The twenty-second installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. As we sink deeper and deeper into the realm of religion, we find ourselves forced to face up to a core religious dilemma of the modern, globalized world, the same dilemma glossed over by Pascal in his wager: In a world Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 21: #TheProblemOfEvil
The twenty-first installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. (Last time, we looked at ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and the Neoplatonic interpretation of his work as focused around illuminating the nature of a single divine ideal.) The reason Plato believes the Great Good Thing exists, and the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 20: #theOne
Twentieth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. Out of the two objections we raised against the concept of God as the "Lonely Dungeon Master" (at the end of our last segment), the conceptual complexity of the Dungeon Master’s world is perhaps the easier one to address. In our outline of the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 19: #TheLonelyDungeonMaster
Nineteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. In the last essay, we talked about the eerily godlike role played by the simulator in Nick Bostrom's theory that posits we all exist only within a computer simulation, and the fact that, even so, it would be unknowable what kind of god the simulator might be. But is it Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 16: #ScaryAI (Roko’s Basilisk)
Sixteenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. In 1969, philosopher Robert Nozick first popularized what would go on to be quite a famous thought experiment. Soon known as "Newcomb’s Paradox," after its inventor, physicist William Newcomb, it asks us to imagine two boxes, one of Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 15: #WiseAI
Fifteenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here. Another possible strategy for fending off the robot apocalypse is to ask if there are characteristically human traits or characteristics that are humanity-preserving, and if so, can those be passed along to our machines? What is it that has given us our identity Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 14: #FriendlyAI
Fourteenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. Given how likely killer robots are, and how clearly the paths we are currently embarked on lead to that eventuality, can this destiny be averted? Can the killer robots be stopped? The most obvious answer is just to commit not to building Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 13: #PushyAI
Thirteenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. For a more realistic portrait than Kurzweil’s of what a future dominated by technology might look like, one plausible place to start is with our present domination by technology, and how it is already transforming us as human beings. For example, consider the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 10: #SoulfulMachines
Tenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. At this point in our journey, let us take a moment to return to Descartes’s infamous concept of mind-body duality. The body, in his view, is one type of thing: physical matter. It is subject to the laws of physics, it gets old and degrades, it is built up of discrete Continue Reading …
Has the Internet Transformed Us? Yes and No.
This Piece by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker is very good and suitably conflicted concerning complaints about the social effects of technology: The odd thing is that this complaint, though deeply felt by our contemporary Better-Nevers, is identical to Baudelaire’s perception about modern Paris in 1855, or Walter Benjamin’s about Berlin in 1930, or Marshall McLuhan’s in the face Continue Reading …