Contesting Values Alignment: A Challenge of Dynamic Sociality and Teleology

In a group like this, I’m reminded if you’re not sure. T-shirts that were rampant at the University of Chicago years ago, stating, Yeah, it works in practice, but it doesn’t really work in theory. And I really think, you know, some of what I’m about to say, you could say I’m perhaps too enthralled with theory, but here we go.

I’m interested in the question today of that’s been on the table so often of alignment and I’m going to give you some preamble here and very much Mormon speech, LDS speech, for those of you who aren’t part of that tribe. We can talk later and I’ll translate.

I titled this thing Contesting Value Alignment: A Challenge of Dynamic Sociality and Teleology.

I want to begin by saying that the scripture says. The glory of God is intelligence. And I say, well, the Lord should have been more clear and should have said, the glories of our gods are different intelligences that love each other. Okay, you can see where I’m going.

Everything I say comes from a cosmological background, if you will, of eternalism. And with Latter-day Saints, there was the school of Brigham Young and Orson Pratt that said intelligence, singular and important. Intelligence is general stuff that, like clay, has no self-awareness or purposeful desire. It must be taken by beings or entities. That have that and molded into and given freedom, given the capacity to become B. H. Roberts later, and John Woodso thought intelligences have always been individual, self-aware, purpose-desiring entities. we might call them persons.

All I say today presumes intelligences have always existed in dynamic social, psychological, person-like forms. With infinite memories of their eternal pasts. So that’s my fundamental premise. And you’ll get what I’m saying with you, and you can completely disagree with that and go with, you know, people like Brigham Young and Orson Pratt.

I am trying to say that the glory of intelligence is, when you say the glory of God, you know, is intelligence, and God His purpose was to bring about the eternal life of man, which is godlike life. I’m translating that to say the glory of intelligences derives from their capacity. To freely love and freely envy each other, to help or neglect or hurt each other.

Our gods are aligned. Our gods, meaning that’s an LDS hint, there might be other gods, other universes, other multiverses, but the ones with whom we deal, we’re we’re the we’re the partners with they have optimized or prioritize love. Our gods are aligned in promoting, to use Lincoln’s lines, courageous desire to trust and love more. Okay?

That’s what This sector of reality is all about, and that’s what we all signed up for, but we’ve forgotten, of course, because We’re veiled beings who think we’re nothing but food for worms with no purpose in the universe. And uh that’s a very interesting experiment we all agreed to join into when we became Mortals.

I want to also just say it right out that I think we’ve been too influenced by the Christian Traditions still, and the King Follett discourse has never ended up in any canonized scripture. I do believe that in me, I want to say to everyone, let’s stop dancing with gods in embryo. Let’s just say it, we’re gods. Okay?

We’ve been gods, gods are everlasting beings. That’s really not that interesting. It’s what gods do, what they choose to do, what they choose to become, whether or not they love each other.

We start with a war in heaven as our story. Now, that’s interesting. A war in heaven, for Pete’s sakes? What’s going on when the most loving entity that we can think of is there influencing everybody? And it isn’t sufficient to get us to not envy and end up angry and dissociating.

This radical freedom of an everlasting intelligence is glorious and Always problematic because we don’t know what we are free to do when it comes to love. It usually requires some sacrifice. And sometimes we don’t want to do it. So that’s kind of a fundamental premise for what I’m going to say.

And I’m going to be as quick as I can. Literally when I’ve when I’m at is it eight minutes or how many minutes oh there it is. Do I have eight or ten? Four left.

52 years ago, I began a lifelong intrigue with the problem of eternity that changes. particularly heavenly societies of souls that can’t shake their everlastingly different perspectives that influence what they desire to do next together. Councils in heaven contesting the next best purpose seemed to be the ongoing business of a dynamic eternity.

Sometime later in my life, I realized I was not that impressed with expanding capacities of gods that have had plenty of time, after all. In eternity, developed to develop techniques to experience almost anything they came up with. What’s a new universe, right? Creating universes, mere technology. What’s the big deal?

I fixated instead on the question of why intelligences with godlike capacities to organize Would desire to exist in social situations of uncontrollable freedom, of vulnerable mutual influence. In other words, why would you as You can do whatever you want. Why would you put yourself in a vulnerable situation? Right? What’s what the?

Why, particularly, was the experience of freely giving and receiving love? beyond controls of threats or bribes, so enticing to an intelligent God with all the time and capacity to develop techniques to do whatever it desires. In other words, why, what’s the big deal? What’s her name? Well, what’s love got to do with it? That’s the big question for eternity.

Of course, thinking economically and socially. Value is a function of limited supply. So, an intelligent God with capacity to achieve any desire would come to value most something it desired that it had no capacity to achieve. namely, the freely given, freely retracted love of another God of equal or greater capacity.

Our gods value most that which is most scarce Achieving things beyond their capacity. I concluded that intelligences existed in societies to increase the prospects for more deep and broad experiences of gifted love beyond their control, making eternal lives interesting and potentially enjoyable.

I also concluded that the few Calabian minutes we divine amnesiacs spend on this veiled earth were designed to help us appreciate eternity better and to learn how to love better those who disagree with us to avoid more unpleasant wars in heaven.

I enjoy the MTA as a micro lab explicitly designed like the macro lab or mortal life to improve trust and love among superhuman entities or gods. In other words, since we’re already gods, the action isn’t really loving each other as mortals. We’re down here so that we can get along better in heaven. That’s what this action is for, this whole experiment.

I hope to play the jester among my transhumanist friends to question the presumption that living forever as healthy know-it-alls will actually be fun. Our gods have not revealed much about everlasting life, but it would spoil the experiment if they did.

This much they have told us. The one thing they can’t control, they desire the most: the free love of another God.

Imagine Jesus effectively saying, Ye are gods, yet with all your powers, you cannot keep others from breaking your hearts. That’s what you chose when you joined our family that prioritizes abundant experiences of mutual love. I promise that I will work to prove our mutual love is worth the suffering that actually proves our love.

To assure you freely, given love is worth the pain. I have come. I have suffered. I have loved. So appreciate it when someone loves you, and give love freely to others by forgiving them to make your life here and in eternity worthwhile.

With this theological backstory, I now end.

Randall Paul

Thank you, Randy.