http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/index/ en pgptag@gmail.com Copyright 2007 2007-12-05T12:58:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/universal_immortalism/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/universal_immortalism/#When:12:58:00Z Universal Immortalism The Society for Universal Immortalism is a progressive religion that holds rationality, reason, and the scientific method as central tenets of its faith. Universal Immortalists reject supernatural and mystical forces as solutions to the problems that face us. I am a member if the Society, and wish to thank the other members for all the stimulating ideas and discussions that led me to writing this book. 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”, which is one of the central ideas discussed in this book. 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” is reproduced below. We have a soul and it is informational in nature. The soul, by definition, is the center of our being, the essence of who we are. In most religious systems the soul is seen as a metaphysical entity not of this world. We do not accept the supernatural definition of the soul, and instead provide a rational, scientific definition of what constitutes our soul. To us the soul does exist, but it is not supernatural. The memories we have, the thoughts we consider, the emotions we feel - these form the essence of who we are. For without these qualities we would cease to be ourselves. There need be no supernatural explanation for these qualities. These memories and processes are represented in the brain biologically as information. No metaphysical or ‘otherworldly’ essence is involved. It is simply akin to software running on a vastly complex computer. And like software, it is the pattern of information that is important, not the medium in which it resides or is expressed. Our soul may arise from the structure of our brain, but need not strongly depend on it. The aim of life is to grow and improve ourselves and our ‘Community’. This is a continual process with no end. We embrace the ideals of Humanism. We must all strive to live meaningful and ethical lives while supporting the rights of others to do so as well. Self-improvement should be the center of our lives. We must strive to maximize and enhance the good qualities in our human nature: compassion, love, understanding, tolerance - while minimizing or eliminating the bad ones: hatred, jealousy, envy, closed-mindedness. We understand that no person lives in isolation and that we all belong to a greater ‘Community’. This community consists not only of other human beings, but life as a whole. We have a responsibility to improve both our own lives, and the overall welfare of the entire community of life. The process of growth and self-improvement, for both the individual and our community, is one that has no limit. There will always be new challenges to conquer, new ideas to explore, and new ways to improve our nature. The thought that we will never reach a pinnacle or perfect state should not sadden us, but instead fill us with happiness and joy. For it is the path we follow, and not only the destination, that gives our life its meaning and purpose. And this path will extend to the very limits of time itself. We are our own saviors. We cannot rely on supernatural or external forces to guide us on our journey. Responsibility is on our shoulders to create the world in which we wish to live. Ethics, morality, and other philosophical issues must have answers that we provide for ourselves through rational exploration. No ‘higher’ power or supernatural entity need be turned to for these answers. All must take part in this process, to the best of their abilities. It is our future and we all must lend a hand in its realization. To that end we believe in the free flow of information and ideas, and a direct participatory democracy in which all have an equal voice. By coming together as one, in an informed and rational manner, we can arrive at the solutions to the problems that face us. Reason, rational thought, and the scientific method are our tools in reaching our goals. We reject divine inspiration and other metaphysical approaches to arriving at truth. Instead we rely on reason, rational thought, and the scientific method as our tools to guide us along our path. The past century has shown us some of the wonders we can achieve when we properly direct our efforts. But these tools can also lead to destruction and chaos if put to the wrong use. We must be ever vigilant and hold to the tenets of our faith. We must transcend our current biological limits to ensure the continued growth and existence of our soul. While our beliefs imply that there is no limit to the progress the individual can achieve, we do find that there are practical limits. The human body, while wondrous in its current form and function, is not designed to carry our growing souls forever. Age, disease, death, and the limited capacities of our body put an absolute limit on how much an individual can achieve. But we believe that these limitations can, should, and will be overcome. To continue our growth and self-improvement, we must transcend our current biological limitations. Age, disease, and even death itself should be eliminated. Our biological form should be modified and enhanced to surpass these limits. Our mental capabilities should be enhanced by integrating new and more powerful subsystems. Our growing capacities will enable us to evolve into beings with many of the attributes of the Gods of past religions. It may become desirable to supersede our biological form entirely and express our nature through other forms of existence. But no matter what form our transcendence takes, we will always maintain our soul, the essence of who we are. None of this is to be achieved through prayer or divine intervention. Instead we will be the architects of our new and greater nature. Science and reason will lead us on the path to creating a better existence. Already we see the beginnings of this with organ transplants, artificial limbs, cloning, and tissue engineering. With time on our side there should be no limit to what we can achieve. Our physical form will continue to evolve, through our own efforts, to keep pace with our ever-growing soul. Preservation of our soul is paramount. Today this means cryonics. Everything we are, everything we will ever be, is contained, or will be contained, within our developing soul. Deep within the confines of our amazing brains our soul sits, encoded in the biological structure of neurons and neurochemicals. But this biological machine, wondrous though it may be, is fragile. In the blink of an eye our entire existence can come to an end, the information melting away as the brain is destroyed. When the Transhuman era arrives, we will be better able to protect and preserve the soul of our being. But that time has not yet arrived, and we must turn to other ways to preserve our existence. At this time the most viable option is cryonics. We believe that after death the body can be kept in a form of biostasis through the process of cryonics. There our soul will sit, safe in the cryopreserved structure of the brain, awaiting the Transhuman era when we can be revived. So strong is our belief in cryonics that it is a major prerequisite for joining our faith. It shows that one is sincerely committed to our ideals. We must also look for other ways to complement or even replace cryonics as a method of preservation. For it is not the how that concerns us, but the why. Revival of those placed in cryonic suspension or otherwise adequately preserved must also be a solemn commitment. We therefore dedicate our efforts to (1) encouraging preservation at clinical death with the goal of eventual revival, (2) seeing that those preserved remain so as long as is necessary, and (3) seeing that revival is accomplished when ways to bring it about have been perfected. Universal Immortalism is one of the ultimate goals of existence. All souls, past, present, and future, have a right to exist and grow and improve eternally. We regard an ‘evil nature’ as not permanent and think that, with proper enlightenment, any soul will become a seeker of what is good and right. And we regard it as a supreme tragedy that past souls have been lost and not preserved. 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 the idea known as Universal Immortalism (R. Michael Perry - Forever for All). Our concern for ‘persons’ also extends to other life forms besides human, which may also have souls capable of unlimited growth and betterment. We hope to achieve our goal of universal revival and betterment, once again, through scientific, rational means. Based on the informational concept of the soul, it may be possible to accurately recreate souls where all information about them has been lost. At this point we do not know if it can be done. But that does not mean we should not try, and it is our ‘leap of faith’ that one day we will succeed. Michael Perry is also 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. “Immortality is mathematical, not mystical,” he said. Perry, with a PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado, might well think so. A rather gaunt figure, a little rumpled and slightly stooped, he’d worked out a scheme whereby if you make enough backup copies of yourself, then everlasting life can be yours forever, always, and in perpetuity. 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 (more on that in the chapter on reality), 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 visions 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 can find effective ways to communicate their beauty. transceng 2007-12-05T12:58:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/bill_bainbridges_religions_for_a_galactic_civilization/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/bill_bainbridges_religions_for_a_galactic_civilization/#When:17:00:01Z Religions for a Galactic Civilization is an old (1981) article by William Sims Bainbridge. See also Bill’s bio on the IEET site and my article on the Spanish magazine “Muy Interesante”, adapted from an interview with Bill recorded at Transvision 2006, where he talks about NBIC, life extension and mind uploading. One of my first impressions after reading “Religions for a Galactic Civilization” today for the first time is that it is dated (well, it was written 26 years ago). If Bill were to write the same article today, he would probably mention NBIC technologies (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive sciences) besides space travel and colonization. I hope he would give less space to Scientology, and I am sure he would discuss the works of transhumanist thinkers in great detail. I think the first sentence quoted below could be written, today, as “We need a new transhumanist social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society”. Actually I am very curious to know how Bill would write this paper today. I will ask him and I hope he will comment. Some quotes from “Religions for a Galactic Civilization”: To become fully interplanetary, let alone interstellar, our society would need another leap—and it needs that leap very soon before world culture ossifies into secure uniformity. We need a new spaceflight social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society. It also should be capable of holding the society in an expansionist phase for the longest possible time, without permitting divergence from its great plan. In short, we need a galactic religion, a Church of God Galactic… The human condition is one of extreme absurdity unless fixed in a cosmic context to provide meaning. Human societies need faith, and if they lose traditional faiths they will struggle to discover new faiths, lest they collapse. Many intelligent species probably end progress in a stew of mysticism, drugs, and decadent social institutions which finally petrifies into a form of living extinction. Most of the rest destroy themselves more violently. A precious few, and we may be the first of this rare breed in our neighborhood, progress so rapidly, stimulated and guided by transcendent social movements, that they achieve interstellar communication and colonization before entering a static cultural phase. Once colonization is under way, a relatively static culture is quite consistent with further expansion, as James Blish noted in his classic tetralogy of novels, Cities in Flight.[26] Indeed, isolated colonies may re-ignite rapid progress as they cope with the challenges of alien environments. A species which does conquer the stars will have developed a culture including a cosmic religious faith well-adapted to continue expansion indefinitely. Spread across thousands of worlds, it greatly increases the chance that still greater cultural mutations will emerge which lead to higher levels of development currently beyond our capacity to imagine. Thus it is wrong to feel that irrational religion must always be a hindrance to progress. I have suggested that only a transcendent, impractical, radical religion can take us to the stars. The alternative is one or another form of ugly death. A successful outcome depends on a kind of lucky insanity, and it is quite unlikely. But for our species, at least it is still possible. transceng 2007-12-04T17:00:01+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/transcendent_engineering_a_synthesis/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/transcendent_engineering_a_synthesis/#When:08:35:00Z Transcendent Engineering: a synthesis The grand visions of what I call Cosmic Transhumanism (spreading in the galaxy as uploaded immortal intelligences, developing megascale space-time engineering capabilities, or even resurrecting the dead by “copying them to the future") and the down-to-earth practical engineering approach of Common Sense Transhumanism (if it is broken, fix it or build a new and better one, and by the way aging and death are bad things that must be fixed) may seem two very different attitudes, completely unrelated to each other. But I think what I call Transcendent Engineering represents a synthesis of the two. It is through practical engineering, by rolling up our sleeves and tightening one screw at a time in the fabric of reality, that our descendants will achieve superhumanity and godhead. Religions could only address our aspiration to transcendence by resorting to a mystical worldview based on supernatural concepts. But the scientific and engineering approach, based on a materialist worldview with no place for supernatural entities, will ultimately turn many promises of religion into reality. Science and engineering are not the enemies of transcendence, but the very tools that will permit achieving it. I am assuming that everything under and beyond the stars is a physical object that must obey the laws of physics, however weird they may prove to be, and can in principle be reverse-engineered and improved upon once we have mastered the engineering applications of these laws. In the next few decades or couple of centuries, we will apply this principle to the human body and the human mind: we will reverse-engineer them, and build better ones. As Sir Arthur C. Clarke would say, “as soon as our machines will better than our bodies, it will time to move. First our brains, and then our thoughts alone, we will transfer into shining new homes of metal and of plastic”. Sir Arthur wrote similar words (referred to the ETs who built the monolith on the Moon) in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Today, using the terminology of modern science fiction, we would probably say something like “computronium” instead of “metal and of plastic”, but the concept is the same. We would also be kinder to poor HAL: in the same timeframe (a few decades to a couple of centuries) we will build artificial intelligences that will first equal, then outperform, and then partly merge with our human intelligences. As uploaded minds with indefinite lifespans, humans will spread to the stars. Note: I am using “will” to indicate a possibility and an intention, not a certainty of a future that might also not happen (it certainly will not happen, for example, if the human species destroys itself before - not a big deal from a cosmic point of view as the dream will be also pursued by other intelligences in the universe, but a very big deal from our point of view). I am using “will” to say that I hope this future will happen, that I think it will happen, that it should happen, that I intend to contribute to make it happen, and that you should also contribute to make it happen. As William Sims Bainbridge noted in a 1981 article titled ”Religions for a Galactic Civilization”, we need a sense of transcendent purpose at both personal and societal levels to embark in the grand journey to the universe. In Bainbridge’s words: “We need a new spaceflight social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society. It also should be capable of holding the society in an expansionist phase for the longest possible time, without permitting divergence from its great plan. In short, we need a galactic religion, a Church of God Galactic…”. As uploaded minds with indefinite lifespans, humans will spread to the stars. What next? Borrowing again from Sir Arthur: But the age of the Machine-entities will swiftly pass. In our ceaseless experimenting, we will learn to store knowledge in the structure of space itself, and to preserve our thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light. We will become creatures of radiation, free at last from the tyranny of matter. transceng 2007-12-01T08:35:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/common_sense_transhumanism/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/common_sense_transhumanism/#When:08:18:01Z Common Sense Transhumanism Another of my favorite brands of transhumanism, apparently quite different from and unrelated to Cosmic Transhumanism, is what I call “Common Sense Transhumanism”. It just means restating some simple common sense, which is often ignored by politically correct “intellectuals” and “bioethicists” used to hiding behind big words. Common Sense Transhumanism says that: health is better than disease, being smart is better than being stupid, being alive and healthy is better than being dead, etc..., and there is nothing wrong in trying to make things better. This is the basic common sense of the farmer, and the healthy practical approach of the engineer, against the abstract hair-splitting of the intellectual. My favorite summary of Common Sense Transhumanism is: Aging is like farting, and dying is like diarrhea. Both are unchosen biological accidents waiting for a good engineer with a good screwdriver. The sooner we can live without shitting our pants, the better. This is transhumanism in a nutshell, as I see it. Of course I could have chosen an example not related to things that most people find vulgar and disgusting, but I think this formulation has the merit of removing residual associations with certain mistaken notions of aging and death as good things, and showing in plain and simple words that they are disgusting things. This must have been one of the reasons why they have chosen a really excellent name for the recently established Fuck Death Foundation (see also their website). I love the name because it tries to remove any vestigial reverence for the “sacred nature” of our limits, that even modern “intellectuals” fall for. Death is not “bad, but...”. It is just bad. So Fuck death is the proper attitude. The church has invented the concept of humility as a value: you should humbly accept (and even rejoice) that you are poor and powerless, leaving them free to become even more powerful and rich. Of course, if you behave you will go to heaven. Too bad that few people believe in heaven these days. But another facet of the same mentality is that we should feel some respect, or “reverence”, for our limits. Even if you do not believe in god anymore, you are supposed to accept, respect and even worship the “wisdom of nature” that has dictated that we must age and die. we must accept and respect our limits with reverence and humility, and do not try to gain forbidden knowledge and power (or else - think of what happened to poor Icarus and Prometheus). Even smart and enlightened people can fall prey of this mind virus. In a recent conversation, a person whom I respect a lot (while we often disagree on important points) referred to the “rather questionable achievement of becoming something like a mineral”. This was probably a rhetorical figure, but it may also indicate a residual notion that a person is defined by the limitations of her or his body. This notion has been used by the church a lot.  What I find very strange is that, while we all know that having a body can be very good (even as a uploaded consciousness, if I get there, I will still simulate good body things like swimming and screwing), the church has always condemned with strong words all pleasures that the body can give. While, of course, they were discretely enjoying the same pleasures themselves. I think another bit of common sense is: swimming and screwing are good things, and farting, aging, diarrhea and death are bad things. Let’s keep the good things, and throw away the bad things.  transceng 2007-12-01T08:18:01+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/cosmic_transhumanism/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/cosmic_transhumanism/#When:07:48:00Z Cosmic Transhumanism Let us now come to my own favorite brands of transhumanism. One is what I call “Cosmic Transhumanism”. 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”. 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. In the past I have been using the term “Soft Tiplerianism” to indicate a general, high level, conceptual appreciation of some ideas proposed by Fedorov, Teilhard, Tipler, Kurzweil, Perry and Clarke, without any specific proposal for their actual implementation. In The Physics of Immortality, Frank J. Tipler proposed a high level concept: Future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of “copying them to the future” He also proposed a specific resurrection mechanism based on: Intelligent beings of a far future epoch close to the gravitational collapse of the universe (the so called Big Crunch) may develop the capability to steer the collapse along a specific mode (Taub collapse) with unlimited subjective time, energy, and computational power available to them before reaching the final singularity. Having done so, they may wish to restore to consciousness all sentient beings of the past, perhaps through a “brute force” computational emulation of the past history of the universe. So after death we may wake up in a simulated environment with many of the features assigned to the afterlife world by the major religions. (from my Interview with Frank J. Tipler of November 2002). Actually I liked David Deutsch‘s account of Tipler’s vision (described in his popular book The Fabric of Reality) more than Tipler’s own account. While I found some parts of The Physics of Immortality *very* interesting, I was not impressed with the overall conceptual clarity and felt that he was stretching some interesting analogies far too much. Tipler’s mechanism for resurrection is often criticized on the basis of its cosmological assumptions, that are not supported by current observations. Even if this is the case (that is, even if the Universe “left to itself” would not spontaneously evolve an Omega Point ´like cosmology), Tipler thinks that we may be able to do something about it: “the expansion of life to engulf the universe is exactly what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant” (reference above). This “fix what you don’t like” is, in my opinion, a very transhumanist attitude and is supported by Ray Kurzweil‘s last sentence in The Age of Spiritual Machines: “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”. We should not take nature (lower case n intended) as an absolute that cannot be modified or as something “superior” that must be revered, but rather as a plastic material that can be shaped and modified once we develop the capability to do so. Which is, in my opinion, what transhumanism is all about. Past generations were used to considering human biology, with all its comic or tragic accidents such as body fat, unchosen gender, stupidity, aging and mortality, as an absolute. We are beginning to see that, after all, our bodies and minds are just machines that can be fixed, improved and redesigned by engineering once we develop the needed knowledge and tools. I am just proposing to apply the same concept to cosmology and the fabric of reality, that’s all (!). Of course. I do not have the faintest idea of whether, when and how megascale cosmic engineering may be an actual possibility. But I do not think we know enough of the detailed machinery of reality to rule out this vision, and find some pleasure and motivation in allowing myself to contemplate it. It is worth noting that also Tipler’s predecessor in using the term “Omega Point”, Pierre Teilhard de Cardin, has been often criticized (even by Tipler himself!) for not getting some scientific facts right. But this is really like dismissing Leonardo as a crank because his aircraft sketches wouldn’t fly, which is just stupid. Leonardo was a genius who got the *concepts* right, and later engineers equipped with more detailed knowledge have realized his visions. While I find speculations on megascale cosmological engineering in the very far future interesting, I don’t think we can take too seriously any current speculations on the capabilities and motivations of persons (in an extended meaning of “person” of course) millions of years more advanced than ourselves. So, I am quite agnostic on the specific resurrection mechanism proposed by Tipler. I also think that, perhaps, we may find some better ways to resurrect the dead much before the end of the universe, regardless of a Big Crunch that may or may not take place, like the fictional example in Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter’s novel The Light of Other Days. In Clarke-Baxter “theory” micro wormholes naturally embedded with huge density in the fabric of spacetime permit looking back in time and downloading a copy of a person’s mind, that can then be “uploaded to the future”. Many other thinkers and writers, including Nikolai Fedorov and Mike Perry, have dared contemplating resurrection. See also the website of the Society for Universal Immortalism. While I cannot claim any knowledge of future “super technologies”, I do relate deeply to Tipler’s high level concept that future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of “copying them to the future"and, in the spirit of “There are more things in Heaven and Earth...”, allow myself to contemplate such possibilities. There may be a point where consciousness becomes a important factor in the destiny of the universe, where conscious beings develop the capability to choose and build the universe they *want* to inhabit, and invite the dead of past ages to join the party by copying them to the future. I am using “Soft Tiplerianism” to indicate this soft rationalist, high level and not detailed concept that will, I hope, be detailed and realized by future scientists and engineers. Since these are very long term visions, I do not put them in the realistic/programmatic world. What I do put in the realistic/programmatic world, in a “think big, act small” sense, is taking the first small steps toward the advancement of our species on this cosmic path, while at the same time trying to ensure our immediate survival. The future can be magic and beautiful, and we want to be there to see it happen. One of the first small steps that should be taken, in my opinion, is making transhumanism more appealing to more people in a more immediate way. Therefore, I am proposing to include “Soft Tiplerianism”, as defined here as “Future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of copying them to the future”, in the transhumanist memetic package. I am persuaded that this could facilitate outreaching beyond the original transhuamanist subculture(s), give many more people hope and a sparkling vision of a better future, and motivate them to roll up their sleeves and try to contribute to realizing such vision. I am *only* arguing for the hypothetical feasibility, in principle, of these concepts, and my argument is based on the fact that they do not contradict the laws of physics as they are presently understood. I never said, do not want to say, and do not think that these possibility are “absolutely certain” or “guaranteed”, just that they are a possible outcome of the development of our species. So I am not at all certain that our descendants will be able to, or be willing to, upload me to the future, but the simple possibility of this option is good enough (for me) as a replacement of religion. 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. I think 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”, 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”. 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. Manifest Destiny was a phrase that expressed the belief that the United States was destined to expand from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only good, but that it was obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny"). Manifest Destiny was always a general notion rather than a specific policy. The term combined a belief in expansionism with other popular ideas of the era, including American exceptionalism, Romantic nationalism, and a belief in the natural superiority of what was then called the “Anglo-Saxon race”. While many writers focus primarily upon American expansionism when discussing Manifest Destiny, others see in the term a broader expression of a belief in America’s “mission” in the world, which has meant different things to different people over the years. Three key themes were usually touched upon by advocates of Manifest Destiny: 1. the virtue of the American people and their institutions; 2. the mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the U.S.; and 3. the destiny under God to accomplish this work. The origin of the first theme, later known as American Exceptionalism, was often traced to America’s Puritan heritage, particularly John Winthrop’s famous “City upon a Hill” sermon of 1630, in which he called for the establishment of a virtuous community that would be a shining example to the Old World. In his influential 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine echoed this notion, arguing that the American Revolution provided an opportunity to create a new, better society: We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand.... One may not always like everything about America, but there is no doubt that American culture has achieved a lot. Their gut belief in their Manifest Destiny, their own goodness, the superiority of their way of life, their mission to bring democracy to the world, and that their God is always on their side, has provided them with a single minded drive to overcome all obstacles on their way and conquer one frontier after another. In President Kennedy’s words: “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too”. A few years later, watching the first men walking on the moon, it was easy to believe in humanity’s Manifest Destiny in space. Too bad space “did not happen”. It will happen someday I hope, but reading the news it is evident that today’s world is a complex, interconnected and difficult place on its way to becoming even more so. It is evident that no part of humanity can march toward its destiny leaving other parts behind. Kennedy’s Moon speech was intended to energize citizens with a 20th century grand vision of Americans’ destiny in space but, as it is now evident, a single nation is not going to make it.  We can only move onward as a whole, or else. Where is a grand vision for the Manifest Destiny of all humanity, that can energize all persons on the planet and provide the drive to move onward as a whole? I think Cosmic Transhumanism could be the answer. It will not lead to holy wars against infidels, but rather to a Holy War against the limitations of being humans 1.0: disease, mortality, stupidity, unhappiness, lack of empathy and understanding, and being confined on our little planet. This is the first paragraph of the Transhumanist Declaration: ”Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth”. We must find new and better ways to communicate this beautiful vision to everyone. We have often failed to do so in the past: transhumanists are often far too aseptic, over-intellectual and out of touch with “the people” to communicate effectively. We should not forget that we are *still* biological beings, and rationality without emotions is often not enough to provide motivation and drive -we also need some chemical and hormonal fire in our blood. This is the challenge ahead: formulating transhumanism as a strong belief that can energize people with emotional fire, without giving up our roots in rationalism and scientific thinking. Besides scholarly works we need more novels, movies, series. We also need good communicators able to explain transhumanism in everyday language and generate a positive emotional response. Religion has been, and is, important for Americans. This is sometimes difficult to understand for most of us us Europeans, used to considering religion as something largely irrelevant and with no place in public life. But religion was an important part of the Manifest Destiny meme, and still is a powerful factor in American policies. Religion is certainly a powerful enabler for memetic engineering. When criticizing the extremes of religion, and there are many very sad examples in history, it is important to bear in mind that religion has also fueled many worth initiatives and provided peace of mind to countless believers. The key question if how to keep the good things of religion (sense of community, happiness, and a hopeful vision of our place and purpose in the universe) without the bad things (bigotry, fundamentalism, intolerance, holy wars, burning heretics and infidels). Here again I think transhumanism, and especially its “cosmic” face aimed at achieving superhumanity and spreading to the stars and beyond, may provide a modern, energizing but tolerant alternative to religion rooted in the scientific worldview.  transceng 2007-12-01T07:48:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/engineering_transcendence/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/engineering_transcendence/#When:15:07:00Z Engineering Transcendence This chapter, adapted from an older article, can be read as a stand-alone summary of the rest of the book and provides a rationale, in a memetic engineering sense, for the program proposed. It has been edited with references to other chapters that provide more detailed information and thoughts. Gazing at the stars in the clear night sky, and feeling that there is something greater than us, which gives a meaning to our little life down here. Being afraid to die, and hoping that our selves may somehow survive death. Grieving for our loved ones who are not with us anymore, and hoping to meet them again, somewhere else. Such feelings and hopes have been part of us since the dawn of time. Perhaps, as it has been suggested, our minds are hard-wired for religion: “Just as the mind has the capacity for analytical thought, abstract mathematical reasoning, and invention of highly sophisticated technology, it also has the capacity - and the built-in design - to experience God”. Or, the capacity to experience “the transcendent” or “Reality” - which can stand in place of God for some spiritual people such as Buddhists. I think there is substantial evidence already for the neural basis of religion but there is also a strong case for the evolutionary advantage conveyed by religious memes, at least in terms of group selection if not individual survival. See Pascal Boyer’s excellent book ”Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought”. Indeed, I think the fact that all human societies have invented religion can be simply explained, without assuming any specific neural basis, by noting that religion can provide some hope in a hostile universe. This is an evolutionary advantage at societal level, because religious individual who hope to wake up after death in a better world can be more willing to sacrifice themselves for the community. In modern times many of us are too intellectually sophisticated and have lost the ability to accept things on faith without any explanation or at least suggestive evidence. I am just unable to believe in anything like a Christian God who created the universe in seven days, sits on a cloud watching us with a fatherly smile, answers our prayers, and grants us resurrection and immortality. I just can’t. That is, I cannot believe without any explanation or at least suggestive evidence. I have known deeply religious people who can. Religion provides them with a deep peace of mind, a sense of purpose, and the ability to calmly accept their death, and the death of their loved ones. Engineering Resurrection Death. I am part of the cryonics movement because I don’t want to accept that I will die. But some people I love are not persuaded by cryonics, and other people I loved are dead already. If I were my grandfather, I could find comfort in thinking that I will see them in Heaven. But, I don’t believe Heaven exists, at least not in the clouds, and not my grandfather’s Heaven. Perhaps Heaven exists after all, in the sense that after we die we may wake up “somewhere else”. This concept can actually be formulated without having to resort to any supernatural belief, as a “simulation theory”: the idea that, as in the movies Matrix and Vanilla Sky, we are actually living in a computer simulation. Many science fiction books and stories also deal with the theme of living inside a virtual world. Vernor Vinge’s short story set in a virtual world “Cookie Monster” (2003) includes within it a list of other short stories of the same theme. The best analysis of a simulation theory is the ”simulation argument” of Nick Bostrom: “There is a significant probability that you are living in computer simulation. I mean this literally: if the simulation hypothesis is true, you exist in a virtual reality simulated in a computer built by some advanced civilisation. Your brain, too, is merely a part of that simulation… a technologically mature civilisation that has developed at least those technologies that we already know are physically possible, would be able to build computers powerful enough to run an astronomical number of human-like minds, even if only a tiny fraction of their resources were used for that purpose.” Bostrom presents some mature arguments to show that the probability that we all live in a simulated world is significant. I must say that I don’t find his arguments very persuasive, but the bottom-line is, you cannot rule out that you live in a computer simulation on the basis of observation, logic, or current scientific knowledge: the simulation theory is perfectly compatible with today’s scientific knowledge and worldview. It is easy to conclude from reading Bostrom’s simulation argument that he thinks the probability that we are living in a simulation now is quite high. That was certainly my impression. But, commenting on an earlier draft of this article, he distanced himself from the inference that this probability is high. Bostrom said that, if he were to make a guess, he would estimate the probability that we are living in a simulation at a mere 20%. That’s not insignificant, but it’s far lower than I inferred from his simulation argument. If we live in a computer simulation run by some future sociologist, mad scientist, ET or whatever, then we can assume that like every good system administrator she is keeping regular backup files and can, if and when she thinks it is appropriate, “extract you” from a backup file and “inject you” into another simulation, or even into her real world. Perhaps her civilization has defeated death and given everyone immortality and happiness. Or, perhaps the civilization simulated in the new virtual world where she has saved your backup copy has defeated death and given everyone immortality and happiness. In other words, if you live in a computer simulation you can wake up in Heaven after death. From a practical point of view, the simulation theory is indistinguishable from conventional religion: somewhere there is an extremely powerful being who is watching your life and can send you to Heaven, or to Hell, after you die. Perhaps the Big Programmer will even listen to your prayers if you pray often and hard enough. Another possibility is that heaven will exist where, and when, we will build it. This is the thesis defended by Prof. Frank. J. Tipler and detailed in his seminal book ”The Physics of Immortality”. Here is my very brief and incomplete version of “The Omega Point Theory in a nutshell”: intelligent beings of a far future epoch close to the gravitational collapse of the universe (the so called Big Crunch) may develop the capability to steer the collapse along a specific mode (Taub collapse) with unlimited subjective time, energy, and computational power available to them before reaching the final singularity. Having done so, they may wish to restore to consciousness all sentient beings of the past, perhaps through a “brute force” computational emulation of the past history of the universe. So after death we may wake up in a simulated environment with many of the features assigned to the afterlife world by the major religions. I am using a weak “may”, but Prof. Tipler thinks that there is plenty of evidence for the Omega Point Theory in today’s universe. See my ”Interview with Frank J. Tipler” and Tipler’s website for a more detailed description of his ideas, but also: read the book. Note that since a simulated world is Tipler’s preferred scenario for resurrection, the Omega Point theory is an extension of the simulation theory, providing a possible sketch of the civilization running the simulation: they are our descendants at the end of time, with perhaps only a couple of seconds of objective time left, but an infinite span of subjective time and computing power. Tipler’s Omega Point Theory has been criticized on the basis of his own belief that there is plenty of evidence for the Omega Point Theory in today’s universe. Some do not see that much evidence, and as a consequence reject the theory as a whole. Others disagree on some or some other specific mechanism proposed by Tipler. This is, in my opinion, missing the point entirely: perhaps Leonardo’s aircraft sketches would not have been able to fly (the knowledge needed to design a flying machine was just not available at his time), but this does not lessen the value of Leonardo’s insight that a device conceptually similar to his own sketches would, someday, fly. Similarly, we may just not know enough physics and mathematics to evaluate the plausibility of a specific Omega Point mechanism, but this does not lessen the value of Tipler’s insight: someday science may develop the capability to resurrect the dead. Most objections to Tipler’s Omega Point mechanism are based on its assumption of a universe which begins to contract at some point after an expansion phase (Big Crunch). Indeed, some cosmological observation performed after the publication of Tipler’s book seem to suggest that the universe will continue expanding forever. But even in this case, a recent article on ”The Ultimate Fate of Life in an Accelerating Universe” supports the idea that life and computation can continue forever in an accelerating universe. In Tipler’s Omega Point scenario it does not matter that conscious beings at the end of time have only two seconds of objective life left, as both their subjective time and the number of computations that they can perform before the end of the universe are infinite. Similarly, perhaps in an expanding universe life and computation will “slow down” as longer and longer times will be required to perform the same computation, but it does not matter since there is infinite time ahead. This is not necessarily true mathematically but you get the idea. I will repeat it: someday science may develop the capability to resurrect the dead. And I will add: perhaps much, much sooner than the end of the universe. Perhaps in a few hundred years. How? Of course, I just don’t know. But I can imagine some scenarios compatible with our current scientific knowledge. The simplest scenarios involve time travel, but not the sort of time travel where you physically go back in time and kill your grandfather with all the logical inconsistencies that follow. What is needed is just the capability to acquire detailed information from the past. If and when our descendants develop such capability, they will be able to look back into the past and extract all information contained in our brains. Then, assuming that by this time our descendants have also developed the capability to load and “run” such information in a new physical or virtual body, they will be able to revive us in their physical reality or in one of their simulated realities. The first writer to propose an idea conceptually similar to this was the 19th-century Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorovich Fyodorov. Of course his scenarios reflect 19th-century models of the universe and seem naive today. In the words of Mike Perry (same reference): “A person is made up of atoms, and when a person dies these (finitely many) particles are scattered. Resurrection of the person occurs as a consequence of restoring the atoms to their previous arrangement. To carry out the resurrection it is necessary to determine what this arrangement was and then to reposition the particles. This is a problem to be solved by science rather than by appeals to an outside power.” Fyodorov’s mechanism is perhaps naive, but his concept is not. In his book ”Forever for All”, Mike Perry presents scenarios more compatible with today’s models of the universe and takes the arguments for physical immortality fare beyond what others have done. Mike Perry carefully examines the scientific, technological and philosophical requirements for the achievement of immortality and gives reasoned hope for the eventual realization of eternal life for all of us. Frank Tipler’s work overlaps part of Perry’s, but is more focused on a single possibility for universal resurrection at the end of time under a particular cosmological scenario that, unfortunately, does not seem very probable given the latest astronomical discoveries. So Tipler’s theory becomes just a special case within Perry’s much larger and more comprehensive work. But, as it is frequently the case, some of the most suggestive resurrection scenarios have been proposed by science fiction writers. In ”The Light of Other Days”, Sir Arthur C. Clarke (who else?) and Stepten Baxter imagine a near future world profoundly transformed by the invention of a “Wormcam”: a remote viewing device that permits scanning every position, including in the past, by using micro wormholes naturally embedded with hugh density in the fabric of spacetime. At some point things start to progress very fast, and soon after scientists develop the capability to resurrect the dead: “It was possible now to look back into time and read off a complete DNA sequence from any moment in an individual’s life. And it was possible to download a copy of that person’s mind and, by putting the two together, regenerated body and downloaded mind, to restore her… We live on Mars, the moons of the outer planets, and we’re heading for the stars. There have even been experiments to download human minds into the quantum foam… We intend to restore all human souls, back to the beginning of the species. We intend to put right the past, to defeat the awful tragedy of death in a universe that may last tens of billions of years.” Of course when Clarke refers to soul, he does not mean a non-material, metaphysical entity. Perry and Tipler provide an informational definition of human personhood which I find quite persuasive and is, I think, what Clarke also believes. The terms “individual” or “person” should be preferred to the term “soul” because the latter term is easily confused with idealist superstitions. And perhaps an all powerful civilization at the Tiplerian Omega Point will indeed restore all human persons. But it seems reasonable to assume that more mundane, albeit powerful, earlier future civilizations will still have to contend with the scarcity of resources. In this case, the first persons to be restored will be selected on the basis of appropriate criteria such as their “worth” (you can derive complete moral systems from this), or their value to some specific entity. In other words, if you are still around at that time, you may be able to sponsor the resurrection of your family and friends. I definitely intend to be still around at that time: I will cryonically transport myself to a suitable future and, as soon as science develops all the necessary capabilities, I will reach back in time to retrieve all the persons I have loved. Engineering God Let’s go back to Prof. Tipler. He states that his future Omaga Point civilization at the end of time will consist of eternal entities able to manipulate the physical fabric of spacetime, able to command infinite amounts of computing power to create virtual universes at will, and with other advanced abilities compared to which the trivial resurrection of the dead will be routine maintenance work. And he asks: what name should we give them but God? Indeed, such entities possess many, if not all, of the attributes of religious Gods including the Christian God. What about earlier future civilizations, incredibly powerful by our standards but still having limited resources? Well, perhaps they will not be Gods, but at least demigods. Yes it is fiction, but if the near future civilization portrayed by Clarke and Baxter can already resurrect dead souls and encode them in the fabric of space-time, try imagining what may come next. So we can imagine a hierarchy of more and more powerful civilizations, filling the universe and acquiring more and more God-like powers. This would be a God who was not around to create things at the time of the Big Bang when the Universe came into existence, but is born and evolves with the Universe - the God of Teilhard: “If one were to project the forward edge of evolution into the future, especially as it falls increasingly under human direction and control, then it makes increasing sense to talk of a higher consciousness as being the inherent end and purpose of evolution. If evolution itself points toward a form of conscious life which has personality, perhaps God is the goal toward which this universe is moving after all”. Teilhard (see also this Wired article) was actually the first to use the term “Omega Point”. Freeman Dyson, author of ”Infinite in All Directions” is another modern thinker who entertains similar notions on Divinity. He writes: “I believe that we are here to some purpose, that the purpose has something to do with the future, and that it transcends altogether the limits of our present knowledge and understanding. ... If you like, you can call the transcendent purpose God. If it is God, it is a Socinian God, inherent in the universe and growing in power and knowledge as the universe unfolds. Our minds are not only expressions of its purpose but are also contributions to its growth”. And: “I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it is passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be considered to be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. We are the chief inlets of God on this planet at the present stage of his development”. But of course, the idea of “engineering God” has not been invented by modern thinkers. It is already present in the writings of Socinus, a Renaissance philosopher and one of the fathers of Unitarian Universalism, who could not spell it out in too much detail for fear of retaliation by the Church, and of many other philosphers and theologians down to our time. In summary, and spelling it out as clearly as I can: someday we may create God. And if we create God, then We are God. Of course, to do that we must overcome our current limitations and dramatically expand our capabilities by taking control of our evolution as a species. In particular, we must leave our frail flesh bodies behind and migrate our minds to more powerful containers, and we must expand our mental powers by merging with the smarter-than-human artificial intelligences that we will develop. The beginning of this new phase of evolution is being spearheaded today by the transhumanist movement. Though most transhumanists would agree with the long-term perspective outlined here, current transhumanism focuses more on short-to-medium-term improvements of the human condition. From the website of the World Transhumanist Association: “We support the development of and access to new technologies that enable everyone to enjoy better minds, better bodies and better lives. In other words, we want people to be better than well”. Engineering Hope and Happiness So far I have been talking of future physical engineering: retrieving the souls of the dead and building God as soon as technology permits. Now I wish to talk of memetic engineering in today’s world: crafting a system of belief, a religion if you like, able to provide modern generations used to the scientific worldview with the same benefits that religion gave to our grandfathers: a deep peace of mind, a sense of purpose, and the ability to calmly accept their death, and the death of their loved ones. The still very young Society for Universal Immortalism aspires to fill this memetic niche by adopting many of the memes described here, and in particular the resurrection of the dead enabled by future technologies: “All souls (past, present, and future) have a right to exist and grow and improve eternally. We regard it as a supreme tragedy that past souls have been lost and not preserved. To that end, we dedicate ourselves to finding a way one day to bringing back all persons that have ever lived, so that they can join us in our eternal adventure”. Universal Immortalist literature is always very sober and reasonable, always compatible with scientific knowledge, yet it manages to convey part of the religious experience that some of us seek. I say “part of” because religion is more than an attempt to deal with death. It is also about establishing a personal and immediate sense of divine or transcendental presence in the present moment. This experiential aspect of religion, which can be called spirituality, is not about thinking, but about feeling, sensing and doing. See the paper of Mike La Torra in the Journal of Evolution and Technology titled ”Trans-Spirit: Religion, Spirituality and Transhumanism”. The much older and more established Unitarian Universalism is a beautiful religion of love, based on very reasonable and liberal premises. More interested in spiritual humanism than in worshipping this or that God, Unitarian Universalists are open to a whole range of beliefs on divinity. I was traveling in Transylvania a couple of years ago and was surprised by the size of the large Unitarian Universalist community there. Then I found out that Socinus (see above) lived some years in Transylvania. With such historical beginnings, it is not surprising that at least some Unitarian Universalists are very open to the transhumanist message. James Hughes, raised Unitarian Universalist and now the Secretary of the World Transhumanist Association, has written a good paper on ”Transhumanism and Unitarian Universalism: Beginning the Dialogue”. I have used the words “sober” and “reasonable” referring to Universal Immortalism and Unitarian Universalism. Well, perhaps too sober and too reasonable. Perhaps most people still need some messianic fire. In a very interesting article on ”Weak Theology”, the author Jeffrey Robbins talks of secularism as weakening of thought: “Weak thought is not a term of derision, but a positive term of praise that can be used as a tool for political emancipation and a more democratic philosophy. It produces a desirable humility about our own moral intuitions and about the social institutions to which we have become accustomed. This humility will encourage tolerance for other intuitions, and a willingness to experiment with ways of refashioning or replacing institutions”. Now if this is “weak thought”, I am happy to be a weak thinker. But why is it called weak? It is called weak in opposition to “strong thought”: thought based on absolute truths, certainty, totality, aiming at providing absolute foundations for knowledge and action. The contemporary philosopher Gianni Vattimo has used the “strong” and “weak” terminology extensively. As a weak thinker, I am afraid I have to acknowledge that strong thought is, well, stronger than weak thought in terms of its immediate emotional appeal to the majority of people. While weak thinkers talk of rights and appeal to reason with measured arguments, always open to criticism and doubt, strong thinkers talk of duties and appeal to gut feelings with the passion of true warriors. And apparently this still resonates more with the minds of the majority of people. In passing, it is worth noting that the political differences between Americans and Europeans which are evident from recent events can be formulated in terms of conflict between weak and strong thought. While a religious fundamentalist has been re-elected to the US presidency, in Europe a religious fundamentalist (Buttiglione) has not been been accepted as a member of the European Commission. Most European nations have strongly resisted proposals aimed at introducing strong references to the European Christian heritage in the new European Constitution. It appears that many Europeans are weak thinkers, and many Americans are strong thinkers. Perhaps this is because in Europe we once fell in love with strong ideologies in Germany and Italy before the Second World War, and have seen the catastrophic consequences. Going back to religion, perhaps the reason why it is still such an important factor after centuries of scientific advances is that it is strong thought, and this is what most people still want: absolute certainties and strong truths delivered with religious fervor. So while I like very much the Unitarian Universalist calm and thoughtful approach, and consider Universal Immortalism as a very interesting route to a “practical transhumanist religion” for the future, I fear that it will be difficult to win minds and hearts without a stronger formulation. Before concluding and to avoid misunderstandings, I wish to say that I am definitely not proposing a transformation of the transhumanist movement into some sort of irrational religious sect. If anything, I believe the transhumanist movement should evolve into a mainstream cultural, scientific and social force firmly established in the world of today - to prepare the world of tomorrow. But as all good salespersons know, different marketing and sales techniques have to be used for different audiences, and perhaps we should also explicitly address the needs of those who are hard-wired for religion. Doing so will be facilitated by understanding the neurological and social basis of religion - why most humans are religious to varying degrees and why some humans are almost completely resistant to religion. Then we can utilize this understanding in the creation of a religion for the Third Millennium. So, I would support developing a strong, religious formulation of transhumanism as a front-end for those who need one. A possibility, in my opinion compatible with both the path taken by Universal Immortalists and current efforts to understand the neurological and social basis of religion, would be presenting the ideas outlined here - moving on to the next evolutionary phase enabled by technology, resurrecting the dead, and building God - as a strong duty of our species, packaging them with some of the rituals whose appeal is demonstrated by the history of religions, and delivering them with some messianic fervor. transceng 2007-11-30T15:07:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/transhumanist_technologies/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/transhumanist_technologies/#When:10:24:00Z Transhumanist technologies Let me define “transhumanist technologies” as those technologies that permit or will permit, using Fukuyama’s words, “to liberate the human race from its biological constraints”. There is a good probability that you are already using transhumanist technologies: if you are reading this page with eyeglasses, you are using a human enhancement technology aimed at overcoming your poor eyesight, or your “natural” loss of eyesight caused by aging. Same thing if you used Viagra or Cialis last night. Speaking about that, you have probably used contraceptives or condoms, which are also transhumanist technologies that permit liberating the human race from some of its biological constraints. The last two technologies have been, and still are, condemned by religious fundamentalists who believe (or better, wish to make us believe) that having a good life is a bad thing, but less and less people are listening to them. If you are reading this page on the Internet, you are using another transhumanist technology - the Web is the quintessential transhumanist technology, which has given us the ability to access information and communicate with others regardless of physical proximity. You probably have another transhumanist gadget in your pocket - your cell phone gives you capabilities that your grandfather would have considered as magic. But also the primitive line phone that your grandfather used would have been considered, by his grandfather, as magic… And today the magic of multiuser online virtual worlds like Second Life permits meeting people online in synthetic realities with a high, and fast growing, degree of realism and immersion. The point I am making is, of course, that we have always been using “transhumanist” technologies to enhance our capabilities. Actually, this can be taken as a definition of technology, and in this sense every technology is a transhumanist technology. Eyeglasses and condoms have already disappeared so deep in the texture of everyday life that we do not consider them as technology anymore: technology is, of course, whatever was invented after you were born. So what transhumanist technologies are coming, and when? One, that is already beginning to make headlines and reach the consumer market, is the ability to control computers by thought. Based on high performance interfaces able to sense specific features of the brain’s activity and translate them to a format understandable by software running on a computer, these gadgets already permit playing simple computer games by thought. transceng 2007-11-30T10:24:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/immortality/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/immortality/#When:10:18:00Z Immortality Strictly speaking, immortality means “living forever” - that you never die. But perhaps “forever” is a nebulous concept. And actually those who talk of “immortality” are frequently criticized for using a term tainted by religious associations. Also, assuming the physical universe will end in a heath death, big crunch or whatever, surviving it will require “magic” engineering feats that most people would consider unrealistic. In practical terms, immortality means that you are not going to die yet, or in other words that the possibility of your death is not an important factor for you. Everyone knows that teenagers are immortal: they (at least the mentally healthy ones) never think that they are going to die. Of course they know, on an intellectual level, that someday they will die, but they see their death as something so very abstract and remote, that will happen so far in the future, that does not even need to be taken into account. Unfortunately, old people feel their death, in their aging bones, as a much closer and very unpleasant event. An alternative and more precise term is “indefinite lifespan”: you may die someday, but not just yet, and your life does not have a fixed expiration date. Common sense says that living 120 years is good, but living 121 years is better and living 122 years (in good health and enjoying life) is even better, so why not 1220 years or even more. Of course everyone would agree, even your grandmother and her grandfather, but they did not dare thinking of indefinite lifespan because it was a clear engineering impossibility at their time. Now, we are beginning to see that biomedical engineering shows a potential to achieve very radical life extension beyond all hopes of our grandparents, and other experimental technologies promise very radical, “magic” feats. Today, we can see that an indefinite lifespan is a practical engineering possibility. Coming back to the terminology used, “immortality” can be written with less keystrokes that “indefinite lifespan”, and has some immediate and emotional clarity that the more precise term lacks. So, having stated that by the word “immortality” I mean an indefinite lifespan without a fixed expiration date, please let me keep using it occasionally. transceng 2007-11-30T10:18:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/mind_uploading/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/mind_uploading/#When:10:08:00Z Old - initially written on Transhumanity in 2004. The last part is dated. Mind uploading Copying a human mind with personality and memories to an appropriate intermediate support, and later loading the copy on a biological or electronic support different from the original brain, is still far from our reach. At the same time this ambitious proposal for a future technology, frequently called “uploading”, has the highest conceivable practical importance: uploading means effective immortality. Why? Because then we can make multiple backup copies and, should anything fatal happen to a person, we can load the most recent backup. While the endless possibilities that follow are explored in some detail in the excellent science fiction references, the question asked here is what options may become available within our lifetimes. The reconstruction of a human mind, from the data acquired by scanning the original brain, on some other computational support, requires a very detailed understanding of how the physics of the brain generates the conscious mind. Some hold the opinion that even this is not enough, and that some other phenomena not derived from the physics of the brain must play an important role in explaining the mind. If, of course, mind can be explained at all. In this note I will make the assumption that a “sufficiently complete” brain scan, followed by a “sufficiently accurate” reconstruction of the patterns encoded by the data in the scan, performed following appropriate physical models of the brain and target systems, permits re-instantiating the mind in its state immediately before the scan. I make this assumption because, in my opinion, it is the simplest assumption compatible with what is known today. In other words, I am assuming that uploading is possible in principle. Is it feasible in practice? How long will uploading technology take to develop? Can we look forward to be uploaded, or is it rather for our grand grandchildrens? In the recent novel “Down and Out in Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow, situated at the end of this century, uploading and reconstruction are described matter-of-factly as routine medical procedures. While I strongly recommend reading this delightful novel, it may leave the reader with the impression that uploading is just behind the corner. The more sobering view held by most experts is that the technologies involved are so complex that uploading a human mind is more than 30 years away: 50 years are often given as a more realistic estimate even by “true believers”. At the same time, the technology for the acquisition of the input brain scan, sufficiently complete to permit a future reconstruction as outlined above, might be available much sooner. Suppose for example that at some point, say 20 years from now, we have developed the capability to map a physical brain with the required accuracy, without having developed yet the capability to reconstrut the original person. This is a reasonable assumption, and indeed this is the current status of cryonics: we (believe that we) know how to properly freeze a recently dead person, but we do not know yet how to revive her. Cryonics is an expression of faith in future scientific advances. Then we may consider scanning a brain and storing the map as a viable self preservation procedure, equivalent to cryonics: scan now, store one or (better) multiple copies, reconstruct as soon as permitted by scientific and technical progress. This sounds like a reasonable alternative to cryonics, at least to me. I am in my forties and I do not really hope that an operational end-to-end uploading technology is developed within my natural lifetime. At the same time I am sure that appropriate physical models of the brain and target systems, and consequently the technology to map one onto the other, will be developed sooner of later. So I will use the remaining part of this note to speculate on when the capability to acquire and store a “sufficiently complete” brain scan could be developed. Of course, the first key question is what “sufficiently complete” means, and nobody can answer that yet. Other key questions are, what technology can be used to acquire the scan, how long it takes, how much storage capacity is required, and, of course, how much money it costs. I want to make an important assumption explicitely. I will assume that all properties of the brain/mind system can be completely understood in terms of macroscopic (non quantum) physics, or in other words that we can safely forget quantum effects. I believe this is the simplest assumption compatible with our objective knowledge at this time. Now there are theories that, on the contrary, quantum effects are absolutely vital to whatever the physical brain does to produce (or interact with) consciousness. If these quantum consciousness theories are validated by experiment, they are bound to have a profound impact on the engineering feasibility of mind uploading. Back to the macroscopic viewpoint, let’s try to establish some required upper and lower resolution figures for a sufficiently complete brain map. Some experts believe that, since we have to know where all relevant molecular structures are and what they are doing, a resolution of 1 nanometer, with occasional sampling at a higher resolution, could very well be required. Remember that it takes one million nanometers to make a millimeter. Other experts believe that a resolution of 10 nanometers may be sufficient. Leaving aside for the time being the critical issue of how to acquire a volume map of a 3D object at this very high resolution, I wish to note that this is a huge amount of information. Assuming 10 cm as a typical linear dimension of the brain, and that 1 byte (8 bits) is sufficient to encode the information in each volume element, we have to acquire and store 10**24 bytes of information, or 60.000.000.000.000.000 CDROMS!!! This pile of CDROMS would extend much beyond Pluto’s orbit in interstellar space. While this is a good visual illustration of the sheer volume of information contained in a human brain, the CDROM is definitely not the last word in information storage density. Indeed, there are indications that a density of ten terabytes (10**13 bytes) per square cm may be attained soon. Then, instead of a pile of CDROMS reaching into interstellar space we have a surface of 10 square km that, after some more development in storage density and three-dimansional packaging, may well go further down to, say, a large building. In the rest of this note, I will assume that storing the amount of information contained in a human brain will be feasible in ten years and operational in twenty years. Once the brain and self are better understood, data compression may permit dramatically reducing storage requirements. All digital video aficionados know than digital movies require less and less storage space: modern MPEG 4 video compression technology permits squeezing a full length movie with several audio tracks, with a quality comparable to that of a DVD, on a single CDROM. Data compression works by discarding information deemed not relevant for a given application. This is how MP3 audio compression works: it discards information that the human ear would not be able to hear anyway, such as frequencies above or below a treshold. Analogously, the bits corresponding to small variations in hue that the human eye is not able to appreciate are discarded in image compression. I think that perhaps a complete model of the interplay between brain and consciousness, when it is established, will show that much of the information encoded in the physical brain ("mind file") is not strongly coupled to consciousness and can be discarded while still preserving the essential information. In fact, estimates (e.g. Moravec and Tipler) for the information content of a human mind range between 10**13 and 10**17 bits, much lower than the 10**24 bits obtained by “brute force” mapping of the physical brain. Also, it may be possible to replace specifc subsystems, like for example the ability to speak a foreign language, with standard “modules” available off-the-shelf. To make it clear: I am proud to speak a fair number of foreign anguages, but I do not consider it as something central to my identity. If I have no other choice, I would accept being revived from a brain scan without the bits associated a language, and later grafting this skill from a standard module. I think it would not be exactly the same thing, but perhaps it would be good enough, and would not strongly impact on “being me”, at least if it is not a language that I use frequently (the ability to speak a mother language or any language that one is very familiar with may well be too strongly coupled to personal identity). Something similar may probably be said for most mind subsystems associated with bodily functions and motor skills: an importat part of the information hardcoded in our brains may be dedicated to managing our body and, assuming that this information is not strongly coupled to the sense of self, it may be possible to replace it with standard subsystems. Please, install the very latest release of “Squash Master” before waking me up. Moreover, we all know that an old and scratched picture can be turned into an image that might have been taken by a modern camera by using image processing techniques plus inference and rules: if we cannot see if a person portrayed in the old and scratched picture has a wedding ring on the finger covered by a scratch, we can decide to paste a wedding ring there if we know that the person was married, and with high probability the choice is right and the processed image will be more faithful to the original scene. In summary, when the brain is better understood it may be possible to use this knowledge to compress mind files. Our understanding of the brain is advancing rapidly, also as a result of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research. After the outline of storage requirements, and in view of the rapid progress of AI and brain sciences, I am now satisfied that the technology needed to reliably store a mind file may well become available within my natural lifetime. Now I wish to evaluate the feasibility of generating a mind file by scanning a physical brain. Most proposed methods require technologies that have not been developed yet. For example when operational nanotechnology is available, it will be possible to send swarms of nanomachines in a brain to copy the detailed status of relevant cellular and molecular structures such as neurons, neurotransmitters and synapses. The information copied can be later retrieved from the nanomachines with an appropriate method. The process may be performed on a recently dead brain (similarly to current cryonics, and this is the only feasible approach if the copy process is destructive) or on a living brain. In this case perhaps the nanomachines may take up permanent residence in the brain and copy/paste the information continuously. Alternatively, the “Introdus nanoware” in Greg Egan’s “Diaspora” destroys the subject’s brain in the nanomachine based copying process. The problem is, we do not know when advanced nanotechnology will be developed and deployed operationally. We are now only approaching the capability to develop very crude nanotechnology demonstrators, and the time it may take to develop mature applications such as this is anyone’s guess. While most experts assume that it will take from thirty to fifty years, it may take less, or it may take much more. Having set my own natural lifetime as “useful” timeframe, I prefer to speculate on the development of today’s operational technologies. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology is used in hospitals to acquire three-dimansional images of living brains, reaching a resolution of 1 mm that permits, in some cases, detecting early-stage brain tumors or other neural disordes. At this time, MRI is many orders of magnitude away from the submolecular resolution that may be required. Might MRI technology progress to the point where it is able to achieve this resolution (of the order of 1 nanometer, one million times smaller than a mm)? MRI is based on the principles of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and works by submitting a brain, or whatever living tissue, to a strong magnetic field. The magnetic resonance signal emitted by hydrogen nuclei in the magnetic field produces the MRI signal, that can be processed to generate two or three dimensional images. The image resolution that can be obtained from the MRI signal depends on the gradient of the applied magnetic field, that is, on how much it changes from place to place. MRI can be performed on a living brain and, indeed, has well known clinical applications in neurology and brain oncology. It can, however, be performed at a much higher resolution on an appropriately prepared dead brain. This is due to the fact that generating magnetic fields with the required gradient is much easier if the field is confined to short distances (for example, a magnetic field confined between two plates separated by a very short distance). Therefore the highest resolution applications of MRI are performed on very small samples. For brain imaging, the sample can be reduced to the required size by cutting the brain in small cubes or very thin slices (taking care of not destroying too much tissue in the cutting or slicing process). Of course, this can only be done to a dead frozen brain. Assuming that this continues to be true as MRI technology evolves, the first viable applications of MRI to mind uploading shall be performed on recently dead corpses (as is the case for today’s cryonic procedures), and destroy the corpse’s brain in the process (in other words, if they screw up you are irreversibly dead). This is the technique used in the novel “Eater” by Gregory Benford, where a sentient black hole visiting our galactic neighborhood tries to bully the world into sending it uploaded humans, and recommends this procedure as the only one compatible with the current status of our technology. So how fast is MRI technology developing? Resoutions of the order of 1 micrometer (one thousandth of a millimeter) in all three directions have been recently demonstrated by experiments done on vary small tissue samples, cells, and single cell organisms (ref. 4). 1 micrometer is “only” 1000 times bigger than the required 1 nanometer, so it seems reasonable to think that soon, say within the next 30 years, uploading level resolutions might have been demonstrated in the laboratory on small tissue samples. This would already permit reliably copying the information stored in a dead frozen brain. Establishing the required extended magnetic fields and engineering a suitable data acquisition system to permit copying the information stored in a living brain is a challenge of the same magnitude, that will also require important scientific and technological breakthroughs. The conclusions? Well on the basis of the available hard facts (few), expert opinions (some), less expert opinions (plenty), and a lot of personal guesswork, I believe that if I manage to stay alive and mentally fit until well into my eighties or nineties (personal discipline and medical advances required) I may have a reasonable chance of having my mind scanned, stored, loaded on a better support system after a few decades or centuries, and then living forever. Perhaps multiple copies of me will explore the stars and merge their memories every few thousands of years. I prefer not to start speculating on the legal, societal and political adaptations that a world where uploading is a routine procedure would require, since things would become really complex then. Perhaps I am too pessimist on the development rate of nanometric resolution MRI and fully operational nanotechnology, which may materialize sooner than expected. As Kurzweil points out we have already entered an era of exponential growth and while we usually overestimate developments in the short term (a few years), we tend to underestimate developments in the medium term (a few decades). Perhaps by the time when the first crude assemblers are developed we may already have operational AI, smarter than humans, to rapidly push to advanced nanotechnology. Or perhaps I am too optimist, and things are going to take much longer than expected. Back in the sixties we all thought that we would have cities on Mars in the 21st century, and they just did not materialize. So while I hope that advanced technologies for uploading may develop sufficiently fast, I would not bet too much on it. For the time being “conventional” cryonics looks like the safest way to maximize our chances of indefinite survival, by transporting revivable physical bodies a few decades or centuries in the future.  transceng 2007-11-30T10:08:00+00:00 http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/a_brief_history_of_transhumanism/ http://transumanar.com/index.php/transceng/a_brief_history_of_transhumanism/#When:09:24:00Z A brief history of Transhumanism Like most groups of people, also the small but growing transhumanist community has internal factions and some ego-boosted primadonnas who wish to claim that they, or their mentors, invented transhumanism. No matter what I write here, someone will complain that (s)he has not been included or given enough space, and someone will complain that others have been included or given too much space. So I will not even try to write an objective or “neutral” history of transhumanism, but rather a first-person history of my own involvement with transhumanism, focused on what has been important to me. I have said that I have been a transhumanism since I was a teenager, or perhaps even younger, without even knowing that such a thing as transhumanism existed. The younger readers will not remember a world without the Internet, where we actually depended on the printed press, radio and television for our information. Even if we do not have cities on the moon like in Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odissey, there has been some real progress in the last decades! In 1994 the Web existed already, but it was not yet part of our daily life. Also, as a European I did not have easy access to the US press. So my first encounter with transhumanism was an article in the October 1994 issue of Wired, by Ed Regis, titled Meet the Extropians: “It’s a doctrine of self-transformation, of extremely advanced technology, and of dedicated, immovable optimism. Most of all, it’s a philosophy of freedom from limitations of any kind. There hasn’t been anything like it - nothing this wild and extravagant, no such overweening confidence in the human prospect - since way back to those bygone ages when people still believed in things like progress, knowledge, and - let’s all shout it out, now - Growth!” The main hero of the article, and the person whom I have always considered as the “father” of modern transhumanism, is the British philisopher Max More: “We see this need for transcendence deeply built into humanity. That’s why we have all these religious myths. It seems to be something inherent in us that we want to move beyond what we see as our limits. In the past we haven’t had the technology to do that, and right now we’re in this difficult period where we don’t quite have the technology yet, but we can see it coming”. I had the pleasure of meeting Max in person in 2005, 11 years after reading the Wired article. In the meantime, of course, I have been reading most of his writings. My favorite is a short article of 1999, titled ”A Letter to Mother Nature” where Max, after thanking the Mother for having done, all things considered, a reasonably good preliminary design work on the human species, announces that “we have decided that it is time to amend the human constitution” and proposes seven amendments: “Amendment No.1: We will no longer tolerate the tyranny of aging and death. Through genetic alterations, cellular manipulations, synthetic organs, and any necessary means, we will endow ourselves with enduring vitality and remove our expiration date. We will each decide for ourselves how long we shall live. Amendment No.2: We will expand our perceptual range through biotechnological and computational means. We seek to exceed the perceptual abilities of any other creature and to devise novel senses to expand our appreciation and understanding of the world around us. Amendment No.3: We will improve on our neural organization and capacity, expanding our working memory, and enhancing our intelligence. Amendment No.4: We will supplement the neocortex with a “metabrain”. This distributed network of sensors, information processors, and intelligence will increase our degree of self-awareness and allow us to modulate our emotions. Amendment No. 5: We will no longer be slaves to our genes. We will take charge over our genetic programming and achieve mastery over our biological, and neurological processes. We will fix all individual and species defects left over from evolution by natural selection. Not content with that, we will seek complete choice of our bodily form and function, refining and augmenting our physical and intellectual abilities beyond those of any human in history. Amendment No.6: We will cautiously yet boldly reshape our motivational patterns and emotional responses in ways we, as individuals, deem healthy. We will seek to improve upon typical human emotional excesses, bringing about refined emotions. We will strengthen ourselves so we can let go of unhealthy needs for dogmatic certainty, removing emotional barriers to rational self-correction. Amendment No.7: We recognize your genius in using carbon-based compounds to develop us. Yet we will not limit our physical, intellectual, or emotional capacities by remaining purely biological organisms. While we pursue mastery of our own biochemistry, we will increasingly integrate our advancing technologies into our selves.” Max has coined the term “Extropy”, defined as “The extent of a living or organizational system’s intelligence, functional order, vitality, and capacity and drive for improvement”, and written the Principles of Extropy (a living document, probably his best known work) to outline the extropian worldview. The late lamented Extropy Institute (dissolved in 2006), and especially the “extropians” mailing list (now exi-chat), served as first incubators for the transhumanist community. I started contributing to the extropians mailing list in 2000, and immediately realized that it was a watering hole for a group of very remarkable persons. transceng 2007-11-30T09:24:00+00:00