For how often people invoke it, the concept of “hell” in Christianity is remarkably vague and nebulous, as both the Old and New Testament barely go into detail about the concept. As such, I’m glad Microsoft has now given us a clear vision of hell and what, exactly, it looks like, ending centuries of denominational disagreements.
Microsoft is currently selling the idea of Windows and Copilot as two separate things: an OS and an assistant riding along on top of it. However, a leaked video shows Project Aion, an internal prototype where Copilot doesn’t just sit inside Windows, it becomes Windows, swallowing the Start menu, the taskbar, and three decades of desktop conventions in the process. The footage is reportedly two years old, so Aion is most likely dead by now. But it’s the clearest look yet at how far Microsoft was willing to take its agentic AI ambitions.
↫ Alfonso Maruccia at Techspot
Everything about this is dreadful. Obviously replacing the entire shell with “AI” nonsense is the main crime against usability here, but on top of that, this new shell is all just websites, all the way down, so everything is slow and stuttery. Since this runs on something called “Win3”, which appears to be a very minimal, stripped-down version of Windows intended to only run the Edge browser engine, you can’t run Win32 applications. If you do try to run a Win32 application, it will load the application in a remote virtual machine running in the cloud, which I;m sure does wonder for performance, responsiveness, and latency.
We can all thank the lord this project is two years old and most likely cancelled by now, but we have no way of knowing if Microsoft is still intending for this to be the future direction of Windows. Since people don’t want to use “AI” of their own volition, it only makes sense in the technology industry’s sick, twisted mind to force people into using “AI” with efforts like this. Consent has never been Silicon Valley’s strength, after all.
At the time of writing, Microsoft is 225 billion dollars in the red on “AI”, so I wouldn’t be surprised if attempts to replace the regular Explorer shell with something “AI”-based is still very much on the table in Redmond.
I would go so far as to say that hell isn’t in the Bible. The Old Testament had Sheol, but that’s different, it’s where both good and bad people went. According to the New Testament (although this is indeed vaguer, with some passages having other possible interpretations) both the good and bad come back to life, the bad so that they can be judged and punished with eternal suffering. The concept of hell (certainly the way it’s viewed nowadays) was added later.
I hope we’ll continue to have OSes with interfaces like today’s, but version with AI input would be very interesting. One of the most useful applications of AI is as input. This type of interface would be huge (already is in some cases [1]) for some disabled people.
[1] https://lobste.rs/s/q49re5
cheemosabe,
The modern Christian “Hell” is probably borrowed from Islamic version, with the help of a certain writer.
Though to be entirely fair, these depictions are not in the Qur’an either. But rather arrived with the tradition that is expressed later on. And that happened with Muslims wider expansion and encountering of different cultures.
Specifically a large variety of new things came from Talmudic traditions. Zoroastrian tests, and old Mesopotamia cultures. This is not to say Islamic Hell is “tame”, but it is not described in much detail other than eternal torment, and fire. It for example has “seven gates”, but not described in the usual seven layers.
(Regarding AI, I think it might make sense to ask one to verify / expand this. I’m no theological expert)
The earlier copies we’ve found of the bible books (I guess the new testament) don’t mention hell at all. Satanism/Hell appears to be an Invention of the Romans to co-opt Christianity.
There was a video I remember watching which laid out how it was probably a syncretic borrowing of the Ancient Greek underworld.
I think it was Genetically Modified Skeptic’s I traveled to Jerusalem to face my fear of hell.
TREY the Explainer has also done some great videos on that sort of “history of the mythology that wound up in the Bible” thing. Here they are in order I consider most to least relevant to the discussion at hand.
What’s the deal with the Nephilim?
How Jesus Got A Beard
Who is Lilith? Adam’s first wife?
What is the Leviathan? and What can it tell us about Ancient Religions?
His “The Colossus of Rhodes – The Mystery Behind the Tallest Statue in the Ancient World” and “The Phantom Pharaoh” are also relevant to the broader evolution of the greater interconnected euro-near-eastern mythological milieu.
In the OT, Sheol is synonymous with “the grave”. In the NT, there are two words sometimes translated “Hell”. One is Hades and is comparable to Sheol. The other is Gehenna which came from the valley of Hinnom. Before Jesus, that area had once been used for sacrifices including sacrificing one’s own children. Later, it ended up being used as a garbage dump. It was known for being putrid and even having a sulfuric quality as I understand it.
So, the concept is a place so putrid and horrifying that no one realistically wants to be there. Other passages speak of the “lake of fire” and its eternality. So, together, the concept of Hell is very much in the New Testament in quite a bit of detail (contrary to what Thom says).
It’s like someone dared them to design the least secure of all possible systems. All I have to do to authenticate anything is tell Copilot my password so that it can pass it to a website that passes it to a remote win32 application.
I’ve seen this progression before… If we’re lucky, maybe it’ll have the same ending as BeIA
Hell does NOT exist in the old testament, the closest thing you get is gehenna which was a garbage dump outside of jerusalem. Either way, Jesus is very immoral in his teachings that you recieve infinite punishment for a finite transgression against a god that allready knows what you are going to do before you do it (omniscient) and a for a thing that god had created and caused in the first place (omnipotent)
>Jesus is very immoral in his teachings that you recieve infinite punishment
That’s not what Christians believe. If you “confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) And of course John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Hell is never mentioned in the Bible. It’s not a Biblical concept.
In many Bible translations “Hell” is used where originally “Gehenna” stood. Gehenna was a big fire where Isrealites burned their waste. Gehenna is used as analogy for destruction without restoration because once someone threw their waste into Gehenna they were never getting it back.