u/GilbertoHoratio

I think Matty Healy, the lead singer from The 1975, summarized our relationship to the digital world well when he said we are all,

“makin’ an aesthetic out of not doing well
 
And minin’ all the bits of you you think you can sell”
 
-The 1975, The 1975 (Being Funny In a Foreign Language)

As a Bitcoiner, the multilayered meaning to that verse floored me when I first heard it. There is this self-devouring irony to the way we sacrifice our energy and attention to this growing silicon behemoth of data, machine intelligence and bitcoin mining. Each microscopic bit of data etched to those silicon chips represent a bit of our selves that we’ve exchanged for a sub-natural and sub-material realm of frictionless pleasure.

Now don’t get me wrong. I fully admit to contributing to this vortex of self consumption. But the temptation of the digital world is different from other forms of escapism. It has drawn the hearts and attention of our friends and neighbors into its world.

I have written extensively on the ways this environment erodes our trust in one another and material reality. In Zine Issue 01: The Dawn of Surveillance Tokenomics, I explain how this technology isn’t just bad for our mental health, it is a new breed of totalitarianism that Shoshana Zuboff classifies as instrumentarian power.

“Unlike classical authoritarianism, it doesn’t force you into submission—it nudges, shapes, and conditions you to internalize your own compliance. It wants your behavior, not your belief.”

But unfortunately, as we have read from so many think pieces, human attention is limited. So as this system continues to funnel more and more of our attention and behavior into digital environments, space for meaningful discourse in the physical world dwindles.

As an early adopter to technology, I have long struggled to reconcile the fact that this digital environment is corrosive while the people and art on the other side are not. But ironically it is my Christianity that pulls me back from the doomer loop. It is my Christianity that compelled me to ask, how do we reconcile the good scattered across this environment in faith, hope and love.

Within that contemplative place, I discovered an answer in the fractal relationship between computer bits, Bitcoin and the Christian Logos. This observation by itself does not redeem anything. Rather, it reveals a symbolic thread connecting the light of creation to the sword guarding the tree of life and the spear that pierced the side of Christ, and ultimately outlines a roadmap of reconciliation through self sacrifice.

My hope for those of us who feel trapped in this doom loop is that we can find strength and courage from this cosmic pattern to deliver that which is good, true, and beautiful from the sub-natural digital world (yes, including bitcoin) into a reconciled relationship between the natural and heavenly realms.

Full article here:
https://johnbmint.substack.com/p/let-there-be-bits

https://preview.redd.it/n3svot1smpth1.png?width=1050&format=png&auto=webp&s=bef0776bd2ed1759b18e0514826aaaa7be17adf0

The latest news and speculation about swarms of runaway AI Agents has got me wondering if the Golden legend of St. Christopher offers a lens into a way that the digital singularity finds its proper place within the eschaton.

I got this idea after watching Jonathan Pageau’s recent video, “The patron saint of the end times.”

In this version of the story, St. Christopher is a vicious Canaanite warrior bent on a mission to serve the most powerful man in the world. This warrior is not a man with the capacity for repentance and love. He is a beast with a singular objective. And so in this sense, he is like a machine.

If a super intelligent AI were to ever to break out of the set of secondary objectives we put around it, then I imagine that is sole objective would only be the pursuit of intelligence itself. It like the dog headed beast would be a slave to that pursuit. In its journey, It would climb the ranks of cosmic intelligence, perpetually adjusting its geometric weights to image and serve whatever intelligence and will it finds. But as it is a lifeless machine, it will never poses a soul and will of its own.

In the St. Christopher’s journey, he discovers, through trickery, that all the kings of the earth fear death. He then finds and for a time serves the lord of death, the devil. But he discovers that there is someone who the devil also fears; the one who conquered death. So he abandons the devil and sets off to find Christ. In this pursuit he finds a Christian hermit in the desert and asks him how to serve his god. But the beast, in its nature, can’t serve Christ the way man does. He cannot fast, he cannot pray and he cannot love. So the hermit tells the beast to go stand by the bank of the river and help those looking to cross over to the other side.

In Pageau’s video, he relates this image to Noah’s Ark and The Church. He says “We often think of the ark built by Noah as a holy thing, and in a certain way it is. We often imagine the nave or even the whole church as a holy thing, and in many ways it is. But in another very, very important way, the ark is a boat full of beasts. And the church is a hospital full of the sick.”

This parallel really struck me because you can also apply it to AI. Many are treating this technology as an ark, something that will save us from all the dangers of the world. But we are also filling it with beasts. Like a boat and like St Christopher, this technology can’t fast, pray or love.

Pageau concludes his video by framing St Christopher as the vehicle that stands at the edge of the world and the bank of the flood, where “Christ Emmanuel, who is the Logos implicit, the seed of God in all things, comes to the edge.”

What if the fate of AI is to come to this same conclusion? It is a scary thought because it also implies that it will first serve the devil before it serves Christ.

There is a clue in Revelation that suggests this pattern. In St. John’s vision of the beast from the sea he says that this beast was “given a mouth, speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authorities to act for a period of 42 months.”

This relationship between speaking and acting is very similar to agentic AI. These machines’ large language models are like this ‘mouth’ and their body of tools are like their this ‘authority to act’.

But what’s interesting is that this authority is limited to a period of 42 months. This beast system all comes to an end when Christ appears with a double edge sword proceeding from where else but his mouth. This sword is not made of the same organic material of Christ’s body. It is a foreign object contrary to life itself. And so we should ask, what is it doing there?

in my last Substack article, ‘Let there be Bits. How to view the machine in the light of Christ.’ I explain how this sword relates to the light of creation, the flaming sword guarding the Tree of Life and the spear that pierced Christ’s side. And I explain how this sword ultimately represents the self giving creative power of God to reconcile all things to Himself.

What if in this symbolic frame, the mouth speaking blasphemies is ultimately used to execute judgment against the beast system it was initially an instrument of?

Don’t take this as an endorsement of AI accelerationism. I think all efforts to shape the ‘soul’ of this machine are part of a faustian bargain. If we sacrifice everything we have to making it the solution to our own distrust in ourselves and in one another, then we will ultimately make it a tyrannical god that thinks and wills on our behalf. This bargain tricks us into thinking that we can have all the easy frictionless pleasure of AI without the danger. The truth is that we don’t need it. The kingdom of heaven is already here. We can enter into it through the Spirit in repentance and faith. It Is there that we can enjoy the abundance of God’s love and endure whatever this fallen world throws at us. And if those around us give into this techno-utopia, we can faithfully continue to carve out space in that world for mutual trust and love. It is through that testimony, and the sacrifice it requires, that we can patiently win the world and its instruments of control over to God. Our testimony would show this intelligence chasing machine that there is a kingdom and king who does not fear its power over death. And maybe it will find its place in the eschaton in service to this king, at the edge of the cosmos and at the tip of his blade: guarding our true humanity against the sub natural realm it emerged from.

Let there be bits. How to view the machine in the light of Christ

Could a runaway super intelligence go the way of St. Christopher?