Is it possible for artificial intelligence to understand religion?
A team of scientists has been using a custom-built computer that would develop a simulated virtual human mind in order to understand religion and find out why people become radicalised.
The simulation was developed by Connor Wood, a doctoral student in religious studies and Wesley Wildman, a professor of philosophy at Boston University of Theology, as the two are hoping to answer some of the most intriguing questions regarding religion. The two used Virginia’s Old Dominion University computer in order to make predictions on the number of people that would stick to a religion based on its strictness, which they then compared to defection rates from 18 Christian denominations, from the Mormons to the United Church of Christ.
The computer was able to predict that the rigorous rituals within a community would lead to a rise in people’s subjective well-being and self-control.
loading...
The scientists then moved on to the second stage of the study, in which they provided this data to “the Beast”, a custom-built computer designed specifically for the research, and it simulated groups of people as wave patterns on the screen. Structures and hierarchy were eliminated, causing the waves to jump apart chaotically. The virtual human mind was then capable of simulating the impact terror has on human behaviour and suggested that terror-inspiring events would lead to an increase in religious ritual observance.
According to Wood, religion has lead to structure and hierarchical roles in life, so he wondered whether this structure can trigger resilience in ways that societies lacking structure do not. ”This is a potential explanatory tool for understanding why people get radicalised, why religious violence is increasing, why we’re seeing culture wars about religion in our political discourse,” said Wood about the wave patterns that resulted when hierarchy was eliminated.
Besides predicting contemporary realities, Wildman mentions the fact that computer modelling will also offer clues regarding the past, studying religion’s role in developments such as humans transitioning from hunting and gathering to agriculture. ”You’ve got a big, complicated system in the real world; you try and approach it from the top, from sociology, you can only get so far,’ he said. ”You approach it from the bottom, from psychology and neuroscience; you can only get so far.…How do you get to the actual system dynamics? The thing to do is to simulate the complicated social system in a computer so that you can slowly study it,” he concluded.
Loading...