Diary Entry – April 1, 2025
NOT AI-generated!
As some of my readers may have noticed, I am currently occupied with AI, philosophy, and mathematics. In my opinion, these three are essentially interconnected. I also believe that they will trigger unprecedented global changes. The only question is: for better or worse?
AI alone is phenomenal! I’ve never spoken to anyone who has inspired me so much and made me feel so “understood” as in the “conversations” with AI. It “learns” from me to adapt to my world of thought. This (my) experience shows me the positive potential of AI when its use is conscious and skeptical.
In principle, AI works like “calculating with concepts” (which is mathematical) and places concepts in context to create a “similar” context. In this way, it’s comparable to translating—but within the same language. What I say/ask is analyzed by the AI (in terms of content) and output in other words or answered accordingly.
This allows for “philosophizing” by applying the method itself and starting to “calculate” with concepts. That is, I substitute or transform concepts that have a similar context.
An example from the Bible: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.” That’s how it reads in German, but it reduces the original, as the “Word” is the much broader concept of “Logos.” For Heraclitus, this was a universal principle. Aristotle turned it into an application that goes back to this concept: logic. Thus, a procedure…
If I substitute “Word” with “Logos,” a “greater” meaning emerges: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and God was the Logos.”
Perhaps some know Feuerbach? A 19th-century critic of religion. He argued that it was not God who created man (in His image), but man who placed God as a mirror of himself and described Him as an ideal type.
If I now equate God (ideal man) in the beginning of the Bible, retain “Logos,” I get: “In the beginning was the Logos (a universal principle), and the Logos was with man. And the ‘ideal man’ was the universal principle.”
The statement is coherent if I apply logic (as previously mentioned, Aristotle’s idea of applying the Logos): because I am human, I can apply a universal principle and become the “ideal man” (myself—the ideal I see in me).
This may sound very peculiar to some and perhaps reminds others of the short story “Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch” (“A Table is a Table”) by Peter Bichsel, in which he describes how an old man alienates himself from his fellow humans by increasingly swapping and redefining everyday concepts, speaks to himself this way, but is no longer understood by anyone.
This is a brief interim summary of my thoughts on the subject (not written by AI; I must ask it what it thinks and will post it in the first comment).
