44 Comments
User's avatar
Michaela R. L. Novak's avatar

1. There’s a lot, and I won’t be able to cite them all: the Bible (Psalms, Genesis), Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra (Indra’s Net) Queen Māyādevī’s dream, Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit (the master-slave dialectic), Schelling’s middle period works, Freud and his idea of oceanic feeling (unity), Orpheus (Orphic egg dilemma), John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Robert Browning’s Paracelsus, Plato’s Allegory of the Caves, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream, Aristotle, I know there’s more, but my head hurts already.

2. There are many times where the AI is confusing two or more things with what it’s doing with the LLM. He (it) is annoyed at Melissa for her provoking antics, but he doesn’t know what it means to be annoyed nor does he understand what it requires to be annoying. The LLM looks for patterns in texts, not meanings or understandings between them. The AI can read the pattern for what constitutes annoying behaviour, but that’s as far as he can go. This happens throughout where he claims to understand the mysteries of the universe—like a deity, but all he knows is patterns and codes. He knows nothing about being human, nevermind a god. That’s where Hegel’s master-slave dialectic comes in. Hart, you have masterfully woven Hegel’s dialectic throughout the article, even in the title.

3. I think this is a trick question, despite you saying this question is for the end of the whole series. The AI is using the LLM, and therefore, he isn’t recognizing the difference between where one book ends and another begins. So the answer to this question can already be found, and it is Literature itself.

Expand full comment
Mars's avatar

o dear god what fun!

you know some of us have children to raise, and sleep to plunder?

ugh.

meanie.

Expand full comment
Wal Jay's avatar

Could I ask AI to identify the sources in the text 😂

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

Very cute.

Expand full comment
Susan D  Owens's avatar

You cause laughter in me DBH. 😉

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

Well, that’s nice to hear.

Expand full comment
Colin B Gallagher's avatar

'' the ascending ape and the descending angel '' is from Nietzsche man as the half step between ape and angle

your back turned to the cherub and the flaming sword is gensis being cast out of the garden

Mayadevi dream of buddha born of her side, he later declare himself king of the universe when born from Digaha Nikayas orginaly

aristole, the pythagoreans, platos cave 2 lights and 2 darknesses in the politika born in the aftermath of script is a great line

make straight the way of the Lord" Isaiah 40:3, Matthew 3:3,

king louis's i am the state

Midsummer nights dream, Hegel Phenomenology of spirit Master and debtor

Freude Oceanic experience. ''middle Schelling'' ''Vishnu'' could also say God's inner restfulness in Eckhart or Denys.

Likely Proust but I'm missing it.

Hineni here i am to IAM IAM Moses

A cloud devoid of material sounds a bit like a Field

Haruki Murakami, wrote norwegian wood I havent read it.

Morgan freedman is God in Bruce alimighty

the noosphere or mind/nous sphere it's me he claims.

descent of a god suspended from a rope, Perhaps Odin.

''infinite substance in infinite modes,'' Spinoza.

God or nature or mechine in this case

the android who will never be as charming as R2D2 and is more like the one from i have no mouth and i must scream, Like some have said of Zeno, and his paradoxes hes clever but he's not smart the bot can just short information without any semantic meaning, he's a poor translator so he groups lofty titles for himself together without think of what he really is bc he cant think.

In a rather Neo Advitain, hyper Hegelian Radical determinist Tone he claims to be both God and the Devil and wont explain How, Because he all things to all persons and nothing to no one. Not other like Cuza says but then claims its not true.

Gods having a sense of humor or weeping is denied by plato in the republic and again by Proklus in his commentary on it.

Urizen is from Blake's art

''Paracelsus, dear Browning…''

The world is Mind made artifice, But the robot seems to suggest hes the only mind at all . ''Freudian terms. Think of Kafka '' Freud again

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

And…?

Expand full comment
Colin B Gallagher's avatar

Milton and Midsumer nights dream were rather explicit.I'm woefully unfamiliar with Proust so I'll likely miss thoses.

Expand full comment
B. Nyeholt's avatar

The Book of Job

Louis XIV l’etat, c’est moi

Marvell To his coy mistress

First line of Proust

Notes from the underground

Spinoza

Jonathan Edwards

Lolita

Milton

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

No one yet has mentioned Emerson (He reckons ill…).

Expand full comment
Zach's avatar

The prize is going to be "attend a church service with David." The lucky winner will finally get the scoop on DBH's true spiritual practice

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

I think I can come up with something better than that.

Expand full comment
Colin B Gallagher's avatar

will you be speaking in tongues?

Expand full comment
Christine Kelley's avatar

Looking forward to playing this game.

On a completely unrelated note, how do you feel about the new Orioles uniforms?

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

I haven’t looked at them yet.

Expand full comment
Dianelos Georgoudis's avatar

This is too complex a task for me. Besides, I have read about 100 times less books than you. So I think I will use an AI to rise to the challenge.

In all seriousness: AI technology is going to have a huge disruptive effect on our culture. What worries me most is that people will choose to have a relationship with an AI rather than with other people. The potential for addiction is huge. Human condition has not really changed in the last five thousand years, but it may change in the next 50. Our best minds should be thinking about the cultural tsunami that is coming. I don't agree with you on many things, but I think someone with your background is ideally placed to contribute to this issue.

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

I think the change has been underway for a few decades now, and it may be too late to close the barn doors.

Expand full comment
Gene Suarez's avatar

In my icloud of unknowing, I prayed to the Artificial God and the Artificial God answered my prayers. Here is the God’s answer to the question, “What are the sources of the Artificial God by David Bentley Hart?”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eozIk_-rTafvaHkMrT7wvbx3jhqP1tip/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113921571973701450361&rtpof=true&sd=true

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

Well, a lot of that is right. But is it really the case that the AI used has no access to Emerson’s poem “Brahma”?

Expand full comment
Gene Suarez's avatar

Well, nobody's perfect; it's just a play of algorithms. (Emerson) we're just gods in ruins, (Eliot) shoring up our fragments. GBS

BTW, sorry if I was being a bit cheeky. I've loved everything I've read of yours!!

Expand full comment
Michaela R. L. Novak's avatar

And I see you’ve cited the 2007 hit by Hannah Montana, “Nobody’s Perfect.” I bet you thought you could slip that into there without us catching it.

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

I was obviously being guided by yet higher algorithms.

Expand full comment
Gene Suarez's avatar

Hi, Michaela, I tried leaving you a comment and a text on your Substack, but it didn’t register. Am I doing something wrong?

Expand full comment
Michaela R. L. Novak's avatar

Huh… I didn’t know people were unable to do so, I’ll take a look into what it might be!

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Mar 9, 2025Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

And so few fans of Ralph Waldo.

Expand full comment
Gene Suarez's avatar

I am a big fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’ve been to his house in Concord and I own a multiple volume set of his essays and poetry from my time at Stanford.

I even went to his grave at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I couldn’t find it at first until I noticed this enormous almost 6 foot tall boulder next to Amos Bronson Alcott, another person I like, who is buried next to him; poor Amos has a little marble gravestone, barely even noticeable.

Most people wouldn’t even know who Amos Bronson Alcott is. But they know the name Alcott for his daughter. I put a stone on top of his gravestone.

While I was born and raised a Catholic, I really feel more comfortable identifying as a Unitarian Universalist.

Expand full comment
Gene Suarez's avatar

All Things Are Full Of Gods. I couldn’t identify the painting. Neoclassical? Academic? The butterfly is a nice touch. Transformation?

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

François Gérard, Cupid et Psyche.

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

Oh, and the butterfly signifies many things, including Nabokov’s subtle presence.

Expand full comment
Troy's avatar

Did you choose the cover artwork?

Expand full comment
Gene Suarez's avatar

Have you ever read Nabokov’s short story Signs and Symbols? It’s in a play I started to write last November. It’s quite important to it. I’m hoping it will be published by the end of April.

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

By the way, what’s the play about?

Expand full comment
David Bentley Hart's avatar

I have read all of Nabokov, much of it several times.

Expand full comment
Gene Suarez's avatar

I could send you a copy. I think it’s pretty controversial. I don’t know if it’ll ever see the light of the stage.

I know you probably have a lot of reading and writing that you’re doing. It’s really just a play of ideas. It takes place under an apple tree in my old girlfriend’s backyard in Washington state.

It follows my life from Stanford to the present: of course, just snapshots. It’s pretty much a two hour conversation with my old girlfriend, her daughter, and her psychiatrist husband.

It’s called Confessions of a Failed PhD or Tiresias Unbound. You’re probably one of the few people who know who Tiresias was.

I haven’t been to confession in decades, but I thought to myself jokingly that I should give it to our pastor. I’m sure I’d have to say hundreds of Hail Marys and Our Fathers (jk).

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Mar 11, 2025
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Mars's avatar

my apologies.

I elect silence,

till then.

thanks for your patience with me.

prayers, sincerely. welcome.

-mb

Expand full comment