If you listen to small children's babbling, they sound exactly like little Markov chains. As they start to get older, their 'next()' function is informed more and more by semantic connections, reasoning, chains of association etc. until they're talking as people, not just like people.

We tend to think of language as separate from the rest of life, maybe because it's so transportable, but in a way it's strange to imagine an intelligence that only deals in language, and not even the language of "its own species."

A baby babbles I guess for fun but also because it's part of the process of playing with the world to learn to cope with it and to become an effective person. So talking, walking, eating, etc, are all part of the same general activity of life, and they all have their own forms of "grammar."

The semantic connections and associations go all across embodied life; you can't really use human language without being a person who also sees, moves, eats, loves, etc.

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations starts from the first paragraph by quoting Augustine:

> ‘When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires.’ (Augustine, Confessions, 1. 8.)

Wittgenstein thinks this is a good example of a misunderstanding of how language and language acquisition works. Then he formulates an understanding of language that focuses less on meaning and signification and more on social activity and speech acts.

I have a feeling that I myself am babbling right now, I don't know exactly what my point is and I'm hungry for breakfast...

Yeah, exactly. Almost everything a small child does is a directed attempt to generate training data, whether they're talking to you or talking to themselves or grabbing random things or trying to crawl into traffic.

I am not finding the link right now, but there were some researchers who attached a mic to very young babies that could pick up very faint sounds and an earphone to their caregivers and the researchers listened carefully to the baby and signaled the caregiver to touch the baby every time the baby made a (basically inaudible) intentional speech sound. After a short time the baby started producing a lot more of those sounds.

Similarly, since babies can’t really talk, caregivers can advance their communication by a few months by teaching them a simple sign language.

(Disclaimer: I didn’t do either of these things with my 2 year old. Just read about it.)

There's something I remember reading about, years ago, by I think a linguist: there's a point during a child's development where their language skills appear to suddenly get worse, which they thought was because the kid stops just rote repeating and instead is trying to conjugate words themselves (and getting it wrong because it's so new).

> I wonder what theologians might say about this question.

I'm not a theologian, but I was very catholic for first 22 years of my life, and for me the Blade Runner was more about the relation with god than about the question "are we artificial".

Basically it was a prometheic/messianic story - Man searches for God to get answers and fight for salvation.

And the answer he got was "whatever, I don't care, your life has no meaning and you cannot be saved". And then the Man forgives the God and dies - reversing the Jesus story.

It resonated strongly with me, world is much more consistent with incompetent God that doesn't care, than with a loving, caring and omnipotent God.

As for "are we artificial" - what does it even mean? My former religion accepted evolution, so the question was "was it God that caused evolution, on is there no God and it was just an accident".

Actual piloting (critical thinking, reasoning, creativity) requires more mental effort and is much slower. Perhaps our brains are optimized to have the pilot train the autopilot (so to speak) when necessary, but otherwise leave things to the autopilot? I suppose that's why training, muscle memory, and practice are so important.

I don't think any of this is controversial but it does seem a lot more human activity runs on autopilot than we thought.

For some reason, we as humans seem to like thinking of our conscious / deliberate pilot as ourselves, and the subconscious / autopilot as some form of "Other" somehow cohabiting our bodies.

(I'd expect this viewpoint to be especially true for the academic / programmer crowd here on Hacker News, who stereotypically tend to be more skilled in logical / deliberate forms of thought, and comparatively lacking in the intuitive / automatic, such as social skills).

However, the subconscious is as much YOU as the part of which you are more aware, and, in fact, probably has a GREATER effect on your action. In conclusion, the autopilot is as deserving of the term "actual" pilot, as the deliberate pilot is.

I was not referring to the subconscious as autopilot. To stretch this already tenuous analogy further the subconscious would be the flight control software.

I'm saying during our waking supposedly conscious experience our conscious selves (pilot) is actually rarely in control. Most of our choices are automatic (autopilot) and the conscious mind retroactively invents rational explanations for them when we bother to notice them at all.

Free will (if it exists) is probably almost entirely contained within the ability of the pilot to repeatedly tweak the autopilot settings, which is entirely indirect and a far smaller degree of control than we like to suppose.

If you consider evolution this isn't so surprising. Intelligence is just one strategy for adaptation and evolution repurposes and builds on top of existing structures. Why wouldn't the rational conscious mind evolve as a tweak on top of an unconscious intelligence, which itself is a tweak on top of subconscious/instinctual behavior? If animal studies are proving anything it's that intelligence is a spectrum and many supposedly human behaviors (concept of self, tool use, et al) are present in other species.

From what I understand, Heidegger's phenomenology is related to this piloting and autopiloting, exemplified by the way a hammer only appears as explicit conscious representation to a woodworker when something is wrong with it. The hammer's normal relation to the woodworker is just its ordinary function; the tool's own presence recedes.

But then I also wonder if there's something suspicious about the pilot/autopilot dualism. It seems to mirror dualisms like culture/nature and animal/human. Maybe what we think of as piloting is not as critical, rational, and creative as we are inclined to believe?

We see the same thing with auto racing. Really experienced drivers "feel" as if the car is an extension of themselves. Its mechanical nature disappears beneath conscious thought.

My hypothesis (admittedly based on little evidence) is this is an optimization function due to conscious thought being a relatively slow process. Once the autopilot has integrated the necessary functions the conscious mind can get out of the way and focus on more "important" things. This appears to apply to memory as well: unless the situation is in some way extraordinary the brain doesn't bother keeping full details in long-term storage. When interrogated later our minds just make up the likely details and call it good enough.

> But then I also wonder if there's something suspicious about the pilot/autopilot dualism. It seems to mirror dualisms like culture/nature and animal/human. Maybe what we think of as piloting is not as critical, rational, and creative as we are inclined to believe?

If it helps I was thinking of the mind as four layers: unintelligent instinctual/automatic systems, subconscious processing, autopilot, and pilot (conscious rational mind).

That said I think you are correct: being critical, rational, or creative is probably rarer than we like to believe. Maybe it is partially a cultural belief, as if admitting we are just cruising through life most of the time makes us seem stupid or un-human?

It sounds like you have said something objective. But really perception of time is a completely subjective phenomenon as well, constructed from unconscious processes which create conscious experience.

People in great fear report time slows down, but also top tier athletes.

Thinking hard about something is one particular kind of unified subjective experience.

I'm talking about measuring reaction time or brain imaging studies.

For top athletes autopilot kicks in and reacts to the situation, then issues commands to our subconscious body control processes, which then issues nerve impulses to begin movement, all before the pilot (prefrontal cortex?) has even perceived the situation, let alone made any decisions. The autopilot knows how to do this via repeated trailing guided by the pilot function.

You can also observe this in brain imaging studies which can show the body reacting before any thought took place. If pressed people will invent a rational justification for their behavior but the brain images prove this is entirely post-hoc most of the time.

My theory is this is due to conscious thought being so much slower, but I don't have any proof.

I doubt the school teachers who failed his mathematics exam would have major issues finding at least some of the problems in the generated texts he gave as examples.

So asking the question whether humans are "artificial" stems from a place of low empathy, I think.

You need to distinguish consciousness from ego/free will. Consciousness is the fact that there's something rather than nothing, subjectively. That you seem to experience: sights, sounds, sensations, emotions. Under that definition consciousness is something that cannot be fake (no matter what's the nature of the universe; no matter whether you're asleep or awake), simply because you experience things.

Ego/free will is a separate concept and is indeed an illusion (or an evolutionary artifact if you like The Selfish Gene). There's a lot of evidence for that, the simplest being that no mainstream physical theory allows us to have made choices any differently than we have (barring true randomness like quantum mechanics predicts; but it's also easy to see that that's not freedom, just plain randomness).

There are books on the topic, I don't have a slightest hope to get the point across, but I think if you ponder it long enough then you can come to the conclusion even on your own. You can call this familiar pattern "myself" but it's not like there's any ego that you can find in there.

And what I mean here is not "let go of your self be free and enlightened". It's just that it's all more reasonable from purely rational perspective. There are a lot of patters that you can observe in and around you. You can call them all John Doe, but when you examine these patterns, you can exclude some as something that's "not you", just a thing that happens here. If you keep doing that I don't see how can you extract what you call ego. You could group some selfish behavior patterns and associate them with ego as in when we say somebody has a big ego, but I don't think that's what you mean here.

Fine, but what happens when I die? My body is still there but it’s not really me anymore. I’m gone. The body left behind is just a husk. So it seems that I am not just a hunk of matter, but at least a hunk of matter imbued with a dynamic pattern of activity: breathing, perceiving, reacting, speaking, and so on.

Fine, but what about sleepwalking? In some sense it’s me who’s doing the things the sleepwalker does, but in some crucial sense it’s not really me. That’s a subtle and strange distinction, but we make this distinction in everyday life. I don’t blame someone for snoring, and when I feel annoyed I recognize I am being irrational.

And so on until you start to refine a picture of the person’s self as something like that body’s everyday nexus of thoughts, emotions, and decisions, being the result of socialization and growing to adulthood, especially within a narratively coherent life.

There’s no need for a homunculus ego in some infinite regress of ultimate causality—that is indeed a nonreal, fantastical kind of self, the kind of self that early Buddhists criticized the brahmins of their time for promoting as the true self.

Real selves are just developed, cultivated, socialized entities that arise as psychological realities. There might be more complex, nuanced structures than just “one body, one self.” But the insistence that selves are just nonexistent delusions seems to me like an unnecessarily provocative way of formulating something.

Or if it's "nexus of thoughts, emotions, and decisions" then maybe you think more about patterns of behavior. If you would call it just as a currently observed patterns of behavior and update it as behaviors change then I think it's just a matter of naming them or not, they are clearly there.

But my point is that there is no nexus. Thoughts, emotions and decisions are there but there is no single central point to them apart from maybe current point in time which is basically a story that allows you to reason about the world as explained in [2].

But even in common sense distinction you are talking about seems very vague. You "say something before you think" you do something "on autopilot" or you're coding while being so deep in the flow that you are not aware of yourself etc. You or not really you?

You can blame someone for an outburst of anger (he's not sleeping) to then realize he had a tumor in the brain pressing against the amygdala. It can be the same story with yourself.

So where is self? Naming people is useful. It's not about that. It's just that we tend to look and talk about some inner pattern inside that pattern without really ever finding it.

Even treating whole body and behavior as a pattern seems somewhat context dependent. Maybe I was part of Milgram experiment or fought in some war - "that wasn't really me".

I'm sorry if it sounds provocative. I know that "losing self" has some associations that don't necessarily promote rationality.

I'm just interested in how people organize it in their heads.

1. https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.h...

2. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Multiple_drafts_model

That's how some Buddhist texts approach the question, typically with a horse cart or a wheel as the object they demonstrate lacks a fixed essence.

To which I say, sure, fine, there is no essence. There's still a table, a cart, a self! We don't need such essences. We don't need to be able to pinpoint the exact location or center of every entity we take to exist.

It is indeed interesting to look at edge cases and borders, like what happens to the self during states of deep meditative absorption, for example. Well, let's say it temporarily dissolves, like when you heat up a piece of wax. Maybe that's accurate, maybe not.

Buddhists do talk about the self like this, that it comes and goes, that settling into samadhi makes it calm down and fade into a more diffuse state, and so on. They also say that the self is ultimately an "illusion", but in the same sense that everything is an illusion: it is temporary, compounded, dependent, etc, while we sometimes are deluded to think otherwise, e.g. that our soul is eternal which is of course a common belief (that I do not hold).

Buddhists also always add that the teachings about "not self" are not to be taken as metaphysical claims, but as useful instructions for teaching a practice, the practice of meditation leading to liberation. Or in a lighter sense, you can practice having a less limiting self-definition, or to accept that your self is dynamic and expansive.

Still, people exist, and "self" is basically just a word I use to denote myself as a person. In my solitary flow states I am in a different state than in ordinary social situations; maybe I am a bit like a chameleon, too.

People are extremely complex and marvelous, so they exist in many different ways, within many different kinds of relations and environments, and they are constantly changing and adapting, but they are also constantly maintaining and preserving.

That's all a bit of a ramble, I didn't have time to organize these thoughts properly!

This doesn't necessarily follow. Emergent properties are still real, even if you can't separate that property from the system that generates it.

The fact that we are talking about it, is not enough for it to exist.

Let's say there is a ray of light from the sky. And people start talking that there's a white tower standing on the ground as high as the sky. Everybody knows what we are talking about, it's just that we go there, examine it, and it turns out it's just a ray of sun from behind the cloud.

Not such a great example because a white tower would still be much more clearly defined than the ego is, but that's what came to mind.

The way I see it, your perception of there being "a little you" is basically a self-referential part of your brain taking a bunch of status readings from all over your brain and using them to generate the sensation of the little you doing whatever it is that you're doing.

The homunculus is there in your head, but he's just a picture on the screen in your Cartesian theatre.

To be clear: the mystery is there - no-one has yet shown how minds do work - it is the assumption that it must be forever so that is a matter of faith (as is the opposite view; the issue is why a person would lean one way or the other.)

I think humans employ markov chains (MCs) all the time. (Back in the days of symbolic AI, these became popular as 'frames', AKA case-based reasoning.)

But it's clear that human cognition far exceeds the capacity of simple probabilistic devices like MCs, much as context-free grammars exceed finite state machines. Eventually it became clear that too much of intelligence cannot be modeled viably using simple probabilistic mechanisms like MCs or frames (like memory, logic, and learning).

I'm hopeful that work like GPT-2 will accomplish the same revelation for the limits inherent in probability-based models via deep nets. As long as AI models fail to model semantics explicitly, they will forever create only narrow savants or general morons.

But so is a rock, so I would argue it is not an overly illuminating fact. Furthermore I suppose you have this very convincing experience of free will, an experience that seems pretty robust even when facing such facts as the brain is just made of chemicals, so I wouldn't worry about it.

"A human being is not mindless or mentally deficient without language, but he is severely restricted in the range of his ideas."

To defend the original metaphor: without language, a person might be akin to a Markov chain generated from the relatively small 'corpus' of individual experience.

While the 'well socialized' individual can draw on the vast range of human experiences shared in language. They have access to a much larger corpus.

Imho many theists are very aware of these alternative interpretations, but due to all of them being rather unsettling and potentially existential-dread inducing, they chose the "Welp, I rather go with the God thing, that's less hassle" route.

Nothing wrong with that, we all have a mind of our own that allows us to frame our world view in the way most convenient/understandable to us.

But sadly it seems these difference in world view too often prevent us from agreeing on a consensus about how to go about things or even where to go in the first place.

Oh yes, absolutely. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...

It advances the hypothesis.

> Dawkins indicates that your self is a kind of evolved meme whose function in nature is to further your family of genetic replicators;

I'd say your self is rather a battlefield for such memes.

My actions are undoubtedly being driven primarily by a series of electrical, chemical, and other reactions going off in my mind and throughout my body. Manipulate my brain in various ways and you can manipulate my behavior in various ways. In this regard I'm effectively a glorified automaton. Yet the catch here is that there is something inside here, 'me', observing all of this happen and having the perception of controlling it. When I write a program to generate a random number I find it inconceivable that suddenly some entity poofs into existence observing itself imagining it's deciding on a random number only to inevitably decide on the number that my pseudo-random algorithm had already predetermined given its initial state.

And similarly, even if we made vastly more complex systems that could create a passable replication of human behavior - I do not think there would, at any point, suddenly appear some entity within that machine suddenly imagining itself driving the deterministic decisions occurring within. A religious individual would call this 'me' your soul. I'm more compelled by the simulation hypothesis for reasons beyond the scope of this post. But in either case this is something that will undoubtedly never going to be proven in any way during our lifetimes, if ever. So it's a place where an individual must come to their own conclusion based on very limited information.

That a bad decision could have unimaginable consequence here is undoubtedly what drove things such as Pascal's Wager [1]. Though he failed to consider of course that life itself could be a test. Willingness to adopt views one does not genuinely believe for hope of future reward and convenient social graces, is probably not something that would score so well. Quite the burdensome consideration, life is.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

Why would you think something like that??!! I'm really curious of your reasoning...

To me and other peoples like me, both reason and intuition are "99.9%" sure that this is how it all works. Life / the universe / math / is full of emergent phenomena/properties, things that you'd say "suddenly appear". Even in pure math, even basic and boring areas like number theory have deep structure in them unseen if you just think from the "basic principles" step by step.

The illusion is the opposite kinds of things: things where you (mistakenly believe) you understand the full causal sequence of things and that there are no extra things that can pop out of the darkness and surprise your reason. This is plain arrogance. "Step by step rational reasoning" doesn't work except in a very very small number of cases. Because natural processes can only rarely be approximated to a human-brain-friendly number of steps - most of the time you can't reason A -> B -> C because there's a gazillion steps from A to C, and they're all no-linear eg. you can't "compress them" into a fewer number of steps (btw, this is the insight behind deeps neural networks and "deep learning" - very very basic math operations + some adequate non-linear transforms between them ---> "emergent" intelligence).

"Rational thought" as understood naively by lots of non-techical people is a weird distorted aberration.

If I were to subscribe to mystical viewpoint, it would likely be some form of pan-teism or "the entire universe is conscious / pure consciousness" whatever thing, it's the only thing that would even remotely make sense... the whole idea of "soul" and all that ghost-in-the-machine and "chinese room argument" nonsenses deriving from that... I almost feel that you people thinking this way are an entire different species from us, how can you "compute" like that? It's almost as if human brains "diverged" at some point and produced two different types of minds with completely different views of the world...

No need for a soul.

Initial set of the network (DNA, Hox genes, and a million others) and the environment "is all" that is needed for that fire to light up in there.

Not always, unfortunately. Severe developmental disorders sometimes prevent the forming of that consciousness.

So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people?

I still can't figure out how very smart people who know a lot of science, look at this world and say "here - science", "there - also science", and then there's me. I know how my brain works and that you can manipulate my behavior just by touching it, but apart from it there's also the entity. It's obviously not there but I'm also sure it is.

Emergent behavior of complex systems. Is it so hard to believe that we are one?

If you want some romance in all this then how about the universe looking at itself. Is it burdensome?

> So I code a fleshy looking automaton that it's indistinguishable for you from a human. Every action and communication is 100% convincing. Surely you feel some empathy towards it (since you are not able to tell) and you may even want it not to suffer. Does that change after I tell you what it "really is"? How about other people?

Your comment has nothing at all to do with the comment you quoted. Whether something is merely convincing to you or I is irrelevant–since it wouldn't actually be cognizant either way. The parent comment was discussing meta-cognition and the fact that even if you made a replica it wouldn't have meta-cognition like we do.

Before brushing Pascal's Wager aside, one should remember that Pascal was one of the main founding fathers of probability itself. We're not talking about some lightweight mucking around in the mud of primitive mankind's ignorance. The man knew what he was talking about.

While the book is science fiction, it does make an interesting case, and some of it is grounded in actual research.

Off topic: There was also another book that made it clear to me, that "the stars do not belong to mankind". Something about the spiritual awakening of humankind, leading do another evolutionary tree for our children, while the adults are left to die, knowing they'll never be able to explore the universe. Forgot the name, but still think about this, too.

Lastly, the Three Body Problem with it's "Dark Forest" theory. I'm not completely convinced by the idea, but it's thought provoking.

Various insights into evolution, biology, materialism, or what have you can't really negate the reality of what's going on today. Or if they seem to do so then the insight is probably incomplete. I'm reminded of the way people use rational scientific rhetoric to exclaim that religion is irrational and dumb; well, but how about using that rational science to investigate how and why religion is a part of human psyche and society? Etc.

I’ve actually been looking for the source for sometime so I could read it.

It's not irrational to posit that you are more than merely a 'bag of particles'.

Just because scientific materialism, taken to it's extreme, might want to describe us as such, does not mean it is true.

Scientific materialism is only one metaphysical perspective, based on assumptions - such as the universe is ordered and can be described with a set of rules. There is no full evidence of this, it's just an assumption. Given that some of the material universe seems to 'mostly' adhere to a set of equations, and because it's objective ... we like scientific materialism a lot, but we also have to remember it's not the only way to look at things.

Consciousness itself, or rather, life, the perspective of 'the observer' could be the reality that matters. The expression of life itself is the interesting thing that only seems 'miraculous' from the perspective of materialism because it's literally denied by it -> that materialism can't seem to describe life is not so much a realization of science, rather it's an assumption that we started with: the universe is just a pile of particles, ergo, we are a pile of particles. The later does not follow the former as a logical conclusion, rather, the assumption that 'everything is just particles' basically implies the later.

It may very well be more rational to accept that life / consciousness is 'real' - and it seems to transcend our materialist conclusions because materialism as a metaphysical perspective just doesn't fully work, i.e. there's a hole in it.

Consider that we ultimately developed logic / reasoning / scientific materialism mostly to enable our lives and expression i.e. it's just a Tool, not a Truth.

1) I gotta say though when you talk of "the observer" it throws me off as it sounds like the typical quantum woo twisting of the observer effect, perhaps you meant something else? what do you mean by "the observer"?

2) Regarding "the universe is ordered and can be described with a set of rules. There is no full evidence of this, it's just an assumption." this has proven so far to be a good assumption (as seen by the massive amount of scientific knowledge and verified predictions accumulated) and if anything it seems all evidence points to exactly this. Is there evidence that there the universe is more than just 'a pile of particles'? (although that is a somewhat simplistic way to put it)

3) Trying to distill the comment, it seems the main argument is along the lines of "science can't explain life itself and/or consciousness, therefore there must be more" is that a fair assessment? and in that case what would you convince you of the oposite? for e.g what if "life" is well understood and can be reproduced in a lab etc.. what if we can reproduce most human-like intelligence with AI, etc... in other words, what would (realistically) change your mind to the opposite?

Humans in every culture since the dawn of time have referred to 'spirit' or that which seems to animate matter.

Yes - 'laws of the universe' we take as a given because they seem to work for us, in paper fairly well.

But you know what we also take as 'a given'? That you are alive.

'Your life' is kind of more important to you than science. Life itself, and the expression of it, seems to be our #1 concern.

That once branch of thought, Scientific Materialism doesn't by definition allow for life to exist, doesn't deny the nature of life.

1) Not 'quantum observer' - your spirit, soul, or some other scientific description. The word doesn't matter.

2) The evidence the universe is more than a pile of particles is life itself. And consciousness.

3) "Science can't explain life" - it's worse: Scientific Materialism rules it out completely by definition. If we decided that 'the universe is mathematical rules' - then - 'there is no life'. Creating life in a test-tube probably won't give us the answer.

FYI Science also has a problem describing why simple objects can ultimately make up very complicated ones with different problems, it's called 'emergence', it's a field of study.

Finally, I'll refer you to the the concept of 'biocentrism' - which is a more material outlook at the subject without getting so overtly metaphysical, and it's done by real scientists. [1]

[1] http://www.robertlanza.com/biocentrism-how-life-and-consciou...

Its why i promised myself to never try and understand how cars work. They just work.

If only i could apply that to just about anything..

The latter suggests that the brain is a prediction engine; and things we do are just the brain minimising prediction-error for systems at various levels.

(SSC is concerned about the dangers of AGI, and sees GPT-2 as imitating what people do).

The Creator of dimension, time, space, matter, energy and the subtle mathematical laws that govern their interactions will ALWAYS be beyond our comprehension, but we can understand a bit of It in very small, very abstract slices.

Mostly, however, we are here to enjoy this wonderful creation and for that reason we are created as moral creatures with an animalistic body. The most subtle law of the universe, that only we live under, is the Law of Karma. This law dictates that we must use our abilities to learn and choose, via our free will, to self-evolve out of our mammalian capacities of pack warfare and alpha-dominance games (most people naturally live above their reptile potential, that is why there are so few serial killers). This is why all the Great Teachings emphasize compassion towards all our neighbors as the destination for a spirituality that is born of an inward seeking for self-improvement via a connection with our Magnficent Creator.

There are many ways for a human being to enjoy this creation, which starts first with our body. There is the physical pleasure of eating and sex; the pleasures of having friends and family, perhaps having children of our own; the pleasures of athletic feats (Alex Honnold WOW!), mental feats (chess, mathematics), creative feats (art, writing, performance), as well as scientific feats that explore the nature of the universe in all its grandeur.

Our intrinsic sense of morality is built into us as a feedback mechanism to nudge us away from mammalian competitive strife and towards truly human cooperation, where those that have the means choose to help those that lack, where all oppression -- based upon ethnicity, form of religion (including none at all), sexual preference or identity -- is stamped out in favor of a free society of equals that each enjoy the respect and comfort that this planet provides when generosity and compassion are the rule.

Such compassion also requires us to fight oppression in all its forms, both personally and as societies and cultures. This is group compassion that stems from individual morality and the understanding that we are all in this together.

The Law of Karma's primary function is to feedback into ourselves the happiness or unhappiness resulting from our treatment of others. This is why so very few ultra-wealthy people are happy: they have built their empires upon the misery of the workers they have used and discarded for the lowest price possible. Note that there was a notable exception I saw crop up a few months ago where a very successful health care company founder gave very large bonuses to his employees in preparation for going full non-profit. He did this out of gratitude and generosity, knowing that his hundreds of millions of dollars was more than he needed and was built upon their backs. That is the essence of the spiritual path. It matters not which form of religion (if any at all) he adheres to. We are measured by our hearts and how we tune our minds to live the truth of selfless positivity over selfish negativity.

The misery upon the Earth in 2019 is the direct result of our free will's ability to choose the most horrific path due to Lennon's "Instant Karma" not existing. Karma is much more subtle than that. You can see its results on Trump's face and those of every person aligned with him. Yes, they can have the pleasure of domination of others or wealth and power, but pleasure is NOT happiness. Happiness comes from within.

This is a part of the Sufi Message of Love. All human beings must unite to selflessly create "On Earth as it is in Heaven" because each of our free wills are equal and the people who lie, oppress and keep secrets have an advantage over the truthful, meek, and kind people in that they not only have chosen to live unfettered from their consciences (the part of us that is the source of our morality) but take pleasure in the misery they inflict upon others. It is difficult for those not yet on the spiritual path to understand how evil a person can become for the simple fact that until we begin to fight against our own vices we do not know how deep human pathology can grow.

We are perfectible just as our software and machines can be made perfect, if we put in the effort and pay attention to the details; don't worry, the universe will test us ;-). Yes, we are all born imperfect, none greater than any other, but we also ALL have the ability to learn and self-evolve from vice into virtue. To reach that perfection, however, we must go within ourselves and beg our Creator for help. That humility and seeking then opens up our potential for only then are we truly living up to our potential to know the bits we can about our Creator and the magnificent tools we, ourselves, are to explore this universe in peace and harmony with each other and the Earth itself.

I suggest anyone interested in this Message to look into Coleman Barks' translated poems of Rumi. His UCTV presentation "Rumi and the Play of Poetry" is on Youtube and is excellent.

All our problems are caused by a lack of love, and no solution that does not emphasize love as its foundation is only a band-aid.

"The Way goes in." --Rumi

For those who ask for proof of what I speak, you must experience this truth for yourself by activating your own free will. If you believe that what I say does not exist, you will be correct from your perspective. That doesn't mean you aren't capable of exploring this sphere of creation or that you are not behoven to the Law of Karma; it just means you haven't opened your spiritual eyes, ears and mind to its reality and remain in the realm of scientists that shunned Boltzmann and Einstein for their expansion of our understanding of this universe. It is your free will's decision to accept this Message and try, or to deny it and remain as you are. There is no compulsion in religion and I am commanded to love everyone anyway. That is why I try to speak of the sublime joy I experience in my life as a result of trying.

Peace be with you all. We love you. The evil, selfish people are destroying our beloved Earth and inflicting misery on countless human beings.