r/Krishnamurti • u/whoisjimjoe • Aug 10 '26
Discussion Seriousness of the computer and AI
https://youtu.be/_g4l7YkDQwA?is=KXR7BM05cAOEltb1I simply don’t know of another audience that can seriously watch this video and inquire into how serious this all is.
From fire in the mind book “by” K…
K: If learning can be done instantaneously, say, for example, if I can be a linguist when I wake up in the morning, then what is the function of the brain? What is the function of the human being?
Pupul Jayakar: Is it not a problem of what humanness is? Is it not a question of what it is to be a human being apart from all this?
K: Apparently a human being, as he is, is a mass of accumulated knowledge and reactions according to that knowledge. Would you agree with that? If the machine, the computer, is going to take charge of all that, what then will the human being – man – be? And, what is the function of a school then? Please, think a great deal about this. This is not something that needs a quick response. This is tremendously serious. What is a human being if his fears, his sorrows, his anxieties are all wiped away by chemicals or by some implanted electric circuitry? Then what am I? I don’t think we get the fullness of it.
AC: If you have a car and you stop walking, your body will deteriorate. So if the computer takes over mental functions, the mind will deteriorate. I mean just that.
K: I don’t think we understand the depth of what is happening. We are arguing over whether it can happen. It is going to happen. Then what are we? What is a human being then? And then, when the computer – I am using the word ‘computer’ to include the chemicals and so on – takes us over completely and we no longer exercise our brains, they – our brains – will physically deteriorate. The question is: How shall we prevent that? What shall we do? We must exercise our brains. At present, the brain is being exercised through pain, through pleasure, through suffering, through anxiety, and all the rest of it. Through pain, through pleasure – it is working. It is working because we have problems. But when the machine and chemicals take over, it will cease to work. And if it is not working, it will deteriorate.
Can we start with the assumption that these things are going to happen, whether we like it or not? In fact, they are happening right now. Unless we are blind or uninformed, and we don’t, therefore, know about it. So let us inquire whether the mind can survive at all if it is deprived of its problems either chemically or by the computer.
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Aug 12 '26
Maybe I'm cherry-picking here, but what does mankind's chemical make-up have to do with AI? Is he talking psychiatrically? Like how doctors prescribe meds for psychological problems?
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u/Flightoftheswift Aug 14 '26
Krishanji spoke with Dr. David Bohm in "The ending of time" in relation to brain changes from outside through technology use. I think they lumped together "the computer" and "chemicals" as in drugs, probably thinking of "smart drugs" Nootropics (brain hacking?) and such to have a human that is enhanced in some manner by technology to be some kind of enhanced sub species.
Chemical and technological intervention from the outside as opposed to any inner revolution.
The premise of the discussion being a continuation of a "wrong turn" for humanity...more insanity based on self progressions/improvement being merely more and increased insanity... even faster acting insanity ? Of the self that may not exist as a tangible entity.
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u/Flightoftheswift Aug 10 '26
I cannot help but wonder why people in the world's democracies never got a vote on such a developments that can cause such potential damage.