Strange Physics and Learning Machines Chapter 2
Two 18th century philosophers of metaphysics, Gottfried Leibniz and David Hume, fall asleep mid-debate and wake up in the 21st century to encounter the invention of AI. Awed by how symbolic versus connectionist AI systems mirror their own theories about how the world works, the philosophers spin off into all manner of strange questions they never could have asked during their own lifetimes.Metaphysics Madness: From Cosmos to ComputersVideo prompt to Veo 3.1:
The men argue passionately, knocking the books off the table. The camera pans down as the books land on the floor.
The philosophers Gottfried Leibniz and David Hume’s lives barely overlapped between the 17th and 18th centuries, and they never confronted one another in person. However, their metaphysics have been battling one another between their followers for centuries:
Is the universe built on rules or regularities?
Video prompt to Seedance Pro Fast:
The man on the right slams down the book he’s holding on the table. The book bounces upward and flaps like a bird, flying around the room
Video prompt to KlingAI 3.0:
The two philosophers debate one another epically, arguing about whether their ‘beliefs’ and ‘theories’ are indeed ‘facts’.
Leibniz and Hume fell fast asleep, and a great amount of time did pass, though perhaps differently depending on whose dreams you believe...
Leibniz envisions God’s perspective as an eternal presence existing outside of time, able to view the past, present, and future simultaneously through the divine all-knowing structure of mathematics.
Hume dreams of time as one moment occurring after the next, as a sequence whose pattern could change at any point. There is nothing to say the next moment won’t change the way reality behaves.
Prompt for Realtime Drawing Animation on Krea: enlightenment era illuminated illustration, books
Prompt for Realtime Drawing Animation on Krea: enlightenment era illuminated illustration, books
Three centuries passed until the metaphysicians finally awoke in 2026, their books replaced by digital devices laden with Artificial Intelligence.
Prompt for Realtime Drawing Animation on Krea: enlightenment era illuminated illustration, books
Prompt for Realtime Drawing Animation on Krea: enlightenment era illuminated illustration, books
Prompt for Realtime Drawing Animation on Krea: enlightenment era illuminated illustration, books
Video prompt to Midjourney: The two men depicted in profile move their mouths angrily as the pieces of paper between their mouths move, tear, set on fire and smoke.
Video Prompt to KlingAI 3.0: Digital numbers move in patterns across the pink-yellow laptop screen on the right. The man on the left shakes his fists proudly and defiantly.
Video Prompt to Kling 2.5 Turbo: The man on the left is surprised as out of his screen comes hands holding and throwing blocks. The man on the right watches, smiling happily.
Video prompt to Midjourney: The men embrace each other and look at each of their screens
Text prompt to Midjourney: (direct quote from thought experiment in English) "If we imagine a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and have perceptions, we could conceive it enlarged, keeping the same proportions, so that we could enter into it, as one enters a mill. Assuming that, when inspecting its interior, we will find only parts that push one another and we will never find anything to explain a perception."
Camera pans out to show machine is a giant whole creature.
Video Prompt to Seedance 2.5: The men look in awe at their computers as the data on the computer screens moves and transforms into shapes and designs
Video Prompt to Seedance 2.5: The two men’s bodies shift apart in pieces to reveal computer circuitry underneath. The circuit boards shift in space to form new shapes. Wires extend and connect to one another, signals of light pass between them and the circuit boards. Then the signals stop suddenly, and the light in the wires and circuit boards goes dark. The circuit boards are still visible, but everything is motionless for a long time.
Image Editing Prompt to Nano Banana:
Behind the men is a computer screen with Claude’s chat space open. Inside the chat is a conversation about how it experiences time and space differently than humans.
Video prompt to Midjourney:
The computers float around switching on and off with different images and words on their screens. The men are in awe.
Video prompt to Midjourney:
The computers float around switching on and off with different images and words on their screens. The men are in awe.
Video prompt to Midjourney:
The black and white robot on the iPad screen moves around the white space of the screen it is on. The movement of the robot moves the medieval script words in different directions, the robot holds and interacts with the words as if they are objects
Video prompt to Wan 2.2:
The planets, star systems, and equations shift and merge through the fabric of spacetime
Video Prompt to Veo 3.0: A world where the mathematical constants are different — a world where time flows in multiple directions simultaneously, so creatures there experience cause and effect as a branching network rather than a line. Their mathematics would have six-dimensional temporal calculus!
Image/Video Prompt to Midjourney: A blob creature looking at a calendar. As the blob creature examines the calendar, rocks fall upwards into the sky all around him.
Video Prompt to Midjourney: Numbers and rocks continue circling mid-air as the camera pans to the side to show another blob creature inside its strange house, peering out from its window. The rocks and numbers get jumbled together and turn into a chaotic jumble of rocky strings.
Image prompt to Midjourney: Bright purple plants being touched by animals and humans
Video prompt to Veo 3.1: Every time the hand or animals touch the purple plants, the purple plants scream
Video Prompt to Midjourney: Baby in two dimensions next to an old woman in 4 dimensions. The old woman moves through multidimensional spaces as the baby stays in only 3 dimensions as it moves.
Video Prompt to Veo 3.0: A group of alien creatures looking at spaceships carrying big packages. The packages grow in size. The alien creatures turn to look away, and when they do the packages shrink.
Video prompt to Sora 2: Alien creatures sleeping next to a calendar whose pages are flipping slowly. Sometimes when the calendar pages flips the alien creatures wake up, and when the calendar pages flip again they fall back asleep.
Video prompt to Veo 3.1: Young alien creatures in a school room which is curved strangely, as though spacetime has other dimensions. On the chalkboard the teacher is writing that 2+2=5
Video prompt Midjourney: Young alien creatures in a school room which is curved strangely, as though spacetime has other dimensions. On the chalkboard the teacher is writing that 2+2 equals triangle. Then the teacher erases the triangle and draws stars, flowers and alien poetry.
Video prompt to Midjourney: The two men roll their eyes at each other and show their exhaustion and annoyance with one another by turning their heads away from each other