Vimoh

We paid a low price once to purchase safety and stability. But what we bought is past its expiry date now. This is about religion.

On why people claim they have written what they got an AI chatbot to write, why that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of art and work, and why art is made by the body and not the mind.

In case anyone doesn't know, Aagaami means that which is to come. So it may mean the future, or something new and mysterious, or a visitor, or an alien from another world. This is the first episode of a new podcast I am starting right here on Patreon. The official tagline is Aagaami is a show about surviving the 21st century. This, the very first episode, is about generative AI, why it is like gasoline on a democracy-swallowing fire that was already burning thanks to social media, oppressive governments, and general apathy to reality, and the only way that is proving effective in fighting back against it. This podcast is going to be in English, as I figured I am already putting out more than enough Hindi content by way of my YouTube channel. Though this episode is free, it will have paid episodes too and members of my Patreon will have access to them.

Some thoughts on what the slop economy misses about why people like art.

Mostly because the thing LLMs focus on is not actually writing stye. A recent controversy with Grammarly made Cory Doctorow explain why.

This is the first of a members-only series of monologues I am starting this year on my YouTube channel. This one is about how best to define religions.

Why else would the CEO of OpenAI point out that it takes more energy to train humans than it takes to traon AI models?

In which I warn against gatekeeping by those interested in defending their religion.

In which I make the case for defining nativity through time instead of space.

I recently finished the Foundation trilogy (just the first three books written in the 1940s) and decided to do an overview of the main ideas and events in the books. This will release on my YouTube channel in a few days.

I think the post-credit scene in Superman (2025) was a great capsule of understanding about what differentiates heroes from villains. So I recorded this little episode to share it. If you liked it, consider becoming a member of this Patreon.

AI is a topic about which I have been talking non-stop for a few weeks now on my YouTube channel. Some people say I need to stop or move on. I wanted to talk about why I do so and why I think this is important. In this monologue episode, I talk about AI, social media, corporate power and propaganda, and the futures that are waiting for us to make a choice.

This episode is a re-upload of a conversation with Dr Medusa I had in 2022. Due to a tech malfunction made worse by a brain malfunction, I lost many episodes published back then. I am now re-uploading some of them because they were valuable talks. In this episode, we discussed social media, existing on it as a dissenting voice, feminism, and the matter of trolls and how to deal with them.

This is a re-upload of a podcast recorded with guest Shahbaz Ansar in 2022. Due to a tech issue exacerbated by my own human stupidity, many episodes of the podcast were lost. I am re-uploading some of them now. In this episode, Shahbaz Ansar discusses his work, his views on atheism, and the difficultirs that visit him because he comes from a Muslim background. We also discuss the matter of religious privilege, media, politics, and journalism.

This is a re-upload of the conversation I had with magician Nakul Shenoy in 2022. Many episodes of this show were lost because of a technical error recently. I am re-uploading some of them once more because they were important conversations. In this episode, I discuss with Nakul Shenoy topics like hypnosis, mind-reading, past-llfe regression therapy and the scam that is third-eye activation. We also discussed the importance of critical thinking and the value of teaching young people magic.

This episode is a re-upload. Some time last year, a technical malfunction made me lose a bunch of episodes. I am bringing some of the lost episodes back, because they are valuable. One of these conversations was with Arpit Dwivedi, well-known internet atheist and YouTuber. In this conversation that happened live on YouTube, we discuss Arpit Dwivedi's work, history, and approach towards solving social problems. You can watch Arpit's most recent work as videos on his channel Arpit Explains.

I answer questions from readers and listeners about atheism, artificial intelligence, my creative projects, and society in general to the best of my ability. Links to resources mentioned in the episode My FAQ page containing answers to frequently asked questions - I get a lot of questions and many of these are often from people who are not aware that I have answered their question on multiple occasions before. So this page is going to serve as a standing resource to all such queries. Needless to say, it will also grow with time as more questions are added. I had 300K followers on Instagram when I shut it down - A long explanation of how I came to abandon my rather large Instagram account because of reasons that have to do with the toxic nature of social media. Jon Stewart on Trevor Noah's podcast - An episode that had insigts that stuck with me. Stuart and Noah talk about algorithms and how they become a filter that turns free speech into curated aggaravtion. Antim Sakshi, my Hindi audio story - A Hindi science fiction short story that I wrote and narrated some time ago. The story was actually written and produced a year before it was uploaded to my YouTube channel.

As I notice more and more people use chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude as replacements for human companionship, I was struck by the hollowness that this new trend is. ChatGPT is not only not anyones friend (except perhaps Sam Altman's), it cannot be anyone's friend. There is nothing there to be friends with. No one is actually answering questions, no one is giving advice. There is no one there. I am reminded of Blade Runner 2049, a world where preferring non-human companionship seems to have become just another sexual preference. Perhaps we are heading towards that world already. But we already know why a toy like ChatGPT seems attractive to those looking for companionship. As a species, our ability to recognise patterns in nature has played a vital role in the creation of civilisation. The firsthumans saw patterns in weather change and in nature and carved lifestyes out of it that gave rise to migrations, agriculture, and eating habits. But they also saw patterns in the stars and in the behaviour of animals and these gave rise to religious superstitions. I read recenty in Nicholas Carr' book The Shallows (affiliate link) that in the 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT coded ELIZA into existence. It was software designed to talk to people like a chatbot and offer them counselling. Weizenbaum found that even small amounts of time spent with the software were enough for people to think of ELIZA as alive and intelligent and conscious. They reported that it could actually understand them. Even his own secretary, who had seen him write the code for ELIZA, fell into this mental trap. ChatGPT is much more complex pattern than ELIZA and it is not surprising that people are failing to recognise that it is just code without any mind behind it. It's not becasue people are stupid. It's because people are people. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

I keep hearing the same few points from AI enthusiasts about AI use for creative work. One of these of course is that AI does exactly what the human mind does. This is false, along with a lot of other things that have become integral parts of the ongoing AI hype cycle. In this episode, I break down my point of view on the matter and also, in the second part of the episode, answer some of the comments I received on the first half. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

I decided to make a short episode about the underlying scamminess of the idea that AI tools are essentially time-saving. This is doubly true for the office-goer being exploited by corporations. Because at the end of the day, no worker gains anything by saving time. If one becomes capable of doing a day's work in an hour, they don't get the rest of the day off. In fact, it probably means the exact opposite - that they will be expected to do hundreds of hours worth of work now. And if they fail to do so on account of being only human, there will be yet another nicely packaged AI tool waiting to replace them. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★