Metaphors we believe by
The more I learn, the more I suspect that rationalists only managed to kill a very narrow and anthropomorphic conception of God. People who study complex systems started using new words to talk about god-like phenomena — metaphors that are more palatable to secular minds. I believe these new words can help scientifically-minded people better understand what it actually felt like to believe in God before science became a Thing. Let’s take a tour through the pantheon of 2019 and explore what these seven “gods” might teach us in our era of ecological crisis and post-truth confusion.
The seven “gods”
- Human Colossus — The god of collective human knowledge
- Moloch — The god of coordination failure
- Uruk Machine — The god of heartless market forces
- The Stack — The god of systems thinking
- Yggdrasil — The god of spooky entanglement
- The Singularity — The god of artificially intelligent utopia
- Egregore — The god of collective consciousness
We’re cells in the Human Colossus. We’re caught in the fiery clutches of Moloch. We’re invisible to the Uruk Machine. We’re surrendering our data to The Stack. We’re tangled in Yggdrasil’s roots. We’re uploading ourselves to the Singularity. We’re hosts to increasingly parasitic Egregores.