0:00

To a certain extent, I think the whole

0:02

rhetoric about AI rests on faith,

0:04

right? On this idea of just trust us.

0:06

We're the smartest guys in the room. We're

0:09

going to do this. We're going to deliver. And

0:12

what are you going to deliver? Nobody can even

0:14

articulate what it is that we're trying to solve.

0:30

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't

0:32

Save Us Made in partnership with

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The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks. And before

0:36

we get into this week's episode, just a reminder that we

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are in the final stretch of our membership drive

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0:59

tools and the growing backlash to them

1:01

that is happening around the world due

1:04

to water use, energy use, questions of

1:06

control. And that gets to the bigger

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on Tech Won't Save Us, the critical perspectives

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to patreon.com/Tech Won't Save Us where you can

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help us hit our goal. Now this week's

1:53

episode is with Megan O'Giblin. Megan is an

1:55

advice columnist at Wired and the author of

1:57

God, Human, Animal, Machine. I came

1:59

across Megan's work. When I write an

2:01

essay that she wrote a number of

2:03

years ago now on Trans humanism and

2:05

religion. I. Found it absolutely

2:07

fascinating and given the moment that

2:09

were in where we have these Ai

2:11

companies pushing this notion of artificial

2:13

general intelligence, these ideas of mind uploading

2:16

you are must saying that he's going

2:18

to have these implants for your brain

2:20

that will eventually allow you to transfer

2:23

your thoughts and consciousness on to a

2:25

computer. and not to mention these tech

2:27

billionaires who are still trying to live

2:30

forever and see technology as a means

2:32

of doing so and ultimately hope to

2:34

replace the physical body with. Some

2:37

sort of digital computational

2:39

alternative. So. Given all that,

2:41

I thought it would be great to have Megan on the

2:43

show to talk about. Trans Humanism, but

2:46

also the very long history of religious

2:48

ideas that bullied into the Trans Humanists

2:50

out of today and that many of

2:53

you know the leaders of this movement

2:55

will not acknowledge are actually their rights.

2:58

Because. As he explains, Trans Humanism

3:00

doesn't just recreate these ideas

3:02

of resurrection, but through a

3:04

technological means instead of a

3:06

spear to one, it also

3:08

even recreates Christian ideas of

3:10

history and how history as

3:12

evolved, but instead through this

3:14

more technological in France Humanist

3:17

Lanes. Personally, I love these

3:19

kinds of conversations because they think it helps

3:21

to demystify. It's these big ideas that we

3:23

often get from the tech industry where they

3:25

act like they're the first people who have

3:27

ever thought of some of these things. But

3:30

actually when you dig into the history you

3:32

can see that they're just recreating ideas that

3:34

have been around for a long time, but

3:36

expressing them in different ways that make more

3:38

sense for their particular ideologies are they are

3:40

interest. So as we have this new push

3:43

for it, has no optimism and the growing

3:45

power of Silicon Valley. I think that these

3:47

sorts of. Insights are important for

3:49

us to have so he can properly

3:51

understand where these ideas are coming from,

3:53

Have faith that is really inherent in

3:55

them, even though the people in the

3:57

tech industry often wouldn't identify as religious,

4:00

And how we need to have a skeptical

4:02

view when they're telling us what they are

4:04

potential future could look like and what they

4:06

want us to achieve. So. That

4:08

that I hope you enjoyed this conversation with

4:10

Megan or gambling. And of course if you

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Thanks so much! Enjoy this we summer season.

4:33

Megan. Welcome to tack on Save Us

4:36

Thanks so much that any I'm really

4:38

excited to with you. You had this

4:40

essay published in and plus one quite

4:42

a long time ago now, but that

4:44

is you know, rather newest to me

4:46

that digs into trans humanism and it's

4:48

relationship to religion. And of course the

4:50

have a book on human Animal Machine

4:52

that I have had the pleasure to

4:54

read as well and I think it

4:56

deals with these really important topics that

4:58

are really coming back in this moment

5:00

as we hear the talk about eighty

5:02

I but also I think a. Real

5:04

distinct shift in the way that Silicon Valley

5:06

approaches some of these questions. And so that's

5:08

why I really wanted to have you on

5:11

the show and I think just to get

5:13

into this can you explain to listeners was

5:15

Trans Humanism and the Singularity actually are like

5:17

what those concepts mean because the people might

5:20

have a kind of general idea, but there

5:22

might be some specifics that they haven't caught

5:24

caught. Yeah, So Chance even isn't

5:26

is typically chase back to this

5:29

sort of nice subculture. south west

5:31

coast teachers and that evolves I

5:33

guess in the eighties and nineties

5:36

and L is primarily a bunch

5:38

of tech industry people who were

5:41

interested in how. Technology.

5:43

Could eventually help human service. Transcend

5:46

over into the next says that the

5:48

leash and so they are really interested

5:50

and in a nano technology ends cryogenics.

5:53

Sen and all of this at a

5:55

very speculative technologies. They communicated

5:57

largely the a mailing

5:59

list. And the beginning,

6:01

and I think probably the

6:03

point at which that idea

6:06

reached the mainstream. Was with rakers

6:08

was but the a dispersal machines which

6:10

was. Published. I believe in

6:12

Nineteen Ninety Nine. Colonel really

6:15

popularize this idea for a larger

6:17

audience and his version of chance

6:19

humanism which are think as as

6:21

sort of become a muslim and

6:23

version of it I mean he

6:25

sets out this whole history of

6:27

evolution through the lens of information

6:29

is physically you know information emerged

6:31

with the big bang and then

6:33

it became more complex as you

6:35

know plants and animals emerged from

6:37

and human minds came about and

6:39

there was this this this much

6:41

more complex for most information processing.

6:45

And he believes that this

6:47

process was. Exponential of

6:49

as If is happening at an accelerating

6:51

rate especially now that we had developed

6:53

technologies and so a lot of his

6:56

projections about the future were based on

6:58

Moore's law. This idea that you know

7:00

constitutional powers doubling I think every

7:02

pretty years and that eventually we were

7:05

going to completely merge our minds with

7:07

machines and become he called it posts

7:09

him and basically so he believe that

7:12

we are currently trans human because were

7:14

in the process of you know, aiding

7:16

and enhancing our intelligence in our powers,

7:19

humans through technology. And once the singularity

7:21

happened which is this intelligence explosion we're

7:23

basically going to be post see a

7:26

man. Yeah, I mean it was really

7:28

just as this work of a call

7:30

it a work of secular scuttle as

7:33

he has a very sort of transcendent

7:35

religious art to it. this idea that

7:37

all of history is moving toward this

7:40

moment of a final transcendence. Yeah,

7:42

that's great and I want to com. I

7:44

thought religious these in just a second,

7:46

but you're talking about this emerging kind of

7:49

in the eighties and nineties and Kurzweil

7:51

spoke really popularizing it in Ninety Nine,

7:53

which of course was the peak of the.com

7:55

boom as well. I guess it would

7:57

not be surprising that someone like Kurzweil is.

8:00

Kind of dreaming up and publishing

8:02

this idea of the history of

8:04

humanity being this history of evolution

8:06

being related to information and information

8:09

becoming more complex overtime and leading

8:11

to more complex intelligences at the

8:13

same time as computers are becoming

8:15

popularized in the internet is becoming

8:18

more common. Like it seem like

8:20

there's a clear relationship between both

8:22

of these things with happy right

8:24

to observe that. Yeah. Absolutely.

8:27

And I mean I think and nina anyone

8:29

who remembers that era of said that emergence

8:31

of the internet. I was very young at

8:33

the time. But and mean there was

8:36

this area utopian strain of rhetoric. About

8:38

the fact that we're all gonna be

8:41

globally connected with Can They Have Productivity

8:43

is getting democratize the world and I

8:45

think Kurzweil another chance human as they

8:48

were really sort of the most. Maybe

8:51

the highest form of specializing. That

8:53

idea, you know, basically that whole

8:55

transhumanist ideology rest on that idea.

8:57

the information as is sacred. That

8:59

sort of patterns of information are

9:01

what's going to outlast us. You

9:03

know? he was really interested in

9:05

mind uploading this idea that all

9:07

of our neural activity is just

9:09

patterns that we can transfer to

9:11

a computer and will be able

9:13

to live forever. And you know,

9:15

if you're a believer in that

9:17

ideology, it makes sense that you

9:19

share as much data as possible,

9:21

that you contribute. As much to

9:23

the seizure through these technologies that

9:26

with sense learned have much more

9:28

mundane uses in and six collect

9:30

masses of user data and you

9:32

know further the advertising that you

9:34

know all of these sort of

9:36

more less chance and and uses

9:39

said as technology has been put

9:41

toward. I think that makes

9:43

perfect sense and I was really strong as

9:45

I was reading in your essay in your

9:47

book about these ideas that Kurzweil put forward

9:49

in the book. And for me a lot

9:51

of those things where new to me when

9:53

I started to read about long term ism

9:55

and I was like are you know they

9:57

want to colonize is our planet Some. Molly's

10:00

post Humans in these kind of computer

10:02

simulations. and this is kind of the

10:04

first time I had encountered a lot

10:06

of these things. And then to read

10:08

in your work that all of these

10:10

ideas kind of contained within Long Term

10:12

is them, you know? Other than maybe

10:14

some particular orientation toward them and moral

10:16

justification for why that should be pursued.

10:18

Really kind. it comes out of cars

10:21

was work, and I'm sure some of

10:23

the strands humanist out before that, and

10:25

I hadn't realized that those ideas were

10:27

kind of decades old already at that

10:29

point. Is funny because ah now it's

10:31

writing as I say that sends him as

10:33

an author as a my book which is

10:35

around like three Nineteen Twenty Twenty I guess

10:38

my own and his ideas are so dated.

10:40

Yeah, because I encountered Kurzweil in early two

10:42

thousands and as like really obsessed with here

10:44

and a message boards and and everything. Hearing

10:46

Gensemer zoc about how these technologies and you

10:49

know by the time we got inflict early

10:51

twenty twenty the to Salt Lake who really

10:53

buys into this anymore and then yes years

10:55

later all the sun I'm hearing about long

10:57

term as I'm I'm like oh. This is

11:00

the same shit basically dressed up in

11:02

a in a different name. but it's

11:04

like the same people. It is like

11:06

sort of rationalists. Browse, You

11:08

know the correct about stress and it's

11:10

funny cuddly part of my. Book.

11:13

I think with a bow it's how

11:15

this ideology but the future keeps getting

11:17

a recycling. The keeps appearing. And reappearing

11:19

throughout history. But I think I didn't

11:22

expect it to come back so soon.

11:24

In this other slightly different form, it

11:26

is. At least good for making the

11:28

writing even more relevant. But you know

11:30

you talked about how these things summer

11:32

again and obviously you mentioned religion and

11:35

have you encountered Kurzweil spoke in the

11:37

early two thousand? Do you want to

11:39

talk to us about why you know

11:41

for a little while those trends humanist

11:43

ideas were something that really resonated with

11:45

you in part because of the Religious

11:47

Foundation said they had, even though that's

11:49

often not acknowledged by the very trends

11:51

humanists that a spouse them. Yeah, Definitely

11:54

of is a big part of it

11:56

for me. I was raised in a

11:58

fundamentalist christian home. I tend to eventually

12:01

cause at home schooled as a child,

12:03

was tired in a six day creation

12:05

of them and winter Moody Bible Institute

12:07

when I was eighteen to study theology

12:10

for a couple years and I actually

12:12

last. That. School after my

12:14

second year say it had like a

12:16

faith crisis and the strain to question

12:18

the whole Christian ideology and I was

12:21

living in Chicago at the time the

12:23

United Soothing for many years, just sort

12:25

of on my own and and working

12:27

and identified as an atheist that point

12:29

I could totally left the church and

12:31

yeah a friend gave me say this

12:33

year so machines. And I

12:35

read it and had like my mind

12:37

totally blown. I mean, the book was

12:40

a bestseller, but I think there wasn't

12:42

like a lot of conversation about those

12:44

technologies. At the time, they were very

12:46

futuristic. Again, he was talking about mind

12:48

uploading nano technology all the. Stuff that

12:51

wasn't really part of the mainstream conversation.

12:54

And I read the book I

12:56

was reading. You know a lot

12:58

of these message boards on line

13:01

among Trans humanists and. I.

13:03

Think Way really appealed to

13:05

me. In. I took me a

13:07

while to realize is that like if is

13:10

very much dislike millenarian fish and narratives that

13:12

was very familiar to me. You know I

13:14

grew up thinking like were living in the

13:16

end times Crisis can return. A Any points

13:18

you know we're gonna be wrapped, shared the

13:20

data gonna be resurrected, We're gonna have these

13:22

glorious new bodies and live and have and.

13:24

Forever And this.

13:27

Is essentially what Kurzweil was arguing, but

13:29

he muna without any sort of appeals

13:32

and metaphysics or the supernatural and fact.

13:34

I think the runway took me so

13:36

long to like real as the parallels

13:38

between them is that. All. Of

13:40

the shunts, humanists were also like the i'm

13:42

an Atheist and Rational s. And.

13:45

Even. Like the histories of the movement, most

13:48

people are writing. About the origins of

13:50

Chance Humanism referred to Nick Bostrom,

13:52

it's brief history. of

13:54

the movement where he very much

13:56

traced back to the enlightenment and

13:58

you know these very humanistic,

14:01

secular ideas. And

14:03

so it didn't seem so there

14:06

was a connection there. And

14:08

it really baffled me for a while

14:10

though, too, because I was like, why

14:12

are you know, for example, like just

14:14

getting into like the nitty gritty of

14:16

these conversations about for example, mind uploading,

14:19

like there's this problem about

14:21

continuity of identity, right? If you were

14:24

to for example, transfer your all of

14:26

your neural patterns onto a supercomputer, or

14:28

if you're, you know, even to replace

14:30

like every part of your brain with

14:32

a neural implant, is your consciousness

14:34

still going to be there afterwards, are you still going

14:36

to be you? And these

14:38

were like basically the same questions that the early

14:41

church fathers were debating in the third and fourth

14:43

century, which was for Christians, at least like the

14:45

the body was a really important part

14:47

of the afterlife, you

14:50

know, which was sort of what distinguished I

14:52

think Orthodox Christianity from Gnosticism, which

14:55

thought that the afterlife was just going to

14:57

be spiritual, we're just going to be souls

14:59

disembodied. So there's this

15:01

problem in early Christianity about like, well,

15:03

you know, bodies die, and they decay.

15:07

So you know, what happens, how are all

15:09

of those parts going to be resurrected? And how

15:12

is the person going to be the same person

15:14

in heaven? And the transfuminous

15:16

at the time, we're using the same

15:18

metaphors as the early church fathers to

15:20

well, I guess one of the metaphors

15:22

that Kurzweil uses in the

15:24

age of spiritual machines is this idea that

15:26

consciousness is a pattern. And he said, it's

15:28

like the pattern that you see, you know,

15:30

in ripples of water in a river, and

15:33

the individual water molecules are always different, but

15:35

patterns the same. And that's basically what consciousness

15:38

is. And that's why it can persist across

15:40

substrates. And this

15:42

is a very same metaphor that

15:45

the origin of Alexandria used to

15:47

talk about the Christian resurrection, where

15:49

you said basically, yeah,

15:51

our soul is a pattern.

15:53

And you know, our body is

15:55

going to die and

15:58

decompose with basically the pattern is going

16:00

to persist. And this is sort of how he

16:02

reconciled Christianity with Greek thought. So

16:05

these transimendists are not reading, obviously,

16:07

the early church fathers, like, how

16:09

did these same metaphors and these

16:11

same ideas keep recurring? So

16:13

part of the fun of writing that essay, which

16:15

I didn't write until much later for M plus

16:18

one was just like reading

16:20

about this strain of Christian

16:23

eschatology that I didn't know anything about

16:25

because I had studied fundamentalist theology, which

16:27

was very narrow. But there

16:30

have actually been Christians throughout different

16:32

points of history that have believed

16:34

that resurrection could happen through science

16:36

and technology, basically, going back

16:38

to, you know, medieval alchemists who were trying

16:40

to create an elixir of life that was

16:42

going to make the person who took the potion

16:44

have like a resurrected body through

16:46

like Russian cosmism. I wrote a little

16:48

bit about this idea and the theology

16:51

of Péhard de Chardin. Yeah,

16:53

there is this lineage, basically.

16:55

And I don't know how in

16:58

detail you want to get here. But like, there

17:00

is a way in which it connects directly to

17:03

modern transhumanism, like they basically took

17:05

these ideas from Christian theology, stripped

17:08

them of all the metaphysics and

17:10

created this sort of religion of

17:13

technology out of it. Yeah,

17:15

I did want to get into that because I

17:17

find that absolutely fascinating, right? And one of the

17:19

things that really stood out to me, and I

17:22

can't remember if it was in a talk that

17:24

you gave or in the book, but you were

17:26

basically talking about how, you know, there is this

17:28

clear history that you can see. But when the

17:31

transhumanists talk about, you know, the history of the

17:33

ideas that they're drawing from, as you say, they

17:35

talk about the Enlightenment, or they go back to

17:37

say Julian Huxley, mentioning this for the first time,

17:40

but there's this whole kind of religious history discussing

17:42

all of these ideas that they leave

17:44

out of those discussions. And

17:46

I think it was in a talk you

17:48

gave in Sweden, you basically said that in

17:50

part, that seems like a deliberate act, right?

17:52

To make sure that this history is not

17:54

known and is left out of the stories

17:57

that they tell because they don't want this

17:59

kind of relationship. with religion to be

18:01

part of the thing that they are engaged

18:03

with and that they are talking about again,

18:05

as you say, because a lot of

18:07

them identify as rationalists and atheists and don't

18:10

want to kind of pretend that they

18:12

are engaging in these kind of spiritual or

18:14

religious ideas. Can you talk about that aspect

18:16

of it? And I guess rather than

18:18

Huxley being the first person who talks about

18:21

transhumanism, how this is something that exists before

18:23

that as well. Yeah.

18:26

So I can't remember if it was Boston or

18:28

I mean, it's a widely published

18:30

origin where people say the first use

18:32

of the word transhumanism came. Yeah. And I

18:34

think it was 1957

18:37

with Huxley using it in a talk. And

18:40

I had known

18:43

that actually the first use of

18:46

transhuman in English was in the

18:48

translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. And

18:50

it's in a passage where he's

18:53

describing the resurrection. It's in the

18:55

parody. So he's talking about ascending

18:57

into heaven. And he notices

18:59

at one point that his body is

19:02

transformed into this

19:05

heavenly body. And he's trying

19:07

to emphasize the fact

19:09

that this is a singular moment that nothing

19:11

like this has ever happened before. And so

19:13

he to emphasize that he makes up an

19:16

entirely new word in Italian, which

19:18

is transhuman are translated basically in English

19:20

to beyond the human. And

19:23

the line I think is words cannot

19:25

tell of that transhuman change. And

19:28

so I learned this actually,

19:31

because I was talking to a bunch of Christian

19:33

transhumanists, which is a whole nother weird subculture, but

19:35

they really last onto this as like transhumanism has

19:37

this Christian origin. And I

19:39

was like, okay, well, how did it

19:42

like this word appeared in I think

19:44

it was 1814 when this translation of

19:46

Dante came into English and how

19:49

did it get to Huxley from there. And

19:51

actually there was another use of it in

19:53

the 1940s, I believe, before

19:56

Huxley, which was the Catholic theologian

19:59

and priest. Purity her dish

20:01

or dance France. Trees and

20:04

Paleontologists to was really interested

20:06

in evolution and sort of

20:08

merging evolution with with Christian

20:10

theology and he had on

20:13

this book that was banned

20:15

for many decades by the

20:17

Catholic Church as heretical called

20:19

the Future of Man where

20:22

he laid out his vision

20:24

of the future where he

20:26

imagine that technology would help

20:29

humans reached the next level

20:31

of evolution and actually bring.

20:33

About the resurrection prophesied in the

20:35

Bible and he had this image

20:38

of like basically all of the

20:40

world is becoming more and more

20:42

connected with technology. And. You

20:44

know he's writing and like the forties

20:47

and fifties about these ideas. So he's

20:49

talking about least radio and television but

20:51

he somehow saw like masks. Indication

20:53

is making our. Minds like

20:55

Starts become more connected and were merged

20:57

and he believes that this is eventually

20:59

going to create something called the New

21:02

Sear and which is basically like a

21:04

lot of your said it's a really

21:06

pressing you know idea of the internet

21:08

where human minds are going to be

21:10

connected and then this is going to

21:13

lead to an intelligence explosion, much sheath

21:15

of the Omega plant and at that

21:17

plane humanity was basically going to like

21:19

break through the time space him barrier

21:21

and become divine. And this was going

21:24

to be like basically. The Resurrection.

21:26

This is how we were going

21:28

to become gods and then idea.

21:30

Obviously, I mean it like that.

21:32

the Omega plane is basically just

21:34

personal singularity, but it has very

21:36

clear religious connotations. He used the

21:38

word chance human probably he got

21:40

it from Dante, I imagine and

21:42

he talked. About how that siege after

21:44

we sort of become divine were going

21:46

to become trans. Human and Tailored

21:48

Was friends with Julian Huxley

21:50

and you know they exchanged a

21:52

lot of ideas and so the

21:55

saw. It seems to be

21:57

that that Huxley got that term.

22:00

The a priest but again. Just totally

22:02

stripped and of it's religious and

22:04

theological meaning and created this secular

22:06

idea of transcendence. And and from

22:08

there is I think it's a

22:10

pretty clear lineage to get sick

22:12

or as well and. And Contemporary

22:14

Chance Humanists and long term as it's

22:16

so cool to like see that history

22:18

and see the relationships to it and

22:20

part of what may be really interested

22:22

in the way that you were telling

22:24

this and and these connections that you

22:26

were making was because I also read

22:28

David Nobles both the religion of Technology

22:30

which goes into a lot of other

22:32

aspects of what you're talking about where

22:34

you know there were these Christian Theology

22:36

Are Christians who really believe that science

22:38

and technology the be you know a

22:40

way to achieve these kind of Christian

22:42

prophecies are or. Stories are are you

22:44

know? However you want to talk about them

22:47

as wonder if you talk about that a

22:49

bit more specifically in relation to Trans Humanism

22:51

and you know the real similarities that exists

22:53

between the stories that they tell about what

22:56

our future is going to look like and

22:58

how these technologies are going to develop and

23:00

how there are going to allow us to

23:02

kind of transcend this human body and also

23:05

even with cars. while talking about this kind

23:07

of progression through history and how that relates

23:09

to the way that this is told in

23:12

you know a lot of Christian theology. And

23:14

of course you know how those things

23:16

relate to one another and out entirely

23:19

similar they are other then obviously looking

23:21

at differ means of achieving something that

23:23

seems quite similar. Yeah, I mean,

23:25

there's many different versions of

23:27

the Christian historical narrative. I

23:29

guess in terms of like

23:31

the and times and what

23:33

what that's going to look

23:35

like. The version I was

23:37

hired in the fundamentals college

23:39

that I went to was

23:41

called pre Millennial. The Sensationalism.

23:43

I mean it's a very

23:45

pessimistic view of history and

23:47

of the future that ideas

23:49

basically that God reveals himself

23:52

indistinct. Dispensations across history and

23:54

that there's sort of different.

23:56

Ways in which we experience God has she

23:58

was his little bit abstract. But the

24:00

point is that like eventually,

24:02

all of this, everything that's

24:04

happened in the past and

24:06

everything's happening in the present

24:08

is leading to this redemptive

24:11

narrative. That's that's going to

24:13

happen. And there was a

24:15

big cut. a split, An

24:17

American. Christianity around.

24:20

And. See the turn of the twentieth centuries

24:23

and getting the dates cracked and then I

24:25

think it became more pronounced after the world

24:27

wars. But you know there is a sort

24:29

of split between Christians who had a very

24:31

pessimistic view the future which is where my

24:33

family and sort. Of attrition I was raised

24:36

and as. Pre Millennials year which is

24:38

that we're headed toward this apocalypse and

24:40

tribulations and you know God is going

24:42

to destroy the world. There's nothing we

24:44

can do about it and eventual he

24:46

like we're going to survive is where

24:48

the Elect right? Where did he get ruptured

24:50

and get to go to have and by it

24:52

was basically this is really dark idea. Of

24:54

you know history as on this downward

24:57

spiral. And then there's also this post

24:59

millennial tradition of christians. The C N

25:01

like the Social Gospel movement that's more

25:04

concerned with making life better here on

25:06

earth and this idea that we. Can

25:08

sort of create. Maybe. Not

25:10

happen, but the sort of like millenarian. Utopia.

25:14

Here on earth if we tried to

25:16

live out the gospel and actually help

25:18

the poor and become socially engaged. so

25:21

and as a much more optimistic view

25:23

of history and in those ideas have

25:25

always been kind of in conflicts and

25:28

I would say that Lakes Kurzweil. And

25:31

the people who are sort of

25:33

techno optimists shields me. Like a

25:35

very. I mean, and a

25:37

weird way. sort of like a possible

25:39

unhealthy you in that they believe technology

25:41

is going to make things better. that's

25:43

at least so their daily pay lip

25:46

service to that idea. Riots can extend

25:48

our alliances going to take away suffering

25:50

on earth as Una create medical advances,

25:52

it's gonna solve all of our problems.

25:54

And then you know there's this other

25:57

very in a. Dark

25:59

side. The of the debate about

26:01

the future and ai which he knows

26:03

existential risk. You know it's. Feels to

26:06

me more like that like the

26:08

pessimistic apocalyptic view see as interesting

26:10

how those ideologies are playing out

26:12

in that similar snow in religious

26:14

basis and then secular space is

26:17

it just feels like the same

26:19

conversations sunni and I also feel

26:21

like those you world the Israeli

26:23

feed off of one another and.

26:26

At times I think prevent us from

26:28

having. More. Practical conversations about

26:30

like the real world harms that

26:33

the technologies. Are are doing. Yeah,

26:36

definitely were always focused on these. You know,

26:38

big as you're saying, existential risk. Especially when

26:40

we're talking about Ai in the past couple

26:42

of years. Where the focuses is the I

26:44

going to like you know, be this kind

26:46

of wonderful future for us or is it

26:49

going to in the world rather than talking

26:51

about okay, how are these technologies being implemented

26:53

now? what are the effects of them? A

26:55

what should we be doing to try to

26:57

mitigate the negative impacts of that but that

26:59

gets distracted by the much bigger picture of

27:02

or the eyes gonna kill us or enslave

27:04

us or something like bad, right? And

27:06

a silly were become god or

27:08

whatever. Yeah, You

27:10

know, I. I know. I found it fascinating

27:12

that Kurzweil actually reach out to you after

27:15

you wrote that. And plus one essay? Did

27:17

you get more insight into Steel how he

27:19

thinks about this in his approach to it

27:22

in that exchange? Or what more did you

27:24

learn about how he sees Trans humanism through

27:26

that. Yeah. It was

27:28

so bizarre. I had as as a appear in

27:30

and and plus languishes like this and I'm fairly

27:33

small let mag and then I think it picks

27:35

up in the Guardian after that so I guess

27:37

it sort of reached a wider audience that's yeah.

27:39

Was checking my email one day and I got

27:42

an email from Ray Kurzweil and like surely this

27:44

is a job. at him

27:46

and his financial records all he had

27:48

read the article he said he really

27:50

liked it and yeah he sent if

27:52

is very nice change he he with

27:55

citing a lot about matter for which

27:57

is i guess i have been writing

27:59

my book that point. And I was I was

28:01

thinking a lot about the question of

28:03

metaphor and technological metaphors. And

28:05

he said, you know, anytime

28:07

we're talking about something transcendent, we have

28:09

to use metaphor because it's a reality

28:12

that we can't access, we would have

28:14

to transcend time and energy

28:16

in order to understand that and our

28:18

human understanding is limited. And

28:20

he said, basically, Christians were, you

28:22

know, and other religious people are

28:25

using pre modern metaphors to describe

28:27

the future. And I'm

28:29

using technological metaphors. But basically, you know, I

28:31

don't think he said it exactly. But the

28:33

implication is we're talking about the same thing.

28:36

We're just using different language, which, to

28:38

me was really surprising and interesting. It was

28:40

something that I had, you know, sort of

28:43

intuited from writing about this history. And it

28:45

was also a little bit eerie, given my

28:47

religious background, I started to get even

28:49

doing this research years later, like a little

28:51

bit conspiratorial, where it's like, how

28:54

is it that these same ideas keep coming

28:56

up? Like, is it true that like, these,

28:58

you know, biblical prophets and early church fathers

29:00

somehow had this like premonition of

29:02

what was going to happen in the future through technology,

29:04

and they just didn't have the language for it. But

29:06

that's sort of what I'm understanding him correctly. I think

29:08

that's what he was saying more or

29:10

less, right, that we're all just sort of trying

29:12

to describe something that's going to happen in the

29:14

future that we don't understand yet. Yeah,

29:17

and then he offered to send me some of his

29:19

books in the mail, and he sent me

29:21

a signed copy of Age of Spiritual Machines, which is

29:23

kind of cool to get but yeah, that was that

29:25

was the only correspondence I've had with him. Do you

29:27

still have the book? Yeah, I do. And

29:29

he inscribed it, he said, Megan,

29:31

enjoy the Age of Spiritual Machines, but

29:33

it wasn't like capitalized or underlined or

29:35

anything. So it was just, you know,

29:38

you could read it in sort of

29:40

different ways. It's

29:42

fascinating. I love that when I was reading through

29:44

the book. But I think that point around metaphor

29:46

is actually really fascinating, right? And you dig into

29:49

this a lot more in your book. Because

29:51

I feel like, time and again, we encounter

29:54

these metaphors for many things in the world.

29:56

But in particular, I think with these sorts

29:58

of discussions for how the

30:00

mind works or how the body works where

30:02

they're often related to technology or you know

30:05

the things that you know are really important

30:07

to how we experience the world right if

30:09

you think back to like, the industrial revolution

30:11

when we often thought of how we worked

30:14

as being kind of like a machine right

30:16

and and kind of the cogs that kind

30:18

of work within us and now how we

30:20

see these metaphors that treat the human or

30:23

treat the mind as though it's a computer

30:25

or as though it's some sort of digital

30:27

technology and we work in kind of a

30:29

similar way to that which of course

30:32

feeds into these trends humanist ideas i

30:34

wonder what you make of those metaphors

30:36

and how they affect how we see

30:38

ourselves and the world around us yeah

30:40

i mean i was interested in

30:42

that question of like where do we get

30:44

this idea and you know this is something

30:47

i think everybody just intuitively assumes today that

30:49

their mind is a machine in some way

30:51

or a computer and we defer

30:53

to it in everyday language you know if you say

30:55

oh i have to process something that's a using

30:58

metaphorical machine language and

31:00

like you said you know these are very

31:02

old these metaphors if you want to go

31:04

back to like ancient Greece you have this

31:06

idea that the soul is like a chariot

31:09

you know and then all throughout the industrial revolution

31:11

yeah these sort of mechanistic metaphors for the

31:13

body or the mind the

31:15

idea of the mind is

31:18

a computer really emerged in the late

31:20

1940s early 50s with the

31:23

emergence of neural networks which

31:25

were based on the brain and there was

31:27

this idea that we could create these they

31:29

were called at the time Turing machines that

31:31

were sort of operating in the same way

31:33

that our minds were and the thing with

31:35

any type of metaphor is it like it

31:38

goes kind of both ways so then shortly

31:40

after that there's this idea that yeah the

31:42

mind is also you know computational that the

31:44

mind is you know in some of the

31:46

early theories it was really like this sort

31:49

of humorous idea that the mind function according

31:51

to like You know, binary

31:53

logic and things like this, but it's a

31:55

useful metaphor. Obviously I mean all of like

31:57

content of science and AI research has. Drawn

32:00

out of there. and part is I

32:02

think the appeal of it initially was

32:04

that you know if you think about

32:06

the mind as a machine, you can

32:08

get away having to talk about consciousness

32:11

or the solar. These sort of like

32:13

mean a subjective experience basically. which is

32:15

the hard thing to talk about from

32:17

the third person point of view. Science.

32:20

And you know I think said it

32:22

was interesting Some me about it though

32:24

is that there's a point at which

32:27

you know because they're sort of like

32:29

a dual built into. Computers.

32:32

To he has like software which is

32:34

just information as to somebody it's it's

32:36

not matter, energy, and any of hardware.

32:38

There is like this kind of weird

32:41

mind body dualism built in it where

32:43

you can think about things like mind

32:45

uploading like oh, is it possible if

32:47

my mind is this information, can that

32:49

somehow be extracted from my body and

32:52

you know travel to this other kind

32:54

of substrates. The irony for me when

32:56

I was writing about this is like

32:58

this metaphor emerged as a way to

33:01

get around Metaphysics. And have this

33:03

like fiercely materialistic idea of the

33:05

mind and it somehow that metaphysics

33:07

not back in there. Were

33:09

you know if you look at Kurzweil

33:12

are sort. Of any of these people

33:14

who are interested and this futuristic

33:16

technology is, it's almost like information

33:18

has become a metaphor for the

33:20

soul. It's something that's going to

33:22

persists after we die. It's indestructible

33:24

at some point. Or yeah, it

33:26

is very. Strange to me how

33:28

that happens but also like

33:31

very understandable. I think that those

33:33

that dualism. I mean that's like a

33:35

cognitive bias. It's very deep and us

33:37

sleek it's and children it's it's it's

33:39

like you know, anthropologists have studied and

33:41

cultures all over the world and I

33:43

think that's it's natural that we extend

33:45

that by as slower than you'd Better

33:47

technology is also. do you think that

33:49

that metaphor that you know the mind or

33:51

or the body is like a machine or

33:53

like a computer do you think it leads

33:56

us to be more open to ideas like

33:58

trans humanism or this idea that of brain

34:00

or a human mind can be recreated on

34:02

a computer when it allows us

34:04

to, I guess, not think

34:06

so much about the biological barriers

34:09

to that. Because if we

34:11

think that the brain computes and processes

34:13

just like a computer, then it's easier

34:15

to believe that, okay, maybe we're going

34:17

to recreate the mind on a computer

34:19

or an AI is going to reach

34:21

the level of human intelligence and we're

34:23

going to be able to kind of

34:25

stick some computer hardware on the back

34:28

of our brain and transfer it over

34:30

to a machine. Like, do you think

34:32

that it leads us to be more open to these

34:34

things? And do you think in part it kind of

34:36

misleads us into believing that something like this is possible

34:38

at all? Definitely. Yeah. I mean,

34:40

I think this is the whole idea

34:42

of like functionalism, which is

34:44

just that there's it doesn't really matter what

34:46

the material is. So long as the parts

34:49

are doing the same work, right? If you

34:51

have a biological brain or if you have

34:53

a computer, you can presumably

34:55

have consciousness emerge out of

34:58

a silicon the same way from a human brain. And

35:01

I think most people like intuitively feel

35:04

like there's something that's missed there.

35:06

But I think it also ignores the fact

35:09

that like we all evolve together through, you

35:11

know, millions of years

35:13

of evolution. And like whatever

35:15

is evolving in machines

35:18

is the type of intelligence

35:20

that's evolving. There's not anything

35:22

like what the sort of experience

35:25

that we have of the world. In

35:27

fact, there's not really any evidence that there's

35:29

going to be any kind of first person

35:31

experience in machines. And you

35:33

know, that's another thing that comes up in

35:36

a lot of these conversations about mind uploading,

35:39

which is like, you know, if

35:41

you start reading, it sounds like great, like, yeah, yeah, we'll be

35:43

able to live forever in the cloud. And

35:45

if you start reading between the lines, it's like,

35:47

well, you know, we can't really guarantee that there's

35:49

going to be any sort of subjective experience. It

35:51

could just be this like sort of clone that

35:54

looks and talks like you and there's not any

35:56

experience there, which is like, okay, well, what is

35:58

the point of, you know, people who

36:00

want to live forever, they want to experience

36:02

that. They don't just want to have some

36:04

avatar or clone of themselves that's persisting after

36:07

they die. Maybe some people do. That

36:09

was a moment of disenchantment for me when I was

36:11

really into transhumanism. I think that was the appeal for

36:14

me. It's like, oh yeah, this is a way to

36:16

live forever. And it's like, well, the

36:19

people who are writing about this don't believe

36:21

that machines have consciousness. A lot of them

36:23

don't believe that humans have consciousness, really. I

36:25

mean, that's sort of a superstitious idea. There's

36:28

not really a clear way to talk about it.

36:30

But yeah, I think that, I

36:33

don't know, what is the point of living forever if

36:35

you're not going to experience it? Yeah,

36:38

I don't know if living out my life

36:40

in the cloud sounds so

36:42

appealing to me. Yeah,

36:45

me neither. I was really

36:47

fascinated to learn though, that a

36:49

lot of Kurzweil's interest in this

36:52

seems to come from his desire

36:54

to be able to

36:56

recreate his father as a digital

36:59

agent or an AI being or whatever you

37:01

want to call it. And I was particularly

37:03

fascinated because I'd never heard this before that

37:05

he has collected a bunch of writings

37:08

and things like that that his father had.

37:10

And in the hopes that one day, he'll

37:12

be able to be scanned in some AI

37:14

chatbot or something of his father will be

37:16

able to be recreated. Do you

37:18

think that that is part of what

37:20

motivates his interest in these sorts of ideas? Yeah,

37:24

he's been very, I think transparent actually

37:26

about the fact that he has a

37:28

very personal motivation for this. And yeah,

37:30

there was a documentary about

37:33

him many years ago called

37:35

Transcendent Man, where he takes the filmmakers

37:37

into this storage unit that he has,

37:39

where he's kept all of his father's

37:41

father was a classical musician. So he

37:43

has all of his music, he has

37:46

his letters, he has his diaries,

37:48

and a lot of

37:50

personal writing. Yeah, he actually did,

37:53

at one point, use

37:55

this to create a chatbot of

37:58

his father, his daughter. actually

38:00

Amy Kurzweil wrote a book about

38:03

her dad called Artificial. It's a

38:05

graphic memoir, which is actually really

38:07

excellent. And she talks about sort

38:09

of interacting with this chatbot version

38:11

of her grandfather. And we've seen,

38:13

you know, a lot of sort

38:15

of speculative, you know, startups that

38:17

are claiming to be able to

38:20

resurrect in chatbot forum, people

38:22

who have died so that you can talk

38:24

to them, talk to, you know,

38:26

some version of them after they're gone. To me,

38:28

I think to most people

38:31

right now, it doesn't really seem especially

38:33

appealing, because I mean, part of the

38:35

idea of communicating with the dad isn't just

38:37

to like get information about what they would

38:40

say to you. It's about making some sort of

38:42

interpersonal connection that if

38:44

the person isn't actually there, I don't

38:46

know what sort of like emotional or spiritual

38:48

benefit you're getting from that. But

38:51

I definitely think it's something that we'll see more

38:54

in the future. There's probably a market

38:56

for it of some sort. Yeah,

38:58

I definitely think so. And I think we're

39:01

already seeing it. I was reading a story

39:03

the other day about how in China, I

39:05

believe they're already kind of making chatbots or

39:07

something like that of the dead. And you

39:09

know, I'm sure it's happening here as well

39:11

to a certain degree too. You know, we're

39:13

already reading about AI girlfriends. So I'm sure

39:15

AI dead people is something that some companies

39:17

are working on. Next frontier.

39:20

Yeah, yeah. I was interested as well.

39:22

You know, you were talking about how

39:25

you became an atheist after

39:27

this evangelical upbringing. I would

39:29

imagine in the time that you had done so

39:31

you were probably into some of the new atheist

39:33

kind of writers and that movement as well. Would

39:35

that be fair to say? Yeah, I went

39:37

through a little phase where I was

39:39

reading Dawkins and Hitchens and Sam Harris.

39:41

And yeah, it was part of my

39:43

deconversion journey. Yeah, I was right

39:45

along with you. I became an atheist in the

39:47

mid 2000s. And so it was right

39:50

at the time when that was kind of in full

39:52

steam. And I remember watching Bill

39:54

Maher's documentary and you know, religious,

39:56

I think it was called and

39:59

kind of being all for or like embarrassing to

40:01

admit today, but you know, reading

40:03

the Dawkins and the Hitchens and all that sort

40:05

of stuff too. And I was

40:07

interested in, because I feel like this movement

40:09

kind of happened that, you know,

40:11

a particular moment in time, but we've

40:14

seen even as, you know, new atheism

40:16

as a movement has kind of faded

40:18

off, it feels like a lot of those

40:20

figures have continued along and now are kind

40:23

of key parts of this right

40:25

wing movement that is increasingly popular in

40:27

the tech industry as well, you know,

40:29

people like Sam Harris and Dawkins comes

40:31

up as well. And even though, you

40:33

know, it's not as kind of explicitly

40:35

championing atheism in the way that kind

40:37

of new atheism was, it feels like

40:39

a lot of these ideas kind of

40:41

still stick around and these figures have

40:44

become key figures in this kind of

40:46

anti-woke movement or whatever you want to

40:48

call it. I wonder if you

40:50

have any thoughts on how that has developed and

40:52

how those ideas kind of seemed

40:54

like a foundation for some of what has come

40:56

after. Yeah, I admittedly have

40:59

not followed them as closely. I know

41:01

that they're like touchstones in the sort

41:03

of rationalist community, but it's strange. I

41:05

don't know if this is actually true.

41:07

My parents recently told me

41:09

that Dawkins is now Catholic. Is that true?

41:12

Or that he's like a cultural Catholic? Cultural

41:14

Catholic, yeah. There was an

41:16

interview recently where he was talking about how, you know, he's

41:18

not a Catholic himself, he doesn't believe in God, of course.

41:21

But yeah, he was really interested in cultural

41:23

Catholicism and like, it would be very disappointing

41:25

to him if the churches in England went

41:27

away and he still loves to go to

41:30

them for the cultural experience, just not the

41:32

religious experience. And he was basically making the

41:34

argument that like, if churches were replaced with

41:36

mosques, it would be terrible to him, right?

41:39

Because picking up on the Islamophobia that was

41:41

always kind of there. Right, which is with

41:43

Sam Harris too, I remember. Yeah, I

41:45

mean, it to me is just, there's

41:48

a cynical part of me that just says that

41:50

they're just sort of trying to capitalize on the

41:52

way that public sentiment on the right, especially has

41:54

shifted in the last few years. And I do

41:57

think it reveals some sort of bad faith about

41:59

their whole problem. I think from

42:01

the beginning, I kind of become disenchanted with

42:03

them even before that. Well, I mean, part

42:05

of it I think is maybe because I

42:09

can see how, you know,

42:11

even people who are very

42:13

militantly atheist or rationalist, you

42:16

know, that doesn't inoculate you

42:18

against superstition. It doesn't like

42:20

inoculate you against these really

42:22

basic human desires to live

42:24

forever, you know, or, you know,

42:27

to find some sort of like technological transcendence.

42:30

If anything, I think it sort of puts

42:32

blinders on you in

42:34

a way because, again, a lot of these

42:37

ideas about technology in

42:40

the future feel to me like very

42:42

much rooted in wishful thinking in

42:44

a way that is precisely the kind of wishful

42:47

thinking that they accused religious people of back in

42:49

the early 2000s. No,

42:51

I definitely agree with that. I was commenting, I

42:53

think it would have been the end of last

42:55

year, on a manifesto that

42:57

Mark Andreessen had written, you know, the

42:59

Techno Optimism Manifesto. And it really

43:01

stood out to me in that moment. You know,

43:03

I feel like they've been kind of increasingly pulling

43:06

on faith in order to drive their technological project.

43:08

But in his manifesto, he was making

43:10

all of these claims, you know, and

43:12

basically saying time and again, we believe,

43:14

we believe, we believe, right? There is

43:17

no kind of tangible foundation to this

43:19

belief. It was just we think

43:21

that this technology is going to change the

43:23

world in all these positive ways that I,

43:25

Mark Andreessen, have been setting out, and

43:27

you should all have faith that we can achieve

43:30

this. And it very much felt like this kind

43:32

of religious argument, even though I'm sure Mark Andreessen

43:34

would say, you know, that he's an atheist and

43:36

he doesn't believe in all that and whatever. But

43:38

it still seemed to be drawing on these very

43:41

similar, you know, ways of arguing and ways of

43:43

presenting this. Yeah. Oh,

43:45

that's really interesting. And to

43:47

a certain extent, I think the whole

43:49

rhetoric about AI rests on faith, right?

43:51

On this idea of like, just trust

43:53

us. We're the smartest guys in the

43:55

room. We're going to do this.

43:57

We're going to deliver. And like, what?

44:00

are you going to deliver? Nobody can even articulate

44:02

what it is that we're trying to solve. It's

44:04

going to change everything. It's the future. It's

44:07

these abstractions that do feel very much

44:09

like religious rhetoric to me. And the

44:11

people who believe in this feel to

44:13

me also like spiritual acolytes in a

44:15

way, just with the way in which

44:17

they've just completely gone all in and

44:19

embraced this idea of the future. And

44:21

I mean, Sam

44:23

Altman, I think, talks about the

44:25

future in a way that's very Manichaean, like

44:27

this is the way history is going. People

44:30

who are on board are going to survive and

44:32

people who are not are going to be left

44:34

behind. He said this a couple of years ago

44:36

in a tweet, I think. And I mean,

44:39

to me, it's really like this idea

44:42

of a spiritual elect that you see.

44:44

That was the same thing like my

44:46

family believed, which is that like we

44:48

are going to, because we have honored

44:50

God, the world is going to be destroyed, but

44:52

we're going to survive because we

44:54

are the good ones. And yeah, I

44:57

think it seems like there's sort of

44:59

a similar narrative there, which is like we're

45:01

on the side of progress. We're on the

45:03

side of the future. And people are

45:05

going to fall by the wayside, but we're the ones

45:07

who are going to make it into the next stage

45:09

of evolution. I feel like that's part of

45:12

the reason why your writing really resonated with

45:14

me, right? You know, on the one hand,

45:16

talking about kind of the circularity of these ideas

45:18

and these ideas coming back again and again.

45:20

And also the fact that,

45:22

you know, we kind of as Western

45:24

society have gone through this secularization. So

45:26

we lost this ability to

45:28

look up and say, okay, we're trusting in God,

45:31

you know, we're going to go to heaven. We

45:33

have these religious stories that we tell ourselves and

45:35

what fills that void. It feels like in the

45:37

tech industry, they've kind of built their own kind

45:39

of theology or religion of techno optimism

45:41

or whatever you want to call it that

45:44

gives them these narratives that give their life

45:46

meaning and allow them to feel that they're

45:48

contributing to this bigger project. You know, I

45:50

think we often joke about like the cult

45:52

of Elon Musk and the people who are

45:54

really behind him and just believe in kind

45:57

of whatever he says, but it feels like

45:59

there's something. broader in Silicon Valley, where,

46:01

as you say, Sam Altman is drawing

46:03

on this, and especially the way that

46:05

he talks about the potential AGI and,

46:07

you know, what this is going to

46:09

be, it feels like they are kind

46:11

of, you know, building their own belief

46:13

system, whether we want to call it

46:15

religious or whatever, in order to get

46:17

their followers and their believers to stick

46:20

behind them. Yeah, absolutely. What was

46:22

the phrase that Altman used when he

46:24

was describing AGI, like magic

46:26

intelligence in the sky? I

46:29

would believe that. Yeah,

46:32

I mean, I do feel like it's filling

46:34

the vacuum that, you know, that we've seen

46:36

so much secularization and people,

46:38

I think even people

46:40

who are in, you know, institutional religion

46:43

today don't quite believe it as literally

46:45

as they used to. And

46:47

there's something I think really appealing

46:49

about a literal future

46:51

that's going to enact a lot of

46:53

those promises. And if you're going to

46:55

make the case, which have made these

46:58

technological stories about the future

47:00

are a form of religious

47:02

eschatology. It is like

47:05

the crudest, most fundamentalist version of that, which

47:07

is, again, this idea that, like, we're going

47:09

to live forever, we're going to be saved,

47:11

everyone else is going to die, you

47:14

know, and there's this whole other tradition

47:16

of Christianity that we really

47:18

respect and that is not part of this at

47:20

all, which is that, like, we

47:22

are fallen human beings, we

47:24

have limitations, you know,

47:27

and there's something beautiful about that. And

47:29

like Christ came to earth to take human

47:31

form, to like take part in our suffering.

47:34

And I think like the social gospel movement

47:37

was really, really grew out of that. And

47:39

that's something that is, I don't

47:42

know, to me, it seems like that could actually

47:44

provide maybe a counterpoint,

47:46

maybe not necessarily a religious narrative, but

47:48

just this idea of like finding something

47:50

positive in our human limitations, in the

47:52

fact that like, yeah, we're not

47:55

going to live forever, we're going to die.

47:57

And there's something tragic and maybe beautiful about

47:59

that. And to

48:01

strip away that whole aspect

48:04

of human experience that I think so

48:06

much of our history has been devoted

48:08

to exploring, it just

48:10

feels like this very crude, the

48:13

most sort of basically childish version of

48:16

Judeo-Christian narratives that you can come up with.

48:19

I feel like based on what you're describing, you

48:21

almost see that in some of the backlash to

48:23

these ideas, right? That you have the Altman saying

48:25

we're going to build the AGI and the AI

48:28

is going to take care of everything and do

48:30

all the jobs and whatever. And

48:32

you have the Musk saying, okay, we're going to

48:34

go colonize another planet and we really need to

48:36

be focused on all this. The real long-termist ideology

48:38

that we sacrifice in the present, maybe

48:41

we don't pay attention to global poverty or

48:43

we let climate change get worse than it

48:45

would otherwise be, because we

48:47

need to be focused on this long-term future rather

48:49

than addressing the here and now. And

48:51

I feel like there's a growing number of people who say that

48:54

makes no sense. We should be

48:56

caring for this planet and the people who

48:58

are on it instead of going after your

49:00

kind of wild technological fantasies, which

49:02

sounds a lot more similar to the kind of

49:05

social gospel thing that you're talking about there. Yeah,

49:08

definitely. I mean, long-termism,

49:10

like when I first started reading about it,

49:12

I think it even more than transhumanism because

49:14

they are thinking about, ostensibly thinking

49:17

about things like climate change, but also like kind

49:19

of dismissing it, feels like really

49:21

similar to the pre-millennial Christianity that I experienced

49:23

growing up, which was also, yeah, not interested

49:25

in climate change. Who cares? So like I

49:28

was going to destroy the world anyway, you

49:30

know, and this idea of like, we're going to

49:33

invest all of our resources

49:35

and all of our energy into

49:38

these future human descendants

49:40

who are not even going to be

49:42

human. They're going to be like digital

49:44

beings, I think is the idea, right?

49:47

That this like really extreme utilitarianism, it

49:50

does feel like it's a way to

49:52

like escape historical responsibility,

49:54

you know, to put

49:56

all of your energy into this like

49:58

afterlife that you're not going to experience.

50:00

but is going to make you a

50:02

good person somehow and ignoring

50:04

the really real and more urgent

50:07

injustices and problems that we're living

50:09

through. Yeah, when you talk

50:11

about that element of long termism

50:13

as well, one other thing I wanted

50:15

to ask you about before we wrap

50:18

up was Nick Bostrom, who is obviously

50:20

one of the major kind of long

50:22

termist thinkers coming out of that rationalist

50:24

and transhumanist tradition, wrote about

50:26

this thing called the simulation hypothesis that people

50:28

will probably have heard Elon Musk talk about,

50:30

right, that we all live in a simulation

50:32

and whatnot. And

50:34

in your book, you talk about that

50:36

in particular in relation to creationism, right?

50:39

And this, again, kind of these ideas

50:41

of religion, you know, in a sense coming

50:43

back where you're not only thinking

50:45

about how you're creating

50:47

new humans or kind of uploading the

50:49

mind or what have you, but actually

50:51

creating a whole new world that you

50:53

have complete control over that you are

50:55

like the god of. How

50:57

do you see that kind of simulation

51:00

hypothesis and the way

51:02

that Bostrom approaches it? Yeah, I

51:04

also was really obsessed with the simulation

51:06

hypothesis for a long time, and it

51:08

is it's a technological creation myth and

51:10

it appeals to the same cognitive

51:13

biases, I think, that we have as humans where

51:15

we tend to see everything is designed and everything

51:17

is having a purpose and a telos. And

51:20

I think it makes a lot of sense to people right

51:23

now for that reason. You know, I think a lot of

51:25

even just people, you know, that I'm friends with will casually

51:27

just be like, oh, yeah, of course, run a simulation that

51:29

makes total sense. And

51:32

I think it's also appealing because you

51:34

can think about an afterlife, right? Maybe

51:36

if we're just software, we're not going

51:38

to just die and be done with

51:41

ourselves. Maybe we'll be extracted and put

51:43

in another simulation at some point. It

51:45

also makes, you know, the world seem like

51:48

it had meaning and purpose that

51:50

it was designed by maybe some

51:52

sort of benevolent engineer. The

51:55

funny thing is it doesn't really explain anything

51:58

In terms of like where the world came from. From could

52:00

presumably whatever civilization. Created.

52:03

Us where did they come from is just

52:05

it's like this you know you can keep

52:07

going back and back and back. So it

52:09

has defined become very popular own thanks to

52:11

Basra in a lot of other people who

52:13

have dreamt about it. yeah. And you know

52:16

you even see the pop culture depictions of

52:18

it. where you know, like that black me

52:20

or episode sense, you know, pyro where these

52:22

people basically die and then are able to

52:24

kind of lives in the simulated world for

52:27

as long as they want. I guess. He.

52:29

Ass and how these things tend to

52:32

come up time and again I think

52:34

to wind down our conversation I wanted

52:36

as You After you know, looking in

52:39

to this history. after looking into Trans

52:41

Humanism and the metaphors that we have

52:43

around technology and and the Mind and

52:45

body and all these sorts of things

52:48

that you have explored through your work

52:50

over the past number of years, I

52:52

wonder if should this make us think

52:55

differently about the technological stories that we're

52:57

told and where. You. Know this is all

52:59

going. The. Fixing for me

53:01

as is realizing how much as

53:03

these projections about technology even when

53:06

they're very did. And data

53:08

and hard facts. And

53:10

putting scare quotes on that's our at

53:13

Rude you know come from a lot

53:15

of wishful thinking and a lot of

53:17

inherited cultural narrative that seem to keep

53:20

finding their way back into the stories

53:22

that we tell about the future. And

53:24

you know, I think the thing that

53:27

I've. Seen. Through a

53:29

few in an old enough now I've seen

53:31

a few cycles of technological utopia with the

53:33

rise of the Internet, with the rise of

53:35

social. Media in Us is going to

53:37

you know topple autocratic regimes and there's

53:40

always this sort is very utopian and

53:42

I think also very spiritual dimension to

53:44

those stories. The people who are telling

53:46

them believe them to some degree, but

53:49

they're also used to get us on

53:51

board. And again to

53:53

share our data. to accept

53:56

these technologies as somehow predestined

53:58

or four days that these

54:00

are, you know, this is where history is going. And

54:03

if you don't believe in God, and

54:07

you don't believe that there is,

54:09

you know, a telos to history,

54:11

you have to take responsibility

54:13

for the fact that like, we are building

54:15

these technologies. I mean, as humans, we are

54:17

right, we have a choice, we're making these

54:19

decisions. And I think the hardest

54:22

thing for me is just watching, you

54:25

know, the people who are building these technologies sort

54:27

of treat them as though they're inevitable, that

54:29

they're just the next stage of evolution. And

54:32

then also, you know, the people who, you

54:34

know, I talked to who are like, not

54:36

necessarily thrilled about that technology is who just

54:39

sort of complacently accept them, because this is

54:41

the future, this is where everything's going. And

54:43

it's like, no, we don't have to accept

54:45

this fatalistic story.

54:47

But if it's true that we're really directing our

54:50

evolution, or directing, you know,

54:52

technology, then we have choices

54:55

to make. I think it's so important

54:57

to, you know, recognize these histories of

54:59

these technologies and where so many of

55:01

these ideas come from, especially in this

55:03

moment, because of, you know, the way

55:05

that these people who rule the

55:07

tech industry are using them and are deploying

55:09

them in order to, you know, try to

55:11

carry out particular futures. And so that's why,

55:13

you know, I think your work is so

55:15

important and why it was a real pleasure

55:17

to have you on the show today. So

55:20

thanks so much, Megan. Thanks so much for

55:22

having me. Megan

55:24

O'Giblin is an advice columnist at Wired and

55:26

the author of God Human Animal Machine. Tech

55:29

Won't Save Us is made in partnership with the

55:31

Nation magazine and is hosted by me Paris Marks.

55:33

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55:36

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