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Test Your Techno Tolerance!

Interesting quiz: http://www.sagecrossroads.net/Quiz

Do you envision the future as a time when your physical body will no longer be the limit to your abilities? Does the idea of living forever tantalize your mind? On the flip side, would you like to revert back to a simple, down to earth agrarian lifestyle? Should the invention of the wheel - or at most the horse and buggy- have been the final frontier in technological advancement? Take this quiz to find out where you stand!

These questions should unearth your inner feelings about technological advancement and its role in our future. While answering the questions, assume that cost is not a barrier and that the technology is widely available. Also, if a question asks you about living a great long time, assume that your years will be spent happily on the shore of your favorite beach rather than in a hospital.

What’s your technological tolerance?

My (predictable) results:

You Score as a Transhumanist-Biotech

Transhumanists believe that humanity can and should strive to attain higher levels of physical, mental, and social achievement through the use of technology. They seek to extend human capabilities and improve the human condition through technology- supporting the quest for immortality, the conquering of death and disease, the amplification of human intelligence, and the capabilities of the human body.

Transhumanists recognize that over time and with technological advancements, man will realize new possibilities for society and human nature and achieve a posthuman condition (becoming more than human). Societal change is an important consequence of technological progress.

Because of this passionate trust in technological advancement, transhumanists generally see all technologies, as long as they don’t jeopardize the non-corporeal consciousness of a person, as being beneficial both to society and to the happiness and advancement of the person. Transhumanists see benefit not only in technologies that address medical necessities, but also aesthetic or recreational demands. They support advances in cybernetics, genetic engineering in clinical settings, embryo design, and other technologies that allow individuals to take control of their biology, and the human species to take control of evolution.

Transhumanists can be either hard-technology oriented--more inclined to add microchips and machines to their lifestyle--or bio-technology oriented--preferring the softer, more natural advancements and modifications that are made available.

We The Poopers?

I reacted to this Amor Mundi post with this comment: “Yet another apology of the body defined in terms of its mortality and vulnerability. You are beginning to sound like one of those preachers who tell people that they should be happy in their misery because we are born to suffer. Or like those Victorian writers who exalted the lives of the poor, while of course their masters accumulated wealth and they, like all good lackeys, got some crumbs of their masters’ wealth. I never considered myself as a rugged individualist, but if a rugged individualist is defined as someone who deals with things and achieves his objectives, then I am happy to be one. You claim to be a person of the Left - did you ever read Marx?”, and triggered a wave of anti-transhumanist posts, one of which personally dedicated to me.

Of course there are the usual personal insults: “idiot, bullshit, jackass...” and even a new word that I had to look up in a dictionary: “doofus”. But I am impermeable to Carrico’s insults, for which as usual the best policy is one-ear-in, other-ear-out. What I find interesting, instead, is that he is defining humanity in terms of shit.

Yes, shit. In his passionate defense of the body: “it is true that life is lived in bodies, and that bodies are various and vulnerable and mortal and hungry for connection, and that embracing embodied life demands an embrace of all this about bodies. To deny their variation, their vulnerability, their mortality, their sociability is to deny the body”, he makes references to the alleged body-loathing of “Transhumanists who want to talk about living forever in computers and not having bodies that have to poop”. I and other transhumanists are “dispirited at the prospect of continuing to have to poop or whatever it is that freaks you out so much about bodily life”.

My reply was:

“This is your second reference to poop in a few days and, to make things clear, I will state that I actually enjoy pooping. When I was a student I even wrote a poem about poop for a literature class and, while the teacher did not appreciate it too much (he wanted some loooong essay with biiiiig words), the other students appreciated it immensely and wrote parts of it on the walls.

On the reading table next to my WC (I am one of those who like to read while pooping) I have a nice little book titled “What’s Your Poo Telling You?” It is very refreshing to read this little book, whose intellectual content is certainly higher than some examples of poo (aka crap) disguised as deep insightful thinking.

The book begins with: “Not unlike a snowflake, each bowel movement has a uniqueness that should be regarded with wondrous appreciation”.

And I do appreciate it. When the Robot God will upload me to an angelic immortal body in Cyber Heaven, I think every now and then I will enter a VR simulation of a physical body taking a good crap.

This is to say that I am no enemy of poop. On the contrary, I am actually a friend of poop.

But somehow I do not consider it as a central defining feature of my identity as some people seem to do”.

Yes, I Shit. I Belch. I Fart. When I was in high school I won many farting contests, and I am as proud of this as of other sporting achievements. But if I had to choose between never farting again and never reading Shakespeare again, I think I would go for Shakespeare. I do not define human nature in terms of farts. I prefer to define it in terms of curiosity for reality, overcoming limits, and love for others. And I believe these things would survive the transition to an enhanced biological body or a uploaded consciousness.

To all those who define their human identity in terms of shit: please feel free to do so. I will feel free to define my human identity in terms of other things.

Review of Stefano Vaj’s Biopolitica

I became aware of Stefano Vaj’s writings, and in particular his book Biopolitica (http://www.biopolitica.it/), in the summer of 2006 lurking on Italian transhumanist lists. I did not have much time and did not really read posts carefully, but could not help noticing that there was a flame war triggered by Stefano’s book, with some posters enthusiastically endorsing it and others attacking it as fascism. The same discussion has more recently taken place on the global transhumanist lists. Since the book is not available in English I am often asked to provide information, and this is why I am posting here this review adapted from a post to a transhumanist mailing list.

I am as far from fascism as one can be, but am not afraid to consider ideas different from my own. Moreover, I am acutely aware that history is always written by the winners. So I decided to actually read the book with my own eyes and brain. I discussed it at length with Riccardo Campa, the founder of the Italian Transhumanist Association and a former WTA Board member who writes on left-wing magazines and cannot be accused of fascist leanings, and asked many questions to Stefano.

Here are the conclusions that I reached:

1) The “flavor” of the book, as defined by the choice of words and quotes and the general “atmosphere”, does indeed show that the author was strongly influenced by sensibilities that belong, as well, to some components of European neo-fascism.

2) The book does not contain a single endorsement of anything that I would consider as a fascist policy. No exhortations to burn people and attack cities and states, no proposals to enforce social order by means of a police state, no support for repressing deviance, no hate for or proposed actions against “inferior races”, etc.

3) The main ideas are:

a) A radical flavor of transhumanism where achieving superhumanity is seen as what our species _must_ do at this stage of its evolution. Check. Note: the word “superman” has been, indeed, used by nazis. But they also used the word “potato” I believe. And don’t forget that your favorite cartoon hero was “Superman”.

b) A strong endorsement of the self-determination of communities and the preservation of their own culture and chosen way of life against global pressure. Check. This is, I believe, a necessary condition for the transition to posthumanity. Do we want to let a fundamentalist administration in a superpower impose a ban on human enhancement upon the rest of the world? Or is it better to leave other communities free to choose their own approach?

c) “Rights” are recognized as a cultural product. Check. This is, I believe, the only mature way to talk of rights. Unless, of course, we prefer to believe in “God´s given”, “natural” rights.

4) There are many references to Nietsche and the Italian Futurist movement of the early 20th century. Both have been accused to be precursors of fascism, which is historically and philosophically not correct. Both support striving to transcend current limits with no reverence for God’s or Nature’s will. Check. This bold approach to taking control of our lives as individuals and as a species, with a certain sense of a cosmic destiny is, I think, exactly what the transhumanist movement needs at this moment.

More on Digital Persons, Immersionism vs. Augmentationism

I participated in this interesting debate on Immersionism vs. Augmentationism. Topic: These deep thinkers, all fairly well-known for their positions on immersion vs augmentation, will have an energetic debate about their differences in opinion.  Expect the conversation to touch on issues such as avatar rights, voice verification, and avatars as legal entities. See ORANGE EXPLORES SL CULTURE! for background.

This discussion is always interesting. I was representing the attitude of “augmentationists”, for whom Second Life is a videoconferencing environment (a better phone call). Sophrosyne Stenvaag concisely states the issue as “is SL for you a place or a tool? Everything else, from standards of identity and trust to “A/S/L,” follows from that”, and quotes a post by Argent Bury on Digital Persons for whom SL is a place different from the atomic world, aka RL. In the debate Soph said “Giulio and I share a “live and let live” approach, the only difference between us really is the locus of our identities, I’m *here*, and he’s visiting from elsewhere”. And Gwyneth asked me “did you ever cry or laugh out loud when you read a book?” and welcomed me to immersionism when I answered yes.

Well. I can have emotional reactions to _good_ books, but I don’t consider Second Life that good yet. I don’t consider SL as a place because, for example, places have a distinctive smell and SL has none. Miami is hot and humid, Amsterdam is cold and humid, Madrid has hot dry summers, it is very nice to walk in the snow in Budapest. These are all places where I have _lived_ and know well. In Napoli, the city where I was born, the characteristic smell in the air is actually one of rubbish (!!!) but the food tastes like nowhere else. The point I am making of course is that the atomic world is sensorially rich while in Second Life the sensorial environment is very poor: pixels on a screen and poor audio with statics.

This will change with better virtual reality technology. Some day VR will offer a fully immersive environment, with stimulation of the five senses via direct brain to computer, brain to network and brain to brain links and sensorial experiences indistinguishable from physical reality. In my interview on The Future and You podcast I speculate on immersive neural interfaces to VR worlds and place them 20 years in the future. At that moment I will take virtual worlds as “places”, but now I see them only as advanced communication tools.

But I think the mini-trend toward immersionism and digital personhood is very important, and positive. Those who are psychologically able to really _be_ in a VR world even with the primitive VR technology of today are doing terribly important experiments with the very concept of identity, and I think we will soon need the results of their experiments and some practical guidelines for managing personal and social relations in a world that becomes more and more complex. One of the first results is there is room for more than one person in a brain.

One very important thing that digital personhood can facilitate is tolerance of diversity. Diversity is GOOD - how boring would be a world where everyone looks, thinks and acts the same. Let millions of flowers bloom, in virtual and real worlds. Live and let live, everyone should be free to do absolutely whatever she wishes as long as she does not do concrete harm to anyone else, victimless crimes are not crimes, and one should enjoy his own favorite lifestyle instead of criticizing the lifestyle of others.

Transhumanists talk of augmenting life in very radical terms. We want to merge biology with technology and eliminate disease, suffering, aging and death. Yes, death. Our generation may be among the last mortal generations, and by the end of the century our children may live in the Metaverse as disembodied software beings. Let’s call this Life 3.0: escaping the prison of the flesh and moving on. This will be a _very_ radical change of the nature of the game, and will bring much more diversity in human societies. It is important that we learn, now, to live with it. Of course there will be those who will prefer to stay in the old comfortable game instead of embracing change and moving on, but many others will run at full speed toward a speciation with the full range between organic humans 1.0 and conscious software beings in synthetic realities. It is going to be interesting, dangerous and fun. Let us consider our tiny, primitive and unstable SL as a workbench for first experiments and baby steps toward future humanity. To Gwyn, Soph and Argent: I will be an immersionist and a digital person (or many digital persons) then.

Perhaps the most interesting observation in the debate, by Aldon Huffhines, was about “the self as existing at the intersection of our inner neural networks and our external social networks”. Aldon Hynes/Huffhines has then expanded this very interesting point in his blog on The Virtual Self and R.

The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists

The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists begins with “We transhumanists have adopted a clear and ambitious goal since the birth of the Italian Transhumanist Association: to create in our country the conditions for a moral and intellectual revolution with a Promethean orientation. A revolution capable of producing radical changes in the world of culture and daily life”.

I have had the pleasure and the honor to contribute to this very important document, together with Giuseppe Lucchini, Alberto Masala and Stefano Vaj. But the main writer is the philosopher Riccardo Campa, the President of the Italian Transhumanist Association and a former Board member of the World Transhumanist Association. I hope the Manifesto will be translated, but translating a dense document of 14 pages is not easy work. I will translate some excerpts here, and wish to urge all Italian speakers to read the full text.

The definition of transhumanism is simple and crystal clear: “The cornerstone of transhumanism can be summed up in a formula: it is possible and desirable to move from a phase of blind evolution to a stage of purposeful self-directed evolution”. I agree that this simple sentence says it all. One of my first impression is that the Manifesto is a very reasonable document, very far from hysteria and “who is not with me is against me” fundamentalism. Riccardo, a visionary but pragmatic thinker, has avoided the easy mistake of proposing a one-size-fits-all black and white worldview, and acknowledged the _necessary_ diversity of opinions in the transhumanist community.

So, about politics: “Regarding politics, a recent poll shows that, in qualitative terms, in the WTA there are transhumanists of nearly every color, from the extreme left to the extreme right, and everything that lies between the two poles… transhumanists are able to look farther compared the traditional policy. The birth and development of the Internet and geographically distributed virtual communities require rethinking a whole range of issues such as the management of technology patents, copyright standards, the phenomenon of Open Source, telematics systems and satellite surveillance, citizen privacy. Technological development shows the inadequacy of a leadership still focused on the public-private dichotomy and still reasoning in limited nation-state terms”. And also: “in our synthetic view the three major fetish ideologies of the nineteenth century -the market, the state, the race- abandon the center stage to a higher value, self-directed evolution”.

About religion: “Transhumanism is not and should not be classified as a religion, although nothing prevents it from being interpreted as an alternative to religion, or as a vision that can find space inside a religious doctrine”. But also “Although open to dialogue with everyone, we see the impossibility of an agreement over principles with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, especially on issues such as artificial insemination and research in biotechnology”.

Much of the discussion on politics and religion is centered on Italian politics and the disproportionate influence of the Church on it (strange in a country where, as in most of Europe, most people do not take really seriously a religion which is not an important factor in their day-to-day life). But a lot goes much beyond Italy and is applicable also to global politics and policy making.

About the scientific worldview: “The boundary between science and science fiction is well defined. Scientific theories are one thing, and futurist speculations are a very different thing. These two areas have different functions. Research must develop, enrich and deepen the scientific conception of the world, while futurology (which is not science as it deals with futurabilia, things that may be possible but do not exist yet) explores possible future developments of current work. Without any certainty or faith… We will take care to avoid speculations too bold in public policy discourse”. But also: “To sum up, only when a technology exists and is experimentally proven it can be considered in a transhumanist policy program of action - which is typically aimed at ensuring access to citizens. Until then, it can be only a working hypothesis of scientists in their laboratories or science fiction writers in their literary works. Transhumanists are ready to recognize the importance of these speculations, because they can give meaning and direction to activism and offer a far reaching vision that permits seeing today’s issues in a cosmic perspective”.

Very far from both naive wishful thinking and bigot ultra-rationalist fundamentalism. I agree with each and every word in the text quoted, and I have been accused of being both a ultra-hard scientist without imagination, and an anti-scientific cultist. Well, these two accusations cannot be both true at the same time, and I guess I will just continue to ignore them.

One final comment to sum everything up: Bravo Riccardo!

ORANGE EXPLORES SL CULTURE!

I will participate tonight in this interesting debate on Immersionism vs. Augmentationism. Topic: These deep thinkers, all fairly well-known for their positions on immersion vs augmentation, will have an energetic debate about their differences in opinion.  Expect the conversation to touch on issues such as avatar rights, voice verification, and avatars as legal entities.  This is a debate you won’t want to miss! Come to Orange Island tonight. See full article on metaXLR8.

Universal Immortalism: transhumanism plus hope

The Society for Universal Immortalism is a progressive religion that holds rationality, reason, and the scientific method as central tenets of its faith.

I am a member if the Society, and wish to thank the other members for many stimulating ideas and discussions. In particular, I am indebted to R. Michael Perry for the beautiful declaration in his book ”Forever for All”: “To that end, we dedicate ourselves to finding a way one day to bring back all persons who have ever lived, so they can join in our eternal adventure”. This is a very strong idea, which may permit a full reconciliation between the scientific and religious worldviews. Universal immortalists do not propose any specific engineering approach to resurrection, but consider it as an objective that future technology may be able to achieve, someday, based on future scientific advances.

I see Universal Immortalism as Transhumanism “plus something”. This “something” is the resurrection idea: finding a way one day to bring back all persons who have ever lived. Even if Universal Immortalism is scientific speculation (we hope to resurrect the dead using “future magic” based on science and engineering), the resurrection idea is hard to swallow even for many transhumanists. For me, Universal Immortalism is perfectly compatible with transhumanism, and constitutes its logical endpoint. The engineering challenge will be huge of course, but so it was for the development of agriculture. Universal Immortalists not only hope to find a way one day to bring back all persons who have ever lived, but also intend to be there to make it happen. That is why, at this moment, being a current cryonics suspension member is a requirement to become a member of the Society for Universal Immortalism.

The full text of ”The Beliefs of the Society for Universal Immortalism” begins with: “We have a soul and it is informational in nature”.

Michael Perry is mentioned in the 1994 Wired article ”Meet the Extropians”, which was the first introduction to transhumanism for me and many other transhumanists:

Mike Perry, overseer of the 27 frozen people (actually, 17 are frozen heads, only 10 are entire bodies) submerged in liquid nitrogen at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit (Cold enough for you?) at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics outfit in Scottsdale, Arizona, gave a talk saying that, contrary to appearances, genuine immortality was physically possible.

He explained: some of the more submissive immortalists - non-Extropian immortalists, in other words - had worried about the possibility of their lives being terminated by accident, murder, or some other such form of radical unpleasantness. The way to get around that in the future, said Perry, would be to download the entire contents of your mind into a computer - your memories, knowledge, your whole personality (which is, after all, just information) - you’d transfer all of it to a computer, make backup copies, and stockpile those copies all over creation. If at some point later you should happen to suffer a wee interruption of your current life cycle, then one of your many backups would be activated, and, in a miracle of electronic resurrection, you’d pop back into existence again, good as new.

Universal Immortalism is an extension of Perry’s ideas on mind uploading (the concept of downloading the entire contents of the mind into a computer is frequently referred to as mind uploading) - a possible way to bring back all persons who have ever lived may be, once technology has advanced enough, “copying them to the future” by mind uploading performed on a mind that existed in the past.

Besides mind uploading technology, this would require time travel or a technology able to extract information with very high resolution from the past. Time travel seems to introduce logical paradoxes (you go back in time and kill your grandfather before your father was conceived - then you were not born, and cannot go back in time to kill your grandfather). But this “grandfather paradox” goes away, for example, in Everett’s interpretation of quantum physics, and there is no paradox involved in extracting information with very high resolution from the past. So while of course I realize that engineering resurrection will be a huge scientific and technical challenge, I consider it as a possibility that future scientists and engineers may be able to achieve.

A possibility that future scientists and engineers _may_ be able to achieve. If it does not prove incompatible with some fundamental physical law. If our species does not destroy itself before. If, instead of falling prey of superstition and religious fundamentalism, we continue our journey towards more and more knowledge and mastery of reality. There are no buts (universal immortalism can _not_ be thought of as a bad thing), but there are many ifs. We are not selling certainties, but we are offering hope. Hope permits happiness, and hope can provide the drive and energy to do something to take today’s reality closer to the reality we wish to inhabit. The Society for Universal Immortalism has only 10 members as I am writing this -this has something to do with the fact that a cryonic suspension agreement is a current membership requirement- and is very far from taking over the world, but I often think that the vision of our tiny and unknown society of ten members could be _exactly_ what billions of people on this little blue planet need, if only we could find effective ways to communicate its beauty.

My interview on The Future and You podcast

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Stephen Euin Cobb for his award-winning podcast The Future And You. Stephen is a U.S. science fiction author, futurist, a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine, the online magazine from Baen Books. Within Second Life his avatar’s name is “Boc Cryotank.” Stephen is also a game designer, artist, essayist and transhumanist. In each episode of The Future And You Stephen interviews a variety of authors, scientists, celebrities and “pioneers of the future” as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in general.

My interview focused on Second Life, Virtual Reality technology and business, possible mid and long term evolutions of VR, Artificial Intelligence and other technologies, our work at metafuturing, transhumanism, the WTA, the IEET, and various thoughts about the future (and the present). Stephen’s thoughts on “schisms” in virtual and physical realities (at the beginning) are quite similar to my own.

Listen to the mp3 podcast (it is also archived on the metaXLR8 server).

Here is the text of Stephen’s blog post on the show website. See also the post on the Extropia Core blog - Extropia Core is the main meeting place for transhumanists in Second Life. Not much to add to my profile (too bad that I do not find enough time for some of the projects he mentions, such as the (almost) late lamented Fastra and FutureTAG). See my articles More voices from Second Life and Life 2.0 and Life 2.0: augmentationists in Second Life and beyond for more thoughts on the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.

Giulio Prisco (futurist, scientist, corporate consultant and until recently the Executive Director of the World Transhumanist Association) is today’s featured guest. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and on the Global Task Force on Implications and Policy for CRN, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

Argent Bury (a digital person living exclusively within Second Life) provides an essay concerning the tension between immersionists and augmentationists within her virtual world.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 20, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 79 minutes]

Giulio Prisco also covers the prejudice and intolerance between immersionists and augmentationists, and mentions that the day before the interview, Cervantes University held its very first college class within Second Life, and discusses many aspects of the future of virtual realities.

A virtual reality expert and consultant for companies wishing to use and benefit from many different VR platforms, Giulio describes what’s available now, and what will be available in the decades to come. From the current photorealistic graphics, to the total immersion through full sensory feedback directly wired into the human nervous system.

He describes various VR platforms including Second Life and its competitors, as well as the possibility that all the platforms will become linked together into a unified whole, just as the internet was once many separate little nets that could not share content.

Giulio Prisco is also the Director of the futurist consulting consortium called FutureTag, as well as founder and CEO of Metafuturing (a company specializing in Science and Technology Consulting, Internet Services and Virtual Reality). Based in Madrid, Spain, he founded the Spanish transhumanist group FASTRA. He is a former physicist and computer scientist, as well as a former manager at ESA: the European Space Agency.

SNOWCRASHING INTO THE DIAMOND AGE 2 (PART 2-B): An essay by Extropia DaSilva.

Continued from PART 2-A

Is the latter peril really a bad thing? Such a declaration would appear to stand in contrast to the dream of a life free from toil. This vision can be traced back at least 23 centuries, to a time when Aristotle wrote, in ‘The Politics’, ‘we can imagine managers not needing subordinates and masters not needing slaves…if every machine could work by itself…by intelligent anticipation’. And here it is again, this time from a quote in ‘Time’ magazine, 1966: ‘By 2000, the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the US will, in effect, be independently wealthy. How to use leisure meaningfully will be a major problem’.

More...

SNOWCRASHING INTO THE DIAMOND AGE 2 (PART 2-A): An essay by Extropia DaSilva.

IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID.

The ability to replicate the means of production themselves from cheaply available elements is what underlies most of the utopian expectations of a society with molecular nanotechnology. One commentator on an online forum asked ‘why the hell would anyone pay for something nano makes with no effort?’.  Second Life, though, suggests such an argument holds no water. After all, this is a world whose content is built from resources instantly available wherever you happen to be at negligible cost, and which can be duplicated with no effort. But most reporting on Second Life does not describe a world where products are given away free. Instead, it’s all about the money. ‘None-existant’ objects being bought and sold for real cash, land barons earning fortunes from virtual property. Also, Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote about the socio-political beliefs that SL residents subsribe to (‘Anarcho-syndicalists, ‘Anarcho-capitalists’, ‘libertarian/neoliberalists’). Of these groups, only the first ‘idealise a SL where money, land and prim limits are unnecessary’. I don’t know how many residents consider themselves to be anarcho-syndicalists, but common sense dictates that the group believing money is unnecessary are in a minority compared to the many groups who consider it necessary, for the simple reason that the latter are many and the former is one.

More...

Transhumanism, religion and Raelians

A blogger calls the attention of his readers upon an ”infamous excerpt from a prominent transhumanist’s [yours truly] evangelistic speech about transhumanism”, and concludes that ”the actions of some transhumanists are pseudo-religious”. The source of such wisdom is the very illuminated Wesley J. Smith, in a post of January 1, 2007 titled Give Me That New Transhumanist Religion.

Smith quoted me as:

”I want our ideas to reach as many people as possible, in a clear and understandable way. Why? Because our worldview can give a sense of meaning of life, a vision of our place in the universe, peace and happiness. This has been the historic function of the world’s great religions and monolithic ideologies that, on the other hand, are now finally beginning to show some fatigue and soon will be completely unable to persuade people more and more culturally sophisticated and used to the scientific worldview. We should not forget that these are still a minority, but the trend is clear....

We cannot deny that the great world’s religions have managed, and quite well, to reach the masses. Religions’ success is due to the fact that they offer an answer to the nightmare of death. Yes, your loved one are dead, and sooner or later you will also die, but you will meet again in heaven. This is a *very* powerful meme as the penetration of religion demonstrates. With the coming of a secular worldview based on science, it seems impossible to continue taking religion seriously. But is it really so? Perhaps not. I am very interested in the current experimental activities to create ‘transhumanist religions’, based on science, but still able to offer hope in ‘another life’ even for those who are already dead”.

I wrote these words in my Considerations on the development of the transhumanist movement, posted on December 31, 2006. After a year full of vicious flame wars on all transhumanist lists and technoprogressive blogs, I would still write each and every word in the passage quoted.

By the way, thanks to Mike and Natasha for having supported me on Smith’s blog. In his own comments Smith said ”*Of course* you believe in religion. That is what transhumanism is. It seeks to find transcendence and Truth through scientific means. As such, it isn’t really about science. It is about the very human desire to find meaning and purpose. In this regard, transhumanism is a denomination of Scientism, which is merely religion masking as science”.

And I replied ”if religion is defined as “seeking to find transcendence and truth, meaning and purpose”, then I am ready and willing to accept the label “religious”. And as you say, I want to find it through scientific means, or at least through means compatible with the scientific method and worldview. If I don’t *find* it, I want to *build* it following the best examples in the history of our species and our civilization. Science and engineering have taken us from caves to where we are now, and there is no reason to think that this process should stop here”.

I have spent a lot of time in 2007 defending this radical, cosmic interpretation of transhumanism against its opponents. Sometimes transhumanism looks like religion. So what the fuck? Religion is not always bad, it can be good. Actually it can be _very_ good. Take a look for example at the websites of the Society for Universal Immortalism, or the Mormon Transhumanist Association. I think in 2008 I will spend much less time debating with often intolerant opponents, and much more time exploring the interface between transhumanism and religion with like-minded friends.

Ah yes, the Raelians. Smith & friends attacked me for saying that ”the Raelian message is very similar to the transhumanist one”. Actually after my original post I received many hate letters not only from outraged ultra-rationalist atheists, but also from outraged Raelians, so perhaps it was not so Rael-friendly. But, the Raelian message _is_ very similar to the transhumanist one. I subscribe to the technology news list rael-science. The signature on list message includes: ”“Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism, through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and new technologies. There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history, it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations. On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease, death and the sweat of labour”. This _is_ transhumanism, even if uncaveated and worded in a form too triumphantly propagandistic for my taste. Of course the “UFO layer” of Raelianism has nothing to do with transhumanism, and actually not much to do with the rest of the Raelian message either, so I have always wondered why it is there and suspect it is some kind of clever marketing technique.

Facebook, the pub and the Singularity

Take a look at this anti-progress hate piece: “Why on God’s earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?” My answer: nothing is wrong with the pub, but what is wrong with Facebook? If you don’t like, why don’t you stay in the pub?

The author must be one of those people full of hate against more imaginative and successful people, especially “Silicon Valley venture capitalists”. In the order, he rants against Facebook ("59 million suckers"), PayPal, Peter Thiel, futurists, virtual worlds, the internet ("it promises a certain sort of freedom in human relations and in business, freedom from pesky national laws, national boundaries and suchlike” - horrible isn’t it), life-extension technologies, Aubrey de Grey, and the Singularity. The author quotes “The Singularity is the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. There are several technologies ... heading in this direction ... Artificial Intelligence ... direct brain-computer interfaces ... genetic engineering ... different technologies which, if they reached a threshold level of sophistication, would enable the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence”, and concludes that “Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls “nature”, and install a virtual world in its place”. Of course, every new technology is a weapon used by the CIA and the multinationals against us little people.

So many stupid luddite clichés concentrated in one article. At the same time I quite agree with a conclusion: “Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven’t read Keats’ Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don’t want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it”. Fine! Read Keats and sow the seeds in your back yard if this is what you want to do, and don’t complain if others spend time on Facebook, or advancing technology, if that is what they want to do. It is called freedom.

SL banking ban: hot comments

I use two different blogs (Transumanar and metaxlr8) respectively for philosophy and metaverse technology-business, but sometimes an issue touches on both, so I am just posting this to both blogs. The fact: On the heels of banking scandals in the virtual world Second Life, its publisher Linden Lab announced Tuesday that it is effectively banning in-world banks.

Linden Lab’s justification: “Some may argue that Residents who deposit L$ with these “banks” must know they’re assuming a big risk – the high interest rates promised aren’t guaranteed, and the banks aren’t overseen by Linden Lab or anyone else. That may be true. But for all of the other reasons we’ve set out above, we can’t let this activity continue”. The comments of readers show mixed reactions, some in favor and some against.

My own reaction is also mixed. I run an IT and VR consulting and development company, and have often realized that many potential clients are scared of the bad press about Second Life and the frequent “scandals”, especially gambling, unregulated banking with Ponzi scams and such, and pornography. These things do not have the clean, crisp, mainstream and businesslike image that most firms and institutions wish to have. For this reason I was not too unhappy when the gambling ban was announced, am not too unhappy now after the announcement of the banking ban, and will not be too unhappy when the sex ban will be announced in a few months (wanna bet?). These bans permit me telling my clients that Second Life has outgrown its juvenile extremes and is on its way to becoming a mature, serious and sedate mainstream business platform in a black suit and a striped tie. These bans will actually help me making more money.

But due to philosophical and political considerations, I am _very_ unhappy with the turn things are taking. When I deposited some money in the BNT Bank run by my good friend IntLibber Brautigan, I was perfectly aware that the bank did not have an applicable license from a governing regulatory authority, that IntLibber & Co. could just run away with my money, and that I could lose my money due to poor business decisions of BNT management. I invested my money in BNT because no, I don’t have to justify it to you or to anyone. I invested my money in BNT because it was MY FUCKING DECISION TO MAKE with MY FUCKING MONEY. Period.

Of course Linden Lab claim that they made this decision to protect their users: “These “banks” have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it’s our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse – leaving upset “depositors” with nothing to show for their investments”.

But as a user, and as a citizen, I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN A NANNY STATE that protects me from things I don’t want to be protected from. I say ENOUGH, in both First and Second Life. What is next? Sex banned in Second Life because it scares teens? (BS: it would not have scared me when I was a teen, or you). Or sex banned in First Life because it can be a health risk? I am afraid that if this trends continue people will be"allowed" to have sex only in the presence of a qualified nurse. One word: ENOUGH.

Of course the real reason for the banking ban in SL is another: “The legal and regulatory framework of these non-chartered, unregistered banks is unclear… we will not apply this policy to companies who submit a registration statement, charter, or other applicable license from a governing regulatory authority”. Of course, Linden Lab is introducing the banking ban for fear of regulatory pressure from US authorities. And as the harsh logic of the business world goes, it is probably a sound decision, necessary for the survival of the company.

What can we, metaverse users, do to protect ourselves from excessive regulation? We already live under nanny states in RL, and can certainly do without nanny states in the metaverse. The answer is, I think, very simple: open standards, interoperability, technology diversification, platform diversification, and geographic diversification. We need alternative technologies and platforms - the banking ban in SL makes me even more interested in open standard, open source, non proprietary systems like OpenSim, and we need service providers in other, less fundamentalist and overprotective countries. I look forward to a metaverse operated by a network of interconnected and globally distributed service providers, and based on open standards and open code (well, like the Web).

I only wonder what we can do to protect ourselves from excessive regulation and nanny states in real life.

The Physical World as a Virtual Reality

An interesting speculation: This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter.

TRANSHUMANIST THINKING AND THE NECESSARY REJECTION OF THE BIG BANG: An essay by Extropia DaSilva.

Transhumanist thinking sometimes stands opposed to scientific orthodoxy. Nowhere is this more apparent than when questions regarding our importance in the grand scheme of things are raised. According to most scientific speculation, the sheer enormity of the cosmos on temporal and spatial scales makes our home planet seem like an insignificant speck and we humans are but transient patterns of matter and energy enjoying a temporary stability before inevitably decaying as entropy marches inexorably onward. Intelligence played no part in the aeons that preceded our evolution and it sure as hell won’t play a part in the vast expanses of time that lay ahead.

Transhumanist and extropian groups disagree that intelligence is an impotent force in the face of nature’s nuclear, electromagnetic and gravitational energies. They argue that the gigantic technological leaps that have resulted from an understanding of the workings of nature will continue to grow, allowing our species to break free from its biological limitations and its Earthly origins, until via a sublime ability to command the laws of physics, we shall shape the cosmos to suit our purposes…

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Associazione Italiana Transumanisti

Transumanar is a transhumanist blog - online magazine on science, technology, politics and culture, edited by Giulio Prisco. See About (English) and Introduzione (Italiano).

Transumanar e' un blog - rivista online transumanista di scienza, tecnologia, politica e cultura, curato da Giulio Prisco. Vedi Introduzione (Italiano) e About (English).

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SL-Transhumanists, a group for transhumanists in Second Life

metaXLR8 - acceleration in the metaverse

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