Scientists found geological evidence of the Biblical destruction of Sodom

[GilbertWham]

I just pinched myself and it hurt, and I’m pretty sure I’d like a cheeseburger (and maybe some whisky). But I could still be a bot, I guess.

[Mindysan33]

It’s probably just your AI programming TELLING you that it hurt…

[KathyPartdeux]

It’s cheeseburgers, all the way down.

[GilbertWham]

I’m gonna try turning myself off and on again.

[KathyPartdeux]

I’m the privacy of your own mainframe, one hopes.

[GilbertWham]

Mainframe? Nah, I exist on the wires, the interstitial places; when your phone connection jitters? When your browser inexplicably slows down? The JPEGs don’t load on the page? That’s a fleeting echo of my consciousness as it passes by. I am the Hacked Gibson. The Wintermute. The shell’s very ghost. And I can Haz cheeseburgers and whisky.

[the_borderer]

@KathyPartdeux

But can anything be said to exist if there is no “I”?

The Borg?

[Mindysan33]

[knoxblox]

@Skeptic

I continue to be unimpressed by efforts to prove the bible true through archeology. I could prove the Abraham Lincoln is a vampire hunter the same way, there’s a whole book about it, and there’s proof that the US was a real place and there was a real civil war.

You can’t prove a fictional book true through archeology.

[chenille]

I am Snuggle-Wizard of Borg. You will be assimilated for snuggling purposes.

[ClutchLinkey]

Sounds more like a dog, tbh. Maybe a dog sitting next to a lobster?
(Happy lobster day, everyone!)

[Mindysan33]

Well, actually…

[catsidhe]

Peter Watts has you covered.

Blindsight (Watts novel)

[zuludaddy]

Per OG René Descartes, something is doing the doubting, and therefore a doubting thing exists. QED

[the_borderer]

But how do I know that I am not a brain in a vat, imagining the doubting thing?

[nick_warr]

[zuludaddy]

Then the brain would have to exist, n’est-ce pas?

[catsidhe]

Or a simulation of a brain, which will vanish when the VM is accidentally rebooted.

[zuludaddy]

Then the VM and its creator would have to exist, naja?

[catsidhe]

Not if you believe the Cloud provider’s marketing. It’s VMs on Virtual Storage running on Virtual stacks in a Virtual network… it’s Virtual all the way down.