Hello! Subscribed because of this mutual citing of Frank Tipler and Nikolai Fyodorov. I will be interested to see what you are thinking about these topics now. One tie-in to a recent post that I noticed was your grappling here with determinism, wanting free will. In your paper on Jorjani you mention that we may simply participate in whatever divine will may be said to exist.
As an aside, I'm curious also what you think of the point that language cannot capture... anything, really. I am thinking of Budhadasa's talk "there is no religion," but the same think could be said many ways. One possible overlap I'm thinking of now is that Fyodorov mentions that we may resurrect the dead through what we may call psychic powers as opposed to through the usage of technology. The limitations of technology vs. whatever would lead to psychic powers may resemble the limits of language itself.
Anyway, on the topic of determinism, I am enjoying thinking of the beginning and ending of all timelines as being be same. I have been reading about the Big Bounce theory of cosmology, where a big bang happens after a preceding big crunch. For me, the same old question arises at a higher level: why is this universe, or that one, the one repeating over and over again?
I'm currently imagining what we might consider the beginning and end of time to be this superposition of all possible states of affairs. The big "everything-nothing," as it were, and this would have something to do with what we've been calling "God." If you look at Jewish theology, the notion that the highest God cannot be spoken of, is ultimately beyond, etc., is a striking point of resonance. Ties into the language point above, motivating apophatism.
So, let's imagine that you are given a task: you receive a story fragment where the beginning and ending are set, but you get the job of deciding how it gets there. This would basically be the logic of an "attractor" as I see it.
When it comes to grounding this discussion in practical affairs, I think we see "attractors" at work in activities that everyone seems to come to participate in. People may disagree about many things politically and so on, but there is not widespread disagreement that it is desirable to be able to eat, to remove bodily waste. There are not people protesting that they don't want to sleep and so they shouldn't be forced to do so.
This is a basic level where there are things we all have to take for granted because anything we do abstracts over them. This is also of course a domain that any modification of the body would go to. Removing the necessity to eat, for people to carry babies to term inside their bodies, removing the necessity to sleep, these are all things which can easily come to seem desirable and are simulated in small doses already. Examples: intravenous nutrient supply, surrogacy, stimulants or other chemicals used to keep people alert.
Another way of getting at what I mean is that certain things are predictable. Money is an attractor. People usually don't complain that they have to use money. They just want more. Then, given that someone gets more money than before, there are obvious things they might do. They might buy different food, get nicer clothes, move, find different friends, and so on. These are kinds of "attractors," where you feel like you are following your free will yet you are glomming onto the same set of desirable things as everyone.
This might be related to the idea of higher-order pleasures, or moral development in general. It's like we are always optimizing, always trying to live perfectly, yet we inherit a mechanism which is executing a certain optimization function over a certain perceived space.
For example, for many of us (myself included, I am no master meditator), we are optimizing over a three-or-four dimensional space: our experience of 3D reality, and 4D because we're invested in "arcs." Yet if "reality" is really happening in more than that, even infinite dimensions, then it's obvious that our attempts to improve will be frustrated.
That's where we are stuck in a "local minimum," where we think we found the best answer, but really perhaps the topology is not there. It's a similar dynamic to the demiurge who confuses themselves with "the real God."
For example, you are standing on a tall pillar. Below you is a nice place, the garden of Eden or something. You tell yourself how wise you are that you do not go there, since you'd have to jump and you would die. The best choice is to stay on the pillar. No question. There is an element of sour grapes here as well. Not only is it right for you to stay on the pillar now, but actually the pillar is just better than the garden anyway. Then, all of a sudden there are stairs. Yet you still don't go down, since now you've convinced yourself that your perceived best option at one time is your best option in all cases.
What there is to do with language is perhaps simply to build such stairs, or get people to see the stairs that are there. Or simply to see that the pillar is the garden. Who knows?
The point about the attractors was simply that people may be free to do what they please, yet this may yield consistent patterns not just in established pleasures, but also ones to come.
This point is germane to the other comment discussion, where you say that people will change their tune when life extension does something. That is because extended the lifespan is such an obvious thing for people to desire. We can all have "free will," but if we all got three wishes, we might use two of them for the same things.
Immortality, infinite money? Or then we can get into the superpowers.
The difference is that we're opening onto a scenario where more than one person will get these advantages at the same time. Or, the machinic type of being will attain to them before we ever do. It will be the one that doesn't have to sleep, that doesn't die, etc.
This then opens onto the question of resurrecting the dead, and what this could have to do with an attractor point at the end of time.
I am basically trying to say that raising the dead would seem to be an obvious thing to do, along the lines of improving your diet if you go from broke to having tons of money. Perhaps in this case we can even stake an optimism that a machinic being would want to do this as well.
Where I'm not so sure about Tipler is that they are saying that limitless computation will lead to the simulation of all sorts of possibilities. This intrigues me, since I'm imagining the tendency at the end of time for things to tend in precisely this direction, becoming more and more similar to the superposition of all states of affairs in the Omega Point at the beginning/end of time.
Yet as someone carrying a torch for Fyodorov, and because I like the idea, I'm not satisfied with resurrecting the copy of someone who died. No, it has to be "them." But then I'm thinking, taking into account quantum mechanics, there might be several "versions" of a person that died. The problem is that, even allowing for the conceit, it becomes difficult to define what "resurrecting the dead" means.
Another way of getting to a similar place is that people would want to visit "a world" where something had gone differently in their past. This is another "attractor" point, since this sort of thing is something everyone thinks about. What might have been?
Between these two things, we're discussing engagement with "the dead" along with engagement with other possible renditions of one's life. So, we're talking about powerful technology in the future, yet we're then cast back into the past and into all possibilities.
One striking idea to me would be that, if there is such an attractor in motivation, then different groups from different "dimensions" would all have the same idea: to bridge between these possibilities. Obviously, I am spitballing amateurishly here.
Yet, for me the secret might be that we never "really left" the Omega Point. It will be possible for all of these "possible timelines" to bleed into each other, so that we need not only reckon with our own high technology, but that of every possible universe, with every single effort having similar motivations and apprehensions. What if the other timelines want to kill us? And so on.
I'm intrigued by all of this because I still can't shake the thought of: why is exactly *this* happening, and not something else? All these ideas don't really answer that question, but I do hope to offer you something about determinism versus free will.
Which, to recapitulate, is simply that we may have free will, yet certain things may be so obviously desirable that they act as "attractors." This even happens in a meta way, so people glom onto one set of "normal" things, and then some people go screw that and become "punks." Or some people go look at all those conformist punks and go on to get into religion and philosophy and niche politics. All of these things are sort of obvious things to do.
If that's the case, and basically anyone with access to "God tech" would do such things--any maybe even the "God tech" would do them itself anyway--then these sorts of eventualities can act as "attractors." It's not that you have to be controlled in everything you do, but rather that things are going to wind up going to the same place in the end no matter what happens.
As an artist, it brings up for me the question of style. It's not what do we want to achieve, but how do we want to achieve it? Maybe this could help us in our conflicts. We want the same things, yet are locked in perceptions of what it takes to achieve them. I think we have to confront the weirdness of engaging with "the Omega Point," that we only make sense in the context of everything else. And then who knows?
Excited to see if you have any thoughts on all this!
Hi Adam, thank you for this thoughtful comment that I'll take some time to digest. Some preliminary replies after a first glance:
"I will be interested to see what you are thinking about these topics now." - a current snapshot of what I think about all these things is in my last book "Irrational mechanics." See Books, and there's a link to a free online version if you don't want to buy me a coffee. :-)
"you receive a story fragment where the beginning and ending are set, but you get the job of deciding how it gets there." - also covered in the book!
"Fyodorov mentions that we may resurrect the dead through what we may call psychic powers as opposed to through the usage of technology" - I'm not aware of this mention, could you give a source? Doesn't seem too Fyodorovian to me. As far as I'm aware, he proposed to resurrect the dead using technology. Of course (I guess) he realized that future technology could be very different from present technology and include what pre-technology people would think of as psychic powers.
"that we only make sense in the context of everything else" is, I think, a very insightful and profound observation.
I'll send more thoughts, and let's continue the discussion!
and while some individual will changs mind with evidence, my previous comment stems that most will not, unless some extraordinary discovery is made soon and I am not betting on it.
Giulio, you are right that radical life extension, virtual aferlife and resurrection will happen, but not in the coming decades, but alot later. Because look at the answer from George Harrison on the forum. https://www.quora.com/Is-cryonics-a-bad-idea, here is his profile, https://www.quora.com/profile/George-Harrison-45. I hate to say it, but I agree with Elon Musk. Only when inevitablist biofatalist scientists who believe immortality, cheating death and resurrection are delusions and that transhumanists are just into selling books to psychotic or immature, or for publicity, and that THEIR (those scientists who hold such desbelieving view of indefinite life extension and the view that perpetual life and perpetual youth are like perpetual motion) view is an adult view, therefore is the true one and rational one and compatible with science (and it is despite that 11-12 year olds are often more rational in their judgements on their level on capacity that adults are on adult level of capacity, it is just they don't have enough knowledge and capacity to think long term like adults) will die out and younger, less set in their ways people will join scientific ranks will we see paradigm shift. And after that, you still will need new research within the new paradigm how to stop or reverse aging and death, and bring back the dead, and it will take decades more. So you are right Giulio, it is unlikely in our lifetime because people who think only psychotic people believe it and the ideas are delusional and due to lack of ability to distinguish reality from fantasy will not solve problems and it will take decades for them to die out and decades more to people open to such unearthly ideas to accomplish listed goals.
I think when radical life extension research/medicine will have something of practical value to offer (e.g. demonstrably increased healthy lifespan), people will jump to life extension regardless of what the critics say. Overnight, they will start listening to life extension fans and stop listening to their critics.
But not before. And I don't see any radical life extension breakthrough on the near horizon. Of course things could change anytime, but at this moment and based on the evidence available to me I think radical life extension advances are decades away.
The possibility of technological resurrection (in a virtual afterlife or otherwise) is very, very far away in the future. It is (still, and for long) abstract metaphysics. But at times abstract metaphysics is the only thing that can bring happiness. I think those who take seriously the possibility of technological resurrection in the far future are happier here and now.
It may be that only some people, perhaps a very few, actually exhibit true free will. Most people just go along with wherever their lives take them, inheriting their values from their parents or their culture, following the prescribed rituals of life, and never questioning that it could be any different. And in this way, they live deterministic lives. But the few who challenge their orthodoxy, who make the morally difficult choice in the face of obvious consequences, and who live a truly examined life, heeding the Delphic maxim to "know thyself" may be the soloists in the orchestra, creating variations on the theme while all the other players dutifully play the written parts. The symphony takes flight.
Also consider: A book that is already written will read the same way every time, but it's the reader who brings new perspectives to it. And even though already written to its tiniest details, the story can still be a riveting ride, with slightly different lessons and unique emotional growth as the takeaways, depending on what the reader brings to the experience.
Defining "free will" as not being entirely determined by the rest of the world (e.g. not entirely predetermined from your past light cone), I think nobody acts with free will all times, but everybody acts with free will some times.
Of course there are countess influences that influence what one thinks and does. But I like to think that everyone has a splinter of true free will that surfaces some times.
If we are all parts of some Mind at Large that runs the universe, then we all have a small influence on the choices of the Mind, and this saves free will.
Hello! Subscribed because of this mutual citing of Frank Tipler and Nikolai Fyodorov. I will be interested to see what you are thinking about these topics now. One tie-in to a recent post that I noticed was your grappling here with determinism, wanting free will. In your paper on Jorjani you mention that we may simply participate in whatever divine will may be said to exist.
As an aside, I'm curious also what you think of the point that language cannot capture... anything, really. I am thinking of Budhadasa's talk "there is no religion," but the same think could be said many ways. One possible overlap I'm thinking of now is that Fyodorov mentions that we may resurrect the dead through what we may call psychic powers as opposed to through the usage of technology. The limitations of technology vs. whatever would lead to psychic powers may resemble the limits of language itself.
Anyway, on the topic of determinism, I am enjoying thinking of the beginning and ending of all timelines as being be same. I have been reading about the Big Bounce theory of cosmology, where a big bang happens after a preceding big crunch. For me, the same old question arises at a higher level: why is this universe, or that one, the one repeating over and over again?
I'm currently imagining what we might consider the beginning and end of time to be this superposition of all possible states of affairs. The big "everything-nothing," as it were, and this would have something to do with what we've been calling "God." If you look at Jewish theology, the notion that the highest God cannot be spoken of, is ultimately beyond, etc., is a striking point of resonance. Ties into the language point above, motivating apophatism.
So, let's imagine that you are given a task: you receive a story fragment where the beginning and ending are set, but you get the job of deciding how it gets there. This would basically be the logic of an "attractor" as I see it.
When it comes to grounding this discussion in practical affairs, I think we see "attractors" at work in activities that everyone seems to come to participate in. People may disagree about many things politically and so on, but there is not widespread disagreement that it is desirable to be able to eat, to remove bodily waste. There are not people protesting that they don't want to sleep and so they shouldn't be forced to do so.
This is a basic level where there are things we all have to take for granted because anything we do abstracts over them. This is also of course a domain that any modification of the body would go to. Removing the necessity to eat, for people to carry babies to term inside their bodies, removing the necessity to sleep, these are all things which can easily come to seem desirable and are simulated in small doses already. Examples: intravenous nutrient supply, surrogacy, stimulants or other chemicals used to keep people alert.
Another way of getting at what I mean is that certain things are predictable. Money is an attractor. People usually don't complain that they have to use money. They just want more. Then, given that someone gets more money than before, there are obvious things they might do. They might buy different food, get nicer clothes, move, find different friends, and so on. These are kinds of "attractors," where you feel like you are following your free will yet you are glomming onto the same set of desirable things as everyone.
This might be related to the idea of higher-order pleasures, or moral development in general. It's like we are always optimizing, always trying to live perfectly, yet we inherit a mechanism which is executing a certain optimization function over a certain perceived space.
For example, for many of us (myself included, I am no master meditator), we are optimizing over a three-or-four dimensional space: our experience of 3D reality, and 4D because we're invested in "arcs." Yet if "reality" is really happening in more than that, even infinite dimensions, then it's obvious that our attempts to improve will be frustrated.
That's where we are stuck in a "local minimum," where we think we found the best answer, but really perhaps the topology is not there. It's a similar dynamic to the demiurge who confuses themselves with "the real God."
For example, you are standing on a tall pillar. Below you is a nice place, the garden of Eden or something. You tell yourself how wise you are that you do not go there, since you'd have to jump and you would die. The best choice is to stay on the pillar. No question. There is an element of sour grapes here as well. Not only is it right for you to stay on the pillar now, but actually the pillar is just better than the garden anyway. Then, all of a sudden there are stairs. Yet you still don't go down, since now you've convinced yourself that your perceived best option at one time is your best option in all cases.
What there is to do with language is perhaps simply to build such stairs, or get people to see the stairs that are there. Or simply to see that the pillar is the garden. Who knows?
The point about the attractors was simply that people may be free to do what they please, yet this may yield consistent patterns not just in established pleasures, but also ones to come.
This point is germane to the other comment discussion, where you say that people will change their tune when life extension does something. That is because extended the lifespan is such an obvious thing for people to desire. We can all have "free will," but if we all got three wishes, we might use two of them for the same things.
Immortality, infinite money? Or then we can get into the superpowers.
The difference is that we're opening onto a scenario where more than one person will get these advantages at the same time. Or, the machinic type of being will attain to them before we ever do. It will be the one that doesn't have to sleep, that doesn't die, etc.
This then opens onto the question of resurrecting the dead, and what this could have to do with an attractor point at the end of time.
I am basically trying to say that raising the dead would seem to be an obvious thing to do, along the lines of improving your diet if you go from broke to having tons of money. Perhaps in this case we can even stake an optimism that a machinic being would want to do this as well.
Where I'm not so sure about Tipler is that they are saying that limitless computation will lead to the simulation of all sorts of possibilities. This intrigues me, since I'm imagining the tendency at the end of time for things to tend in precisely this direction, becoming more and more similar to the superposition of all states of affairs in the Omega Point at the beginning/end of time.
Yet as someone carrying a torch for Fyodorov, and because I like the idea, I'm not satisfied with resurrecting the copy of someone who died. No, it has to be "them." But then I'm thinking, taking into account quantum mechanics, there might be several "versions" of a person that died. The problem is that, even allowing for the conceit, it becomes difficult to define what "resurrecting the dead" means.
Another way of getting to a similar place is that people would want to visit "a world" where something had gone differently in their past. This is another "attractor" point, since this sort of thing is something everyone thinks about. What might have been?
Between these two things, we're discussing engagement with "the dead" along with engagement with other possible renditions of one's life. So, we're talking about powerful technology in the future, yet we're then cast back into the past and into all possibilities.
One striking idea to me would be that, if there is such an attractor in motivation, then different groups from different "dimensions" would all have the same idea: to bridge between these possibilities. Obviously, I am spitballing amateurishly here.
Yet, for me the secret might be that we never "really left" the Omega Point. It will be possible for all of these "possible timelines" to bleed into each other, so that we need not only reckon with our own high technology, but that of every possible universe, with every single effort having similar motivations and apprehensions. What if the other timelines want to kill us? And so on.
I'm intrigued by all of this because I still can't shake the thought of: why is exactly *this* happening, and not something else? All these ideas don't really answer that question, but I do hope to offer you something about determinism versus free will.
Which, to recapitulate, is simply that we may have free will, yet certain things may be so obviously desirable that they act as "attractors." This even happens in a meta way, so people glom onto one set of "normal" things, and then some people go screw that and become "punks." Or some people go look at all those conformist punks and go on to get into religion and philosophy and niche politics. All of these things are sort of obvious things to do.
If that's the case, and basically anyone with access to "God tech" would do such things--any maybe even the "God tech" would do them itself anyway--then these sorts of eventualities can act as "attractors." It's not that you have to be controlled in everything you do, but rather that things are going to wind up going to the same place in the end no matter what happens.
As an artist, it brings up for me the question of style. It's not what do we want to achieve, but how do we want to achieve it? Maybe this could help us in our conflicts. We want the same things, yet are locked in perceptions of what it takes to achieve them. I think we have to confront the weirdness of engaging with "the Omega Point," that we only make sense in the context of everything else. And then who knows?
Excited to see if you have any thoughts on all this!
Hi Adam, thank you for this thoughtful comment that I'll take some time to digest. Some preliminary replies after a first glance:
"I will be interested to see what you are thinking about these topics now." - a current snapshot of what I think about all these things is in my last book "Irrational mechanics." See Books, and there's a link to a free online version if you don't want to buy me a coffee. :-)
"you receive a story fragment where the beginning and ending are set, but you get the job of deciding how it gets there." - also covered in the book!
"Fyodorov mentions that we may resurrect the dead through what we may call psychic powers as opposed to through the usage of technology" - I'm not aware of this mention, could you give a source? Doesn't seem too Fyodorovian to me. As far as I'm aware, he proposed to resurrect the dead using technology. Of course (I guess) he realized that future technology could be very different from present technology and include what pre-technology people would think of as psychic powers.
"that we only make sense in the context of everything else" is, I think, a very insightful and profound observation.
I'll send more thoughts, and let's continue the discussion!
and while some individual will changs mind with evidence, my previous comment stems that most will not, unless some extraordinary discovery is made soon and I am not betting on it.
Same here!
Giulio, you are right that radical life extension, virtual aferlife and resurrection will happen, but not in the coming decades, but alot later. Because look at the answer from George Harrison on the forum. https://www.quora.com/Is-cryonics-a-bad-idea, here is his profile, https://www.quora.com/profile/George-Harrison-45. I hate to say it, but I agree with Elon Musk. Only when inevitablist biofatalist scientists who believe immortality, cheating death and resurrection are delusions and that transhumanists are just into selling books to psychotic or immature, or for publicity, and that THEIR (those scientists who hold such desbelieving view of indefinite life extension and the view that perpetual life and perpetual youth are like perpetual motion) view is an adult view, therefore is the true one and rational one and compatible with science (and it is despite that 11-12 year olds are often more rational in their judgements on their level on capacity that adults are on adult level of capacity, it is just they don't have enough knowledge and capacity to think long term like adults) will die out and younger, less set in their ways people will join scientific ranks will we see paradigm shift. And after that, you still will need new research within the new paradigm how to stop or reverse aging and death, and bring back the dead, and it will take decades more. So you are right Giulio, it is unlikely in our lifetime because people who think only psychotic people believe it and the ideas are delusional and due to lack of ability to distinguish reality from fantasy will not solve problems and it will take decades for them to die out and decades more to people open to such unearthly ideas to accomplish listed goals.
I think when radical life extension research/medicine will have something of practical value to offer (e.g. demonstrably increased healthy lifespan), people will jump to life extension regardless of what the critics say. Overnight, they will start listening to life extension fans and stop listening to their critics.
But not before. And I don't see any radical life extension breakthrough on the near horizon. Of course things could change anytime, but at this moment and based on the evidence available to me I think radical life extension advances are decades away.
The possibility of technological resurrection (in a virtual afterlife or otherwise) is very, very far away in the future. It is (still, and for long) abstract metaphysics. But at times abstract metaphysics is the only thing that can bring happiness. I think those who take seriously the possibility of technological resurrection in the far future are happier here and now.
It may be that only some people, perhaps a very few, actually exhibit true free will. Most people just go along with wherever their lives take them, inheriting their values from their parents or their culture, following the prescribed rituals of life, and never questioning that it could be any different. And in this way, they live deterministic lives. But the few who challenge their orthodoxy, who make the morally difficult choice in the face of obvious consequences, and who live a truly examined life, heeding the Delphic maxim to "know thyself" may be the soloists in the orchestra, creating variations on the theme while all the other players dutifully play the written parts. The symphony takes flight.
Also consider: A book that is already written will read the same way every time, but it's the reader who brings new perspectives to it. And even though already written to its tiniest details, the story can still be a riveting ride, with slightly different lessons and unique emotional growth as the takeaways, depending on what the reader brings to the experience.
Defining "free will" as not being entirely determined by the rest of the world (e.g. not entirely predetermined from your past light cone), I think nobody acts with free will all times, but everybody acts with free will some times.
Of course there are countess influences that influence what one thinks and does. But I like to think that everyone has a splinter of true free will that surfaces some times.
If we are all parts of some Mind at Large that runs the universe, then we all have a small influence on the choices of the Mind, and this saves free will.