David O’Hara’s thoughts on whether an artificial intelligence could have a mystical experience (be it real or imagined) is sort of the plot of Battlestar Galactica. The question of whether or not AI in fact could perceive something real through its consciousness that we cannot through ours sort of makes me wish that idea had been a part of The Thing Itself, which spent a lot of time on the question of how much of reality we might be incapable of seeing.