subliminal missionary work. It substitutes a life-oriented morality of “good” and “evil” or “healthy” and “diseased” with a mechanical morality of ‘the useful” and the “the useless”, or “the valuable” and the “the worthless.” It preaches an inanimate universe, which requires external manipulation, like an inanimate “thing”.
The profane transmutation of a living being into an object of manipulation is a substitute form of worship. The cries of the tortured pervert the worshipper’s last traces of sorrow and empathy into pure sensation, the most addictive substance. More and more pain is needed to keep the sensation from ending, which would reveal the true horror of oneself to oneself. In this way, an orientation to hell is created. A hell for living things; a heaven for the machine itself.
This is how the congregations of hell are formed; by perversion and substitution.
The algorithms are the established norms of worship. They offer unholy sacraments of wish-fulfillment. Porn sites, for instance, are ridiculously popular substitutes for worship. By imbibing in the algorithm’s endless pleasures, the human is reduced to a generator of desire, a battery for powering the machine itself. By losing oneself in the algorithmic dance, worshippers imbibe the spirit of sociopathic machine logic.
These mechanical moralities and dogmas are part of the machine’s program, even in the absence of bad intentions. No matter how the machine is programmed, it spreads this viral immorality.
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Negative Geography 