Spiritual is a loaded word for some, so I'm trying to stick to tracing the metaphysics at physics' observable boundary. We can observe (and experience) that the rational intellect grasps universals and abstracts. Zero, infinity, continuity (which is a form of infinity), triangularity, dimensionality... Bitcoin giving us a model of time (state, conservation and change) that we can view from the outside, not only means that we can make a better model of the time we experience (physics) but also a better model of the interface (metaphysics). I seems to look just like what Aristotle and St. Thomas said. The rational intellect grasps possible changes ("quantum states" which are not physical states but potentia) and qualities, practical reason discerns the good and the will signs potentia into actus. The negative case is being proven to us by AI. Despite the complexity of computation, they still suffer model collapse. Without sustaining order from outside the system, they fall into entropy. Something sustains order from the outside and we participate in that because we bring order into being as well.

Bitcoin and the Theology of Time

Thank you. For the human intellect to grasp immaterial it then must be a part (or at its core though parts and cores are just analogy) non-physical, immaterial (and indestructible) soul. Which is why we must treat people with such profoundly more respect than mere physical beings or things. However, we can create, through seemingly mere physical means, the combination (e.g. In vitro fertilization) of substances (at least transiently perhaps even themselves organisms - sperm and egg, though that may be incorrect it does require viability which implies internal organization to work) that combined allows reception from (in your essay Source) and instantiation of a soul. Said more simply man cannot manipulate the soul but man can make IVF “work” and the resultant substance formed can evidently receive a soul because the babies have evidence of intellects just like non IVF babies - and thus somehow acquired a human soul (and the resulting profound respect it calls for). Whatever AI is or is meant by it, it would seem determining whether it is always and inevitably never itself a substance (never even an organism) or whether it is possible, somehow, in analogy to IVF, to Frankenstein together a collection of AI things that can receive a soul. Which would have heavy ethical concerns. I apologize as this has little to do with time and your essay but the AI negative case you mention is incredibly important to get correct.