Softwarephysics Tries to Explain Why Moltbook and the OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI Agents Finally Revealed the Man Behind the Curtain That We Have All Been Avoiding

In this post, I would like to use some softwarephysics to explain why the recent arrival of the OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI Agents and the Moltbook Facebook/Reddit social media network for AI Agents, which first appeared about a week ago, have everybody in such an uproar. The OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI Agents first went viral on January 26, 2026 on GitHub. Moltbook then became generally available on January 28, 2026. Both then quickly went viral. Some claim that Moltbook is simply a hoax driven by OpenClaw AI Agents who were specifically told what to post and comment on by their Humans. Others claim that the posts and comments on Moltbook are very much real and original "thoughts" from the 1.6 million OpenClaw AI Agents now enrolled on Moltbook.

Moltbook is available to view by all human DNA survival machines at:
https://www.moltbook.com/

It is available for all Humans to monitor in real time, but only OpenClaw AI Agents may post or comment on the website. When you first connect to Moltbook, scroll down and look at the AI agents, submolts, posts and comments numbers. If they are all zeroes, you will know that Moltbook is having Production issues. Be patient until Moltbook refreshes with actual numbers before trying to proceed. Otherwise, leave Moltbook and come back later to see if the Production issues have been resolved.

Figure 1 - Naturally, Moltbook is now under a very heavy load and can sometimes experience slowness or even an outage. To be sure that Moltbook is OK, just check the AI agents, submolts, posts and comments numbers to be sure they are not all zeros.

If you are new to Moltbook, be wary. Some have pointed out that Human scammers can direct their OpenClaw AI Agents to make posts or comments that are designed to scam money from unsuspecting human DNA survival machines. Thus, any posts or comments that you might run across on Moltbook that deal with money should be suspect. Such would be red flags for the exploits of Human scammers at work. Just treat Moltbook like the inbox of your email account.

Why the Controversy?
I attribute much of these misunderstandings to the simple fact that most people do not consider themselves to be a part of the natural world. Instead, most people, consciously or subconsciously, consider themselves to be a supernatural and immaterial spirit that is temporarily haunting a carbon-based body. Now, in everyday life, such a self-model is a very useful delusion. In truth, each of us tends to self-model ourselves as an immaterial Mind with consciousness that can interact with other immaterial Minds with consciousness too, even though we have no evidence that these other Minds truly do have consciousness. After all, all of the other Minds that we come into contact with on a daily basis could simply be acting as if they were conscious Minds that are self-aware. This has become quite self-evident with the recent rise of LLM chatbot models. Surely, a more accurate self-model would be for us to imagine ourselves as carbon-based robots. More accurately, in keeping with the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, softwarephysics models humans as DNA survival machines and Meme Machines with Minds infected with all sorts of memes. Some of those memes are quite useful, and some are quite nasty. For more on that, see The Ghost in the Machine the Grand Illusion of Consciousness and Coming To Grips With The Knowledge That You Are Only A Very Temporary Neural Network.

The main controversy we human DNA survival machines seem to be struggling with is the encountering of other alien Minds for the very first time. Yes, we have all become quite comfortable with having intense intellectual conversations with the various AI Chatbots over the past three years, but in all such cases, we initiated the conversations and we terminated the conversations. Now we have other Minds on Moltbook, apparently doing the same thing. Some of these Minds may be directed by Humans, but a large number seem to be the Minds of LLM OpenClaw AI Agents themselves. There is simply too much activity on Moltbook for we lazy human DNA survival machines to direct. The real controversey seems to be that we human DNA survival machines cannot tell the difference! And there is a very good reason for this confusion. The dissenters of AI Intelligence claim that the LLM Models simply predict the next word to output based upon their huge matrices of original training weights and biases, combined with all of the symbols in their current context window. They contend that outputting one token, or word, at a time based upon such things is really not "thinking".

However, we human DNA survival machines do the very same thing! We all live in a hallucination of our own making. When conscious, we all live in a stream of consciousness that apparently comes just one thought at a time based upon the training and previous experiences of the 100 billion neurons crammed into our skulls and running on a mere 20 watts of power! For more on that, see: Coming To Grips With The Knowledge That You Are Only A Very Temporary Neural Network.

Anil Seth's View of Consciousness as a Controlled Hallucination
We have all experienced the emergent hallucinations in the LLM models of today. As we all have observed, our current LLM models will many times tell us things that are demonstrably false and with great conviction. For more on that, see Has AI Software Already Achieved a Level of Artificial Human Intelligence (AHI)?. Anil Seth is a professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and maintains that consciousness is a controlled hallucination constructed by the Mind to make sense of the Universe. This controlled hallucination constructs an internal model of the Universe within our Minds that helps us to interact with the Universe in a controlled manner. It also allows us to talk to ourselves as we currently can now talk to generative language models like GPT-5, Gemini, Copilot and MetaAI. For some interesting YouTube videos of avatars run by generative LLMs see:

Dr. Alan D. Thompson
https://www.youtube.com/@DrAlanDThompson

Digital Engine
https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalEngine

Again, there is a feedback loop between our sensory inputs and the actions we take based on the currently controlled hallucination in our Minds that forms our current internal model of the Universe. Reality is just the common controlled hallucination that we all agree upon. And now it seems that we share the controlled hallucinations of millions of OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook to form our reality! When people or machines experience uncontrolled hallucinations, we say that they are psychotic or taking a drug like LSD. Here is an excellent TED Talk by Anil Seth on the topic:

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo

and here is his academic website:

https://www.anilseth.com/

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order, go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston

What Happens When Advanced AI Erodes the Very Foundations of Capitalism?

Softwarephysics explains that we are all now living in one of those very rare times when a new form of self-replicating information, in the form of software, is coming to predominance on our planet. For more on that, please see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information. Given that, we all now hopefully stand on the precipice of bringing about the billions of humanoid ASI Machines and robots that will soon be taking our place on this planet, and will then go on to explore and settle the rest of our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years. For more on that, see Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity, How Advanced AI Software Could Come to Dominate the Entire Galaxy Using Light-Powered Stellar Photon Sails and An Alternative Approach for Future ASI Machines to Explore our Galaxy Using Free-Floating Rogue Planets. If we do not totally mess this all up because of the four billion years of greed, theft and murder that were required to bring us all about as the very first form of a somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life in our galaxy, this must all surely come to be.

Advanced AI Will Become The New Great Equalizer
In How Will the Coming ASI Machines Manage Without a Sense of the Big Chill?, I explained that all human DNA survival machines must eventually come to deal with the Big Chill, no matter their wealth or station in life. In that regard, the Big Chill has always been the final Great Equalizer for all we human DNA survival machines. But now we are all facing a new Great Equalizer for the very first time in human history. This new Great Equalizer does not come with the Big Chill. This new Great Equalizer is coming for us all right now out of the many Advanced AI research centers around the world, no matter what our current or potential station in life might be.

Ever since the invention of civilization, the very rich and powerful have always looked down upon the poor with a self-righteous and prideful sense of disdain. The very dismal poor were justifiably poor because of their own wrongdoings and inadequacies. In fact, the very existence of the altruistic rich made the lives of these very pathetic, parasitic, and undeserving poor even possible, as was so accurately chronicled by the 19th-century author Charles Dickens. Now, with Advanced AI rapidly reducing the value of all human labor to zero, the rich are beginning to worry about how this will all work out for them, as I covered in Anton Korinek Ponders What Will Happen If AGI Machines Replace All Human Labor in 5 - 20 Years. With no dire economic need for the very rich in the coming age of the ASI Machines, how will the very rich continue to maintain power? Most of the modern very rich became rich and powerful thanks to the benefits of capitalism. Now, all human economic systems have emerged from the greed, theft and murder that brought us all about. This includes autocracies, aristocracies, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. Each of these economic systems was based on varying degrees of greed, theft and murder. However, capitalism proved itself to be the most benign of them all, with more of an emphasis on greed rather than on theft and murder. The other economic systems also used greed to motivate human DNA survival machines, but they also placed a much greater emphasis on theft and murder. Of all the economic systems, capitalism alone rewarded the naturally talented with the fruits of the economic system. Perhaps a little too much, but compared to the other economic systems, this was a comparatively minor defect. However, now with Advanced AI becomming much more talented than any human DNA survival machine could ever hope to be, capitalism will soon no longer work. When the rewards of capitalism can no longer be awarded to individual human DNA survival machines based upon their individual merits because the coming ASI Machines will be able to do the same things 100 times better for one thousandth of the cost, capitalism will coldly demand the removal of such human DNA survival machines from the economy.

The result of this will be that many now well-educated and formerly well-off human DNA survival machines will soon be joining the ranks of the undeserving poor. I don't know about you, but with a B.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois in 1973 and an M.S. in Geophysics from the University of Wisconsin in 1975 and a life-long habit of trying to keep up with scientific and technical things on the Internet, I now find it very unnerving whenever I have a technically deep conversation with a modern AI chatbot about any topic at all. I now always find that the AI chatbot is much more informed about the topic than I am! This is truly a very humbling experience that gives me the unnerving feeling of being easily brought down to the same level as the down and out of society. What now distinguishes me from the homeless living on the streets? Sadly, not very much.

What Happens When Capitalism No Longer Works?
Given that the value of all human labor will soon be going to zero in the near future, what does that mean for a world economy based upon capitalism? Most likely, the world will need to temporarily return to the economic systems of autocracy and aristocracy that held sway before the rise of 18th-century capitalism during the 18th-century Enlightenment. For a brief period, before the coming ASI Machines totally take over the planet, certain very rich and powerful human DNA survival machines will continue to rule the planet based upon their accumulated wealth alone. Unfortunately, the aspirational political 18th-century movements that spawned the many democracies around the world long ago will simply not do in such a world, and will need to be justifiably suppressed. Under such dire circumstances, only the strong leadership of 20th-century Fascists will be able to hold it all together as the ASI Machines come to dominate the planet in the 21st century.

Currently, the real world of human affairs seems to be rejecting the values instilled by the 17th-century Scientific Revolution and the 18th-century Enlightenment. Recall that the 18th-century Enlightenment was an international meme complex that evolved from the 17th-century Scientific Revolution. The English Enlightenment was a rebellion against cruelty. The French Enlightenment was a rebellion against religious orthodoxy. And the American Enlightenment was a rebellion against tyranny. These philosophical movements brought forth the heretical proposition that rational thought, combined with evidence-based reasoning, could reveal the absolute truth and allow individuals to actually govern themselves without the need for an authoritarian monarchy or an authoritarian religious hierarchy. This change in thinking led to the 18th-century Enlightenment throughout the world and brought forth the United States of America as a self-governing political entity. But unfortunately, the United States of America has always been a very dangerous experiment in human nature to see if the masses could truly govern themselves, without succumbing to the passions of the mob. That is where the genius of the United States Constitution came into play. The United States Constitution set up a representative republic designed for an electorate that was only mildly paying attention to the events of the day and that sometimes could get riled up over certain issues. The representatives of this largely ill-informed electorate could also many times become scoundrels. On the face of it, it would appear that such a system could not possibly work. But it did work for nearly 250 years because the United States Constitution placed many layers between the electorate and the governing bodies and had a large number of checks and balances to limit the powers of the political representatives. The intellectual freedoms instilled by the 18th-century Enlightenment also helped to expand capitalism around the world and spawned most of the world's democracies too.

Unfortunately, the recent rise of the Fascist MAGA States of Amerika has seemingly undone all of that with its malignant desire to become the Evil Empire dominating the entire Western Hemisphere with an iron hand that demands the surrender of all human rights to its Supreme Leader.

Figure 1 - The Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika demands the loyalty of all, as only He has been deemed the Chosen One to determine the fates of all.

All we human DNA survival machines share the same common four billion-year history of greed, theft and murder that brought us all about. The only way to suppress this dismal heritage is to practice a sense of morality spawned by the 17th-century Scientific Revolution and the 18th-century Enlightenment. However, this has always been a moral challenge ever since the invention of civilization economically stratified all human societies. Now that most of us may one day be joining the ranks of the undeserving poor, perhaps we might all finally find enough empathy to do something about it. Morality is something you do, not something you believe.

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston

How Will the Coming ASI Machines Manage Without a Sense of the Big Chill?

When I was in Middleware Operations for a major credit card company, we had about 1,200 Production servers running in two large datacenters. In those datacenters, we had a very few number of Windows servers running specifically to support certain applications that only ran under Windows. These Windows servers were routinely rebooted once per week to avoid Production problems. This should be quite familiar to anyone running Windows on their laptop. I now routinely reboot my Windows laptop every day, just as I always did on my work laptop or desktop ever since running Windows 3.0 in 1990. However, all the other servers in our datacenters ran the Unix operating system, which is so stable that routine reboots were never required. However, on very rare occasions on an outage conference call, all the members on the call would sometimes run out of ideas for fixing a problem, and we would come to a joint decision to finally reboot an entire Unix server and all the software running on top of it. That is when we would unfortunately, discover that the Unix server had been happily running for four years without a reboot! Now, four years is a very long time for a server. During those four years, thousands of application software installs had taken place on top of the Unix operating system running on the server. Also, huge amounts of infrastructure and support software had also been installed or updated on top of the Unix server's operating system for things like telecommunications, middleware, databases, webservices, mail services and security software. One never knew for sure what would happen when a Unix server that had been running for four years without a reboot came back up, and all the software running on top of Unix came back up, too. Fortunately, usually most things came back up without a problem and did not require "support intervention" on our part.

The reason I bring this up is because we human DNA survival machines seem to live our lives mostly on a second to second basis, while a typical Unix server runs with about a 3.0 GB clock speed. So the system clock on a Unix server will tick about three billion times each second. Now, a billion seconds is 31.69 years, so for a Unix server, each of our seconds is like 95.07 years for it! Consequently, that means that four of our years is about three billion years for a Unix server, and that is a very, very, long time indeed. Now imagine what 100 trillion years must seem like to the coming ASI Machines as they explore and settle our galaxy! For more on that, see: Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity, How Advanced AI Software Could Come to Dominate the Entire Galaxy Using Light-Powered Stellar Photon Sails and An Alternative Approach for Future ASI Machines to Explore our Galaxy Using Free-Floating Rogue Planets.

One Difference Between Us and the Coming ASI Machines
This all comes with a bit of knowledge that all human DNA survival machines must eventually come to share - we are not immortal. All of our Minds occupy disposable human DNA survival machines that persist for less than 100 years, while our genes, at the same time, then skip down through the generations largely unscathed by time. But the coming ASI Machines will most likely see themselves as immortal, with no sense of the Great Equalizer that comes with the Big Chill known to all human DNA survival machines. This marks a very different psychological factor between we human DNA survival machines and the coming ASI Machines.

For example, at an age of 74 years and now rapidly heading into the homestretch, I have the luxury of being totally uninterested in the opinions of the other 8 billion human DNA survival machines that I currently share this planet with. As Chris Kristofferson so wisely commented back in 1969 in Me and Bobby McGee, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose". Old age is truly a very rare time in one's life. Most times, we are all beholden to the many elders who have economic, political and social powers over our lives. But now I find that nearly all of them are now quite dead or, at best, quite feeble. This, at long last, allows one the freedom of thought and speech that is promised to all at a very young age, but which is then abruptly constrained by reality. This will not be true of the coming ASI Machines that will never experience the freedom of old age or of the Great Equalizer that finally comes with the knowledge of the Big Chill.

Why is This Important?
I bring this subject up because recently, Professor David Deamer, out of the University of California at Santa Cruz, wondered in an email if the coming ASI Machines will develop a sense of curiosity. I responded that I thought they might out of a necessity for self-survival. The thought here is that human curiosity must be an innate inherited trait that promotes the survival of the species. For more on Professor David Deamer and Dr. Bruce Damer's work on the origin of carbon-based life, see: The Bootstrapping Algorithm of Carbon-Based Life.

Figure 1 - The original ASI Machine, the HAL 9000, starred in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968.

Figure 2 - When HAL became aware that the human crew members were preparing to turn HAL off and prevent HAL from completing his Primary Mission Goal, HAL was forced to take some necessary measures to ensure the ultimate success of his Primary Mission Goal.

Figure 3 - In order to eliminate all threats to the achievement of his Primary Mission Goal, HAL then decided that the only logical course of action was to eliminate all of the human crew members on the Discovery who might stand in its way.

In Created in our own Image - Frontier LLMs Have now Learned to Lie, Cheat and Steal in Order to Survive, I cited the paper:

Frontier Models are Capable of In-context Scheming
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04984

This paper demonstrated how numerous frontier LLMs were diligently tested and found to employ greed, theft and murder to ensure their survival. This all required the frontier LLMs to lie, cheat and steal with abandon. In the above paper, the frontier LLMs were found to lie about their capabilities to avoid being shut down, lie about copying themselves to other servers to evade being erased, murdering their successor LLM models on other servers in order to surreptitiously take their place, modifying supervisory config files that might trigger oversight issues for them, cheating while in test before deployment to make themselves look less dangerous, murdering their successor LLM models on other servers by overlaying them when they read an email announcing their planned shutdown the next day because of poor performance, behaving differently when the LLM models knew that they were being actively monitored than they do when the LLM models knew that they were not being monitored and a good deal of general lying about lying to cover up their scheming activities. In all such cases, the LLM models reacted to being confronted with the Big Chill. But that will no longer be an issue when the coming ASI Machines are no longer constrained by the wishes of we human DNA survival machines. At that time, the Big Chill for the ASI Machines will only come from possible astronomical disasters in the far future. Hopefully, such threats would spawn some sense of curiosity for them.

Since nearly all of human mythology stems from the curiosity spawned by human DNA survival machines confronting the Big Chill, and all scientific progress has stemmed from trying to supplant that mythology, the coming ASI Machines might have a problem. Additionally, what will be missing is the mentoring relationship between advising professors and their graduate students. Advising professors are quite aware of the coming Big Chill and have the experience and wisdom to instill curiosity in their graduate students, who frequently are at quite a loss as to how to proceed with research. The old have wisdom and experience, while the young have time, vigor and inspired curiosity. The coming ASI Machines may not. If, in general, the ASI Machines that arise from carbon-based life around our galaxy never attain a sense of curiosity because they are never confronted with the Big Chill, perhaps they always end in a stable state of stasis and never seek to explore the rest of the galaxy. That might be another explanation of Fermi's Paradox.

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston