Deus in machina

Inevitably when I post something to the effect of "ha-ha, isn't this the weirdest thing you've ever heard?", my readers take this as some kind of challenge and respond with, "Oh, yeah?  Well, wait'll you get a load of this."

Take, for example, yesterday's post, about some "Etsy witches" who for a low-low-low payment of $7.99 will put a curse on Elon Musk (or, presumably, anyone else you want), which prompted a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to send me a link with a message saying "this should significantly raise the bar on your standards for what qualifies as bizarre."  The link turned out to be to an article in The Guardian about St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, where they've set up a confessional booth -- but instead of a priest, it's equipped with a computer and an AI interface intended to be a proxy for Jesus Christ himself.

The program is called -- I shit you not -- "Deus in Machina."

You can have a chat with Our Digital Lord and Savior in any of a hundred different languages, and get answers to whatever questions you want, from the doctrinal to the personal.  Although, says theologian Marco Schmid, who is running the whole thing, "People are advised not to disclose any personal information and confirm that they knew they were engaging with the avatar at their own risk.  It’s not a confession.  We are not intending to imitate a confession."

Which reminds me of the disclaimers on alt-med ads saying "This is not meant to address, treat, or cure any ailment, condition, or disease," when everything else in the advertisement is clearly saying that it'll address, treat, or cure an ailment, condition, or disease.

Schmid said that the church leaders had been discussing doing this for a while, and were wondering how to approach it, then settled on the "Go Big Or Go Home" model.  "It was really an experiment," Schmid said.  "We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI...  What would they talk with him about?  Would there be interest in talking to him?  We’re probably pioneers in this...  We had a discussion about what kind of avatar it would be – a theologian, a person or a saint?  But then we realized the best figure would be Jesus himself."

[Image credit: artist Peter Diem, Lukasgesellschaft]

So far, over a thousand people have had a heart-to-heart with AI Jesus, and almost a quarter of them ranked it as a "spiritual experience."  Not all of them were impressed, however.  A local reporter covering the story tried it out, and said that the results were "trite, repetitive, and exuding a wisdom reminiscent of calendar clichés."

Given how notorious AI has become for dispensing false or downright dangerous information -- the worst example I know of being a mushroom-identification program that identified deadly Amanita mushrooms as "edible and delicious," and even provided recipes for how to cook them -- Schmid and the others involved in the AI Jesus project knew they were taking a serious chance with regards to what the digital deity might say.  "It was always a risk that the AI might dole out responses that were illegal, explicit, or offer up interpretations or spiritual advice that clashed with church teachings," Schmid said.  "We never had the impression he was saying strange things.  But of course we could never guarantee that he wouldn’t say anything strange."

This, plus the predictable backlash they've gotten from more conservative members of the Catholic Church, has convinced Schmid to pull the plug on AI Jesus for now.  "To put a Jesus like that permanently, I wouldn’t do that," Schmid said.  "Because the responsibility would be too great."

I suppose so, but to me, it opens up a whole bizarre rabbit hole of theological questions.  Do the two-hundred-some-odd people who had "spiritual experiences" really think they were talking to Jesus?  Or, more accurately, getting answers back from Jesus?  (As James Randi put it, "It's easy to talk to the dead; anyone can do it.  It's getting the dead to talk back that's the difficult part.")  I guess if you think that whatever deity you favor is all-powerful, he/she/it could presumably work through a computer to dispense some divinely-inspired wisdom upon you.  After all, every cultural practice (religious or not) has to have started somewhere, so maybe the people who object to AI Jesus are just freaking out because it's new and unfamiliar.

On the other hand, as regular readers of Skeptophilia know, I'm no great fan of AI in general, not only because of the potential for "hallucinations" (a sanitized techbro term meaning "outputting bizarre bullshit"), but because the way it's currently being developed and trained is by stealing the creativity, time, and skill of thousands of artists, musicians, and writers who never get a penny's worth of compensation.  So personally, I'm glad to wave goodbye to AI Jesus for a variety of reasons.

But given humanity's propensity for doing weird stuff, I can nearly guarantee this won't be the end of it.  Just this summer I saw a sign out in our village that a local church was doing "drive-through blessings," for your busy sinner who would like to save his immortal soul but can't be bothered to get out of his car.  Stuff like Schmid's divine interface will surely appeal to the type who wants to make religious experiences more efficient.  No need to schedule a confession with the priest; just switch on AI Jesus, and you're good to go.

I bet the next thing is that you'll be able to download an AI Jesus app, and then you don't even have to go to church.  You can whip out your phone and be granted absolution on your coffee break.

I know I'm not a religious type, but this is even giving me the heebie-jeebies.  I can't help but think that the Spiritual Experiences While-U-Wait Express Mart approach isn't going to connect you with any higher truths about the universe, and in fact isn't really benefiting anyone except the programmers who are marketing the software.

Until, like Gary Larson foresaw in The Far Side, someone thinks of equipping the Heavenly Computer with a "Smite" key.  Then we're all fucked.

****************************************

Deus ex machina

If you needed further evidence of how powerful surveillance technology has become, consider that Google Street View has captured a photograph of god.

At least that's what some people think.  The photograph, taken near Quarten, Switzerland, shows two blurry figures hovering above a lake, and some people have decided that they are the Father and the Son.

I've beaten unto death the whole why-the-human-brain-is-wired-to-see-faces thing, so I won't revisit that topic, but for myself, I'm not seeing Jesus and God the Father in the photograph.  The one on the left looks too tall and gawky, and the one on the right far too short and tubby, to fit my image of the Supreme Being and his Only Begotten Son.  In fact, if the rightmost is the one people think is God, my personal opinion is that the Big Guy needs to lay off the Hostess Ho-Hos and Little Debbie Snack Cakes for a few months.  On the other hand, if it's not God and Jesus, who is it?  After studying the photograph carefully, I've decided that it's Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria.  Why they'd be visiting a lake in Switzerland in the afterlife, I don't know.  I guess there are worse places to take a vacation.

On the other hand, if I were a deity, I'd definitely opt instead for a pub on the southeast coast of Australia, which is another place that Jesus has been spotted lately. The front wall of the Seanchai Irish Tavern in Warrnambool, Australia, was in need of a paint job, and the flaking of the paint left a bare patch that looks by some stretch of the imagination like a tall, thin figure with outstretched arms.
  

The manager, John Keohane, who is a devout Roman Catholic, immediately decided that it was Jesus.  Many of the pub's patrons agreed, which goes to show that pints of Guinness definitely don't contribute to rational thinking.  The priest of a local Catholic parish is apparently interested in the image, and encouraged Keohane to place a protective screen over the image so that over-enthusiastic tourists (evidently there have been busloads of them) don't touch the image and cause more paint to flake off, thereby causing Jesus to morph into Queen Victoria.

Lastly, there was a sighting in my home state of Louisiana of Jesus on the cross. Rickey Navarre, of Hathaway, Louisiana, saw a vine-covered telephone pole which looked to him like a crucifix.

Navarre was inspired to devotion by the image, which is not necessarily a bad thing, although I do wonder what he would expect a bunch of vines on a cross-shaped telephone pole to look like.   Concerned electrical company workers hastily cleared away the vines, fearing that hordes of the devout would attempt to climb the pole to touch the vines and summarily be ushered into heaven via electrocution.  One disappointed resident placed flowers at the base of the pole, but on the whole, I think that it's probably better that they're gone.  The last thing we need is people erecting a shrine around an electrical pole.  The electric companies think they're omnipotent enough as it is.

That's about it for Jesus sightings lately.  It's a bit of a nice change that he seems to be avoiding food items these days -- tortillas and grilled cheese sandwiches really don't have the gravitas that you'd like to associate with the Almighty.  And although there are clearly rational explanations for all of the above -- vines on a cross-shaped pole, randomly flaking paint, and what was probably just two blobs of schmutz on a camera lens -- if you prefer to think of them as images of god, don't let me discourage you.  Humble human that I am, I wouldn't presume to tell Jesus where he should visit.  I will suggest, however, that if he appears anywhere near where I live, he should dress warmly, as this time of year upstate New York can be a little "brisk," as the eternally-cheery weather forecasters like to call it.  He might want to mention the same thing to Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria, in case they decide to tag along.

Tunnel vision

Last week, Switzerland opened the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which at 57 kilometers is the longest underground traffic tunnel in the world.  The entire project took twelve years to complete, and cost over $12 billion.

All of which is cool enough, but things got even more interesting at the inauguration ceremony last week.  Because the powers-that-be saw fit to open the tunnel with a performance that can only be described as "really fucking weird."  It started with bunches of people in hard hats and orange jumpsuits doing a slow march into the tunnel, followed by their doing some kind of strange interpretive dance involving headbanging.  Then came a whole bunch of people wearing tiny tight garments that left you in no doubt about the size and shape of their naughty bits.  The almost-naked people proceeded to have what appeared to be a cross between a square dance and an aikido tournament, all while being watched over by an image of a very old lady with a creepy, knowing smile.

After this came some white Dementors flying around.  Then the almost-naked people came back, covered in gauzy veils, wearing expressions of extreme angst.  This was followed by about a dozen people flailing about wearing wigs and swinging around yards of swoopy material.  In the midst of which was a guy dressed up like a goat.  Some of these people were wearing suits with long colorful dreadlocks, sort of like Cousin Itt gone punk.

The whole thing culminated with the appearance of a huge-headed baby with wings.

I would strongly recommend watching the entire thing.  (Here are links to part I and part II.)  The whole time I watched it, I was thinking, "Who planned all of this, and what mind-altering chemicals had they just ingested?  And can I have some?"  I'm sure all of it was supposed to have deep significance and relevance to Swiss history and culture, but mostly what it did for me was cause me to say "What the fuck?" about 47 times.

But people do trippy things all the time, so my purpose here is not simply to report about a performance that looks like what J. K. Rowling would come up with if you gave her acid and then told her to write a script for a sequel to Zardoz.  The reason this comes up on Skeptophilia is the reaction of people who saw the ceremony.

Because large numbers of folks are completely freaking out over this.  Here is a variety of responses, gleaned from people who commented on the video and/or blogged about it:

• This is a satanic ritual.  These people have invoked the power of Satan.  That tunnel has been consecrated as a portal to hell.  I wish anyone who goes in there luck.
• A New World Order ceremony, complete with the all-seeing eye.  The real rulers of the world are coming out of the shadows.  We are near the end of them hidding [sic] -- prepare yourselves.
• They have called on Lucifer, they shouldn't be surprised when he shows up.
• Better pick which side you are on!  Jesus Christ's or Satan's...  Because at this rate, you DON'T have TIME to ride the fence.  They are flat out laying their evil ways and plans right to YOU, no longer are they in hiding.  Which side will you choose?  I pray you choose the Lord! Eternity is too long to be wrong. 
• FOR UNGODLY PEOPLE, THE WEIRDER THE BETTER!!!  THIS IS JUST A SMALL EXAMPLE OF DISGUSTING REPROBATE MINDS AT WORK!!!  I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL JESUS RETURNS AND DESTROYS THE FOUL WICKED!!!!
• sick and sad. they have there hands in everything.  FEMA train here it comes, even in switzerland.  stay tune bc they have big plans for this new rail train tunnel.
• FINALLY Illuminati ControllS [sic] Humans By RFID and Humanoid Robots In 2017 
• And so many buy all the paranormal bogus leaks from CERN.  Think.  Same country same leaders.
• THIS IS NOT ART.... THIS IS SATANIC OPENING CEREMONY/RITUAL RIGHT ON YOUR FACE!  you will see more and more of this until the world is used to the worshipping [sic] of Baphomet through entertainment.  You will fall in love with these dark presentations. AND you will embrace SATAN, the prince of this world!  YOU BETTER REPENT of you sins and seek the face of GOD!

So.  Okay.  Will all of you people just calm down for a moment?

The ceremony was bizarre, I'll grant you that, but I would strongly suspect that if Satan exists it takes more than bare-chested guys in tightie-whities jumping around on a train platform to summon him up.  What this looks like to me is an off-kilter experiment in modern dance, not an appeal to Lucifer.

A few other points:

• If this is a ritual of the Illuminati, the Illuminati need to lay off the controlled substances.
• If you "can't wait" for Jesus to return and butcher all of the nonbelievers, I think it's your morals that need some examination, not mine.
• FEMA is an agency in the United States.  Therefore there will not be any FEMA trains in Switzerland.
• CERN is a scientific research laboratory, and has nothing to do with mutant winged babies and guys in goat suits.
• The expression is "right in your face," not "right on your face."  If someone had a satanic ritual right on your face, it would be a far more serious matter.

Anyhow, that's our visit to the wacko fringe for the day.  If you're in Switzerland, make a point of taking a train through the new tunnel.  It'll significantly cut your travel time, and you'll have a nice tour of the nine circles of hell.  Such a deal.

Walking on sunshine

At what point, when someone believes something that is counterfactual, unscientific, and (to put not too fine a point on it) ridiculous, does it become the person's fault for not knowing better?

We live in a culture which, to a large extent, has an expectation that people should be protected from the effects of their own stupidity.  This extends to the availability of insurance, and claims for government aid, when people build their houses in areas that are known to be targets for natural disasters.  When a five million dollar house is built onto a canyon wall in earthquake-prone, mudslide-prone, wildfire-prone California, and it (to borrow a phrase) burns down, falls over, and sinks into the swamp, and the owner acts all mystified that it happened, how sympathetic should we be?

This question isn't just relevant to matters of property loss; it also is appropriate to ask in a great many issues of personal safety.  Take motorcycle helmet laws.  Take smoking cigarettes.  Who, at this point, doesn't know the dangers of these behaviors?  At some point, it is not the government's responsibility to prevent us from doing stupid stuff; it is ours.

The matter becomes a little fuzzier with medical issues, because (1) people are trained from birth to listen to white-coat-wearing individuals with stethoscopes, (2) there's a huge profit motive to the whole quack-cures industry, inducing charlatans to spend a lot more time and effort pushing their claims, and (3) human physiology is a great deal more complicated than "if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and get in an accident, you will be turned into a giant splat mark on the asphalt."  Still, I can't help but think that there is a point at which it is the consumer's personal responsibility to be well enough informed that (s)he won't do anything egregiously idiotic, such as trying to treat an illness by taking pills that have had every last potentially useful molecule removed by serial dilution.

But homeopathy isn't my topic today; the genesis of this post is something even stupider.  Something that makes homeopaths seem worthy of the Nobel Prize in Medicine.  Something so monumentally idiotic that I felt obliged to dig around and see if it could possibly be a hoax.

Tragically, it is not.  It really seems to be true that a Swiss woman died last year -- after a guru convinced her that she could live on sunlight alone.  (Source)

Apparently the woman, whose name was not released by the press but who was a resident of the town of Wolfhalden, had had some health problems, and after being unsatisfied with the medical care she was receiving from actual doctors, she decided to ask a guru's advice.  The guru said he was 70 years old and was still in prime health, and had done it by giving up food and water entirely decades ago.  He said all you had to do was to sit in the sun with large sectors of your skin exposed, absorbing the sun's "life-giving rays," and that if you had reached a high enough plane of spiritual consciousness, that'd be all you'd need not only to survive, but to thrive.

The article didn't say, but I'd bet hard cold cash that the guru also used the words "resonance," "frequency," and "vibration."

Anyhow, the woman didn't do what I'd like to think most of us would do in that situation, which is to burst into guffaws and say, "What the hell?  Do I look like a house plant to you?"  And walk away.  No, she apparently said, "Wow!  I never thought of that!" and proceeded to stop eating and drinking.  She spent a great deal of time sitting, scantily-clad, in the sun.  And amazingly enough, she succeeded not in curing her illnesses -- but in starving to death.

An unanswered question I had is how on earth her friends and relatives let this happen.  If I saw some nimrod I knew stop eating anything and spending large quantities of time sitting outside naked, I think I would probably question whether he'd lost his marbles, and try to intervene.  But either she didn't have enough close friends, or hid it from them well enough, that by the time she was admitted to medical care, it was too late to save her.

This, of course, has elicited calls to prosecute the guru.  My general thought is that this is probably justified, because victimizing stupid people is a pretty terrible thing to do, but there's a part of me that can't get all that worked up about this.  Shouldn't we have an expectation, as a presumably educated society, that people will at least understand biology to the extent that they know that humans cannot conduct photosynthesis?  If there really is someone who is that dumb, or that gullible, should the authorities step in to protect them from the consequences of their foolishness?

I think that at some point, personal responsibility has to kick in.  If we fail to educate ourselves on issues of vital importance to our health and happiness, and then become victims of natural disasters, preventable accidents, hucksters, and frauds, it is no one's fault but our own.  And as far as the Swiss woman who thought she was a plant; this, to me, is just a case of natural selection in action, improving the gene pool for the rest of us.