created: `=dateformat(this.file.ctime, "DDDD, HH:mm")` updated: `=dateformat(this.file.mtime, "DDDD, HH:mm")` tags: #technologicallove/connections #essays/powerunderstanding #Starred #sentience #Consciousness related notes: The challenge of being human is in weaving onesself gracefully into the fabric of what is around you, whilst knowing everything you know and seeing everything you see. This is the general challenge of intelligence. An unintelligent being just is what it is, it does what it does. A rock is a rock is a rock. This one here is heavy and hard and cracks when I hit it with a hammer. We act on it and it responds in a manner that is predictable and where no extra intention is assigned. This is how both how machines work and what we use as criteria for distinguishing the intelligent from the parts of our world we consider to be lesser. Intelligent, sentient, etc. beings on the other hand have all of their actions mediated though their model of the world. As this model becomes more and more general and less tied to specific action-perception contingencies, we gain more possibility and agency with our actions. As this happens, we need guidance on which actions to choose. This choice is a power. The guidance for how to use this power must come from understanding. Understanding of the impacts the choices are likely to have. Understanding of what constitutes a good outcome. A healthy and balanced outcome. Whether we choose to view the world mechanistically or spiritually, our actions have effects and it is important to guide them well. We currently live in a world where we have this power, both of consciousness and of technology, without the understanding required to guide it well. And so we are lost, driving without headlights, and whatever choices we make seem to cause us to crash into one thing or another. The road is wide, but the path is narrow. If we wish to stay on the path, we must learn to see. To see in our world is to understand. And to understand requires that we grow a body of wisdom and a web of technolgies that can serve as this guiding light. One cannot choose if they do not know the choices, and one cannot truly know the choices unless they understand the impacts they have on themselves and the greater world.