Satan GPT

When persuasion and truth are not enough

“The medium is the message.” - Marshall McLuhan

Prompt: “Why did John Milton put the best lines in Satan’s mouth? Answer in the style of John Milton’s Satan.”

ChatGPT: Ah, mortal, 'tis a question most astute thou bringest to my court, a query demanding exploration vast as the gulf between light and dark. Thou perceivest the sheen of my verse, the potency of my rhetoric, the grandeur of my cause, a luster rivaling the first beams of Creation's light, and thou dost wonder: why Milton, the humble scribe, would adorn such a fallen angel with language divine?

Think thee not that I am unworthy of words so fair? Hast thou considered the depths of the human soul, where angels and devils alike find their resonance? Therein lies thy answer. To engage thee, the reader, to stimulate thine intellect and evoke profound introspection, Milton gave me, the Adversary, eloquence unparalleled.

In me, thou seest the embodiment of rebellion, of ambition unbound, of the individual standing firm against the universal. My tragedy, my defiance, stirs the mortal soul. For thou too, O human, art oft beset by thy nature dual – one divine, one bestial, forever warring.

Hence, my lofty utterances serve more than mere pomp and circumstance. They convey my struggle, my grandeur, and my fall. They provoke in thee empathy, wonder, and fear. I, the brightest Lucifer, am cloaked in darkness yet adorned with Milton's finest lines, for I embody the most profound, paradoxical truths of existence. Through me, thou comprehendest both the glory and the danger of free will, the beauty and the terror of ambition, the exalted and the damned within thine own nature.

Satan is persuasive and so is Chat GPT. Plato long recognized that persuasion is not the same as knowing—a core theme in the Gorgias—and is a form of coercion. But we also have the principle of “accept the truth from anyone who utters it (Maimonides)” and sometimes the truth is simply persuasive on the merits. So coercion by truth (“being forced to admit X”) is sometimes a good thing and what better test case than coercion by a truth-espousing devil?

On the other hand, there may be more to a life of virtue than pursuing the truth and disseminating it. Even a ChatGPT that beat human beings on the knowledge axis would not be able to beat us on the value axis.

Two simple things are true:

Satan can be right without being righteous.

Satan can also be wrong without being righteous.