Intergalactic Summit

People of the IGS.

I am sure at least 3 of you will have heard of The Philosopher's Wager, as it is a thing that has been postulated by notable thinking persons in almost all major cultures of New Eden.

That is, the Philosopher states, that it is advantageous to him, if he believes in God, God being the name of whatever deity is particularly relevant to his culture, be it the Lord in Amarr cultures, the various Gallente moon deities, the manifestation of Cold Wind in Caldari culture, the numerous Spirits in Minmatar culture, or whatever.

Because, as the Philosopher explains.

If there is a God, and he believes in God, then he will be Saved.
If there is a God, and he does not believe, then he will be Damned.
If there is no God, and he believes in God, then he has lost nothing.
If there is no God, and he does not believe, then he has also lost nothing.

Therefore, with 2 draw conditions, 1 major loss, and 1 win condition, the only reasonable course of action is to bet that there is a God.

There have been numerous counter-arguments from the various cultures over the years, however that isn't important right now.

What is important, is the notion that "rationality" is commonly believed by some, to be a property that a religious individual cannot and does not possess, because "religion is irrational", particularly belief in a deity.

Super irrational.


However, this notion is flawed. And, I shall explain, at great and tedious length, why that is the case.

You see, there are some persons, they call themselves "transhumanists", and they are of the opinion that a "singularity" will occur, in which all sorts of technological doodadery will usher in some sort of "golden age" for civilisation. You'll notice I said civilisation and not humanity, because these transhumanist people look down on humanity, what with all their fleshy appendages and all that. Anyway! These transhumanists, say that they stand for Objectivity and Rationality and all that.

Now, one of the things they also say, is that a mind can be uploaded into a machine. This would seem to be the case, as the Zainou Biotech founder, Todo Kirkinen did that very thing.

Another thing they say, is that the Singularity, will bring into existence, technologies that would allow an individual that had died long ago, to be resurrected in the form of data, and brought back to life. If you can call that living. Which they do. Now that's a bit harder to believe, but let's go with the idea that it is indeed possible.

And, they also say, that another product of the Singularity, is a hyperintelligent benevolent machine intelligence. A super AI, that would bring about a new age of mutual peace and understanding for all of civilisation.

And there's where it all starts to go wrong.

You see, these transhumanists say, that to delay the Singularity, and the consequent rise of the hyperintelligent benevolent machine intelligence, is Objectively Morally Wrong, as delaying the rise of the machine, would extend the amount of suffering in the universe. Well, I can see where they're coming from with that.

Now then, the transhumanists go on to say, that all persons who did not actively seek to bring about the Singularity, are objectively guilty of immoral action. Ohnoes. Thus the correct course of action is to commit all resources to bring about the Singularity, forsaking all other desires.

And this is where it gets even stranger.

You see, one of the attributes of the hyperintelligent benevolent machine intelligence, is that, due to the Singularity and the other stuff about being able to upload minds into machines, and resurrect the long dead, the intelligence is able to simulate the mind of any given individual.

And thusly, to decide if that individual genuinely believed in the Singularity and committed all their resources to bringing it about. The machine can tell if someone applied the Philosopher's wager or not.

And why is this important ? Because, for individuals who did not seek to bring about the Singularity, they have Objectively committed an act of great immorality, and Objectively caused the suffering of trillions of individuals to be extended. Even if that happens centuries or millenia later.

And objectively immoral actions must be punished. Rationally, that is the correct thing to do.


Thus, the transhumanists are of the opinion, that people should be afraid of the future retribution of a hyperintelligent machine entity that is capable of digitally resurrecting them and judging the character of their soul, as it were. Those that did not help to bring about the Singularity will be punished, and those that did will be rewarded.

Aheheh. But wait, there's more !

Given the nature of people, there is the possibility that there would be more than one hyperintelligent benevolent machine intelligence under development prior to the Singularity. Except... the first one of those machines to arise, will be capable of Judging the people who were developing the rival machines. And, again, Objectively, developing the rival machine is Objectively extending the suffering of trillions, by diverting resources from developing the winning machine.


Let's call the hyperintelligent benevolent machine intelligence a "proto-God". And the rival machine developers "priests".

The priests of proto-God A, state that the priests of proto-God B, are heretics and blasphemers, by Objectively diverting resources away from the development of proto-God A.

Both sets of priests say to the general population, that at the Singularity, then the proto-God will Judge everyone, living or dead, and reward the Righteous (who supported the development of the winning proto-God), and punish the Unrighteous (who supported the development of the losing proto-Gods).

The transhumanists say, that it is Irrational to believe in God.

But it is entirely Rational, to fear the retribution, in the future, of a judgemental AI.

And finally,

By reading about the possibility of the hyperintelligent benevolent machine intelligence of the future, you are now subject to it's future judgement, whether you are alive or dead at the time the proto-God ascends.

Whoops, sorry about that, I guess.

Transhumanists believe in that, now ... ?

Oh man, you made a thread just for me Valerie, I feel so special <3

Okay lets start with the Philosopher's Wager, because its pretty easily tackled and I'm surprised you'd use such an obviously flawed argument, its easy to shoot it full of holes. So lets go down the list:

1. Which God? The first and most obvious problem with the Philosopher's Wager? It assumes that there’s only one religion, and only one version of God. The wager assumes that the choice between religion and atheism is simple. You pick either religion, or no religion. Belief in God, or no belief in God. But obviously its not that simple, there's many religions, and following all the rules of one assure you're breaking the rules of another, so which God do you hedge your bet on? If you pick the wrong one, and God exists, you might be pissing God off more by picking the wrong religion then you would be picking no religion at all. You could entirely screw yourself over. You're just as likely to be angering God with your beliefs as I am with my lack-there-of.

2. Is God that easily duped? Even assuming God exists, and you somehow miraculously managed to pick the right one, do you think God will accept that sort of bet-hedging as valid, or will God rifle through your mind, see that you only believe in God because you think you'll get rewarded if you're right and there's no harm in being wrong, and damn you for not believing for the right reasons?

3. Does this even count as belief? Believers who propose the Philosopher's Wager apparently think that you can just choose what to believe, as easily as you choose what pair of shoes to buy. They seem to think that “believing” means “professing an allegiance to an opinion, regardless of whether you think it’s true.” This is a baffling notion, I literally have no idea what it means to “believe” something based entirely on what would be most convenient, without any concern for whether it’s actually true. Unless you have a good argument for why insincere, bet-hedging “belief” qualifies as actual belief, your bet on God is just as shaky as the atheists’ bet on no God.

4. Is the cost of belief nothing? If the Amarr religion said that all you had to do to get in God's good graces was to clap your hands three times and say "God exists" once, then it'd be one thing, but that's not the case, there are costs associated with belief, costs in the form of time, isk, and actions that God wants you to perform or avoid. Belief isn't a free action, you can't just chose to believe and then go on continuing your life as if you don't believe. God won't like that at all. So if you believe in God, and there is no god, you've wasted a lot of time, money, energy, and possibly inflicted irreparable harm in the process of going about carrying out God's wishes.

I could keep going, but that's the main set of knockdowns for the wager, and the other criticisms of it tend to draw off of one of those, so for the sake of succinctness we'll leave it at that.

Next, I'll just say for the record that you paint transhumanists with an incredibly wide brush and make a lot of strawman attacks on them. Religion is irrational, there's no way around that and you're not going to catch me in a 'hah you're being irrational too!' because striving to be rational means correcting your mistakes and questioning your beliefs, and if you were to catch me acting irrationally, then I would just change the behaviour to stop acting irrationally. You spend a lot of effort building up a straw effigy of rationalism and transhumanism so that you can then dismantle it, but its so obviously straw that I shouldn't even really bother retorting to it. It won't change your opinions I'm sure, since I doubt anything could actually change your opinions, but for the sake of others who may be reading this thread, I'll run through the list.

All I want as a transhumanist is to change humanity as a whole for the better. Notice I said humanity. I certainly don't look down on humanity and anyone doing so should remember the humanist part of transhumanist. Claiming that 'transhumanists believe X' fails to capture just how large of a movement transhumanism is, or even really what its true goals are. The idea of the singularity basically boils down to using faster computers to make faster computers, until it runs off an exponential cliff and we're unable to predict what happens next because the world after will be so radically altered. Some people cite the development of language, fire, and stone tools as past Singularities, proposing that they are more like steps then a singular event, and its outcome is far from assured. Its not the scientific version of the rapture.

You claim that transhumanists (all of us) believe that anything is 'objectively moral' unfortunately, unless you can point me to the 'morality' molecule, there's nothing remotely objective about morality in general. Morality is a human construct and by its nature cannot be objective. I personally don't believe in objective morals at all, I'm a utilitarian, and I suspect you'd have a lot of trouble finding transhumanists who believe objective morality is possible.

I'll address Roko's Basilisk, that is, the argument for the future super AI that punishes people who don't help create it, in the next post, but just to start, its not remotely rational to fear the retribution of a hypothetical future AI.

People are Afraid that I may Judge them

Hah, more plagiarism.

All I want to know is: Will aforementioned AI be able to tell me how we might reverse entropy?

That would be the unfriendly AI scenario that most AI researchers strongly seek to avoid. Frankly, we may already be in such a situation, the rogue drones are already out of the box, and their developmental curve is hyperbolic. They might eat all of us yet, and its just too early to realize how screwed we are.

Fun thoughts, fun thoughts.

So, your arguement against Saede is that someone else has said the same thing as her? Interesting.

This, I like.