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Saints & Simulators 23: #SimulatorShowdown

August 22, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

The twenty-third and final installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. Welcome to the final installment of our series, Saints & Simulators. All along we've been exploring the overlap between modern high technology, traditional religion, and all the contested philosophical battleground in between.  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 22: #ThePerennialPhilosophy

July 31, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

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

July 24, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

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

July 11, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Plato

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

July 3, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

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 18: #Gaia

June 20, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Eighteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. The reason, perhaps, that Professor Nick Bostrom’s demonstration of the probability of God’s existence has received so little attention and notice (especially as compared to the stir and commotion caused by his demonstration of the probability  Continue Reading …

Saints and Simulators 17: #PascalReloaded

June 6, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

Seventeenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here. Last week we discussed Newcomb's Paradox, a thought experiment about the rational response to an omniscient being, and also Roko's Basilisk, the frightening digital boogeyman the paradox spawned in the minds of those who pursued the train of thought too far. It  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 16: #ScaryAI (Roko’s Basilisk)

May 30, 2019 by Chris Sunami 1 Comment

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

May 9, 2019 by Chris Sunami 1 Comment

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

May 2, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

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

April 25, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

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 12: #BadAI

April 18, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Twelfth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. In 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation, the second major iteration of the durable televised Star Trek science fiction franchise, introduced a terrifying new villain called the Borg. An unhallowed melding of a humanlike life form with  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 11: #GoodAI

April 4, 2019 by Chris Sunami 3 Comments

Eleventh in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. For many of the people who find Bostrom’s logic persuasive, the underlying reason is a concept called the “technological singularity.” Named by mathematician John von Neumann after the physicists’ term “singularity,” meaning the collapse of time and space into a  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 10: #SoulfulMachines

March 28, 2019 by Chris Sunami 3 Comments

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 …

Saints & Simulators 9: #ChaosAndEmergence

March 21, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Ninth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. The paired opposite to reductionism is called emergentism, and in recent years it has begun to gain an increasing number of advocates. In summary, it means that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Unexpected behaviors and properties can emerge, even from simple  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 8: #ArtificiallyIntelligent

March 14, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

Eighth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. At this point we have delayed the crux of the matter long enough. At root, Bostrom’s argument hinges on a single controversial question: Is it possible to truly create or simulate a person? Is there any point, with any level of technology, no matter how advanced, at  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 7: #GoingBayesian

March 7, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Seventh in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. We left off last week with the question of how much weight we should give to Nick Bostrom’s argument that we are not only possibly simulated, but likely to be so. This argument, or at least our representation of it, rests on two key claims: first, that our descendants  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 6: #AllYouZombies

February 28, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Sixth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. The sensory aspect of creating a convincing virtual-reality video game seems like a surmountable technical challenge, and the insertion of the real-world player into the game-world avoids the hard problem of consciousness. But video-game worlds are typically  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 5: #3MinuteUniverse

February 21, 2019 by Chris Sunami 2 Comments

Fifth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. The technological ability to emulate a convincing world is plausible in the not-so-distant future. We additionally know that the motivation to create one already exists, given the huge popularity of video games, and the amount of money and effort put into making them.  Continue Reading …

Saints & Simulators 4: #AloneInTheCyberverse

February 14, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

Fourth in a series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. Although it may not be immediately obvious, a consequential, load-bearing part of Bostrom’s argument that we are likely to exist within a simulation, is the question of motivation. Solving the why of whether we might be simulated is at least as important as the how. It  Continue Reading …

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