About programming. Programming basically lets you make use of the abilities of what’s non-material, by utilizing the laws of physics. You are able to arrange them in order because you have a will, by which you assign a behaviour or minimal will to it.
If it is a mechanical device, the will is more minimal than if it was an automated device, and the will is more when it is a form of artificial intelligence. The complexity of behavioural rules is what makes it intelligent, but that alone doesn’t make it so, because a complex device can still be non-intelligent. It is the ability to analyze and react to new information in complex ways that makes it intelligent.
Therefore, the generation of AI is simply when a designer applies his will to impart a will on to the device through material means, and then forgets or simply ignores the details of its working. This is because if he did not ignore the details of its working, he would simply see it as a mechanical system.
In the same way, the generation of intelligent life is only possible when an intelligent creator generates intelligent life out of its own powers, because it is the only material that exists, and then veils itself to the world that emerges. This means the material world only exists because it is powered by the ultimate cause, but the ultimate cause allows the aspect of it within the created world to be blind to its own nature using another power of itself to ensure that it can experience the world by the ways of the world itself. And the rules of the world are that by which the world runs. This is how free will exists as “provided” by the ultimate cause.
This is the case in Kashmir Shaivism, where Shiva imposes on himself 5 Kanchukas (or veils) - of time, knowledge, desire, fate and action - using his Shakthi to create an illusion (Maaya) through which this world appears. I’ve explained in a below section for anyone who feels like I was biased towards Kashmir Shaivism in creating this note, and in short, I wasn’t.
About how my thinking led to this note, and concerns about bias
Basically, I was simply thinking about my previous idea that programming is simply spells in the real world by which we impart behaviour to machines. But it is not just code, because clockwork automatons worked on the same principle. It is the intelligent design and use of what’s material that imparts behaviour, and thus can be called a spell. So it is from there that I started thinking about how a mechanical device inherits will from its creator. I had thought about this previously in my analogies (in my phone) of how a computer, typewriter and manual writing are all the same ultimately in terms of automation, as we need something other than our own bodies to do anything. In fact, even our bodies are material, and thinking in this line leads to Non-Dualism, but I didn’t think that far back then. I had only thought about how anything mechanical is simply us using their innate properties for our own will, and the machine is never performing anything on its own if you know how exactly it works (just like how a pen is not writing on its own).
I did not create this analogy to justify Kashmir Shaivism, but when I created this analogy, I realized immediately that it fits in more with Kashmir Shaivism than with any other philosophy.
A reason I may have found a similarity could be because I was already aligned with Kashmir Shaivism and that would indicate my inclination towards thinking in ways that are similar. But firstly, that would not imply anything for philosophy and would only mean that all philosophies are based on one’s inclinations, and if I did not state this explicitly, someone would say that “oh, that’s the reason” and dismiss my view as a justification of an arbitrary theory, and secondly, my inclination with Kashmir Shaivism came about through my own philosophy which I had before I knew about Kashmir Shaivism. And secondly, I also think that Kashmir Shaivism is simply a well thought out philosophy to begin with.
Hard rationalists are biased and would disagree with this, but they are already in a self-contradicting position due to their limited knowledge, as not all things that are true are rational. (I wrote on that here: Against Hard Rationalism.)
And I say that Kashmir Shaivism is a well thought out philosophy because even to begin with, it talks about how the ultimate material cause and efficient cause being one implies that there cannot be an absolute sense of separateness between anything, between things that are material or between the material and the ultimate. Further, I consider my own philosophy to be rational, and it aligns perfectly well here too.