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Paper short abstract

Language, devices and digital technology are expressions of logic. Logic is an applicative condition that verifies itself beyond premises. Which deities establish these premises? AI and recursion open up earthly spaces inhabited by demons and sacred spaces inhabited by angels. We need both.

Paper long abstract

Self-reference is a logical property that concerns artificial intelligence, while recursion is a logical principle that concerns blockchain. I will analyse AI and blockchain using self-reference and recursion through an association with deities and demons. We must go back to Greek times, when the fate of human beings was managed by the Moire. They used a messenger, the daimon, to whom souls were completely subjugated. Later, according to Plato, the soul is free but still partially bound to the daimon. Only with the figure of the angel who brings catastrophe (the event, the transformation) and opens a fracture in chronological time will the soul acquire complete freedom in intuition.

The power of AI lies in its self-referentiality, that is, in its ability to self-generate data, just as the progress of blockchain lies in the recursive process: the hash of a block is also contained in the inputs of the hash of the next block, and so on. Both processes are governed by necessity, that is by the daimon, but the intervention of the angel leads to freedom. The angel invites us to consider a concept of self-referentiality that escapes logical necessity because it identifies with the spiritual entity, where self-referentiality is not dispositive but intuitive. We are invited to counter the recursiveness of the blockchain, reduced to a mechanism, with a cyclical movement of epiphanies. Our task is not only to manage computerised rituals correctly, but also to understand that logic paves the way for rituals in a sacred space.