Tuesday, November 29, 2022

The Cult of Gai

Imagine a religion that believes that one day, soon, the deity "Gai" will appear. This deity (demon?) will destroy all humanity. They are then obsessed with how to stop this happening. Can Gai be controlled? Contained? Can we make it like us? Won't work. Gai is just too smart.

Therefore, the religion devolves into a millenarian cult. Its charismatic leader says that humanity will cease to exist with >99% probability.

People outside this cult may wonder how they are so certain that Gai will appear, and what its attributes are. Followers of the religion point out that this is obvious from the way society is going, and in particular the technology that is invented.

The omens are everywhere. You can see the shape of Gai in this technology. This other technology bears the unmissable marks of Gai. It is unnatural, decadent, and we should stop developing the technology but we cannot because society is so sick. Maybe we deserve Gai's wrath.

But what will Gai look like? What will it want, or like? We cannot imagine this because we are so limited. The only thing we know is that Gai is smarter than any of us could ever be, and will teach itself to be even smarter.

You can tell adherents of this cult that all the other millenarian cults have been wrong so far, and their deities have failed to show up. You can tell them that all their sophisticated arguments only made sense to people who already believed. But that won't convince them.

You can tell them that the deities of the other cults look suspiciously like products of their time and obsessions (warrior gods, fertility gods, justice gods etc), and this cult's deity is Gai only because they as a culture idolize smartness. That won't move them.

In the end, all you can do is to try to prevent that more young souls are swallowed by the cult. And perhaps quietly lament that so many humans seek the bizarre solace of belief in vengeful gods and the end of the world.

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