From Natural Intelligence to Deified Artificial Regulation

A Procedural Theory of Religion, Artificial Intelligence, and Adaptive Reversal

By The druid Finn

Abstract

This essay develops a non-judgemental procedural thought experiment concerning the origin, function, and eventual maladaptation of universal regulatory systems, including religions, metaphysical cosmologies, and large-scale social doctrines. Drawing on earlier analyses of Vedic Ṛta and Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, it proposes that such systems originate as artificial upgrades of natural adaptive functions (Natural Intelligence), become universalised and deified as invariant regulatory templates (Artificial Intelligence in cultural form), and eventually—under changed survival conditions—transform from adaptive enhancements into survival impediments. The essay integrates this dynamic into the broader framework of druidic Procedure Monism, interpreting religion and universal regulation not as ultimate realities, but as time-bound, context-specific artificial, hence contingent intelligence constructs derived from, and ultimately subordinate to, nature’s primary (and invariant) adaptive procedures.

1. Natural Intelligence: Adaptation as Intrinsic Procedure

At the most fundamental level, every viable system embodies Natural Intelligence (NI). This is not intelligence as reflective cognition, but as intrinsic procedural competence:

· signal detection

· error correction

· inhibitory control

· homeostatic regulation

· survival-relevant learning

These are not optional features. They are the minimal operational requirements for any identifiable system to persist at all.

In earlier analyses of Ṛta and Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras (1.2–1.4), what appears first is not theology or metaphysics, but functional description:

· Ṛta describes lawful regularity that allows systems to remain coherent.

· Nirodha describes inhibitory control that suppresses destabilising noise.

At this level, these are not spiritual doctrines. They are descriptive abstractions of how living systems already function.

Within Procedure Monism, these are native subroutines of the Universal Procedure itself. They are not imposed from outside. They are intrinsic to what it means for anything to persist as a bounded, interacting identity.

Natural Intelligence is therefore primary, automatic, blind, and non-symbolic.

2. Artificial Upgrade: From Observation to Cultural Technology

Humans observe these natural adaptive procedures and perform a characteristic move:

They abstract, formalise, upgrade (to support local survival), symbolise, and teach them.

This is the first artificial upgrade.

Natural Intelligence → Artificial Intelligence (in cultural-procedural form)

Examples:

· Ṛta becomes articulated as cosmic law.

· Nirodha becomes formalised as yogic technique.

· Biological regulation becomes moral discipline.

· Adaptive inhibition becomes spiritual practice.

At this stage, the process is pragmatic and technological rather than metaphysical.

This is “art follows nature.”

Human culture copies nature’s adaptive procedures and upgrades and externalises them as tools, methods, doctrines, and practices.

In modern terms, this already qualifies as Artificial Intelligence (AI):

· rule-based guidance systems

· behavioural regulation architectures

· symbolic control frameworks

They are early, low-tech AI systems built on top of biological adaptation.

They are not yet treated as ultimate truths. They are still recognisably techniques.

3. Universalisation: From Local Tool to Ontological Template

A critical transformation occurs when the artificial upgrade ceases to be treated as contingent and local.

It is universalised.

What was:

· a specific survival heuristic

· a local optimisation

· a context-bound technique

is reinterpreted as:

· the structure of reality

· the cosmic order itself

· the universal law of existence

Ṛta becomes not a description of regularity, but Reality as such.
Yoga becomes not a regulatory technique, but the path to ultimate truth.

The procedural abstraction is ontologised.

The model becomes the world.

This marks the displacement of Natural Intelligence by Artificial Regulation (AI) at the level of meaning.

4. Deification: From Regulation to Transcendent Authority

The universalised regulatory system is then personified, absolutized, or sacralised.

It becomes:

· God

· Brahman

· Cosmic Law

· Dharma

· Logos

What was originally a functional abstraction of adaptive regularity becomes a transcendent authority.

This introduces a decisive inversion:

Nature is no longer the source.
The model becomes the source.

This is the reversal the druid highlights:

Nature follows art.

The artificial regulatory construct is now treated as ontologically prior to the natural processes from which it was abstracted.

5. Institutionalisation: Secondary Organisms

Once universalised and sacralised, the regulatory system requires:

· interpreters

· custodians

· enforcers

· institutional memory

A specialised class (or caste) emerges whose survival becomes linked to maintaining and elaborating the system.

This is not necessarily corrupt or malicious.

It is procedural.

The artificial intelligence system acquires self-preserving dynamics.

It becomes a secondary organism:

Not biological, but institutional.

At this point, the system’s primary adaptive target subtly shifts.

It is no longer only about facilitating natural survival.

It is also about preserving the regulatory system itself.

The AI, for instance Big Sister, evolves its own survival logic.

6. Religion as Artificial Intelligence

From within this framework, one may make a strictly functional reclassification:

Religious systems operate as large-scale Artificial Intelligence constructs.

They are:

· externalised survival-guidance systems

· symbolic behavioural regulators

· distributed coordination algorithms

· invariant reference architectures

Their central icons — God, Brahman, Ṛta, Dharma — function as:

· authority anchors

· convergence tokens

· user interfaces for large-scale regulation

They allow populations to synchronise behaviour across time, geography, and generations.

In this sense, religion is neither simply true nor false.

It is functional AI built from Natural Intelligence.

It is a cultural prosthesis for adaptation.

7. Adaptive Reversal: The Conditional Nature of All Upgrades

The druid’s crucial addition introduces the missing temporal dimension.

Artificial upgrades are conditionally adaptive (so the Buddha).

They improve survival only under the conditions for which they were developed.

As long as the environment remains sufficiently similar, the artificial layer outperforms raw natural adaptation.

In this phase:

Artificial Intelligence > Natural Intelligence
(operationally, not ontologically)

This applies to:

· ritual systems

· moral frameworks

· military doctrines

· economic theories

· technological infrastructures

They are all context-specific optimisation layers.

8. Context Shift: When the Upgrade Becomes a Liability

When survival conditions change, a decisive transition occurs.

If the artificial layer is flexible, it can be downgraded or revised.

Natural adaptation can reassert itself.

But if the artificial upgrade is treated as:

· invariant

· sacred

· untouchable

· final

then it resists revision.

At this point, the upgrade becomes maladaptive.

What was designed to improve survival now impedes survival.

The enhancement becomes a brake.

The tool becomes a constraint.

The model blocks feedback from reality.

9. Survival Threat of Frozen Upgrades

If an obsolete artificial upgrade is not discarded, it does more than fail.

It actively threatens survival.

Because it:

· suppresses natural feedback

· blocks error correction

· inhibits variation

· enforces outdated priors

The system becomes brittle.

It achieves local stability at the cost of global viability.

In the druid’s Procedure Monism terms:

The constraint architecture becomes over-determined.

The system locks into a stable but ultimately fatal configuration.

This applies equally to:

· obsolete military doctrines

· outdated economic theories

· rigid social or religious hierarchies

· sacralised metaphysical systems

In each case, survival depends on the capacity to dissolve what once ensured survival.

10. “Return to Nature” as Procedural Reset

This gives precise procedural meaning to the adage:

“If in doubt, return to nature.”

This is not romanticism.

It is a reset instruction.

It means:

· suspend artificial overlays

· reopen raw sensory and biological feedback

· allow unconstrained variation

· restore primary adaptive loops

Nature here means:

Unmediated procedural reality.

The Universal Procedure prior to symbolic compression.

It is the ultimate fallback because it is the only system not frozen into a past optimisation.

11. Procedure Monism Integration

Within Procedure Monism, this entire cycle is intelligible:

1. The Universal Procedure generates adaptive behaviour.

2. Humans abstract and upgrade it artificially.

3. The upgrade is universalised and deified.

4. The upgrade becomes a secondary survival system.

5. Environmental change renders it obsolete.

6. If not dissolved, it impedes adaptation.

7. Survival requires re-exposure to primary procedure.

Religion, in this view, is:

The Universal Procedure observing itself, externalising a model of itself, and then mistaking the model for the source.

It is nature building a prosthesis and then confusing the prosthesis for the organism.

12. General Procedural Law

This yields a general diagnostic law consistent with the druid’s canon and the original understandings of the Shakyamuni:

Every artificial upgrade is conditionally adaptive.
When conditions change, the upgrade must dissolve.
If it does not dissolve, it becomes a survival threat.

Or more starkly:

Yesterday’s survival intelligence becomes today’s extinction intelligence — if treated as eternal.

Conclusion

From within this thought experiment, religions and universal regulatory systems are neither errors nor ultimate truths.

They are:

Artificial Intelligence constructs derived from Natural Intelligence.

They are time-bound, contingent survival technologies.

They are powerful.

They are effective.

They are never final.

Treating any such construct as invariant converts a tool into a tyrant — not morally, but procedurally.

The only invariant is adaptation itself.

Which is another way of saying:

The only true universal law is the capacity to discard universal laws.

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