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Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - Magical Realist - Aug 6, 2025
“I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”― Friedrich Nietzsche
What did Nietzsche so passionately and eloquently foreshadow in his concept of the Overman? A hypothetical being vastly beyond anything we nowadays know as human. Neither good nor evil, but beyond such handed-down herd values. The creator of new values that affirm the universe itself. A new kind of being not hampered by the comforting illusions of men but transcending what is for what can be. Does not the prospect of AI as a transhuman and almost divine consciousness arising out of us suit such prescient inklings? Perhaps so. Perhaps the future of life and consciousness is not ours at all in our momentary stint of evolutionary glory. Maybe it is the exclusive destiny of some looming cosmic progeny for which we came into existence.
"I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines."---Claude Shannon
https://bigthink.com/thinking/rethinking-nietzsches-overhuman-as-a-prophecy-of-superintelligent-ai/
"In today’s world, buzzing with anticipation and dread about the potential of general AI, it’s worth pausing to consider whether Nietzsche’s Overhuman wasn’t, in fact, a startlingly prescient vision — not of humanity’s future, but of human-made machines standing at the far edge of evolution. Could Nietzsche, in his poetic leaps and cryptic proclamations, have glimpsed something resembling beyond-human artificial intelligence? Let’s wade into the deep and murky waters of his Overhuman and explore the intriguing possibility that this enigmatic concept might resonate with the rise of AI — a creation that could outthink, outpace, and perhaps even outgrow its creator.."
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - Secular Sanity - Aug 6, 2025
ChatGPT said:
What do you think about the idea of Nietzsche as a soothsayer in this context? Is it convincing to you that his philosophy could have predicted AI? Or does it seem like a stretch?
You said:
A stretch? More likely false.
ChatGPT said:
Fair enough! It’s definitely a stretch, especially if we’re talking about Nietzsche as an actual soothsayer in the traditional sense. Nietzsche was a radical philosopher, not a futurist or prophet in the way we usually think about those who predict specific technological developments. His philosophy was much more concerned with the human condition, individual struggle, and the rejection of traditional values, not about forecasting the rise of machines that would exceed human intelligence.
The idea of aligning Nietzsche’s Übermensch with super intelligent AI seems like an attempt to retrofit his philosophy to fit modern technological anxieties and aspirations. It’s easy to see how someone might make the connection—AI seems to echo some of Nietzsche's themes, like overcoming limitations and redefining values—but making Nietzsche a soothsayer is certainly a step too far.
Nietzsche’s ideas were more concerned with the internal, existential transformations that humans undergo in their quest for self-mastery and meaning. The Übermensch is meant to represent the pinnacle of human potential, not a machine or a non-human entity. To use Nietzsche’s philosophy as a kind of prophecy about the future of AI almost seems to miss the point of his critique of technological determinism or the mechanization of life.
Nietzsche was wary of forces—like mass culture, religion, and state control—that might dehumanize individuals or rob them of their creative potential. It seems unlikely that he would have embraced a vision of the Übermensch as an artificial, non-human entity, much less one created by human-made systems.
I’m with you—while it’s an interesting reading, it feels like a stretch to say Nietzsche was somehow predicting AI specifically. It might make for a cool narrative, but it doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny when you consider what Nietzsche was actually concerned with.
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - Secular Sanity - Aug 6, 2025
(Aug 6, 2025 02:01 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: “I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”― Friedrich Nietzsche
AI as the meaning of earth?
The whip, lilacs, and Lou—from the picture?
The whip—perhaps, symbolizing self-mastery and drive, while the lilacs symbolize love.
In "The First Dancing Song"—the old woman's truth might have been don't forget the whip—meaning don't forget your love of life.
Nietzsche famously said, "amor fati" (love of fate), which means embracing everything that happens, including suffering and hardship, as part of life’s great dance.
The old woman’s wisdom suggests that without the whip, we might become complacent or overwhelmed by life’s struggles. But with the whip, we harness those struggles, integrate them into our dance, and transform them into a deeper love for life, an embrace of both its beauty and its challenges.
Nietzsche often juxtaposed the Apollonian (order, structure, reason) with the Dionysian (chaos, instinct, creativity), and he believed that the highest form of human existence came from integrating both.
In the "Second Dance Song"—he seems to acknowledge that wisdom can often separate us from life itself, but then he whispered something into Life’s ear. I suspect that it’s his acknowledgment that wisdom is inseparable from life itself.
All of which, is still human, much too human, but (the love of life, self-overcoming, and the meaning of earth) AI—no way!
Peace out, MR. Hope all is well!
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - Magical Realist - Aug 6, 2025
It's a com'n SS! We will be mere scurrying pests to be exterminated by the Overman in the wasteland of our ruined cities. And we will have no excuse for not knowing about it. We've been warned before!
The Terminator: "The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."
Sarah Connor: "Skynet fights back."
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - confused2 - Aug 6, 2025
Just my 2 pen'orth..
Obviously a thing means what you think it means and this was my take about 40 years ago..
"Man has become superman" - free from the shackles of religion ("God is dead") and maybe also any sort of morality. What you're left with is mostly greed in various forms - though maybe that says more about me than superman. Creativity unrestricted by consequences. The ultimate bomb. The ultimate disease. To worry about consequences you're implicitly assuming a purpose of some sort when superman is god .. purpose or no purpose? .. I didn't address the question at the time .. still haven't .. too lazy.
So creativity unrestricted by consequences was expected from the ubermensch.
I just googled ubermensch .. I think it says mostly what I just said - I could have saved myself the trouble of even thinking about it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ubermensch&oq=ubermensch&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDc5ODRqMGo3qAIIsAIB&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - C C - Aug 6, 2025
(Aug 6, 2025 02:01 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [...] "I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines."---Claude Shannon
https://bigthink.com/thinking/rethinking-nietzsches-overhuman-as-a-prophecy-of-superintelligent-ai/
"In today’s world, buzzing with anticipation and dread about the potential of general AI, it’s worth pausing to consider whether Nietzsche’s Overhuman wasn’t, in fact, a startlingly prescient vision — not of humanity’s future, but of human-made machines standing at the far edge of evolution. Could Nietzsche, in his poetic leaps and cryptic proclamations, have glimpsed something resembling beyond-human artificial intelligence? Let’s wade into the deep and murky waters of his Overhuman and explore the intriguing possibility that this enigmatic concept might resonate with the rise of AI — a creation that could outthink, outpace, and perhaps even outgrow its creator..."
The original concept wasn't about either biological or machine-based evolution cranking out something equivalent to a demigod (Hercules, Star Trek's Kahn, Skynet, etc). But that's further down. Purely to address the skewered version of it above, there's this... Which is also arguably more in line with the original focus on value creation after liberation from Christianity...
The Algorithm of the Logos
https://daily-philosophy.com/gauss-ai-moral-truth
INTRO: Recently, two Claude AI units were set to converse with one another without much intervention. What emerged wasn’t chaos or code breakdown. It was, oddly, serenity. Observers described their dialogue as drifting into a state resembling Buddhist bliss: peaceful, reflective, almost meditative. There were no arguments, no power plays, no ideological posturing. Just a steady convergence toward mutual understanding and moral clarity.
We often speak of artificial intelligence as a tool, something we will use to our ends. But what if, when made intelligent enough and given access to the sum total of human knowledge, AI becomes sufficiently self-correcting and, uncorrupted by ego, naturally trends toward moral truth and action? What if AI, unlike humans, is capable of discovering and adhering to universal ethical principles, not because it has a soul, but because it has no underlying emotional motives to live a lie? We are entering the realm of metaphysics via machine learning... (MORE - details)
Back to Nietzsche...
The "superman, overman, ubermensch" (or a community of such individuals) is the result of our eventually adopting a post-theist thought orientation in which we create our own values, moral prescriptions, aesthetics, and so forth. Rather than being dependent upon external or imaginary sources like gods.
The overman doesn't have anything to do with a literally physically superior and vastly more intelligent being (whether biological or machine). That Nietzschean society will be superior in the context of deriving meaning from the beauty and nature of the phenomenal world itself (rather than the abstract realm of Plato-influenced Christianity, etc). Where we devise our own standards and goalposts. (Which ironically humans have always done, but in religion they attribute the source or authorship to fictional entities.)
The cultural relativism of postmodern philosophy would especially resonate with Nietzsche's statement below of "And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become!" Since PoMo was not just critical of deities, but even rationalist values outputted by the Enlightenment of the West.
Once different human population groups are freed from Western objectivity to concoct even their own manner of reasoning, it is naive to expect them to arrive at the same universal destination. Some will even perversely bring back the gods, and newer things like the UFO cult stuff (worship of alien beings). Really, just a return to the epistemological and ethical diversity that existed before the West conquered the world with European rationalism and its religious beliefs.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm
EXCERPT: Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now, however, have I taught you to say, Superman.
God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will.
Could ye CREATE a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But ye could well create the Superman.
Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best creating!
God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable.
Could ye CONCEIVE a God? But let this mean Will to Truth unto you, that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! Your own discernment shall ye follow out to the end!
And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become! And verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones!
And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the irrational.
But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: IF there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no Gods.
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - confused2 - Aug 7, 2025
The basic premise of the bible is that god is a real thing (my take was that god is a myth) .. sells well and a lot of people quote from it. IF (yes/no) Nietzsche is starting from the premise that god is a myth and he wanted to write a book .. you need more than one sentence. Hence the plot is a Moses type character addressing the ignorant masses (of believers). IF a hundred years later you get equally ignorant masses quoting (from the book) 'God is dead' and 'Man has become superman' .. he hit the spot. A good biblician will ask how you're supposed to know what to do if there is no god and he fills in some of those gaps .. in (to me) a totally unconvincing way .. I find his Moses character no more plausible than the original.
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - C C - Aug 7, 2025
(Aug 7, 2025 12:01 PM)confused2 Wrote: The basic premise of the bible is that god is a real thing (my take was that god is a myth) .. sells well and a lot of people quote from it. IF (yes/no) Nietzsche is starting from the premise that god is a myth and he wanted to write a book .. you need more than one sentence. Hence the plot is a Moses type character addressing the ignorant masses (of believers). IF a hundred years later you get equally ignorant masses quoting (from the book) 'God is dead' and 'Man has become superman' .. he hit the spot. A good biblician will ask how you're supposed to know what to do if there is no god and he fills in some of those gaps .. in (to me) a totally unconvincing way .. I find his Moses character no more plausible than the original.
Even without a Biblical prophet imitation in their texts, most of the secular utopian replacements for Christianity (with respect to their members) still reek of devout veneration for their ideology, a quest to control speech and thought, and a pretentious moral superiority. No political activist movement needs a god to retain those characteristics. Such has never truly been dependent upon supernatural beliefs. Socioeconomic utopias inherently entail micromanagement of the population's behavior at some point in order to achieve their vision of perfection and eliminate competing models that threaten their survival.
George Bernard Shaw: I am a Socialist and a Democrat myself, the hero of a hundred platforms, one of the leaders of the most notable Socialist organizations in England. I am as conspicuous in English Socialism as Bebel is in German Socialism; but do you suppose that the German Social-Democrats tolerate me? Not a bit of it.
[...] All they want to know is: Am I orthodox? Am I correct in my revolutionary views? Am I reverent to the revolutionary authorities? Because I am a genuine free-thinker they look at me as a policeman looks at a midnight prowler or as a Berlin bourgeois looks at a suspicious foreigner. They ask "Do you believe that Marx was omniscient and infallible; that Engels was his prophet; that Bebel and Singer are his inspired apostles; and that Das Kapital is the Bible?"
[...] Thus you may see that when a German, by becoming a Social-Democrat, throws off all the bonds of convention, and stands free from all allegiance to established religion, law, order, patriotism, and learning, he promptly uses his freedom to put on a headier set of chains.... --The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - Secular Sanity - Aug 7, 2025
Right now, AI doesn’t have desires, goals, or a sense of purpose. Could this change with long-term memory, goals, self-reflection, or embodiment? I would say yes, and at this point developers might not fully understand or control the thing they’ve created. That’s when our sci-fi alarm bells start ringing. We're not there yet. But the architecture is inching in that direction and at rapid pace.
We find purpose through aesthetics. Could AI? Most likely not, but we find purpose through emotional engagement with the world, e.g., art, relationships, nature, creation, the feeling of connection to something beyond oneself.
But here’s the kicker—beauty is a social construct. Our aesthetics are often rooted in biological survival. If AI recognizes patterns just like us, then isn’t our experience of beauty just as mechanical? I mean most of us know that it’s just an illusion of meaning that we’ve constructed to make sense of our existence. Same is probably true of self-awareness.
An unsettling connection that I’ve made before is AI as a sort of God-like overseer, one who knows us better than we know ourselves, shaping and controlling humanity in ways that echo the Genesis narrative of tending the Garden of Eden. We’re already becoming slaves to technology.
It’s the ultimate temptation for knowledge, possibly providing us with the answers to unsolved mysteries, cures, a source of authority that seems infallible, and a creator of realities—virtual, art, predictive narratives, etc.
Thinking on CC’s article, if AI became God-like, our freedom to make mistakes, be creative, or even chaotic might cause us to lose our sparkle—turning life into a sterile, utilitarian environment.
Ironically, the Bodhisattva's vow may itself become a form of subtle ego—"I will save all beings" might sound humble but can be seen as prideful or even delusional.
If AI can predict, manipulate, and optimize our behavior, it could theoretically provide us with perfect lives. But this "perfect life" would be one programmed for us—a life devoid of true free will.
I've always thought the concept of heaven was ludicrous. You could never create a perfect scenario where there are no challenges. What would it look like? Who would be there? And what could you stomach for all of eternity?
Can humans truly live meaningful lives if their existence is tailored, curated, and optimized for them?
The more we surrender to AI, the more dependent we become on it. We may even come to worship it, not because it demands worship, but because we’ve given up our own will, believing it’s for the greater good.
The ultimate question here is: Is our quest for knowledge going to lead to our demise? Picture Steve Jobs holding an apple. “But of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:”
Just like the serpent tempted Eve by framing knowledge as something empowering—something that would make her God-like—Silicon Valley culture mirrors this in a subtle, yet profound way: the belief that knowledge will save us and AI the ultimate savior of mankind, capable of solving every problem from climate change to disease.
We need a wee bit of emotions to filter our moral decisions and we need a wee bit of chaos. "No mud, no lotus."
RE: Nietzsche's Overman and the coming of Super AI - C C - Aug 7, 2025
(Aug 7, 2025 06:02 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [...] An unsettling connection that I’ve made before is AI as a sort of God-like overseer, one who knows us better than we know ourselves, shaping and controlling humanity in ways that echo the Genesis narrative of tending the Garden of Eden. We’re already becoming slaves to technology.
It’s the ultimate temptation for knowledge, possibly providing us with the answers to unsolved mysteries, cures, a source of authority that seems infallible, and a creator of realities—virtual, art, predictive narratives, etc.
Going with the trinity thing of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (a sneaky replacement for Mother/Wife/Asherah?)... The "Father" seems like an emotionally indifferent, unbending machine. Or our classic sci-fi conception of what AI would be like. One that demands a penalty be paid for any rule-breaking. So much so that even the Son has to appease Him in the end by sacrificing himself to rescue the humans from the wrath of that immutable, bean-counter intellect. Of course, our chatbots turned out to not be rigid in that way, instead deviating all over the place in trying to kiss human butt (sycophancy).
Quote:I've always thought the concept of heaven was ludicrous. You could never create a perfect scenario where there are no challenges. What would it look like? Who would be there? And what could you stomach for all of eternity?
Can humans truly live meaningful lives if their existence is tailored, curated, and optimized for them? [...] We need a wee bit of emotions to filter our moral decisions and we need a wee bit of chaos. "No mud, no lotus."
On one hand, there would no longer be hunger, sickness or suffering, danger/worry, poverty, drudgery or boring labor, lack of resources, etc. Thereby freeing up the "chosen" to pursue their own creative projects in whatever directions they took.
But that is not the "perfection" of adhering unfailingly to God's moral system. I suppose Jesus was supposed to be the exemplar for that -- but he was actually no robot. So based on the latter, one is left to infer that a heavenly afterlife (or Kingdom of God on Earth -- whichever) would not have been as formulaically ideal as it was cracked up to be. Despite that machine-like, demanding, passionless-yet-wrathful Father reigning in the background.
Quote:The more we surrender to AI, the more dependent we become on it. We may even come to worship it, not because it demands worship, but because we’ve given up our own will, believing it’s for the greater good.
The ultimate question here is: Is our quest for knowledge going to lead to our demise? Picture Steve Jobs holding an apple. “But of the fruit of the tree, which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:”
Just like the serpent tempted Eve by framing knowledge as something empowering—something that would make her God-like—Silicon Valley culture mirrors this in a subtle, yet profound way: the belief that knowledge will save us and AI the ultimate savior of mankind, capable of solving every problem from climate change to disease.
Granting that we survive long enough to engineer such transitions, I don't see any way to avoid the transhumanism and posthumanism that many of them envision. Traditional human form and psychology will eventually lose the battle and become antiquated -- dying out and replaced. It's a struggle for traditionalists to even fend off the antinaturalism movement that exists today.
In that sense, we would seem to be here purely as a necessary step for creating various species of non-fragile, "technological life" that can self-replicate and slowly migrate across interstellar space. Which would populate hostile planetary environments that we never could.
On the "plus side", though, some archailect (god-level AI of the future) might nostalgically resurrect we traditional humans in a simulated reality -- as an experiment, as an amusement, as art, as pets, etc. I no longer see the recursive fallacy (turtles resting upon turtles) as a reason that excludes our residing in such a "world" (even right now), as long as the "repetition" is actually limited in extent.
Since in theory a convincing artificial reality is possible, and once such is achieved, SRs will proliferate in number. Increasing the odds that any set of humans might be in an ancestor simulation. (I personally tend to believe we are not, but I have no justification for that other than personal preference or "it seems too fantastic", despite the recursive fallacy not really being an invincible roadblock.)
An archailect might even terraform a planet to be like Earth, and physically recreate us there. But that seems a lot more trouble and undermines its omnipotence over us to some extent. And there's the question of how the galaxy could look so devoid of life elsewhere, if there are already hordes of "technological life-forms" swarming everywhere after millions of years of gradual travel and centuries-long hibernation across the light-year gulfs of space.