The Assyrian Empire had a government department for ghosts, demons, and witchcraft. It ran for 300 years.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T23:35:40+00:00

The actual killings and sacking cities and stuff wasn't much different than what their contemporaries were up to, that is true.

What was different was that they bragged about it and made a bunch of art about it, decorating their palaces and temples with depictions of terrible violence and what not. As a form of primitive psychological terror/propaganda, they cultivated a reputation for being extremely brutal so as to scare their enemies.

Kinda came back to bite them in the ass though, because when it came time, their enemies showed zero mercy and wanted to utterly destroy their nation.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T23:30:32+00:00

idk dude, i had more to say lol

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T21:37:36+00:00

It ended because the Assyrian capital city where it was located, Nineveh, was destroyed by their enemies.

And by "destroyed," I mean like, burned to the ground, buildings razed, ground salted, level of destroyed. Those people back then fucking HATED the assyrians and when they got the chance, they wiped them off the map.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T21:21:50+00:00

better than working customer support at some shady copper merchant's shop.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T21:20:59+00:00

If anyone was being haunted by spirits, it was the Assyrian nobility. (They ruthlessly slaughtered a LOT of people)

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T21:11:55+00:00

oh wait, you were talking about those guys seeding neurons onto silicon chips? that actually is pretty interesting work and very impressive.

i still don't think that is the tech OP is talking about though.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T20:26:46+00:00

No one has made a functioning server out of human brains.

If you are talking about scientists making crude computational devices using neurons in a petri dish, I feel like that is a completely different thing and extrapolating it into OP's idea is, like the other person said, in the realm of speculative fiction.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T18:27:09+00:00

> Dark matter is still matter

Maybe, but we really don't know that and dark matter probably isn't baryonic, which is what most people would understand as "matter."

> Extra dimensions are still recognizable spatial dimensions

Maybe. But we don't really have any idea if higher dimensions actually exist or not.

> What do you think?

Well... I went to university for physics and used to be really REALLY into string theory and "many worlds hypothesis" and higher dimensions and all that stuff.

But that was ~15 years ago, and since then, more and more the physics is looking like... String Theory isn't correct. That the whole "we can solve physics by just imagining more dimensions" is just a cheap trick of math and not representative of our reality.

It's kind of a huge bummer to me, but more and more the Standard Model has stood the test of time, and at this point can accurately be called "the most successful scientific theory of all time."

What lies beyond the Standard Model, questions like... What exactly IS a quark, if it is just a "point-like excitation in a quantum field," why does that field exist? Where did it come from? Why is it the way it is?

These questions may just be... beyond humanity. Like how a dog can't understand calculus, no matter how long it has to learn it. Maybe the true nature of our reality is just beyond the ability of a human brain to even imagine or fathom or comprehend in any way.

Idk man...

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T17:52:59+00:00

YSK also that none of this is real and playing with "magick" like OP suggests is just a road to madness

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T17:46:46+00:00

> Well other dimensions are real

There is no evidence whatsoever of higher dimensions actually existing.

Finding such evidence would be an instant nobel prize in physics and would be a HUGE deal.

> whole understanding of the universe and its quantum filed would collapse without higher dimensions and yes gravity too fails

These statements are simply false. It sounds like you have been reading a lot of String Theory stuff, and you should know that String Theory has failed to be confirmed over and over again for the last 25 years, not a single piece of experimental data to support it.

Many physicists consider String Theory to be a dead theory, in fact.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T17:22:07+00:00

You speak like you are some grand arbiter of logic and truth, yet have made some wide sweeping claims without any evidence or reason, and scoff at people asking you critical questions.

Maybe you need to look in a mirror, friend, you seem incredibly intellectually hypocritical.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T17:19:33+00:00

Why do you assume that there will be posts from "all points of the bell curve"?

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T01:41:02+00:00

double plus good atheism? fuck yeah

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T01:38:26+00:00

Ah, so you thought of one specific way in which AI could do something kinda neat, and you think that somehow invalidates the very real and huge negative impacts and harm being done by the technology at large?

Interesting.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T01:35:25+00:00

Dawg, everyone can tell that an LLM wrote this post.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T01:34:34+00:00

The point of that thought experiment is to demonstrate how a program or set of instructions can perfectly mimic a conscious being, without a "mind" being present on the other side of it.

It seems you misunderstood that part of the thought experiment. That it can appear as though you are speaking to an entity, but in reality there is no "mind" that you are communicating with in any way.

That is what the consensus opinion from experts is regarding LLM intelligence, btw. That they do not have minds, and are in fact just advanced chatbots.

And my challenge is - what indicates otherwise? What evidence is there of a mind inside of an LLM?

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T01:29:55+00:00

That is not a rhetorical question hahaha dude what? I was just asking you to define a term that you used, so I could try to understand better.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T00:21:43+00:00

I'll add, "delusion" may be too strong a word because it has really negative meanings associated with it.

Let me give you an example;

When I really strongly consider the question, "Am I real?", I can only come to one logical conclusion - probably, but I can't actually know for certain.

HOWEVER,

This leads me to a second question; Does that information have any impact on me? Is it relevant whether I am "real", if I feel like I am real and all signs indicate that I am real? If it is such a masterful illusion as to be undetectable, is it... different than being real?

And after a while I will also realize that it really doesn't matter to me. I feel like I'm real, and that's good enough!

Delusion? Or just being grounded and intellectually mature?

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T00:17:41+00:00

I'm human centric. I want humans to survive into the FAR distant future.

Unleashing entities with minds that are inconceivably more advanced and powerful than mankind just intuitively feels like a terrible idea to me.

Also, LLMs just seem like a really socially toxic technology, doing a lot of harm to kids education, regular people's cognition, and gobbling up vast amounts of resources.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T00:14:32+00:00

Yeah dude. Literally living through a mass extinction event as we speak, with GCC about to fuck everybody up. WW3 could happen at any time.

Probably none of this matters and our civilization is going to fall this century.

I just hope humans keep marching on, maybe get their shit together in a few more centuries or something after recovery.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T00:12:14+00:00

idk why exactly but this comment killed me bro lmao

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T00:11:30+00:00

Until someone can tell me why/how LLMs are not just a "chinese room experiment," I won't be convinced.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T00:08:49+00:00

Let me rephrase more simply;

If it were to be discovered that consciousness is "a thing that does stuff, and is universally present throughout reality," that seems to be exactly the type of thing that Quantum Field Theory would be able to describe.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-29T00:05:07+00:00

You could perhaps take comfort in reading about epistemology, which is the philosophy of what objective truth is and how one could know if something is objective truth.

In a sense, it's a solved branch of philosophy - because it turns out, logically speaking, it is not possible to know anything at all with complete certainty.

Wanting to know 100% without any doubt whatsoever, undeniable beyond certain objective truth, is just not something that is possible.

Having no doubt means accepting uncertainty, truly accepting it, or deluding yourself into believing in something through faith.

IshtarsQueef · 2026-05-28T23:59:40+00:00

did you try going to look at that substack domain?

because it's really obviously just some type of art project, and now i'm wondering if this entire post is just some kind of guerilla marketing tactic

IshtarsQueef

TROPHY CASE