Transumanar

Cosmic Transhumanism

This is a continuation of my articles on Manifest Destiny: To the stars and beyond and Soft Tiplerianism. After discussing them at length with friends on a mailing list, I have started using the label “Cosmic Transhumanism” to indicate a very broad and not precisely defined brand of transhumanism inspired by (among others) Ray Kurzweil‘s radical optimism, the cosmic visions of Frank Tipler and James Gardner, Sir Arthur C. Clarke‘s “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and Shakespeare’s “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

Image adapted from Orion’s Arm

I am persuaded that Cosmic Transhumanism as proposed by Kurzweil and Gardner, the idea that consciousness and intelligent life may become key factors in the future evolution of the physical universe (transcending biology, filling the universe, steering spacetime topology, spawning baby universes, “becoming gods” etc.), once developed and communicated as a strong memetic package, can provide an alternative to religion suitable for the forthcoming phase of our evolution as a species. The main point of my proposal is an explicit acknowledgment that the current scientific thinking, and some reasonable extrapolations from today’s engineering, *may* provide *some degree of* hope, grounded in technology and sciences, in some of the promises of traditional religions. Without, of course, the irrational faith, rigid dogmatism and intolerance that have plagued traditional religions.

The term “Tiplerianism”, be it hard or soft, does not summarize well this cosmic transhumanist sensibility. In addition, it is perhaps too compromised by negative associations to be acceptable by most transhumanists: even after I “renounced” Tipler explicitly on transhumanist lists, most replies were still focused on Tipler alone. In his book Tipler has proposed some valuable insighs (not always original), but mixed them with too many overstretched analogies with classic religions.

One difficulty is Tipler’s (and others’, e.g. Fedorov and Perry) resurrection idea: Future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of “copying them to the future”. I think this idea makes perfect sense and leave it to future engineers to find a way to implement it, but most hard rationalists find it outrageous. Perhaps because they had to make a big effort to free themselves from the old religious superstition, and are afraid of falling back into irrational belief. But technology-enabled resurrection is not irrational belief: it is a wild speculation, in the sense of Shakespeare’s and Clarke’s quotes above, on possibilities that may, or may not, be achieved at some point by science and technology. I have found that, while people converted from religious believers to rationalist believers immediately dismiss technology-enabled resurrection as unscientific, those who never cared too much about religion are basically open to considering it.

Universal Immortalism (resurrection of the dead by means of future technology) is not explicitly affirmed by Cosmic Transhumanism but is not incompatible with it: Kurzweil and Gardner would probably say “let’s wait and see”. I planned to ask them the question explicitly at Transvision 2007 in Chicago, but I did not go to Chicago. I hope next time.

However, even leaving the resurrection part aside, Cosmic Transhumanism makes perfect sense as a worldview. Thinking to be part of one of many intelligent species that will spread to the stars and beyond, leave biological and mental constraints behind, and participate in the cosmic destiny of a universe waking up to life and superhuman sentience, gives a certain nice feeling and a certain sense of wonder, permits seeing clearly one’s place in the universe, and provides a drive to try giving a small contribution to the cosmic adventure. Whitout, of course, forgetting the practical reality of today’s world.

Posted by G.P. on 07/28 at 07:16 AM
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