Transhumanists Aim To Replace God With Machines In Digital Immortality – The Federalist

Transhumanists have hyped the new religion of high technology for decades now. The basic idea, fairly prevalent in Silicon Valley, is that rapid advances in scientific knowledge and tech innovation will culminate in our de facto omniscience and omnipotence. Even though humanity is lost in a godless cosmos, digital devices will allow us to transcend our ape-like forms.

As Googles Ray Kurzweil famously quipped, Does God exist? I would say, Not yet.

One day soon, they promise, well use artificial intelligence to overcome the limits of our meat-based cognition. According to Yuval Noah Hararis 2015 best-seller Homo Deus, computer programmers will realize the age-old fantasies of shamans and prophets by creating a virtual version of the spiritual realm. These Davos darlings are certain God is dead, but Google still wants to patent His best ideas.

Ultimately, they hope to replicate the fabric of ourselves in cyberspace, where we can all live happily ever after that is, until the electricity goes out. A recent paper by Russian transhumanist Alexey Turchin argues this digital resurrection is not only possible but necessary to reach our full potential. We just need enough power both computational and electric to create a virtual afterlife and then keep it running.

For Turchin, the solution is to construct a Dyson Sphere around the sun a megastructure 186 million miles in diameter thats covered in solar panels to capture the dying stars rays. That way, we can run the gargantuan super-computers required to house our digital selves. Sounds easy enough, I suppose. Maybe we can fill the potholes in the road while were at it.

Joining the race to boost fashionable ideas, the once sober Popular Mechanics covered Turchins work enthusiastically:

Think about the end of your life and what might happen next. If your soul exists, you continue on after death and everything is wonderful. And if it doesnt and your fate is utter demise, well, some part of you could still continue infinitely as a digital copy. Its a win-win situation in both scenarios, Turchin says.

If these lunatics convince enough people their scheme is truly working, theyll expect the rest of us to treat these gibbering clones like real people. Even worse, given the shrill demands for religious tolerance, well have to pretend we enjoy their company.

The concept behind digital resurrection goes back to the Ship of Theseus paradox, articulated by the ancient Greeks. Imagine you have a huge wooden ship. You gradually replace the rotten boards with new wood, plank by plank. Eventually, every old part has been replaced by something new. Is it not the same ship as before, only better?

Transhumanists seek to do the same with the human personality. Every neuron will be replaced by networked processors and then some. For example, to preserve himself for future immortality, Alexey Turchin submits the details of his life to ubiquitous surveillance. In addition to keeping a trivia-packed diary, he records every conversation, videotapes his behaviors, and wears an EEG headset while making art or listening to music. He has faith that one day some godlike AI will use this tedious information to resurrect him.

You could call this self-obsessed behavior a personal quirk, but Turchin is hardly alone in this endeavor. For many, its been part of the new normal since before the New Normal.

The Scan Truck is a good illustration, both literally and allegorically. Based in Los Angeles, the company developed a mobile photogrammetry studio decked out with more than 200 digital cameras to capture the uppermost, photorealistic models. The experience is like stepping into an inside-out insect eye.

Subjects who enter The Scan Trucks portable Panopticon preferably in the buff have a million pics snapped from every possible angle. The resulting composite image is then used to create a digital double. This second self includes every scar, pore, and birthmark. The service has become enormously popular among special effects specialists in the movie industry. Its also used to create hyper-realistic avatars to inhabit a virtual environment.

Clever enough, but what about ones inner self?

In line with Turchins methodology, a digital immortality industry has emerged to monitor every aspect of your life. Their services, as advertised, will create a lasting imprint of your earthly persona for friends and family to enjoy when youre gone.

Start-ups with names like Eterni.me, Replika, DeadSocial, and Deep Nostalgia are working hard to re-create deceased loved ones from photographs, home videos, personal diaries, intimate letters, second-hand anecdotes, and of course, online tracking technology. Replika offers an AI talk therapy app that probes living subjects to get at the core of their personality. The constant refrain is that we need to break down privacy barriers and become vulnerable to digital invasion.

For a modest price, this data is correlated with the subjects physical attributes. The resulting electro-wraith can then speak to the bereaved from beyond the grave. Just open your laptop, and theres your late grandma, insisting you have another plate of chicken casserole.

What about grandmas subjective soul, though that mysterious entity who watched you grow up from behind her smiling eyes?

When transhumanists tackle this issue which is less often than youd think they typically deny the existence of a stable, spiritual self thats distinct from brain activity. When the body dies, that soul will disappear. Thats why creating an electronic backup is so important.

For one thing, AI augmentation will make Grandma 2.0 smarter and less whimsical. For another, some rude guest is bound to sit in her empty chair if you dont replace her with a digital super-being.

Throughout that process, the still-embodied subject is scanned, probed, and reconstructed as a digital double. Making multiple copies is even better, but anything beats total oblivion. As years pass, the biological version will wither like a butterfly cocoon. The digital double will soar into the future on a cloud of 1s and 0s.

For those guided by materialist philosophies where transcendence is only available via physical means theres no better way to overcome the finality of death. Naturally, transhumanists tend to see people who believe in a spiritual existence beyond this mortal coil as quaint at best. As a quaint heathen myself, I suspect their well-heeled megalomania is far more irrational than any traditional religion.

These technocratic delusions are only a problem to the extent were forced to participate. Im content to live my life as a caveman and let others become cyborgs, so long as they keep their crossed wires to themselves. Thats not the world theyre creating, though. The insidious elements of their techno-cult from materialist self-obsession to ubiquitous surveillance have crept into our daily lives for decades now.

Consider the widespread adoption of monitored electronic communication. In olden times, the idea that our most intimate letters could be intercepted, analyzed, and added to detailed personal dossiers kept by tech executives and government agents to be used at their pleasure would be laughable. Today, its as routine as driving a few blocks to the grocery store.

In the blink of an eye, we saw the rapid migration of personal interaction to social media. Its now normal to document a childs life for public consumption by total strangers. For many, the privacy barriers have already been broken down. Weve made ourselves vulnerable. The craziest part is that most have enjoyed it.

The next steps in this supposedly inevitable process are just over the horizon. After years of stops and starts, virtual reality will soon be as commonplace as a television set. Many youngsters already idolize virtual influencers who dance across their touchscreens. These bubblegum apparitions are elaborate, entirely fictitious pop stars made from scratch by devious programmers. Some kids have no clue theyre not real people.

For years now, men of fighting age have retreated into video games. Would-be mothers are using dating apps to run out the biological clock. Having been conditioned by porn for generations, wealthy incels are sleeping with eerily convincing silicone dolls. Super-real sexbots are just around the corner.When the snozzberries taste like snozzberries, youll know the end is nigh.

In all of this, we see an increasing detachment from the real world of visceral struggle, heartbreak, and redemption. Without these challenges, people dont develop character or deep social bonds. Anime-obsessed man-babies are a symptom of this tendency. The insane desire for digital immortality is another.

Technocracy is being normalized at an alarming pace. If a population can be convinced that kids need state-supplied hormone blockers to become self-realized, its only a matter of time before theyre ready to upload their souls to corporate data banks. In fact, just hack into their smartphone and youll see theyre already doing it.

One of the darker tenets of the techno-cult is that their innovations are necessary for survival. Anyone who chooses to reject body modification, cognitive enhancement, or mind-uploading will be like job applicants who come to an interview with no smartphone or social media account. Theyll get left in the dust.

In a competitive technocracy, organic humans are doomed to extinction. Trendy cyborgs will transition to digital immortality, while the rest of us become fossils. To the extent that Big Tech holds sway over our lives, its a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yet the transhumanists have it backward at least in the long run. The Egyptians were convinced they would reign forever, as were the Romans. Ultimately, however, their arrogance proved futile. The same will be said of Silicon Valley oligarchs and their consumerist disciples. One day, immortal digital souls will be displayed in museums like crumbling marble statues.

Until then, wed be wise to build high fences as nature takes its course. Were still free to choose our own paths. This is a spiritual conflict on their terms, but Im keeping faith that anything is possible.

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Transhumanists Aim To Replace God With Machines In Digital Immortality - The Federalist