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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25652 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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@FtttG

Simple cryogenics is one thing, I was talking about the uploading of your consciousness to the cloud and stuff. There's a whole bunch of ideas that are essentially recreating a religious worldview inside a secular one - mind uploads, simulation theory, Yud's posthumous consciousness reconstitution inside a virtual paradise vs. Roko's Basilisk.

Is it religion when people want to enter a state of being unbound by the laws of the universe as we currently know them and/or don't want anything hostile to do it first?

Y... yes?

It's a shame that posts as short as this will never be recognized as AAQCs.

Was it religion when people wanted to fly despite common knowledge at the time being that people can't fly?

It just seems like you're latching on the worldly parts of religions when their defining feature is having esoteric claims about the universe.

Was it religion when people wanted to fly despite common knowledge at the time being that people can't fly?

Birds existed, people knew stuff can fly.

But they also 'knew' that people aren't the kind of stuff that can fly.

"They didn't ACTUALLY transcend nature so it wasn't real vindication of hubris" looks like moving the goalposts to me.

Transhumanist thought, as I see it, lacks the inherent reverence that the religious mindset comes packaged with. (Yes there are Friendly AI worshippers and Roko's Basilisk doomers, but those are not the inherent parts of transhumanist thought.) In the end religion is not about entering Heaven or Hell, it's about using the promises of those states as a tool for society-building. I do not think transhumanism is about society-building first. I think transhumanism is about entering Heaven first (or Hell, according to doomers).

But they also 'knew' that people aren't the kind of stuff that can fly.

Did they? Or is it one of those self-congratulatory narratives written by their opponents, decades after the fact?

"They didn't ACTUALLY transcend nature so it wasn't real vindication of hubris" looks like moving the goalposts to me.

I don't think so. There's a few levels to this:

  • Reproducing something we know can be done, but is out of our reach. Aerial flight would go into this, but to take a current example, let's take warp drives. We know space does bendy things sometimes, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility to master that phenomenon, and turning into a method of transport. It is beyond our reach, the requirements to reach it might be absurd given our current understanding of the universe, but it doesn't particularly break any mechanics.
  • Doing something that, as far as we know can't be done. Let's say time travel. Ok, I don't remember if this goes into the "theoratically possible" bucket or it breaks mechanics, but let's just go with for the sake of argument. Sure, I'll accept that as a good curve ball, but it doesn't matter because:
  • We're talking about transhumanists. Their claim that uploading your consciousness into the cloud will constitute it's preservation in any meaningful way is a metaphysical one. Even actually achieving it does nothing to prove or disprove it. It's literally a belief in a soul.

Transhumanist thought, as I see it, lacks the inherent reverence that the religious mindset comes packaged with. (...) In the end religion is not about entering Heaven or Hell, it's about using the promises of those states as a tool for society-building. I do not think transhumanism is about society-building first. I think transhumanism is about entering Heaven first (or Hell, according to doomers).

I don't think a lot of religious people would agree about their religion being about society-building first, and I'm pretty sure that if any belief described itself as "entering Heaven / Hell first" they would instantly recognize it as religious.

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