Transhumanism and Religion

Transhumanism and Religion Manhattan College, New York, October 13, 2011 Giulio Prisco - giulio@gmail.com

Transhumanism ???
Using technology to improve the human condition is feasible and good .
Familiar examples: eye glasses.
Less familiar examples: artificial organs, neuro-prosthetics (brain implants).
Future examples: indefinite life-span (aka immortality), mind uploading.
Ethics: if it makes somebody happy without making others unhappy, then it is good.

About me
I am a transhumanist.
I was raised in a not very religious family and community.
I was trained as a theoretical physicist and computer scientist.
My worldview does not include the “supernatural”.
I am very interested in spirituality and “cosmic visions”.
As a scientist I know that time, space and the fabric of reality may be stranger and more complex than we think.
I am open to natural “magic” in the sense of Clarke’s 3rd Law.

Some convictions (by ?)
It’s highly plausible that in the universe there are God-like creatures.
There are very probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine.
Their technical achievements would seem as supernatural to us as ours would seem to a Dark Age peasant transported to the twenty-first century. Imagine his response to a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, a hydrogen bomb or a jumbo jet. As Arthur C Clarke put it, in his Third Law: 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods?

Some convictions (by Richard Dawkins)
Science-fiction authors . . . have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization. But the simulators themselves would have to come from somewhere. The laws of probability forbid all notions of their spontaneously appearing without simpler antecedents. They probably owe their existence to a (perhaps unfamiliar) version of Darwinian evolution...”
By Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion

Spirituality? Religion?
Spirituality = weak Religion? Religion = strong Spirituality?
Often Religion = [Spirituality + God(s) + dogma + intolerance + holy wars].
But other times Religion = Spirituality (Unitarian Universalism, Buddhism…).
I will talk of Religion - [dogma + intolerance + holy wars], with no supernatural God(s) but open to natural God(s), including those we may build (or become) ourselves.
“ I have suggested that only a transcendent, impractical, radical religion can take us to the stars… We need a new spaceflight social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society… The heavens are a sacred realm, that we should enter in order to transcend death.” - William Sims Bainbridge, Religion for a Galactic Civilization, 1982 and 2009

Why are we addicted to R?
Fear of death.
Wish to see our dead loved ones again.
Other reasons are much less important.
Radical life extension and mind uploading offer immortality (in the sense of indefinite lifespan) but this is not enough.
A memetically strong religion needs to offer resurrection besides immortality.
Of course, we want to offer hope in resurrection based on science and technology.
How?

Mind uploading
Mind uploading: copying the information encoded in a biological brain to an alternative substrate able to “run” the same “computation”.

Is your upload “you”?
If you are about to ask if your upload is “you”, please answer:
Is the “you” who woke up this morning the same “you” who went to sleep last night?
This is NOT a simple question: strictly speaking, the only answer is NO!
But YOU know that you are the same person.
Why?

Accepting change
A person Y is a valid continuation of a person X if and only if both persons accept Y as a valid continuation.
Similarly, X is a valid past of Y if and only if both persons accept X as a valid past.
I accept yesterday’s me as my past, and I know that he accepted me as his future.
I accept tomorrow’s me as my future, and I know (by experience) that he will accept today’s me as his past.
Therefore, we are all the same person.

Two principles
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. - William Shakespeare, Hamlet

The right attitude
"So will the Universe end in a big crunch, or in an infinite expansion of dead stars, or in some other manner? In my view, the primary issue is not the mass of the Universe, or the possible existence of antigravity, or of Einstein's so-called cosmological constant. Rather, the fate of the Universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right .” - Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines

Three cornerstones of a transhumanist religion
Mind uploading - someday it will be possible to transfer entire personalities from their original biological brain to more durable and powerful engineered substrates.
Time-scanning - someday it will be possible to acquire very detailed information from the past. Once time-scanning is available, we will be able to resurrect people from the past by “ copying them to the future ” via mind uploading.
Synthetic realities - someday it will be possible to build artificial realities inhabited by sentient life. Perhaps future humans will live in synthetic realities. Perhaps we will wake up in a synthetic reality after having been copied to the future. Or… perhaps we are already there.

Do we live in a simulation?
We will develop the technology to create synthetic realities (virtual worlds) inhabited by sentient AIs.
You could be a sentient, thinking and feeling NPC in a World of Warcraft on steroids!

Ten Cosmist convictions
1) Humans will merge with technology, to a rapidly increasing extent. This is a new phase of the evolution of our species, just picking up speed about now. The divide between natural and artificial will blur, then disappear. Some of us will continue to be humans, but with a radically expanded and always growing range of available options, and radically increased diversity and complexity. Others will grow into new forms of intelligence far beyond the human domain.
2) We will develop sentient AI and mind uploading technology. Mind uploading technology will permit an indefinite lifespan to those who choose to leave biology behind and upload. Some uploaded humans will choose to merge with each other and with AIs. This will require reformulations of current notions of self, but we will be able to cope.

3) We will spread to the stars and roam the universe. We will meet and merge with other species out there. We may roam to other dimensions of existence as well, beyond the ones of which we're currently aware.
4) We will develop interoperable synthetic realities (virtual worlds) able to support sentience. Some uploads will choose to live in virtual worlds. The divide between physical and synthetic realities will blur, then disappear.
5) We will develop spacetime engineering and scientific "future magic" much beyond our current understanding and imagination.
6) Spacetime engineering and future magic will permit achieving, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions -- and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed. Eventually we will be able to resurrect the dead by "copying them to the future" .

7) Intelligent life will become the main factor in the evolution of the cosmos, and steer it toward an intended path.
8) Radical technological advances will reduce material scarcity drastically, so that abundances of wealth, growth and experience will be available to all minds who so desire. New systems of self-regulation will emerge to mitigate the possibility of mind-creation running amok and exhausting the ample resources of the cosmos.
9) New ethical systems will emerge, based on principles including the spread of joy, growth and freedom through the universe, as well as new principles we cannot yet imagine.
10) All these changes will fundamentally improve the subjective and social experience of humans and our creations and successors, leading to states of individual and shared awareness possessing depth, breadth and wonder far beyond that accessible to "legacy humans”.

The Turing-Church conjecture
The Turing-Church conjecture states that any computation executed by one computer with access to an infinite amount of storage, can be done by any other computing machine with infinite storage, no matter what its configuration. One computer can do anything another can do. In other words, all computation is equivalent. Turing and Church called this universal computation. Mathematician Stephen Wolfram takes this idea even further and suggests that many very complex processes in the realms of biology and technology are basically computationally equivalent. - Kevin Kelly, 2009
Take as a given that the Church-Turing thesis applies to human thinking, that our minds are complex machines, but machines nonetheless. - Randal A. Koene, 2010

Uploading, Resurrection, Synthetic Realities
Following the Turing-Church conjecture, a human mind can be transferred from a biological brain to another computational substrate (Mind Uploading).
Mind Uploading research is ongoing and may achieve practical results in this century, perhaps in only a few decades.
Once Mind Uploading technology is available, humans will be able to live indefinitely in non biological bodies and make backup copies of themselves.
Future civilizations of uploads will colonize the galaxy and the universe, and perhaps they will be able to resurrect the dead by "copying them to the future".
Perhaps they will be able to create synthetic realities inhabited by sentient minds, and perhaps we ourselves are sentient minds in a synthetic, computationally generated reality.

Trans-Religious mythology
These considerations are very similar to, and actually indistinguishable from, the promises of many religions.
Of course there are important differences: no concept of “supernatural”, hope instead of certainty.
We want to achieve transcendence by science and technology, but we have no detailed plan, only vague glimpses that “future magic” may be possible.
Perhaps “mythology” is a better term than “religion”. This mythology can offer many of the “mental health” benefits of religion.

Is transhumanism a religion?
Short answer: yes!
Longer answer: transhumanism is not a religion because it is based on science instead of supernatural beliefs. But it can replace religion by offering the same drive and hope.
“ Transhumanism is already a religion… has a host of beliefs and practices associated with overcoming the human condition and attaining a state of superhumanity. This seems clearly religious to me. As a religious system, transhumanism can tap into the basic human desires for transcendence, meaningful purpose, a sense of community, and the hope for life after death.” - Robert Geraci, Author of Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality, 2010

Uploading tech – hard/wet methods
Mind Uploading is feasible in principle and it will be achieved someday.
Achieving uploading will probably require a combination of all methods proposed so far, and then some.
In a few decades we will develop operational technologies for destructively scanning wetware (biological brains) in such a way as to retain enough information for future re-instantiation of the mind.
Of course, non-destructive scanning would be much better, but experts disagree on its possible timeline, and even feasibility in principle.
I think non-destructive very high resolution brain scanning is feasible in principle and will be achieved someday.
It is compatible with the laws of physics and so it is just another engineering problem.

Soft uploading tech
Bainbridge-Rothblatt “soft” uploading: instead of (or besides) reading a lot of the low-level information physically encoded in the brain by using “hard” brain readout technologies…
we can write a lot of high-level information out of the brain as diaries, blogs, pictures, videos, answers to personality tests, etc. in such a way as to create over the years a large database of personal information (mindfile, see CybeRev and Lifenaut).
The hope is that some future technology may be able to bring the information in the mindfile to life as a valid continuation (from both objective and subjective points of view) of the original person.
Future revival tech may include AI and generic models human minds that can act as a lower level layer of firmware and system software for the higher-level personal information in a mindfile.

Uploading timeline
I am not too optimist on the timeline. I don't think even the first uploading research demonstrators will be achieved by 2050.
Mind Uploading via a combination of:
Brain preservation optimized for future scanning
DNA or softcopy genome storage
Bainbridge-Rothblatt personality capture
may available to those of my generation.
A combination of these methods may transport (a sufficiently detailed instance of) us to a future where Mind Uploading is an operational reality.

This is not a joke (1)
To whom it may concern: I am writing this in 2010. My Gmail account has more than 5GB of data, which contain some information about me and also some information about the persons I have exchanged email with, including some personal and private information.
I am assuming that in 2060 (50 years from now), my Gmail account will have hundreds or thousands of TB of data, which will contain a lot of information about me and the persons I exchanged email with, including a lot of personal and private information. I am also assuming that, in 2060:
1) The data in the accounts of all Gmail users since 2004 is available.
2) AI-based mindware technology able to reconstruct individual mindfiles by analyzing the information in their aggregate Gmail accounts and other available information, with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, is available.
3) The technology to crack Gmail passwords is available, but illegal without the consent of the account owners (or their heirs).
4) Many of today's Gmail users, including myself, are already dead and cannot give permission to use the data in their accounts.

This is not a joke (2)
If all assumptions above are correct, I hereby give permission to Google and/or other parties to read all data in my Gmail account and use them together with other available information to reconstruct my mindfile with sufficient accuracy for mind uploading via detailed personality reconstruction, and express my wish that they do so.
Signed by Giulio Prisco on September 28, 2010, and witnessed by readers.
NOTE: The accuracy of the process outlined above increases with the number of persons who give their permission to do the same. You can give your permission in comments, Twitter or other public spaces.
Sign on my blog: giulioprisco.blogspot.com

Resurrection and/or simulation
Partly based on the article “In Whom we live, move, and have our being” on my blog.

Resurrection of the dead
Spacetime engineering and future magic will permit achieving, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions.
Eventually we will be able to resurrect the dead by "copying them to the future".

Moravec’s resurrection
“ Is robotics researcher Hans Moravec serious about the possibility of reconstructing a human being from "clues" left behind on an atomic level? The answer is "yes.”… Assuming the artificial intelligences now have truly overwhelming processing power, they should be able to reconstruct human society in every detail by tracing atomic events backward in time. "It will cost them very little to preserve us this way," he points out.” - Hans Moravec, interviewed by Charles Platt, 1995
“ Perhaps we are most likely to find ourselves reconstituted in the minds of superintelligent successors.” - Hans Moravec, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind
Note: A processor able to run simulated persons is not a computer, but a person. Not a mere machine, but a Transcendent Mind.

Tipler’s Omega Point
Intelligent beings of a far future epoch develop the capability to steer the dynamics of the universe in such a way as to make unlimited subjective time, energy, and computational power available to them before reaching a final singularity (Omega Point).
They restore to consciousness all sentient beings of the past, perhaps through a “brute force” computational emulation of the past history of the universe.
Our successors may be able to engineer conditions suitable for the emergence of an Omega Point.
After death we may wake up in a simulated environment with many of the features assigned to the afterlife world by the major religions.

Clarke-Baxter’s time scanning
In “The Light of Other Days” by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter:
The fabric of space-time is full of micro-wormholes connecting every point of space-time with every other point of space-time.
Scientists develop the capability to resurrect the dead by time scanning, copying them from their past (our present) and uploading them to their present (our future).
Idea: if there are not micro wormholes suitable for time scanning, perhaps we can make some.
‘ Quantum Archaeology’ may be able to reconstruct the past via quantum entanglement across time, or similar weird ideas.

Do we live in a simulation?
We will develop interoperable synthetic realities (virtual worlds) able to support sentience. Some uploads will choose to live in virtual worlds. The divide between physical and synthetic realities will blur, then disappear.
We may be living in a synthetic reality (simulation) ourselves!

We may live in a simulation
“ Our entire history is replayed many times in many places, and in many variations. The very moment we are now experiencing may actually be (almost certainly is) such a distributed mental event, and most likely is a complete fabrication that never happened physically” - Hans Moravec, 1992
By "almost certainly is" Moravec refers to the idea that observers living in simulated realities may vastly outnumber observers living in original physical realities.
In his "Simulation Argument" Nick Bostrom has proposed a more quantitative formulation.
A computer able to run simulated realities with conscious observers is not a mere machine, but a Transcendent Mind.
Bishop George Berkeley thought that the reality we perceive, and ourselves in it, exist in the mind of "that supreme and wise Spirit, in whom we live, move, and have our being": God.

‘Supernatural’ and ‘miracles’ in simulations
We believe reality is fully understandable and explainable by science.
If our reality is a simulation, everything in our universe can be understood in terms of the physical laws of the higher level reality in which it is simulated.
From the point of those who live in a simulation, Moravec's simulation cosmology may well contain supernatural phenomena: The reality engineer up there, the Transcendent Mind, may choose to violate the rules of the game.
The reality engineers cannot violate the laws of their physics, but they can violate the laws of our physics.
According to our best scientific understanding, it seems that the dead stay dead. But if we live in a simulation, the Mind can copy us to new simulation.

Conclusions
We may be living in a simulation performed by a Transcendent Mind in Whom we live, move, and have our being.
If this is the case, we live in a universe which permits resurrection of the dead. After our death, the Transcendent Mind may choose to copy us to another simulation.
If this is not the case (that is, if we live in the original physical reality), future Transcendent Minds may be able to copy us from the past and upload us to one of their simulations.

A simple simulation: the Game of Life

A miracle: CA Resurrection
If we live in a simulation, the Mind can copy us to new simulation. This is illustrated by the short movie "CA Resurrection", which I made with a Game of Life program.
The protagonist pattern is doomed to certain death by interaction with an environment that, except in very carefully controlled conditions, is very unfriendly to the stability of patterns (sounds familiar?), but is copied before death and restored to life in a friendlier environment.

Trans-religious groups
Mormon Transhumanist Association, explicitly religious, probably the best transhumanist community.
Society for Universal Immortalism.
Terasem.
Russian Cosmists.
Ben Goertzel’s “Confederation of Cosmists”.
Turing Church: a working group at the intersection of science and religion.
Perhaps some of these groups could / should merge.

MTA: MormonTranshumanist Affirmtion
We seek the spiritual and physical exaltation of individuals and their anatomies, as well as communities and their environments, according to their wills, desires and laws, to the extent they are not oppressive.
We believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation, including realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and the discovery and creation of worlds without end.
We feel a duty to use science and technology according to wisdom and inspiration, to identify and prepare for risks and responsibilities associated with future advances, and to persuade others to do likewise.

MTA: Theosis
As man now is, God once was: as God now is, man may be (Lorenzo Snow).
Mormonism teaches that God was once just like ourselves; that the eternal part of Him was enshrined in mortal flesh, subject to mortal ills and earthly pains and toils… He intends we shall become like Him; and it is certainly reasonable to expect that the child will eventually develop to the status of the Parent. We are divine beings in embryo, and it is only a question of time when we shall blossom in perfection (Orson F Whitney).
We believe in a God who is Himself progressive . . . whose perfection consists in eternal advancement . . . a Being who has attained His exalted state (James Talmage).

MTA: The New God Argument
If we will not go extinct before becoming posthumans then, given assumptions consistent with contemporary science and technological trends, posthumans probably already exist that are more benevolent than us and that created our world.
If prehumans are probable then posthumans probably already exist. If posthumans probably increased faster in destructive than defensive capacity then posthumans probably are more benevolent than us.
If posthumans probably create create many worlds like those in their past then posthumans probably created our world.
The only alternative is that we probably will go extinct before becoming posthumans.

Society for Universal Immortalism
We believe that one day it will be possible, through sufficiently advanced science and technology, to restore to life all persons who have ever lived.
This belief is called universal immortalism. The process could involve recreating lost information in such systematic fashion that eventually every lost person is recovered and restored.
We solemnly dedicate ourselves to helping to make this universal resurrection possible, and to bringing it about whenever and however it becomes possible.

Society for Universal Immortalism - Fedorov
Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (a Russian Cosmist) was the first person to propose universal immortalism.
He believed that human beings had a special, cosmic responsibility to make blind nature accord with human reason and love. He proposed that the "Common Task" of bringing ancestors back to life would unite common people and scientists throughout the world.
The scientific methods he proposed investigating were calculating particle positions backwards in time, with the assistance of artificial intelligence.

Society for Universal Immortalism – Perry, Clarke
R. Michael Perry brought together philosophical arguments for the nonlocality of personal identity and showed how short-term methods of life extension such as cryonics could be compatible with long-term methods such as universal immortalist resurrection.
Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, in the very warm and moving science fiction novel, The Light of Other Days, portray a future universal immortalist resurrection using tunneled wormholes in spacetime to capture and transfer information content.

Terasem - A Transreligion for Technological Times
1. LIFE IS PURPOSEFUL. The purpose of life is to create diversity, unity and joyful immortality everywhere. Nature—the Multiverse—automatically selects for these attributes. Diversity, Unity & Joyful Immortality is the self-fulfilling prophecy of creation.
II. DEATH IS OPTIONAL. Nobody dies so long as enough information about them is preserved. They are simply in a state of ‘cybernetic biostasis.’ Future mindware technology will enable them to be revived, if desired, to healthy and independent living.

Terasem - A Transreligion for Technological Times
III. GOD IS TECHNOLOGICAL. We are making God as we are implementing technology that is ever more all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful and beneficent. Geoethical nanotechnology will ultimately connect all consciousness and control the cosmos.
IV. LOVE IS ESSENTIAL. Love means that the happiness of others is essential to your own happiness. Love must connect everyone to achieve life’s purpose and to make God complete.

Terasem – A bridge to spiritually inclined seekers
The Terasem community has a warm, inclusive and welcoming atmosphere with gatherings in both brickspace and virtual reality, music, yoga, meditation, and “soft rituals”.
Terasem can build bridges to the large and scattered community of seekers, including New Agers.
Spiritually inclined seekers should embrace science, technology and transhumanism as a path to transcendence.
Founder Martine Rothblatt is the main advocate of soft uploading via mindfiles.
Terasem offers mindfile building and storage services.

A Cosmist Manifesto
Ben Gorertzel’s Cosmist Manifesto, includes the Ten Cosmist Convictions.
Cosmism is a practical philosophy, and a world-view and value-system that, in addition to containing abstract understanding, provides concrete guidance to the issues we face in our lives.
Cosmism is not something that can be scientifically or mathematically proven to be "correct"; it is something that an individual or group may adopt, or not.
Cosmism will become increasingly relevant in the next years, decades and centuries as technology advances, as the "human world" we take for granted is replaced with a succession of radically different realities.

The Turing Church
The Turing Church Proposal for a Religion 2.0 based on Mind Uploading, Synthetic Realities and Technological Resurrection
At this moment the Turing Church is a closed working group at the intersection of science and religion.

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Transhumanism and Religion

by Giulio Prisco on Oct 13, 2011

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Transhumanism and Religion — Presentation Transcript