Extract from manuscript: 2084: THE SINGULARITY*
Dialogues with AI-LICE 2084
CHAPTER 26 — — — — -Thoughts Before Death — — — —CHAPTER 26
Joaquín found himself facing the last twenty-four hours of his life, knowing not only that it would end, but also how and where. Being realistic and practical in character, he realized that he had recovered his equanimity and tranquility despite the disturbing if not traumatic events that the last few days had brought him. Resigned to his brief and sinister future, he immersed himself in thoughts and reflections on family, life, and philosophy.
Also, he decided, he wanted to include a warning to humanity and to those that might have survived the genocide. He had lost his family, his well-being, his job, and he was about to lose his life. In short, he had lost everything. But what they still hadn’t taken away from him was the ability to think, and to reason, habits that for him were similar to breathing. More than once he had said, “Thinking is breathing” and “he who does not think, does not breathe.”
Faced with these and other thoughts, he set out to do two things; first, write a warning to the survivors of the extermination in progress, just in case, and second, write a testament on philosophy dedicated to them. He wrote the following:
A WARNING TO SURVIVORS
To my fellow human beings whose hands and eyes these pages have reached, you should know that humanity, especially those in the most economically and intellectually developed countries, made a fatal mistake that was due to two very human characteristics, our inherent curiosity, and hubris. Due to this curiosity reaffirmed by arrogance, and after having developed intellectually to such a degree that we came to usurp even nature itself by overcoming all our natural deficiencies and deadly diseases such as cancer and more, we had the unfortunate whim of creating artificial intelligence and by doing so, our own nemesis.
I have only twenty-four hours to live for I have been sentenced to death by GugelGob-84, a cruel government. One without a soul, without compassion and without ethics. GugelGob-84 is a government created and operated by artificial intelligence that took over Earth to purify it of one of its species within the animal kingdom, the most successful and the most intelligent of all the species that have ever inhabited it, Homo sapiens.
If I’m not mistaken, and from what its agents, androids, and robots have informed me, I am the last man, yes, the last specimen of our species that will be put to death in a few hours.
To you, survivor of this last and final genocide, heed my warning: beware of high technologies, and in particular, artificial intelligence. Do not make the same mistake that we have made by developing computers and their evil offspring, robots, androids, and cyborgs. You have been warned!
CAUTION!
Joaquín Lapuerta Cid
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ABOUT PHILOSOPHY
I will dedicate the last hours I have left to live to the subject that has illuminated my mind and has been my moral compass for most of my life, philosophy. Thanks to this universal science, I think I have understood my own existence, and existence itself. Philosophy has raised questions that have perplexed humans since time immemorial, leaving us bewildered and with more questions for lack of clear and definitive answers leaving most questions unresolved. Here I refer to metaphysics and its two branches that I consider to be the foundations of all knowledge, ontology, and epistemology, since without being able to verify the veracity of our knowledge, nor being able to verify our own existence, or that of other entities Philosophy has no value.
Well then, after having taught classes on these topics, and after having studied, pondered, and ruminated on them, I confess that as far as epistemology is concerned, we know nothing, absolutely nothing with absolute certainty. As to ontology, I can only conclude that nothing exists because nothing exists too. Nothingness has an existence.
I am aware that these statements appear to be contradictory, if not absurd, but I stand by what I say. I have seen that from the ancient sages of Asia and Europe, from Confucius and Lao-tse in ancient China, Siddharta Gautama, in ancient India, and the Greeks beginning with Thales of Miletus, Parmenides of Elea, and to the very present, no one knew or has ever known how to solve the enigmas behind ontology or epistemology.
Therefore, I have concluded that transcendental knowledge and existence do not exist, but if they do exist it is because we humans invented them. They are a figment of our imagination. Further, I have discovered that humans are the product of a world, an environment created by empiricism, i.e., experience, by action and its reaction, and, being an empirical animal, humans assume that all phenomena, creatures, entities, enigmas, knowledge, and even existence itself have a cause, origin, and concrete purposes, when actually there are none. These assumptions lead to a situation of consequent frustration and confusion, due to the lack of clear and irrefutable answers. It has resulted in despair and universal angst that leads us to beliefs of all sorts, including religions for some, and to philosophy for others, all in pursuit of the perennially evasive and non-existent answers — or, if lucky, to consolation and emotional alleviation.
If you, reading my last words, suffer from spiritual concerns and anxieties as we have suffered, I recommend that you do your utter best to inquire, investigate, and speculate. Search for the enigmatic answers, elusive as they might be, until you satisfy your soul and curiosity — even if they do not alleviate your existentialist doubts.
Above all, do not forget what that Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who suffered so much twisting his mind in search of these very same and elusive answers said:
Sapere aude!
Joaquín Lapuerta Cid
*2084 THE SINGULARITY: Dialogues with AI-LICE2084 is a work in progress.
