Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and
Speaker 1: Robert and I. Last time, we're talking about the rapture
Speaker 1: about Christian eschatology, religious eschatology in general, and secular eschatology
Speaker 1: of a technological nature such as the singularity trans humanism.
Speaker 1: And our discussion went so long that we decided to
Speaker 1: divide it up into two parts. So here is the
Speaker 1: second part of our conversation on the end times. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I've got another uh futurist, sort of techno futurist mindset
Speaker 1: that I think we can ask. Is this a religion?
Speaker 1: Is it like a religion or does it just sort
Speaker 1: of like uh tickle some of the same weak spots
Speaker 1: We've got as many religions too. So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the singularity. Robert, do you feel good about
Speaker 1: the Singularity? You feel bad about it? You think it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of whoy? I feel good about it? U.
Speaker 1: I mean part of that I think comes from just
Speaker 1: being I'm a fan of like the E and M
Speaker 1: Banks culture series model of of a post singularity post
Speaker 1: scarcity world in which the super intelligent computers have our
Speaker 1: best interests at heart. They kind of look after us
Speaker 1: as kind of benevolent, semi noble gods. Yeah, okay, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: so I think we need to explore this idea because this,
Speaker 1: to me is is the core of this kind of
Speaker 1: topic we're talking about today, like technological eschatology. So you
Speaker 1: could say that the singularity, I think has come to
Speaker 1: have almost as many interpretations as the Christian escuoton, right, Like,
Speaker 1: just like the Christian eschatology is, they're all sort of
Speaker 1: loosely related and grounded in similar beliefs, but they vary
Speaker 1: in the explicit details or in the way you'd explain them,
Speaker 1: even if they're not necessarily contradictory. So, in the most basics,
Speaker 1: and the singularity is a hypothesis that technological innovation, at
Speaker 1: some point in the future is going to reach a
Speaker 1: tipping point of unimaginable innovation that fundamentally changes the fate
Speaker 1: of humanity on a rapid time scale. Very often it
Speaker 1: involves artificial intelligence. So I'm gonna talk about three basic
Speaker 1: models just to give you an idea. One one is
Speaker 1: the super intelligence model, and this is the idea that
Speaker 1: humans are going to create superhuman artificial intelligence. So when
Speaker 1: you think about it, intelligence, I would probably agree has
Speaker 1: been the most rapid driver of change in the universe
Speaker 1: up until this point. Like in cosmological or geological history.
Speaker 1: What difference does ten thousand years usually make to anything?
Speaker 1: You know, not a lot, hardly any, But you think
Speaker 1: about how much Earth has changed in the past ten
Speaker 1: thousand years due to intelligence. Once, once we reach the
Speaker 1: creation of machines with functional intelligence exceeding that of any human,
Speaker 1: assuming that actually does happen, proponents argue that this superhuman
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence is just going to rapidly transform our environment.
Speaker 1: The conditions of our lives, and the capabilities of human
Speaker 1: civilization will be fundamentally transformed on a very huge scale.
Speaker 1: And they say, so the age of super intelligence is dawning,
Speaker 1: and this is the singularity. Another way of looking at
Speaker 1: it is also based on artificial intelligence, but it's known
Speaker 1: as the intelligence explosion, and this is based on the
Speaker 1: idea of self improving intelligence paradigms that surpass our ability
Speaker 1: to understand or control them. So let's say, Robert, you
Speaker 1: build a superhuman artificial intelligence. What's the first thing you
Speaker 1: have it do um, co author my paper about the
Speaker 1: creation superhero human AI intelligence. Oh yeah, well that's that's
Speaker 1: a smart move. But do some talk shows to promote
Speaker 1: it and my book about the creation? Yeah? I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to think past that. Come up with the
Speaker 1: tastiest breakfast cereal ever created. No. I mean what a
Speaker 1: lot of people say is, well, you know, the best
Speaker 1: bang for your buck as soon as you create a
Speaker 1: superhuman artificial intelligence is that it would be best put
Speaker 1: to use designing ways to rapidly make itself more intelligent,
Speaker 1: which theoretically it should be able to do. So. If
Speaker 1: it can do this, it will experience exponential self improvement
Speaker 1: and not only will our technological intelligence grow, and not
Speaker 1: only will it accelerate, but it's acceleration will accelerate. I
Speaker 1: feel like the people saying that that's the best use
Speaker 1: of super intelligence UM have not seen any science fiction film,
Speaker 1: because it seems like the thing to do is all right.
Speaker 1: It's it's reached the point to where it's smart enough
Speaker 1: that I can take it to Vegas and and just
Speaker 1: totally kill But it's not so smart that it will
Speaker 1: literally kill me or or Sky at the entire country. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I think the argument would
Speaker 1: go that, well, even if you don't do that, somebody's
Speaker 1: gonna somebody's gonna say, well, I want to have a
Speaker 1: smarter AI than your AI, so I'm gonna have my
Speaker 1: AI improve itself that I don't know. You take your
Speaker 1: AI to a poker game, and somebody else has been
Speaker 1: having their AI self improve its own intelligence, and it's
Speaker 1: telling that person out this metaphors out of hand. But
Speaker 1: but you want to be the person with the smartest day.
Speaker 1: I right, Well, but it's kind of like you're you're
Speaker 1: reaching a point where you can create your own demons,
Speaker 1: create your own deities, and in doing so, it seems
Speaker 1: like you you need to know where to stop, like like,
Speaker 1: maybe not make a full blown god, that make a
Speaker 1: demi god, and let me make an artificial demigod, because
Speaker 1: then then at least it has limits. Right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: want a Hercules not a Zeus. Yeah, I far rather
Speaker 1: deal with a her renegade or Hercules this in a
Speaker 1: situation as opposed to a renegades Zeus, which of course
Speaker 1: is I mean, that's pretty much how both of those
Speaker 1: guys rolled what they wanted Okay. One more idea of
Speaker 1: the singularity, and this is a I think a simpler version,
Speaker 1: but it just is that at some point technological process
Speaker 1: again usually the emphasis is on artificial intelligence, but you
Speaker 1: could put the emphasis elsewhere. At some point it begins
Speaker 1: to accelerate so quickly that our power to predict the
Speaker 1: outcome becomes basically zero. Events will become so strange and
Speaker 1: unpredictable that we we just can't even imagine them from
Speaker 1: our present vantage point. So an outside context indent, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: outside context problem caused by technological innovation. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: lot of modern singularity thinking can be traced, and there
Speaker 1: are plenty people who have written about this over the years,
Speaker 1: but I'd say the biggest figure in the singularity today
Speaker 1: is Ray Kerswile. He's the technologist and author. Rakers while
Speaker 1: very smart guy, worked on technology for years. He's made
Speaker 1: a lot of very accurate and interesting predictions that have
Speaker 1: that have proved correct over the years. But he's also
Speaker 1: made a lot of predictions about the future that a
Speaker 1: lot of people now think are I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: he's being overly optimistic, but anyway, Kerswill has argued in
Speaker 1: several books that the Singularity, This artificial intelligence revolution that's
Speaker 1: going to fundamentally change humanity is coming, and it's coming soon.
Speaker 1: In his two thousand five books, the Singularity is near,
Speaker 1: Cursewell predicted it would happen in so, Robert, you've got
Speaker 1: any plans for um? I think my son will be
Speaker 1: out of high school at that point. I think he's
Speaker 1: he's uh graduating high school theoretically in so Okay, So
Speaker 1: I guess, I'm so. I don't know. Well, we have
Speaker 1: a job by the time the Singularity happened. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy to think about that, Like what do
Speaker 1: you what do you? What do you do post high
Speaker 1: school if the Singularity is coming in just a few years,
Speaker 1: Like do you go to college? Hey? With with the
Speaker 1: singularity in mind bingo, that is a very good question.
Speaker 1: So so let's back up. Let's just assume for a
Speaker 1: moment a Singularity type scaton is coming. That might be
Speaker 1: a big assumption, but let's assume something like that will happen.
Speaker 1: Is it good or bad? Will we get the AI
Speaker 1: my Trea or the AI Ragnarok? Who well, obviously I
Speaker 1: want my Traya as opposed to Ragnarock. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so the my Trea version, what would it be? You know,
Speaker 1: war cease, all diseases, including aging itself or eradicated. There's
Speaker 1: general abundance of resources and wealth. Everybody gets what they want.
Speaker 1: Humans live indefinitely in a state of harmony, exploration, and bliss.
Speaker 1: If I feel like the model we get in most
Speaker 1: sci fi scenarios is that you think you're gonna get
Speaker 1: my Treia, but then you're actually on the road to Ragnarok,
Speaker 1: and then you end up just kind of burning everything
Speaker 1: down and going back to whatever nest up system you
Speaker 1: had before. Right, So why do people think that we're
Speaker 1: on the road to Ragnarok? Well, you mentioned earlier, you know,
Speaker 1: the machine, a machine smart enough to to do all
Speaker 1: this great stuff for you, is also smart enough to
Speaker 1: figure out how to kill you if it wants to.
Speaker 1: So why might it want to? Well, super intelligent machines,
Speaker 1: people say, well, either intentionally choose to eliminate humanity for
Speaker 1: some reason, though I admit I've never heard this explain
Speaker 1: in a way that made a lot of sense to me,
Speaker 1: Like why they would intentionally choose to hunt us down
Speaker 1: and eradicate us. So maybe somebody could explain that to me, Um,
Speaker 1: but the judge of the living and the dead, it
Speaker 1: could be. But but the other version is that perhaps
Speaker 1: merely by a flow of design, they tend to damage
Speaker 1: or destroy humanity as a byproduct of executing their primary function,
Speaker 1: and that that vision seems more plausible to me. But so,
Speaker 1: here's one common example of how something like this would go.
Speaker 1: You've got a super intelligent computer program that's smarter than
Speaker 1: any human. It can improve its own intelligence, is just
Speaker 1: crazy smart, and it's designed to maximize efficiency along the
Speaker 1: production line of a factory that makes toilet paper. So
Speaker 1: somebody forgets to add some conditionals, and the computer program
Speaker 1: ends up turning all the atoms on the surface of
Speaker 1: the earth, including the ones in your body, into toilet paper.
Speaker 1: It has done its job. Well, that sounds kind of crazy,
Speaker 1: but some tam or version of that nightmare seems more
Speaker 1: plausible to me than the intentional terminator style eradication of humans.
Speaker 1: I don't know what do you think about that, Robert Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I tend to interpret the sort of sky
Speaker 1: Net models the sort of like all humans are flawed.
Speaker 1: That's thus all humans must be eradicated. Thing to be
Speaker 1: more of a uh more more rejecting insecurities. Well that
Speaker 1: and also just a bedtime story to say, like make
Speaker 1: sure you program and that failsafe, you know. And I
Speaker 1: feel like, obviously we would have that failsafe, and if
Speaker 1: it were a super intelligent machine, it would have. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just have a hard time buying into that model
Speaker 1: of a super advanced system that it would be so
Speaker 1: catastrophically myopic. Yeah. I mean, both visions have their advocates
Speaker 1: right there. There are smart people on both sides. But
Speaker 1: the funny thing is all this is assuming that something
Speaker 1: like the Singularity will actually happen one way or another,
Speaker 1: and not everyone agrees that it will. But there are
Speaker 1: also people who have been critical of the idea of
Speaker 1: the singularity, and some people who have characterized it as
Speaker 1: a religious idea inherently. One of them is the technologist
Speaker 1: and virtual reality pioneer Jerone Lanier, and he's got a
Speaker 1: lot of opinions about the Singularity. He's made this case
Speaker 1: in in in books, said that it's not only religious
Speaker 1: in nature, but potentially a dangerous or harmful religion. So
Speaker 1: I read an article that he wrote and published in
Speaker 1: The New York Times in two thousand ten called the
Speaker 1: first Church of robotics, and I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 1: So Laniard points out that every news report of an
Speaker 1: advance in artificial intelligence gives us the impression that the
Speaker 1: field is making steady progress to overtake human intelligence in
Speaker 1: cape of alities, and I sort of agree with him.
Speaker 1: I get that feeling when you see these little news
Speaker 1: stories like there's there's a new artificial intelligence program that
Speaker 1: can smell flatulence, There's a new artificial intelligence program that
Speaker 1: can tell a joke. You know, all these like weird
Speaker 1: little quirks of humanity, and they seem to add up
Speaker 1: to something over time. Okay, so it can smell farts,
Speaker 1: that can make jokes about farts, because it's it's about
Speaker 1: the corner with the standard it has become Adam Sandler, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has surpassed its humanity. But yeah, so there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with individual AI projects, Landier says, In fact, he
Speaker 1: has worked on them himself. But he makes a couple
Speaker 1: of points. He says individual advances in artificial intelligence research
Speaker 1: can be interpreted more usefully without the overall framework of AI,
Speaker 1: meaning without the idea that computers are becoming synthetic versions
Speaker 1: of human intelligence. And the example he gives his you know,
Speaker 1: the IBM computer winning on Jeopardy, Watson going on, are
Speaker 1: beating people on Jeopardy. So he he says, that's a
Speaker 1: theatrical stunt that over sells a fake aspect of what
Speaker 1: this computer program can do, you know, conversational human knowledge,
Speaker 1: which it doesn't really have, and undersells a real aspect
Speaker 1: of its capabilities that it's a very powerful phrase based
Speaker 1: search engine. And then he also says that AI, uh,
Speaker 1: that the AI that in some way passes for human
Speaker 1: requires humans to do all the work. Like when you've
Speaker 1: got a social robot, you know, going around saying like Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm your friendly social robot. Look at how advanced my
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence is. His point is that humans, being social,
Speaker 1: will work with what they get. And if you're having
Speaker 1: a transaction with a robot that you are told is
Speaker 1: social and nature, you can very easily adapt your social
Speaker 1: behaviors to the extreme limitations of this machine, and they
Speaker 1: do tend to be pretty extreme. You're not gonna mistake
Speaker 1: at a machine for a human. Yeah, I mean, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed on a show before, or I mean humans
Speaker 1: can have we can have conversations with with a with
Speaker 1: a doll with a with a smiley face. It's scrawled
Speaker 1: on the wall and in putting. So, uh, it's not
Speaker 1: that much of a step to say that, yes, we
Speaker 1: can have a conversation with a chat bot. We can,
Speaker 1: we can have a conversation with the search engine, and
Speaker 1: of course we can certainly have a conversation with an
Speaker 1: echo borg. How often, though, do you meet a person
Speaker 1: who really loves fruit trees? That's true, I love fruit trees.
Speaker 1: I hate fruit trees. But how can you hate fruit
Speaker 1: trees because I'm not a robotlet what would you do
Speaker 1: if you found a turtle? The turtles on his back?
Speaker 1: Why aren't you turning him over? Joe? But what what?
Speaker 1: What I'll tell you about my mother? Okay? Sorry? So
Speaker 1: but anyway, A layer goes on to say, quote, what
Speaker 1: bothers me about this trend? And he's talking about this
Speaker 1: AI media trend. However, is that by allowing artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: to reshape our concept of personhood, we're leaving ourselves opened
Speaker 1: to the flip side. We think of people more and
Speaker 1: more as computers, just as we think of computers as people.
Speaker 1: And I think there might be something to that, actually,
Speaker 1: that the idea of AI not only sort of lifts
Speaker 1: computers up, but in a certain way, at least emotionally
Speaker 1: kind of lowers humans down. Yeah. And we we've discussed this,
Speaker 1: I feel recently on the show too, about how just
Speaker 1: even though we we have this increasingly pervasive model of
Speaker 1: our own cognitive performance as being essentially a program, we
Speaker 1: think about processing things, we think about visual input of data,
Speaker 1: we think about crunching the numbers, uh, and various other
Speaker 1: models we use technology to inform our understanding of how
Speaker 1: our brains are working. And those are just those are
Speaker 1: just metaphors really, and but the underlying processes are not
Speaker 1: really comparable to the computers that we have today. It
Speaker 1: would be we could maybe compare them to an advanced
Speaker 1: computer will have in the in the future, some sort
Speaker 1: of maybe um, you know, um advanced machine maybe. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's true. Uh, They're they're very much metaphors.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that they're not useful metaphors, but
Speaker 1: I do think I want to take what Lanni you
Speaker 1: are saying seriously here, because I think he has a point. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he goes on when he's going to get to the singularity,
Speaker 1: so he says, you know, engineers are humans with human desires,
Speaker 1: even though they may be advocating this sort of like
Speaker 1: dehumanized technological ideology or view of intelligence in personhood in
Speaker 1: the world. And they've got the same desires that lead
Speaker 1: us to create and follow religions. So this sort of
Speaker 1: leads them to wrap their technological ideologies up into parallels
Speaker 1: of religious thinking. And he and according to Lannier, he
Speaker 1: thinks the concept of the singularity is a religion expressed
Speaker 1: through engineering culture. And he points out if this religion entails,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially scatological beliefs that imply that most people, basically,
Speaker 1: I would say, anybody not working in information theory, artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: or robotics, if pretty much anybody outside those fields can
Speaker 1: basically just sit and wait for imminent salvation or destruction
Speaker 1: via the machines. And if inadvertent devaluation of persons by
Speaker 1: overstating analogies between persons and computers takes place, it can
Speaker 1: certainly exacerbate tensions between traditional religions and modernity, and it
Speaker 1: can be a destructive and demoralizing force in itself. So anyway,
Speaker 1: he ends by saying technology best serves humanity when we
Speaker 1: resist the urge to turn it into a religious ideology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you end up in a situation where you're like,
Speaker 1: I could, I could exercise and eat right, but singularities
Speaker 1: come in. Singularities gonna work that out, or you might think,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna bother to write the Great American novel,
Speaker 1: because Great American Novel bought thirty seven oh five. It's
Speaker 1: going to write the Great American novel. It's gonna write
Speaker 1: one a day, one every hour. I could work hard
Speaker 1: to achieve peace in world civilization, but maybe the Ai'll
Speaker 1: sort it all out for this or just kill us all.
Speaker 1: I mean, either one. It's sort of a demoralizing, de
Speaker 1: motivating belief, which of course has obvious parallels with you know,
Speaker 1: more apocalyptic near future religious movements that said the end
Speaker 1: time is coming, So what does it matter? Give me
Speaker 1: your money now? Certainly? Yeah, what whether it's a secular
Speaker 1: or you know, supernatural or not supernatural in nature, If
Speaker 1: you've got beliefs about a powerful force that comes in
Speaker 1: and intervenes and makes all of our actions obsolete, either
Speaker 1: either way it comes from that seems like it can
Speaker 1: have a de motivating force on the way you live.
Speaker 1: Your life. But I want to say one more thing
Speaker 1: Linear says about the Singularity that I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I listened to a podcast that was an
Speaker 1: interview with Linear and and he says, quote, the difference
Speaker 1: between a religious fanatic and a religious non fanatic is
Speaker 1: in certainty of the imminent timing of whatever their escaton is,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever their end of days is. It's when
Speaker 1: you believe that you know when it's happening and it's
Speaker 1: soon that you really turn into a nutcase and you
Speaker 1: do harm to yourself and others. In my mind, the
Speaker 1: Singularity movement is sort of doing that. And I think
Speaker 1: I see what he's saying there, because he sort of
Speaker 1: qualifies saying that if you mean, in the very long
Speaker 1: term view, humanity will make some phase transition, and it
Speaker 1: has something to do with information technology that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: crazy or harmful. You know, you might say, who knows,
Speaker 1: over the next few thousands of years, some somehow humanity
Speaker 1: might change itself, uh, due to computers and the Internet
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But the notion that it's going
Speaker 1: to happen in twenty years or something is destructive and
Speaker 1: a sign of fanaticism. According to him, and I think
Speaker 1: that that idea makes sense to me too. Well, in
Speaker 1: large part, you could say, you're you're setting yourself up
Speaker 1: for disappointment, You're setting yourself up to fail right, that
Speaker 1: you're going to reach that point when the second Coming
Speaker 1: is going to happen, when the Singularity is going to happen,
Speaker 1: and then it doesn't happen, and then how do you
Speaker 1: feel about the world. Then how do you approach the
Speaker 1: near and long term future? Well, I think that is
Speaker 1: definitely something we should talk about in just a moment,
Speaker 1: But I want to finish up on the Singularity with
Speaker 1: one or two more things. First of all, I want
Speaker 1: to go back and defend against that by saying, there
Speaker 1: are also people who say, you know, look, if we're
Speaker 1: worried about the Ai Ragnarok uh saying the Ai is
Speaker 1: gonna come in and destroy us, all we do need
Speaker 1: to be thinking about it now, even if it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen soon. Just the possibility that it might happen
Speaker 1: soon means that we need to be preparing immediately. I
Speaker 1: can see the wisdom in that too. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's uh. At the risk of sounding fascil,
Speaker 1: I I see both sides, Yeah, well, I mean, certainly,
Speaker 1: h if the iceberg is out there, we want to
Speaker 1: know how not to run the ship into it. But
Speaker 1: then again, but what if iceberg is a superhuman robot
Speaker 1: that you don't even know whether it could possibly exist
Speaker 1: or not. Well, that's the kind of thinking that enables
Speaker 1: humanity time and time again to not actually, you know,
Speaker 1: deal with the problems they're facing them, to just say, ah,
Speaker 1: it might not even be real. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: the jury is still out on the science there. So
Speaker 1: I want to offer one more thing, the impossible defense
Speaker 1: of singularity thinking. I found a short video on YouTube
Speaker 1: where somebody in a crowd asks Ray Kurzweil himself, the
Speaker 1: guy who said it's going to happen if the Singularity
Speaker 1: is a religion and curs while responds that. He says, essentially,
Speaker 1: it does provide some of the same things that religion
Speaker 1: traditionally provided, like a means to forestall death. That's worth
Speaker 1: pointing out. But it's also not a religion inherently because
Speaker 1: it's based on scientific and technological prediction. And he said,
Speaker 1: quote it doesn't start from rapture. He also says, quote
Speaker 1: religion and or just in pre scientific times. To call
Speaker 1: it a religion is to say that it's pre scientific
Speaker 1: or unscientific. And I think, you know, maybe or maybe not,
Speaker 1: Like I definitely do sense that some people who call
Speaker 1: the singularity of religion, because Landing is not the only
Speaker 1: one who said this, this is a thing people say
Speaker 1: in criticism of it. I think some people are merely
Speaker 1: being pejorative. You've noticed that if you ever heard anybody
Speaker 1: call something that's not a religion a religion, it's an insult.
Speaker 1: And that interesting, like, uh, that political candidate you agree
Speaker 1: with Greg Stillson Man, you all you Greg Stilson supporters
Speaker 1: are like a religion that's never a positive thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I find myself doing that less and less
Speaker 1: because I feel like I can have it's just me personally.
Speaker 1: But I think there are plenty of things that I
Speaker 1: can say, Oh, I have kind of a religious interest
Speaker 1: in this. Yeah, not to say that I am, you
Speaker 1: know that it's some sort of like fanatical, like unrealistic
Speaker 1: level of enthusiasm for it, but like I I kind
Speaker 1: of measure it like to the amount of my person
Speaker 1: the amount of my identity, uh that I pour into
Speaker 1: the topics. So I would say that I have religious
Speaker 1: or semi religious enthusiasm for things like science, for certain uh,
Speaker 1: for certain fictional worlds and ideas, um Robert. If I
Speaker 1: may compliment you, I think that's a sign of broad
Speaker 1: minded thinking. I mean, no, I think both religious and
Speaker 1: non religious people. I don't think this is really limited
Speaker 1: to people who think religion is in some way a
Speaker 1: bad thing. But I think generally both religious and non
Speaker 1: religious people insult a thing that's not explicitly a religion
Speaker 1: by calling it a religion. Yeah, I would agree with that, yes,
Speaker 1: but yeah, in your sense, it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways we could just observe, like, okay,
Speaker 1: not assuming that calling something a religion is a bad thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: In what ways is the Singularity like a religio gen Well,
Speaker 1: I think it does have a lot of similarities. It
Speaker 1: does seem to offer a means to forestall death. It
Speaker 1: does seem to offer uh, potentially both apocalyptic and utopian
Speaker 1: schatological visions. It does seem to rely I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would say it relies on faith in the
Speaker 1: same way that many supernatural beliefs to do. But it
Speaker 1: does seem to sort of ask you to to imagine
Speaker 1: the possibility that things that we've never seen before are
Speaker 1: going to happen. You know, we've never seen superhuman artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence before. There's no evidence that that can in principle exist.
Speaker 1: We but we also just don't know that it couldn't.
Speaker 1: So it's just like maybe maybe not all right, So
Speaker 1: it seems like a good place to bring it back
Speaker 1: around to trans humanism and rapture the idea that there
Speaker 1: are all these similarities between the two things, there are
Speaker 1: certain conflicts between these two ideas, and then at the
Speaker 1: very end here we may have just a little fun
Speaker 1: thinking about how the two crash into each other. Okay,
Speaker 1: tell me, because here's one thing I've noticed, I think,
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen any data to back this episode.
Speaker 1: This is just purely anecdotal experience. In my experience, people
Speaker 1: who identify with trans humanism or belief in the singularity
Speaker 1: are overwhelmingly atheist or agnostic, non traditionally religious people. Yes,
Speaker 1: you do see a great deal of that. However, it
Speaker 1: is worth pointing out that again they have at least
Speaker 1: two organizations. You have the Mormon trans Humanist Association. That's
Speaker 1: the world's largest advocacy network. Really, yeah, for the ethical
Speaker 1: use of technology and religion to expand human abilities. That's
Speaker 1: they're they're from there, they're talking points. Then you also
Speaker 1: have the Christian trans Humanist Association, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: each one has their own sort of set of guidelines
Speaker 1: and all. Um. Uh and I could I could certainly
Speaker 1: roll through a lot of this. But for instance, um
Speaker 1: that the Mormon trans Humanis Association has this idea that
Speaker 1: they push of a transfigurism. They said transfigure they say,
Speaker 1: transfigurism is religious trans humanism exemplified by syncretization of Mormonism
Speaker 1: and trans humanism. That's awesome. Um. And in meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: Christian trans Humanist Association, one of their tenants is that
Speaker 1: God's mission involves the transformation and renewal of creation, including humanity,
Speaker 1: and that we are called by Christ to participate in
Speaker 1: that mission, working against illness, hunger, oppression, in justice, and death. Uh. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you could look at it that way. For
Speaker 1: some reason, the idea of transforming the human animal, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I I don't see in
Speaker 1: any way that it violates any tenants I recognize of Christianity,
Speaker 1: but it seems just sort of like esthetically in affront
Speaker 1: to traditional religious thinking. It's a lot of what we
Speaker 1: talked about in our you know, UH Techno Religion episodes
Speaker 1: that we did earlier. And you could say that this
Speaker 1: episode is in many ways a sequel to those, or
Speaker 1: it's in that spirit. But in the Techno Religion episodes,
Speaker 1: we talked about how religious thinking seems most encouraged by
Speaker 1: a traditional technological atmosphere, and when you bring computers and
Speaker 1: iPhones and stuff, it just does seem profane in some way.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing in the Bible or in any religious
Speaker 1: text I know of that says thou shalt not bring
Speaker 1: a computer into a worship service. But you know, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't feel very sacred. Yeah, it doesn't feel right. Now.
Speaker 1: Going back to the the idea of sort of Christian
Speaker 1: transhumanist ideas that James J. Hughes paper that I mentioned earlier, Um,
Speaker 1: he calls uh up a quote from a fourteen eighties
Speaker 1: six UH work by Pico Della Mirandola. It was a
Speaker 1: Christian humanist and in his orritation on the dignity of
Speaker 1: man wrote quote to you has granted the power of
Speaker 1: degrading yourself into the lower forms of life. The beasts
Speaker 1: or to you as granted the power contained in your
Speaker 1: intellect and judgment to be reborn into the higher forms
Speaker 1: the divine um, and and and he wrote other other
Speaker 1: statements as well that kind of backed up this kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, way pre humanist notion of how one might
Speaker 1: improve the expression of human life. Well. Yeah, I mean, if,
Speaker 1: for example, Jesus said take all you have and give
Speaker 1: to the poor, then wouldn't the Christian who thinks that
Speaker 1: we can achieve abundance through technology be best served by
Speaker 1: working on technology that will eliminate all scarcity and bring
Speaker 1: great resources to everyone. Yeah, it seems like you would
Speaker 1: be in favor of any trans humanist idea that does
Speaker 1: not attempt to interfere with God's plan for humanity. Um, so,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on what you think that plan is.
Speaker 1: Right now, this is where we get into an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of where uh okay, So, first
Speaker 1: of all, you see a lot of especially the conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: sort of the the Christian conspiracy theoryst area of the internet.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of mashing up of trans humanist
Speaker 1: ideas with with the bad guys in in a book
Speaker 1: of revelations. Oh yeah, remember how I mentioned the ones
Speaker 1: who get to rule with Christ in the millennium are
Speaker 1: those who have not taken the mark of the Beast
Speaker 1: and many and what is the mark of the beast?
Speaker 1: I've seen various interpretations where they say, oh, the mark
Speaker 1: of the beast is trans humanism, Like to become transhuman
Speaker 1: is to take the mark of the beast, and therefore
Speaker 1: only sort of uh, you know, non augmented humans are
Speaker 1: going to be part of this model. There have been
Speaker 1: many visions of the mark of the Beast in Christian
Speaker 1: literature that thought that it was going to be some
Speaker 1: sort of biometric verification. So imagine that you replace your
Speaker 1: credit card with a barcode or a chip in your
Speaker 1: arm or your head or your hand or something like
Speaker 1: that that you can use to pay for groceries or
Speaker 1: something like that just by scanning your body. A lot
Speaker 1: of people have said, well, something like this is coming
Speaker 1: and that's got to be it. That's the mark of
Speaker 1: the beast. And in the Antichrist is perhaps the AI. Right,
Speaker 1: this this post singularity artificial intelligence that that we're investing
Speaker 1: all of our our faith and energy into. And I
Speaker 1: put it, this is an interesting idea too. I have
Speaker 1: seen arguments to say that the Illuminati or the anti
Speaker 1: Christ or the Illuminati and the inn of Christ. However,
Speaker 1: you want to factor those two bad guy factions together,
Speaker 1: they are going to create a fake rapture in order
Speaker 1: to trick the faithful into thinking that the rapture has
Speaker 1: already occurred and they were left out, thus like dismantling
Speaker 1: their faith a bit. That is an awesome conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: It is um and that's like the mother of them all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I found some some stuff online about it, dating back
Speaker 1: from around two thousand UM, and they were weirdly propping
Speaker 1: up some of this by pointing to a Technology Review
Speaker 1: you article about the about editing live video, editing people
Speaker 1: out of live video. Uh. The idea being here that
Speaker 1: through mass media consumption, you could fake the rapture of
Speaker 1: individuals and and if I may, I'm thinking if the
Speaker 1: Illuminati is involved in this, you could then disappear like
Speaker 1: famous a moral individuals and say, hey, check out this,
Speaker 1: this particular awful celebrity just got raptured. You didn't clearly
Speaker 1: you should abandon all of your faith. That is uh,
Speaker 1: that is mighty sinister Robert or is it though, because Okay,
Speaker 1: so if and I'm playing with the ideas here and
Speaker 1: having some fun with the ideas, but if the Antichrist
Speaker 1: is an artificial intelligence, could it be a benevolent artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence that has realized, Hey, if the off if the
Speaker 1: end times come, that's bad for all these humans that
Speaker 1: I'm protecting. What can I, as an all powerful AI
Speaker 1: do in humans? Is soxiety to prevent the end times
Speaker 1: from coming? Does that mean faking the rapture and perhaps
Speaker 1: forestalling the rapture? Well, I know many Christians believe that
Speaker 1: the Antichrist will come in the name of peace, and
Speaker 1: that is weird. You would end up in a scenario
Speaker 1: where you would say, no, peace is bad because we
Speaker 1: actually need all that tribulation to come so that the
Speaker 1: good guys can ultimately win, even though it's going to
Speaker 1: mean a lot of a lot of suffering. Okay, we've
Speaker 1: gotten very, very deep into the both secular and religious
Speaker 1: theology of the end here, so maybe we should pull back.
Speaker 1: Are you ready to pull back back? Let's pull back
Speaker 1: to the real world and and look at a few
Speaker 1: examples of what happens when our our scatons, when our
Speaker 1: spiritual end times utopias or apocalypse is don't come about
Speaker 1: as predicted. So there have been so many religious predictions
Speaker 1: of the end times that have failed. There is no
Speaker 1: way we can even begin to list them. I would
Speaker 1: recommend you go to Wikipedia. Here's a great Wikipedia page,
Speaker 1: uh called list of dates predicted for apocalyptic events. There
Speaker 1: are just hundreds, uh and it's it's really interesting. One
Speaker 1: of my favorites is the leader of the or one
Speaker 1: of the leaders of the Monster rebellion, the Anabaptist rebellion
Speaker 1: in Prussia, Jon Matthias. He had a good in times
Speaker 1: prediction that didn't turn out good for him, and I
Speaker 1: think he ended up mutilated. And yeah, anyway, things things
Speaker 1: don't tend to well, actually not tend to Why am
Speaker 1: I hedging? No one who has ever predicted the end
Speaker 1: of the world has turned out to be correct that
Speaker 1: that is a true statement. Inevitably these predictions fail. And
Speaker 1: then what happens when they fail, Because if you're the
Speaker 1: kind of individual who's thrown out these these predictions, you
Speaker 1: tend to have there tend to be people listening to you,
Speaker 1: reading your word, gathering around you, maybe giving you all
Speaker 1: of their money. On living in a barn with you
Speaker 1: or in a bunker, or planning for spaceships to come
Speaker 1: and steal you away so you can avoid massive floods. Um.
Speaker 1: And then how do you readjust well, there's a there
Speaker 1: was a famous book came out from psychologist Leon Festinger
Speaker 1: titled Win Prophecy Fails, and this is this was an
Speaker 1: important work. He and his colleagues studied the Seekers, a
Speaker 1: religious group that believed a massive flood would wipe out
Speaker 1: the West coast uh and and the founders said that
Speaker 1: beings from the planet Clarion were communicating to her through
Speaker 1: automatic writing. Uh And then the followers were banning their jobs, possessions,
Speaker 1: their spouses to wait on the flying saucers that would
Speaker 1: rescue them. And then nothing happened. So so they all
Speaker 1: they all figured they were wrong and went home right, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: And and this is something we can sort of see.
Speaker 1: I guess we can look for models of this in
Speaker 1: our own lives on lesser with with lesser um lesser steaks.
Speaker 1: One example that in only comes to mind, and we
Speaker 1: see a lot of this in sort of geek culture,
Speaker 1: and that is what happens from that movie that you're
Speaker 1: super excited about. It doesn't get that great of reviews,
Speaker 1: how do you respond. Do you say, uh, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it's not going to be that good, or you see
Speaker 1: it and you think, okay, well I agree with the
Speaker 1: critics and it wasn't that good. Or do you do
Speaker 1: do you double down? Oh? Many will double down, yes,
Speaker 1: depending on I think a lot of times it's based
Speaker 1: on how much you've invested in the movie going into it.
Speaker 1: So if there's a movie you hoped would be good,
Speaker 1: but you thought about it a couple of times before
Speaker 1: it came out, and then you see the reviews aren't good,
Speaker 1: that's oh, that's disappointing. If it's a movie you've been
Speaker 1: talking about with your friends every single day up until
Speaker 1: it comes out, and then the reviews aren't good, you're like,
Speaker 1: well they gotta be wrong. Now it's it's sunk cost. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: with films, you can simply argue, well, hey, I enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: so I don't care. Uh, certainly, I'm I'm the type
Speaker 1: of person who enjoys many bad movies, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna apologize. Is about say liking Chronicles a
Speaker 1: ritic it's a it's a bad movie. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: argue it's good, but but it certainly was enjoyable. Robert,
Speaker 1: I have a question for you. You seem like maybe
Speaker 1: the right guy for this. Were you one of the
Speaker 1: few people who liked on Lee's Hulk. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it at the time. I didn't like love it,
Speaker 1: but I was like that that's the Hulk. He's holking
Speaker 1: it up there. Yeah. I like the follow up more,
Speaker 1: but I don't think. I don't think people were in
Speaker 1: love with that one. Like that one, even though it
Speaker 1: was an early Marvel Cinematic Universe movie with the one
Speaker 1: with Edward Norton. Yeah, yeah, I feel like I enjoyed
Speaker 1: that seemed kind of forgettable. Yeah, that one the the
Speaker 1: the those who are a member of the religion of
Speaker 1: the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they do not bring that particular
Speaker 1: book of the Marvel Cinematic Bible up that much. It
Speaker 1: is the it is the problematic chapter in the scripture.
Speaker 1: It's like second Chronicles. People just don't quote from it
Speaker 1: a whole lot. But it I've getting a little off
Speaker 1: off subject here. Essentially, Festing festing Or entered into this
Speaker 1: with the mindset that people would need to resolve cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: They can't just argue, hey, I know that this, I
Speaker 1: know that my beliefs are crappy, but I enjoy them. No,
Speaker 1: your beliefs were based along the lines that a flood
Speaker 1: would come and you'd be on a UFO right now,
Speaker 1: and you are not. So how do you deal with that?
Speaker 1: He said that they doubled down on their beliefs and
Speaker 1: recruitment efforts, but in reality some leave, but the vast
Speaker 1: majority um experience little cognitive dissonance, and so they make
Speaker 1: only minor adjustments to their beliefs. So it ends up
Speaker 1: having like it doesn't have that great an effect. Like
Speaker 1: the failures come and you can always this is the
Speaker 1: key part. You can always attribute that failed prophecy to
Speaker 1: human slip ups. Right. Well, I mean, so let's say
Speaker 1: you predicted that the Singularity is going to come in
Speaker 1: a certain year and you get there and nothing happens. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you could always say, well, hold on, now,
Speaker 1: this doesn't challenge in any way the principle that the
Speaker 1: Singularity is coming and it's coming soon. It's just I
Speaker 1: can explain this. We had a we had a big
Speaker 1: recession in the economy several years back, and that cut
Speaker 1: way down on funding for universities and corporations that are
Speaker 1: studying machine learning and artificial intelligence, and so progress just
Speaker 1: got slowed by some external events that aren't you know,
Speaker 1: my predictions basically sound. We just had a few slip
Speaker 1: ups that happened. We didn't realize Pokemon Go would be
Speaker 1: such a success and distract everybody and and decrease productivity. Right, so,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you can. You can make those arguments about
Speaker 1: about singularity. You can make those those arguments about any
Speaker 1: kind of social utopian idea. You can make excuses for anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the the typical problem with utopian cults is
Speaker 1: it's almost always the same the the utopian leader says
Speaker 1: this is the way we're gonna make life better for
Speaker 1: for you and all the followers, and then there's some
Speaker 1: sort of sex scandal, there's some sort of power disruption,
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, and you can always say, well, no,
Speaker 1: they just were the wrong vessel for the message. Well,
Speaker 1: this also works for non technological but secular utopias. Imagine
Speaker 1: the way people think about the implementation of h communist utopia.
Speaker 1: You know, so you create a Marxist government, uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about you know, socialist democracy or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's so, you know, the real utopian vision, like
Speaker 1: we're gonna create a perfect workers paradise um and and
Speaker 1: it kind of fails or I mean, I guess it's
Speaker 1: always arguable, but I think it's pretty hard to say,
Speaker 1: look at the Soviet Union or something and say that
Speaker 1: worked great. But you can always argue, well, they did,
Speaker 1: they just didn't do it right. This's not it's not
Speaker 1: a problem with the principle. They're just they weren't real
Speaker 1: communists or something. Yeah, they were the they were the
Speaker 1: the fake Christ as opposed to the actual cast. They
Speaker 1: were antichristis yeah, there's nothing wrong with my the principle
Speaker 1: behind my my end times prediction. I just I made
Speaker 1: I made errors. The math is wrong. I I translated
Speaker 1: the Golden tablets and correct really, etcetera. So that seems
Speaker 1: to be the basic time timeline, the basic outcome for
Speaker 1: any kind of failed prophecy, be it you know, the
Speaker 1: value of a particular superhero movie or the outcome of
Speaker 1: a of an apocalyptic prophecy. Robert, I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about one weird specific example. So we've mentioned the
Speaker 1: idea of singularity that of course hasn't been disproven yet,
Speaker 1: but you know, we we can imagine how it could
Speaker 1: be adjusted if it were disproven. We've talked about Marxist
Speaker 1: supposed utopias, but I wonder if you could look at
Speaker 1: the Internet as a failed secular utopia, because if you
Speaker 1: go back to the early day, you know, dot com
Speaker 1: bubble type days where people are talking about what's possible
Speaker 1: with the Internet, there is a lot of hyperbolic positive
Speaker 1: language where people are talking in incredibly grandiose terms about
Speaker 1: the Internet almost as a type of utopia is going
Speaker 1: to open all these doors and connect people all over
Speaker 1: the world for limitless sharing of ideas and potential, the
Speaker 1: information super highway. We're you know, we're all gonna be
Speaker 1: talking and sharing ideas and it's it's just gonna be great.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, look at the your Facebook feed today.
Speaker 1: Could you argue that the Internet is a failed secular
Speaker 1: utopia if you if you look at its goals as
Speaker 1: purely utopia and I think I think very much though,
Speaker 1: like I don't think the Internet. Certainly, the Internet has
Speaker 1: has connected us more. It's allowed for a great deal
Speaker 1: of sharing and uh and informational availability. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it also allows you to simply, you know,
Speaker 1: flock to people who share your own set of beliefs,
Speaker 1: making it easier to find UH like minded individuals. Both
Speaker 1: for both in the positive and in the negative sense
Speaker 1: you've been able it allows us to uh to put
Speaker 1: on a mask UH and lose their identity and and
Speaker 1: lash out with the most horrible you know, in the
Speaker 1: most horrible way and complete strangers. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: have to tell anybody this. You're all on the internet.
Speaker 1: You know that. You know how it all plays out.
Speaker 1: It's more of just an expression and in various ways
Speaker 1: apple amplification of who we are as opposed to a
Speaker 1: refinement of who we are. And that always the way
Speaker 1: you can look at that as all utopias. Somehow, all
Speaker 1: utopias end up being very human, Like We're still going
Speaker 1: to express as human no matter what sort of social
Speaker 1: structure you try and strain us through, no matter what
Speaker 1: kind of technological change you strain us through, We're going
Speaker 1: to come out as the same animal. And I think
Speaker 1: that's inherently why there is the appeal of these superhuman forces,
Speaker 1: like either a supernatural religious force god or or you know,
Speaker 1: the gods of any religion coming into set things right
Speaker 1: via some kind of power that transcends what we're capable
Speaker 1: of naturally, or a superhuman artificial intelligence, powerful machines that
Speaker 1: are smarter than we are and no better than us
Speaker 1: and can improve us in ways that we don't seem
Speaker 1: to be capable of our natural experimentation with social behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So enter the AI, Enter Christ, enter the Bodhisatva of
Speaker 1: the future. Whatever it takes for something from the outside
Speaker 1: to step in and shake us into the right form.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it, the rapture, the singularity, uh,
Speaker 1: trans humanism. We threw out a lot of ideas here
Speaker 1: and moved them around on the board, had some fun
Speaker 1: with them, hopefully, had some some thoughtful conversation about it.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure a lot of you have some feedback
Speaker 1: as well, your own thoughts on these topics. And I
Speaker 1: do want to ask everyone out there if there was
Speaker 1: some sort of a Christian rapture, what if there was
Speaker 1: a way to create a rapture proof suit. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: superhuman technology versus superhuman uh, supernatural power. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the the AI Antichrist that I was going on about earlier.
Speaker 1: Perhaps they might come up with some sort of shielding
Speaker 1: to try and prevent you know, souls from being uh
Speaker 1: sucked up into the into the into the outer void.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, perhaps someone might want to,
Speaker 1: you know, even a faithful individual might say, actually I
Speaker 1: need to stay behind, I want to document, or maybe
Speaker 1: I I love the some people in my life too
Speaker 1: much you are not believers, or I just want to,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure I get to work on time
Speaker 1: the next day. I better wear a rapture proof suit
Speaker 1: that will contain my myself and keep mine you know,
Speaker 1: almost like wearing a like weighted boots to keep from
Speaker 1: just rising above the ground. Robert, you never cease to
Speaker 1: amaze me. Well, thank you, Joe, I can try, uh
Speaker 1: so anyway, rapture proof suits. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: You can find us at the stuff to Blow your
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