Based Camp - The Mormon Transhumanist Movement (An Interview)

00:00:00.000 The second president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association has, what, eight children?

00:00:04.580 Do you know if there's any second-generation transhumanist Mormons yet, i.e. kids where

00:00:09.820 this belief system has been successfully passed between generations?

00:00:13.240 All of my children are Mormon transhumanists.

00:00:15.880 They're all adults.

00:00:17.220 Oh, wow.

00:00:18.340 Wow.

00:00:19.140 So it's working.

00:00:20.040 Okay, then the next thing I really want to talk to you about, because I think this is

00:00:24.040 the most interesting thing about it, is the large following in Africa.

00:00:27.240 Yeah, so that's pretty recent.

00:00:30.480 I was approached earlier this year by a guy in Senegal whose name is Kwasi Ngesen, and

00:00:37.620 he was like, I really love what you guys are talking about.

00:00:41.160 He went to our website and read some things and was really excited about it, and he said,

00:00:45.740 I'd like to spread it to Africa. 0.57

00:00:47.520 And I guess he's a pretty good community builder, so suddenly we have almost 30 different groups

00:00:54.200 that he has opened up in various African countries.

00:00:57.240 And is currently sharing some ideas with them.

00:01:02.400 Would you like to know more?

00:01:04.040 Hello, everyone.

00:01:05.320 We have a very special guest here today that I am really excited and could not be more on

00:01:11.660 topic for our podcast, or I think of more interest to a lot of our listeners who are interested

00:01:16.360 in the more religious stuff.

00:01:17.460 But we have with us today the co-founders of the transhumanist Mormon branch of Mormonism,

00:01:25.160 or I'd say movement.

00:01:26.820 I don't like to say movement because I think it's a bit more than that.

00:01:29.700 And I'd really love you guys to introduce yourself.

00:01:33.020 And I'd love to start just by talking about what it is as a concept and how you see it as

00:01:39.260 contiguous with the traditional Mormon tradition.

00:01:41.460 Awesome.

00:01:43.440 I guess I'll start.

00:01:44.580 My name is Carl Youngblood.

00:01:45.840 I'm the current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

00:01:50.860 And I'm one of the co-founders of the association, and Lincoln is as well.

00:01:56.800 But there are several others.

00:01:58.240 So I feel I need to give credit to the whole group.

00:02:01.400 There's, I think, what was it, Lincoln?

00:02:02.940 Like 14 people or so who co-founded the association.

00:02:07.740 And I do want to clarify that several of us are active Latter-day Saints.

00:02:14.000 We consider ourselves to be kind of in the mainstream church as well, although it's not

00:02:20.020 required to be a member of the LDS church to be a member of the association.

00:02:24.900 So we have several active members.

00:02:28.760 We have some who are not active in the church.

00:02:31.560 That's a term we use for, like, whether you are a practicing member, I should say.

00:02:37.280 Sometimes we use this lingo inside Mormonism that is a little bit confusing.

00:02:41.820 So, yeah, there are practicing Latter-day Saints in our midst in the association.

00:02:48.360 There are others who are not practicing and others who've never even been Latter-day Saints,

00:02:53.460 but just found a lot of interesting things to talk about in the group and kind of gravitated

00:02:59.100 towards us for various reasons.

00:03:00.420 And I'll let Lincoln talk a little bit more about it as well.

00:03:04.780 Go ahead, Lincoln.

00:03:05.940 Sure.

00:03:06.340 Thanks, Carl.

00:03:07.280 Yeah, my name is Lincoln Cannon.

00:03:09.040 Like Carl said, I'm one of the co-founders of the association.

00:03:12.340 And I served as the association's president for 10 years from its inception until 2016.

00:03:18.740 As Carl pointed out, you know, there isn't any necessary strong distinction between a Mormon

00:03:26.360 transhumanist and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

00:03:30.260 Yeah, I've been mentioning that I've been figuring that out as I've been talking to more Mormons

00:03:35.040 where a lot of the beliefs that I see are very transhumanist sounding to me.

00:03:39.480 So it seems like a very natural evolution.

00:03:41.800 If it is such a natural evolution, why make the distinction at all?

00:03:46.740 Yeah.

00:03:47.200 So and a valuable part of that is that by making some things explicit, you emphasize them,

00:03:54.340 you bring them to mind, and you ensure their continuing maybe virility or even viability

00:04:02.000 within the culture.

00:04:03.420 And that's one of the things that we cared a lot about is that we wanted to call attention

00:04:07.660 to aspects, genuine aspects of Mormon culture and theology that we felt were very important,

00:04:14.820 are very important, and that merit more attention than perhaps the average Mormon gives them.

00:04:24.020 And so, you know, by organizing a movement around this, we call attention to those things,

00:04:30.320 we emphasize those things, and as a consequence, we cultivate those things within the culture.

00:04:34.900 So can you elaborate or highlight some of the things that you guys would be focusing more on

00:04:40.920 in your framing than a traditional Mormon community would?

00:04:45.080 Yeah, I'll go, I'll share a few things, and Lincoln can add to this.

00:04:49.340 I think one thing that is very important to us is this notion that there is no distinction

00:04:57.160 between spirit and matter in Mormon theology.

00:05:02.120 So, for example, from a philosophical point of view, the term for this would be called substance

00:05:08.380 monism, but it's this idea that, you know, the dualists in classical philosophy would say

00:05:15.500 that there is such a thing as spirit and such a thing as matter, and they are two separate

00:05:20.080 substances, and they will never meet.

00:05:22.400 And typically, they would say that spirit was of a higher order, it was something metaphysical,

00:05:29.120 and that everything physical was an approximation of a better reality that was in the realm of the spirit.

00:05:36.860 Mormonism eradicates that difference and basically says that all things are spirit

00:05:42.820 and all things are matter, essentially, like that they're all part of the same substance.

00:05:46.560 So, if there is such a thing as a spiritual phenomenon that is happening, Mormon theology 0.92

00:05:54.160 would say that that must be observable, comprehensible, measurable in some way, or it's not real.

00:06:01.980 So, I'd love to, oh, continue.

00:06:03.840 Well, really fast, I would just say that would mean that anything that appears to be miraculous

00:06:09.420 would still have some explanation, even if we don't fully understand it yet.

00:06:15.040 So, I'm going to draw a distinction on this point.

00:06:19.200 Are you describing something closer to like an Orson Pratt perception of spirit,

00:06:25.040 where spirit can be thought of in like spirit particles, basically, that could maybe one day

00:06:30.020 be studied, but are still a distinct thing from what we think of as the material human body?

00:06:35.820 Or is it more the way Simone and I think of it, where we think of it as the spirit as more

00:06:39.780 like a metaphor for just your genetics and the patterns that are existing within your brain?

00:06:46.500 Yeah.

00:06:46.780 So, it's interesting.

00:06:48.300 It sounds like, I mean, I'm happy about the fact that you've apparently researched some things.

00:06:54.760 There was this period of controversy where Brigham Young and Orson Pratt were arguing over

00:06:59.620 like what the nature of these, this spirit is, right?

00:07:03.940 Yeah.

00:07:04.140 And I would say that without getting too dogmatic on any particular way of conceiving it, I think

00:07:11.460 we're more focused on sort of the pragmatic aspects of how spirit, spiritual phenomenon may

00:07:17.180 be manifest in the world.

00:07:18.360 So, we probably gravitate more towards the approach that you and Simone are taking in

00:07:24.100 this regard, but I guess I have to tease that out a little more.

00:07:27.960 Lincoln, is there anything you want to add there?

00:07:29.740 Yeah.

00:07:30.740 I think that two very useful approximations of spirit in secular language would be aesthetics

00:07:39.040 and information.

00:07:41.500 And so, those both harmonize well with the kind of account that you were talking about.

00:07:46.980 And those accounts of spirit also work very well with Mormon scripture.

00:07:52.140 Mormon scripture intentionally equivocates between light and spirit and truth.

00:07:59.720 And as a consequence of that, you read scriptures where you can understand light and spirit and

00:08:06.560 truth to be interchangeable.

00:08:10.020 And once you've done that, it's not a big leap to thinking you're talking about something

00:08:15.580 like information and aesthetics.

00:08:17.640 Yeah.

00:08:18.500 Well, this, like our perspective on this, just in case listeners are wondering, is spirit

00:08:22.720 can best be thought of as an emergent phenomenon that comes from specific types of complex patterns?

00:08:28.780 So, what is interesting about the framing that we would use for spirit, it would intrinsically

00:08:36.340 mean that higher order types of spirits can come to exist than potentially exist today through

00:08:43.980 the endeavors of human work, which sounds somewhat similar to, I don't know, your guys' beliefs

00:08:49.660 on things or...

00:08:50.320 Yeah, I mean, what you've described really resonates strongly with me, that there are

00:08:55.500 emergent properties, both in the human body itself.

00:09:00.220 You think about how we evolve from lower life forms that eventually exhibited a sufficient degree of

00:09:08.540 complexity to where emergent phenomena like the ability to think and to express yourself in words and to do amazing feats.

00:09:16.880 And when you look at human organizations at a macroscopic level or imagine them that way, you can start to see even more interesting sociological phenomena occur.

00:09:29.820 And we have as well, you know, the Christian Pauline metaphor of the body of Christ, where he described the, you know, all of the members of Christ's church as a kind of single body that if you could look at it from far away, would each have appendages and members and organs and each person is doing something useful.

00:09:52.460 We may not be sure what it is, like, maybe I'm the spleen and no one can see what my purpose is other than to sit there and be annoying.

00:09:59.720 But, you know, there's probably some version, something that each person is contributing, hopefully, that is benefiting the whole, right?

00:10:07.860 So.

00:10:08.800 Yeah.

00:10:09.580 Just for listeners who may not be familiar with the concept of emergent properties, because it's something that people who talk in this space would be very familiar with.

00:10:15.940 You can think of it as, like, you broadly understand how, like, H2O molecules look, kind of, how they interact with each other, but that them interacting in mass leads to the concept that we know of as wetness.

00:10:29.240 You don't think that there's some extra spiritual thing that's added to the water to make the wetness appear.

00:10:35.080 You just understand that this very different phenomenon seems to emerge when these specific things are interacting in a way that individually you can understand, and you can understand why they might lead to something that at a higher order looks like wetness.

00:10:48.740 But the actual moment it turns from water molecules interacting to wetness is something that our brains just are not structured to understand or to grasp.

00:10:59.780 You could almost say that, like, you need to have some level of abstraction to even comprehend wetness, right?

00:11:08.480 It's like, if you had to think about the individual movements of every single H2O molecule, you would get lost in the shuffle.

00:11:17.620 You wouldn't be able to observe the emergent property, right?

00:11:21.860 I really want to focus or talk a bit about this argument that you sent me that Lincoln came up with.

00:11:26.320 Lincoln, I'd love it if you could present it.

00:11:28.080 I forget the name of it, but it's very similar to arguments that we have laid out with, like, I think minor aesthetic differences that highlight the difference between our communities.

00:11:37.660 And I think a really fun way that people might be surprised about the things we disagree on.

00:11:42.560 So I'd love to hear this argument presented for our audience.

00:11:46.140 Sure.

00:11:46.700 I think you're referring to the new God argument, right?

00:11:48.860 Yes.

00:11:49.220 Yeah, I can give you a nutshell version of that with the caveat that there's a great deal of potential complexity to understanding it.

00:11:59.920 And sometimes the nutshell version gives people just enough to misunderstand it.

00:12:03.960 But I'm more than willing to share it anyway.

00:12:05.980 Anyway, so the new God argument is an argument not to prove the existence of God, but to prove that we should trust in or have active practical faith in that which may constitute God, given certain understandings of God.

00:12:25.400 So there's a little bit of complexity there.

00:12:27.180 It's not an argument about Platonic philosophy versions of the good or of the theologies that descend from Platonic philosophy.

00:12:35.980 It's a much more practical argument than that.

00:12:38.700 It's about an argument on behalf of trust in a God that is the kind of God that could arise within nature, a natural God.

00:12:46.220 And it begins with purely secular assumptions, and it uses those secular assumptions to reach conclusions that sound and operate very much like the conclusions of theism.

00:13:03.780 And so for theists who are not attached to anti-naturalist metaphysics, this argument is quite compelling.

00:13:11.520 And for people maybe who aren't even theists, but who are open-minded enough to deeply consider the argument, it can be transformative of their theological identity.

00:13:22.520 It was that way for me.

00:13:23.580 I was an atheist for nearly a decade.

00:13:25.740 The argument begins with the assumption, the secular assumption, that humanity will become superhumanity.

00:13:32.820 And it's an assumption.

00:13:34.660 And we make this assumption and we say, hey, this is something that we ought to trust in for practical reasons, for pragmatic reasons.

00:13:41.520 If we don't trust in this possibility, we undermine our own efforts to get there.

00:13:46.040 It also kind of entails that superhumanity has dignity, that it's something worth pursuing, something that we can pursue, something that we should pursue, something that we want to pursue.

00:13:55.620 So all of those are kind of bundled together in the assumption.

00:13:58.580 And we call that the faith assumption, the assumption that humanity will become superhumanity.

00:14:04.060 Then there are two arguments that are built on top of that assumption.

00:14:07.920 One of the arguments is called the compassion argument, and the other is called the creation argument.

00:14:13.680 Both of those arguments introduce two more assumptions each, and they use that first assumption, the faith assumption, to reach conclusions about the nature of superhumanity, what superhumanity is probably like if we make those assumptions.

00:14:28.640 The compassion argument makes two assumptions, as I said.

00:14:32.780 One of those assumptions is a description of the possibility space for superhumanity.

00:14:38.780 And the possibility space of superhumanity is, A, superhumanity won't happen.

00:14:44.780 We will not become superhumanity.

00:14:46.240 That's the first possibility, right?

00:14:47.360 We'll become extinct.

00:14:48.360 We'll destroy ourselves or whatever.

00:14:50.120 The second possibility is that superhumanity will not have more decentralized power than humanity.

00:14:58.560 Maybe it will, maybe we will evolve into some kind of singleton where we don't have any kind of decentralized agency.

00:15:06.520 We're just all part of the Borg.

00:15:08.680 The third possibility of the possibility space is that superhumanity has more decentralized power than humanity.

00:15:17.000 So that's the first assumption is this describing the possibility space.

00:15:21.820 The second assumption of the compassion argument is that superhumanity will have more decentralized power than humanity.

00:15:31.460 Again, this is an assumption.

00:15:32.260 It might not prove true, but there is, again, practical reasons why we would probably want it to be true.

00:15:38.880 Unless you are a big fan of living or you wouldn't be living anymore.

00:15:42.620 If you're a big fan of being assimilated into the Borg, then you have reason to not want to be part of a singleton.

00:15:50.420 So if we make that assumption that superhumanity will have more decentralized power, and we maintain the faith assumption that humanity will become superhumanity, then that negates two of the three parts of the possibility space, leaving only one.

00:16:07.920 And that third part of the possibility space is that humanity will have more decentralized power, or excuse me, superhumanity will have more decentralized power than humanity has.

00:16:21.000 And then we look at some of the ramifications of that.

00:16:23.940 One of the ramifications of that is that decentralized power is a very predictable quality for cooperation.

00:16:32.040 Where there's more decentralized power, there's more cooperation.

00:16:35.900 In a previous email discussion with Malcolm, Malcolm brought up the truth that this only works for in-groups, those that have the power.

00:16:43.600 And he's totally right.

00:16:44.760 And that's the point of the argument.

00:16:46.460 The point of the argument is that as we decentralize power, we become predictable to those who have power.

00:16:52.260 And so by decentralizing power more to more agents, we become predictable to more agents, and therefore more likely to be cooperative with more agents.

00:17:00.560 And then kind of the final part of the reasoning here is that decentralized power pressed to its limits requires decentralized cooperation pressed to its limits, which becomes practically indistinguishable from compassion for all practical purposes.

00:17:14.980 So superhumanity, given those assumptions, those two assumptions we made, would be more compassionate than humanity.

00:17:22.100 So that's the compassion argument.

00:17:24.320 Then the simulation argument, or excuse me, the creation argument, which depends in part on the simulation argument, is very similar.

00:17:31.120 First, it lays out a possibility space.

00:17:33.120 The possibility space is that A, will become extinct before becoming superhumanity.

00:17:36.960 That's a possibility.

00:17:38.080 Or B, superhumanity will either choose not to or not have the ability to run many emulations of its evolutionary history.

00:17:46.320 Or C, we're almost certainly living in one of those emulations of the evolutionary history of superhumanity.

00:17:54.420 And the reasoning for this goes back to the simulation argument.

00:17:58.360 It's an argument that's most well known for having been formulated by Nick Bostrom, but the argument's actually older than his formulation.

00:18:05.720 He just did a very good job of expressing it.

00:18:08.180 And that argument is basically that either superhumanity will never become superhumanity, or for whatever reason, they won't run a simulation.

00:18:18.280 Or if they do run a significant number of simulations of their ancestral history, then we're almost certainly living in one of those ourselves, just for reasons of probabilities, statistics.

00:18:29.840 As it turns out, the simulation argument can be generalized.

00:18:32.620 It doesn't depend on simulation technology.

00:18:35.060 It works just as well, the math works just as reliably for any creative mechanism that we think may be feasible.

00:18:43.460 Maybe it's cosmoforming, maybe it's terraforming, maybe it's computing of some other nature than what we might think of as simulation.

00:18:49.600 It doesn't matter.

00:18:50.400 The same logic, the same mathematics hold out.

00:18:53.100 And so the creation argument, first of all, uses the faith assumption and negates one aspect of the possibility space.

00:19:00.380 No, we're not going to go extinct because we assumed that away.

00:19:02.720 It also makes the assumption that superhumanity will have the ability and interest in running emulations, whether they're simulations or cosmoforming or terraforming or what, emulations of their evolutionary history.

00:19:13.800 And the logical probabilistic consequence of that, we're almost certainly living in one of those emulations ourselves.

00:19:19.780 So then the argument concludes by combining the conclusions of the compassion and the creation arguments and says that superhumanity probably would be more compassionate than us.

00:19:32.880 Again, this is a probabilistic argument.

00:19:34.980 And from the creation argument, superhumanity probably created our world.

00:19:38.600 And those two conclusions, when combined, sound very much like God as understood by traditional theology, so long as you're willing to accept a natural version of God, which some people will not like on metaphysical grounds.

00:19:57.880 A progressing God, right, who emerged from simpler forms.

00:20:01.880 Yeah, and fortunately for Mormon theology, that's exactly what God is in Mormon theology, right? 0.97

00:20:07.200 God does not start as God in Mormon theology.

00:20:09.380 God becomes God.

00:20:10.780 So one thing I'm really curious about is, like, I mean, the movement's been around for a while.

00:20:14.580 And like you say, like, it's not that distinguished from, like, mainstream LDS.

00:20:19.700 But I think listeners to the show can also see why it has so many similarities to our belief system.

00:20:24.700 Very, very, very, very many similarities.

00:20:27.400 But are there any, like, sort of day-to-day or month-to-month or year-to-year differences in the lifestyle or practices of a transhumanist Mormon versus a mainstream normal not considering themselves transhumanist Mormon?

00:20:40.500 I guess that would probably vary from individual to individual.

00:20:44.380 But I certainly think that some of the things that are on our radar because of the particular interests of our group tend to cause certain values to bubble up.

00:20:55.560 So, for example, some of us are engaged in things like intermittent fasting, other things around health.

00:21:02.880 We're a little more keyed into some of the new discoveries around health and longevity and trying to do our best to improve our health a little bit and be a little more mindful of some things that maybe an average Latter-day Saint might not be as concerned about.

00:21:20.600 So, basically, would it be accurate to say, like, broader, just more technophilia in general?

00:21:27.200 Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Like, there's more tech nerds among us than probably in the average, you know, LDS cohort or whatever.

00:21:37.540 So, I'd love to get an idea. What's the fertility rate like in this community?

00:21:41.980 And what's the geographic distribution of the community?

00:21:47.220 The second president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association has, what, eight children? Is that right, Carl? Chris?

00:21:53.680 Yeah. Yeah.

00:21:54.640 In fact, Chris is a really interesting figure. I hope he'll forgive us for speaking on his behalf while he's not here.

00:22:02.260 But he calls himself a liberal fundamentalist.

00:22:06.060 And he just kind of like jokingly about how he has certain qualities that you might think of as fundamentalist, but he's also kind of progressive in other ways.

00:22:16.220 And he often had said, he claims that, like, if, if progressive, people with progressive politics really cared about propagating their ideas and sharing them more broadly, that they would have more children, right?

00:22:30.280 And so, I've always thought that was kind of interesting.

00:22:33.440 I agree. I hope that he keeps some aspect of the progressive movement alive.

00:22:41.740 Like, I do not think the progressive movement is bad.

00:22:43.740 And one of the things that we bemoan the most on this show is that it's one of the movements that, unless some people like him are able to find ways to intergenerationally preserve it, that's going to most quickly go extinct.

00:22:54.480 Yeah, and I should clarify that I think Chris is fairly nuanced in his politics, so he's not your typical sort of leftist or whatever.

00:23:02.840 But I think it's more just that, I don't know, I often say that I think that a Christian should actually have qualities that appear on both the right and the left, and some that appear on either side as well.

00:23:16.700 Well, if you're on either side, especially considering how oddly scattershot and, like, in many cases non-thematic the ideological clusterings are politically in the United States, like, there's a lot of stuff that's conservative, and it's like, this doesn't, why is this a conservative thing?

00:23:31.640 And vice versa.

00:23:32.980 If you show more tendency toward that than your religion, then it's just showing that you are, like, basically adhering to a false god.

00:23:39.860 So I think you're totally right.

00:23:41.400 You need to follow your religion's principles, not those of a particular ideological team, especially considering how illogically inconsistent our ideological teams are now.

00:23:50.140 Do you know if there's any second-generation transhumanist Mormons yet, i.e. kids where this belief system has been successfully passed between generations?

00:23:58.840 All of my children are Mormon transhumanists.

00:24:01.480 They're all adults.

00:24:02.800 Oh, wow.

00:24:03.920 Wow.

00:24:04.440 So it's working.

00:24:05.620 Okay, then the next thing I really want to talk to you about, because I think that this is the most interesting thing about it,

00:24:10.820 is the large following in Africa.

00:24:13.840 Yeah, so that's pretty recent.

00:24:17.560 I was approached earlier this year by a guy in Senegal, whose name is Kwasi Ngesen, and he was like,

00:24:26.700 I really love what you guys are talking about.

00:24:28.900 He went to our website and read some things and was really excited about it, and he said,

00:24:33.380 I'd like to spread it to Africa. 0.57

00:24:35.020 I guess he's a pretty good community builder, so suddenly we have almost 30 different groups that he has opened up in various African countries and is currently sharing some ideas with them.

00:24:49.580 I would say that it's still very nascent over there.

00:24:54.980 They're still even figuring out what it is that Mormon transhumanism is and asking us a lot of questions about some of our beliefs.

00:25:04.480 And, you know, it's been interesting also to see the reception amongst different groups where some of them are like,

00:25:10.740 what are you talking about?

00:25:11.480 Are these guys even Latter-day Saints?

00:25:13.600 Like, you know, they're just a little bit surprised at first, but I think as they learn more about it and as we've been having monthly meetups,

00:25:22.100 virtual monthly meetups with them, they're starting to see, oh, yeah, you guys sound familiar.

00:25:26.780 You know, the things you're saying aren't too out there for us, you know, so.

00:25:30.220 It's funny, like, to an outsider, just how close that is to the Matt Stone and Trey Parker Broadway play, The Book of Mormon,

00:25:37.900 that, like, somehow, like, in Africa, now you have all these people who are, like, talking, like, about high tech,

00:25:43.080 like, basically Star Wars and stuff.

00:25:44.540 And it's like, wait, what?

00:25:45.580 Wait, wait, wait.

00:25:46.620 Like, what did Matt Stone and Trey Parker need to know about?

00:25:48.620 You know, my emphasis is different.

00:25:50.680 My emphasis is different for Africans.

00:25:52.760 Like, one of the things that I have been strongly encouraging the African chapters of our association about

00:26:00.780 is to gain as much education as possible.

00:26:03.360 Like, that is a principle that Latter-day Saints firmly believe in that's been affirmed by several of our leaders in general conference.

00:26:11.620 But it's something that is now on the reach of a lot of Africans because the church just recently

00:26:19.540 a remote education program that will hopefully extend the blessings of a strong liberal education to the whole world.

00:26:30.720 Whereas, up to now, it's been largely available to those who live near one of the actual universities of the church,

00:26:37.760 but not, it's a little harder to get to in some of these developing nations, right?

00:26:42.320 Something I wanted to pull on here, and you can correct me if I'm wrong in this sort of understanding of what's going on with the African movement,

00:26:49.220 but that they are culturally a little different from the branch that's in the U.S.

00:26:54.120 And that in the U.S., it seems almost sort of ancillary to the core theology of the movement.

00:27:00.300 The movement is slightly more progressive in its social ideology,

00:27:05.220 where the African movement is more conservative in its social ideology.

00:27:09.880 Is that an accurate understanding?

00:27:11.980 Yeah, I think that's fair.

00:27:13.000 What we've observed is that certain hot-button social issues like queer issues and other things like that

00:27:20.180 don't have a good reception in the global South, generally speaking.

00:27:26.780 And over time, I've come to the conclusion that a few, the church generally,

00:27:32.880 I mean, this isn't like, I'm not dictating what the church should do in these areas,

00:27:37.180 but I personally feel that some of the things that the church in the developed world,

00:27:44.320 some of the issues that are causing people some turmoil and challenge,

00:27:48.940 are like the prescription for the developed world is almost like the precise opposite

00:27:54.300 of what it might be in the global South.

00:27:56.580 Because, for example, if we start liberating certain concepts and doctrines and teachings and practices

00:28:03.800 to accommodate these social issues in the U.S.,

00:28:09.940 that might alienate members in the global South,

00:28:13.960 where these issues, where they have a much more conservative stance on a lot of these issues.

00:28:19.940 And right now, the church is growing tremendously in the global South

00:28:23.900 and not as quickly in the developed world.

00:28:28.600 And so, I mean, in fact, everything that we've seen so far in various surveys

00:28:33.860 shows that it's actually shrinking somewhat in the developed world.

00:28:36.620 And so I'm personally feeling like any church, including ours,

00:28:42.540 that wants to continue adapting to change as it's happening

00:28:49.140 should probably decentralize more in its governance model

00:28:53.420 in order to allow each of these cultures to independently come to terms with

00:28:59.520 and figure out how to deal with certain issues.

00:29:01.900 Not to be too crude about it, but like, it's not uncommon to hear that,

00:29:06.240 for example, in Africa, there's still a lot of gender disparity.

00:29:10.000 Like that sometimes, you know, there's some kind of chauvinism

00:29:14.660 that requires women to walk behind men and to not be treated as equals. 0.99

00:29:21.420 And I'm not, I don't personally like that attitude.

00:29:26.180 I don't agree with it.

00:29:27.780 But I feel like a culture needs to work through those issues at their own pace

00:29:32.520 and not have it imposed externally on them

00:29:35.840 because they tend to rebel when you do that.

00:29:38.260 And I think you would have a poorer hearing in these other countries

00:29:42.680 if you came down really strongly on a certain stance on this.

00:29:47.460 And so it's almost better, in my opinion,

00:29:49.260 to let individual areas govern themselves to some degree

00:29:53.260 so that they can deal with these issues in a way that is best suited for their culture.

00:29:58.840 Sounds like an argument against the problem of evil.

00:30:02.260 Yes.

00:30:03.060 So also, so my understanding,

00:30:04.500 because we talked about how many churches there were

00:30:06.200 or how many like groups there were in Africa right now,

00:30:09.260 there's like a thousand members, thousands of members.

00:30:13.240 I would say that right now,

00:30:15.600 what we've been able to see with the groups that have formed in Africa,

00:30:20.920 this is just chapters of our association now.

00:30:23.940 It's important to clarify that we're not a church.

00:30:26.460 We're, you know, like we're just an association of church members

00:30:30.640 and other people interested in Mormon transhumanism.

00:30:33.300 But what I've seen so far is that some of the largest groups claim about 100 members

00:30:38.720 and it goes down from there.

00:30:41.220 But so I'd say at our most optimistic estimates,

00:30:45.100 it'd maybe be like 500 Africans are somewhat aware of the MTA and coming.

00:30:52.600 But so would this make the African branch of the transhumanist Mormons

00:30:55.480 larger than the American branch?

00:30:57.100 No, so the number of registered members of the MTA so far is just over a thousand.

00:31:05.160 In the United States, well, in the developed world, not counting Africa. 0.88

00:31:09.180 And I mean, to clarify, that thousand number,

00:31:13.800 that thousand count even has some members of developed,

00:31:17.980 or sorry, developing nations as well.

00:31:20.180 It's just that prior to this one individual who was a good community builder,

00:31:24.960 like going gung-ho about it,

00:31:27.620 our membership was just over a thousand members.

00:31:30.980 These members that are joining in Africa, a lot of them,

00:31:34.700 it's like just logistically getting to the point where we can accept donations

00:31:38.960 and help them fund their local chapters is taking a lot of time.

00:31:42.680 So we're just in the process of registering in Ghana.

00:31:45.120 And from there, that will allow us to open a bank account,

00:31:49.360 which allows us to receive donations from these various countries

00:31:54.640 and disperse funds to each country.

00:31:57.860 And the goal here is mostly just to allow them to be self-sufficient.

00:32:01.340 We're basically letting each of them collect membership dues

00:32:05.960 and then use those to hold meetups

00:32:08.560 and do whatever kind of authorized activities they would have.

00:32:12.320 And so because that's only getting off the ground now,

00:32:14.800 and we're still in the process of registration,

00:32:16.660 we don't have a whole lot of like hard, fast numbers and things of who's who

00:32:22.240 and how much activity is actually occurring.

00:32:25.540 So it's somewhat preliminary right now, basically.

00:32:29.440 And I like your argument about decentralization.

00:32:32.060 And I mean, when you look at,

00:32:33.760 there aren't actually that many examples of religions

00:32:37.860 that have with high-ish levels of fidelity

00:32:40.820 and central management managed to spread a lot.

00:32:43.340 But like, when you look at Catholicism,

00:32:44.900 there was a lot of decentralization

00:32:46.360 and there was a lot of like local customization

00:32:49.040 and like adoption of local demigods and all this kind of stuff.

00:32:52.480 So totally agree with you on that.

00:32:54.620 Like, and you need that innovation in a way that even maybe the like main legacy,

00:33:00.400 primary church governing body would integrate the stuff that does work,

00:33:05.500 that they might want to spread to other areas.

00:33:07.700 So I, yeah, so it makes a lot of sense.

00:33:10.660 And do you have social technologies that are unique to members of your movement?

00:33:14.420 For example, any like singles wards or anything like that,

00:33:18.220 that are unique to the transhumanist Mormon movement or...

00:33:22.160 Because I mean, when we look intergenerationally,

00:33:23.880 it seems like one of the hardest things that a lot of people are having trouble with right now

00:33:26.540 is finding partners.

00:33:27.620 And I'm wondering, is this something that you guys do any work on

00:33:30.580 or just use the existing LDS operations?

00:33:34.020 Lincoln, do you want to take some time and talk about maybe some of this discussion

00:33:37.480 of a possible transfigurist order?

00:33:40.680 Sure. Yeah, I can talk about that.

00:33:42.660 A direct answer to your question is that historically,

00:33:45.720 we've not done more than what the church itself offers,

00:33:49.300 which is considerable.

00:33:50.400 The church has single wards all over the place.

00:33:53.000 Yeah.

00:33:53.540 But that doesn't entirely facilitate the needs of Mormon transhumanists

00:33:57.600 because Mormon transhumanists do tend to have some relatively unique emphases.

00:34:03.720 And they look for people with whom those resonate, of course.

00:34:07.700 And so that would be something that we'd like to help with.

00:34:10.840 So that brings us to what Carl was just mentioning.

00:34:14.180 We have for a long time discussed organizing a more formal religious order.

00:34:20.500 We call it a religious order because we want people to understand that it's not a church.

00:34:24.300 It's not a competition with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

00:34:27.940 or any other Mormon church or any other church in the world, for that matter.

00:34:31.720 What we want it to be is a friendship that strengthens its members in their faith,

00:34:41.940 in their spirituality, in their aspirations, in their well-being,

00:34:46.220 and toward what they would like to become.

00:34:48.180 And does so using the principles of Mormon transhumanism in a more strenuous way,

00:34:58.900 in a more vigorous way, in a way that holds people,

00:35:03.760 a way in which we hold each other to higher standards

00:35:06.920 because we want to be held to higher standards.

00:35:10.140 So just a question here for clarification.

00:35:13.360 Would this be closer to the Catholic orders 0.84

00:35:15.920 or would this be closer to something like the Freemasons?

00:35:19.300 Where with the Catholic orders, it's sort of a sub-branch of the Catholic Church.

00:35:22.400 And with the Freemasons, it's more of something that anyone can join,

00:35:26.120 whatever their faith is, as long as they hold a few central tenets.

00:35:30.200 It would probably be more like the Freemasons, 0.99

00:35:33.280 particularly because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

00:35:37.260 has a very positive history with the Freemasonry.

00:35:40.280 Many of its original leaders were Freemasons.

00:35:42.820 There continue to be members of the Church today that are Freemasons,

00:35:45.140 and the Church does not have problems with that.

00:35:48.640 So because of the history of the Church in that direction,

00:35:52.080 I suspect it would be a little bit more like that,

00:35:53.720 although we do sometimes appeal to the tradition within Catholicism

00:35:58.700 to show how it can operate very synergistically with the Church itself.

00:36:05.420 But that's up to the Church to decide.

00:36:08.540 We're not planning to pressure the Church in any way,

00:36:11.660 either its leaders or its members.

00:36:13.580 The majority of us are members of the Church.

00:36:16.260 We want to be in good standing, and we are in good standing.

00:36:19.220 We don't want that to change.

00:36:20.740 And so what this is is to help people in ways that are useful for us

00:36:25.740 as Mormon transhumanists because of our unique emphases.

00:36:29.240 Then to what extent do you talk a lot with or interact with

00:36:33.400 the main body of the Church of Latter-day Saints?

00:36:38.520 And also, do they know about you?

00:36:42.040 Do you know what they think about you,

00:36:43.760 both to your face and not to your face?

00:36:46.060 I'm very curious.

00:36:46.780 Just as an outsider,

00:36:47.900 when I have been doing a lot of research on Mormonism recently,

00:36:50.600 they often come up as one of what people think of

00:36:54.000 who are like Mormon theological people

00:36:55.780 as one of the primary branches of Mormonism right now.

00:36:58.740 Oh.

00:36:59.420 So these are like other people who aren't connected to their movement.

00:37:02.180 They're like, there are these four broad frameworks

00:37:04.800 of Mormonism that are practiced,

00:37:06.300 and Mormon transhumanism is often one that comes up.

00:37:09.420 Anything you'd like to add to that, guys?

00:37:11.680 Yeah, I mean, everybody who knows me well

00:37:14.820 knows that I'm a Mormon transhumanist.

00:37:17.480 And historically, that has very rarely caused problems.

00:37:21.340 There have been people that have been suspicious of that.

00:37:24.480 And those tend to be other members of the Church

00:37:26.500 who may actually be unusually conservative

00:37:29.860 as members of the Church go.

00:37:31.580 Maybe a little bit more like conservative Christianity

00:37:34.880 in the Southeastern United States

00:37:36.380 than like your average Mormon in Utah.

00:37:39.520 Okay.

00:37:39.760 The most typical response when people find out

00:37:42.680 about Mormon transhumanism is kind of like a cautious interest.

00:37:45.740 They're like, oh, that's interesting.

00:37:47.200 Tell me about it.

00:37:48.340 And then occasionally, more often than the negative extreme

00:37:53.700 is actually the positive extreme where they go,

00:37:55.780 oh, wow, that's like, I've always looked at things that way.

00:37:58.320 Maybe I'm a Mormon transhumanist.

00:38:00.240 Right.

00:38:00.540 Yeah.

00:38:00.940 I just want to add one other thing,

00:38:02.400 which is that we often find discussions of transhumanism itself

00:38:08.200 a little bit too binary for our taste

00:38:11.040 in the sense that like, well, for example,

00:38:13.480 just the other day I was, I tried to read broadly

00:38:17.220 from a lot of different religious publications

00:38:19.660 and other publications as well.

00:38:22.400 And in conservative religious publications,

00:38:25.900 transhumanism is regularly pilloried

00:38:28.540 as a kind of freakish attempt to abandon humanity

00:38:34.220 and to upload ourselves into a computer

00:38:36.720 and like abandoning embodiment altogether, right?

00:38:41.160 I see.

00:38:41.680 Yeah.

00:38:41.980 Whereas most of us think of our bodies as like really important

00:38:46.640 and that any experience,

00:38:48.980 any augmentation of our embodiment

00:38:51.520 would need to be an improvement

00:38:53.140 on what we're experiencing now,

00:38:54.900 not some sort of like devolution

00:38:58.300 into something that was even worse, right?

00:39:01.640 Yeah.

00:39:01.940 And so this idea that transhumanists wish 0.98

00:39:06.740 to transcend entirely human nature is,

00:39:12.900 I think often, it's often a caricature

00:39:15.800 of what many more serious transhumanists I know

00:39:19.100 are interested in.

00:39:20.300 And, but in defense of those who are using it this way,

00:39:25.520 some transhumanist advocates haven't done a good job

00:39:28.500 of explaining what it is that they're after.

00:39:30.280 And some of them have a very naive idea

00:39:33.240 that they could simply upload themselves

00:39:35.040 into a computer and it would be better.

00:39:36.620 And like, so in that sense,

00:39:38.520 I think a lot of people have had these

00:39:40.700 sort of naive conceptions of transhumanism

00:39:43.160 that don't really do it full justice.

00:39:45.100 And we find ourselves in this weird limbo

00:39:48.160 or luminal space where it's like,

00:39:51.800 or liminal, I guess is the right word,

00:39:53.560 where it's like, we don't quite fit in

00:39:56.040 with either the secular transhumanist crowd fully

00:39:59.340 or the sort of religious crowd either.

00:40:04.200 And we're trying to help both sides see what they could,

00:40:07.520 how they could benefit from some dialogue, I guess.

00:40:11.540 And I would, I, oh, continue.

00:40:13.620 I have a question.

00:40:14.480 I'm dying now to hear this.

00:40:15.620 Because, you know, when we talk about like a lot,

00:40:18.040 a lot of the, like, we'll say secular tech groups

00:40:21.380 that we interact with fairly closely,

00:40:23.220 we found there's this growing divide.

00:40:25.500 On one side, there are the technophilic pronatalists.

00:40:28.600 And on the other side,

00:40:29.500 there are the technophilic life extensionists.

00:40:31.940 And I'm hearing undertones here

00:40:33.360 of interest in life extension,

00:40:36.480 you know, interest in like, you know,

00:40:38.060 overcoming or improving upon the human body.

00:40:41.060 But you also pointed out that like,

00:40:43.100 it seems that this subset of the LDS church

00:40:46.920 has a pretty good birth rate,

00:40:49.040 which is meaningful.

00:40:50.100 And, you know, Malcolm and I have yet actually

00:40:52.380 to encounter any group

00:40:53.600 that has been both pro-life extension

00:40:56.240 and pro-having a lot of kids.

00:40:58.100 Now you have.

00:40:59.480 Yeah.

00:41:00.240 So where, where are you guys?

00:41:01.620 Like, where are you guys?

00:41:02.180 Yeah, so in, like, in Mormon theology,

00:41:04.060 the purpose of God is to bring about

00:41:07.320 the immortality and eternal life of humanity.

00:41:09.560 So the purpose of God is to have children

00:41:13.260 and to then exalt them, glorify them

00:41:18.260 in intelligence and power and compassion

00:41:20.540 and courage and creativity into Godhood.

00:41:23.640 In which state they live in immortality with God,

00:41:27.620 they become gods themselves.

00:41:29.020 So in Mormon theology, both are required.

00:41:32.320 One is to extend life

00:41:34.520 and extend robust embodiment and intelligence.

00:41:37.340 And the other is to give that gift to others

00:41:40.020 and to share in friendship with them.

00:41:41.960 So we see no conflict

00:41:43.520 between those two imperatives, right?

00:41:45.400 It's like, why not pursue both?

00:41:48.560 Well, I would love it if we could,

00:41:50.820 when you guys, if you guys end up starting this order,

00:41:53.360 I would love to do another episode with you guys

00:41:56.060 to redraw our listeners' attention

00:41:58.600 to what you guys are doing.

00:41:59.840 Because I think that among our listener base

00:42:02.760 and our fan base,

00:42:03.900 you'd find a lot of people

00:42:04.960 who might be outside of the Mormon tradition

00:42:06.860 who could be interested in something like that.

00:42:09.420 And I think the world would be a better place

00:42:12.240 for something like that.

00:42:13.440 And I also think an interesting thing

00:42:15.760 from our followers' perspective

00:42:17.900 is if they're familiar with our beliefs,

00:42:21.100 what they might be surprised about,

00:42:22.940 or you guys might not see it this way,

00:42:24.460 but we would actually come off

00:42:25.540 as a much more conservative

00:42:27.200 and almost sort of ruthless iteration

00:42:30.260 of your belief system.

00:42:31.720 Whereas you guys would come off

00:42:33.220 as the nice, cozy iteration

00:42:35.420 of this belief system.

00:42:36.580 That would fit well with Mormons' stereotypes 1.00

00:42:40.380 of like being polite people, you know.

00:42:42.900 The nice ones.

00:42:44.080 Who like, even when you insult them

00:42:45.620 are like big smile, you know,

00:42:47.560 that kind of stuff, so.

00:42:48.820 Yeah, for example,

00:42:49.780 the debate we were having over emails,

00:42:51.280 we were like, oh yeah,

00:42:51.800 we believe a lot of what you guys are saying,

00:42:53.380 but not that God is a compassionate God.

00:42:55.660 We don't think he's a compassionate God at all.

00:42:58.160 And we think that death is a good thing,

00:43:00.200 like we're anti-life extension.

00:43:01.920 So we come across,

00:43:02.760 I think it's much more Old Testament-y,

00:43:04.460 but I love this distinction

00:43:06.400 and this transformation,

00:43:08.040 I think that we're seeing.

00:43:10.400 And what really heartens me

00:43:11.460 is that you guys do something different than us.

00:43:14.740 One of the things that we're always pushing for

00:43:16.640 is we want as many different types

00:43:18.800 of intergenerational high fidelity,

00:43:21.940 high fertility communities to exist,

00:43:23.860 because it is through our differences

00:43:26.760 that we are able to see things in different ways

00:43:29.080 and able to, as a society,

00:43:30.800 come to better long-term conclusions

00:43:32.780 and solution to things.

00:43:35.160 And it looks like you guys have created

00:43:37.460 the seed of something that really can be

00:43:40.180 one of these intergenerational movements

00:43:41.940 that is going to be a world player

00:43:44.220 in, you know, 500 years.

00:43:47.160 And I find it very rich,

00:43:49.660 and I actually think even likely

00:43:51.500 from the trends we're seeing now,

00:43:53.360 that it is the African fraction

00:43:55.460 that ends up being the primary faction.

00:43:57.940 And we talk about this a lot on the show

00:43:59.940 is that in Africa,

00:44:00.660 there's a lot of cultural experimentation

00:44:02.840 undergoing much more difficult

00:44:05.160 cultural evolutionary pressures right now

00:44:07.040 because it's a much more difficult environment.

00:44:09.280 And so we are likely to see

00:44:10.940 some of the cultures

00:44:11.740 that end up becoming the dominant cultures

00:44:13.240 in the world, you know,

00:44:14.600 500 years from now

00:44:15.540 are going to be coming out of

00:44:17.480 what right now is sort of a skunk works

00:44:20.320 and trial by fire

00:44:21.460 of many different new traditions.

00:44:24.940 And it's really cool to meet people

00:44:26.180 who might be playing major,

00:44:28.020 might have been major founding members

00:44:29.580 of all of that.

00:44:30.900 Malcolm, I really like what you're saying there.

00:44:33.580 And I want to point out

00:44:34.720 that in Mormon eschatology,

00:44:37.420 heaven is not monolithic.

00:44:40.040 In Mormon eschatology,

00:44:41.120 there are heavens and worlds

00:44:42.660 without end of different kinds and degrees.

00:44:45.520 And not everybody is supposed to

00:44:46.920 all go to the same heaven.

00:44:48.380 We're supposed to go to the heaven

00:44:49.720 that's consistent with our desires

00:44:51.660 and our works.

00:44:53.040 And so when you say

00:44:55.340 that you want to live in a world

00:44:56.680 where we're not all the same,

00:44:58.320 but where we can kind of

00:44:59.560 feed off of each other

00:45:00.780 in a virtuous cycle,

00:45:01.780 that's required for Mormon theology

00:45:04.480 to hold out.

00:45:05.920 Oh, that's wild.

00:45:06.400 And so we very definitely wish the same.

00:45:08.780 Yeah.

00:45:09.280 Well, it's funny,

00:45:09.820 an episode that's about to come out,

00:45:11.080 it hasn't come out yet,

00:45:11.860 is we talk about a concept

00:45:13.000 that we've been playing with recently,

00:45:14.460 which is the metaphor of a tesseract

00:45:17.160 as for God.

00:45:18.900 And what we're pointing out

00:45:21.020 was the metaphor of a tesseract for God

00:45:22.900 is a lot of people,

00:45:24.220 they try to overlap traditions

00:45:26.940 to get a truer idea of God.

00:45:29.200 This is like if you had a cube

00:45:30.480 rotating in three-dimensional space

00:45:32.500 and you were looking at its shadow

00:45:33.880 and you tried to overlap

00:45:35.580 the parts of the shadow

00:45:37.520 that were consistent

00:45:38.280 to get an understanding

00:45:39.540 of what the cube actually looked like

00:45:41.080 because you can't understand

00:45:42.140 three-dimensional space.

00:45:42.960 Somebody looking at two-dimensional space,

00:45:44.360 you'd say,

00:45:44.800 oh, it's a sphere.

00:45:45.800 That's the real shape.

00:45:47.280 But you're actually wrong.

00:45:48.460 You would have been better off

00:45:50.340 saying its real shape

00:45:52.060 with any one of the shadow formations

00:45:54.620 that it had created.

00:45:55.940 And it's the same with God

00:45:58.300 where we think that following

00:46:00.660 any one tradition to its fullest

00:46:03.180 gets you to a closer

00:46:04.820 and potentially holistically true vision of God

00:46:07.640 than trying to mix and match traditions.

00:46:12.160 And it is this view

00:46:13.440 that allows us to say

00:46:14.140 people of like ultra-Orthodox Jews

00:46:16.080 have a whole and complete revelation of God

00:46:19.260 to the extent that we as humans

00:46:21.000 can understand God

00:46:22.340 in the same way

00:46:23.440 that any one three-dimensional shadow

00:46:26.100 of a tesseract

00:46:27.080 is the whole and complete revelation

00:46:29.100 of that tesseract

00:46:30.160 to people who are living

00:46:31.640 in a three-dimensional plane.

00:46:33.540 Interesting.

00:46:34.380 I guess I would agree with that.

00:46:36.820 And insofar as we don't suppose

00:46:39.620 that it logically entails

00:46:41.420 that all religious cultures

00:46:43.500 or ideologies are therefore equal.

00:46:45.840 I don't think that

00:46:46.560 that is a necessary conclusion

00:46:48.420 from that reasoning.

00:46:49.700 It reminds me a lot

00:46:50.680 of the old parable

00:46:52.740 that they always talk about

00:46:53.780 like of how, you know,

00:46:55.640 different people are feeling

00:46:56.700 parts of an elephant

00:46:57.680 and describing what they're feeling.

00:47:00.200 And this analogy is often used

00:47:02.160 to describe the differences

00:47:03.660 that exist in religions today.

00:47:05.840 But if it's all right with you guys,

00:47:07.500 I was curious,

00:47:08.240 I think you'll find that both of us

00:47:10.940 and several other members of the MTA

00:47:13.300 are very, very polite

00:47:17.120 and sort of like friendly interlocutors

00:47:20.720 in the sense that we are not easily offended.

00:47:25.300 And so, you know, by disagreement

00:47:27.460 or even when people try to make us mad,

00:47:31.200 but like I would love to see

00:47:33.560 Lincoln and Malcolm engage a little more

00:47:36.880 on the topic of compassion

00:47:38.860 and why, why, Malcolm,

00:47:41.000 you are not persuaded

00:47:42.920 by Lincoln's argument

00:47:44.520 from decentralization towards compassion.

00:47:47.800 Yeah.

00:47:48.220 So I'll give an example

00:47:49.500 of the gist of the argument

00:47:51.480 that I put

00:47:51.820 and then I can hear a better position

00:47:53.420 of his full argument,

00:47:54.480 which is I do agree

00:47:56.100 that cooperation works

00:47:57.860 when you have a community of equals

00:47:59.680 and no outsiders to that community.

00:48:02.220 But cooperation starts

00:48:04.720 to break down as a model

00:48:06.340 when you have outsiders

00:48:07.980 like competing groups

00:48:09.580 or when you have members

00:48:10.980 in a group

00:48:11.680 that are a vastly different

00:48:13.340 or asymmetric intelligence.

00:48:15.040 For example,

00:48:16.200 a super intelligent AI among humans

00:48:18.120 or like two really,

00:48:20.420 two like, you know,

00:48:21.820 two humans

00:48:22.420 that would be considered

00:48:23.440 of like average intelligence

00:48:26.200 among a community

00:48:27.660 of like 20 people

00:48:29.220 who have serious mental situation.

00:48:32.100 I don't know the PC way to say this.

00:48:33.960 I wouldn't want like a democracy in that.

00:48:36.960 Oh, you naturally,

00:48:38.600 the people who were of higher

00:48:40.340 cognitive processing

00:48:41.320 would end up influencing

00:48:42.640 much more what's happening.

00:48:44.460 And so I think that

00:48:45.420 when we have a world of,

00:48:47.980 so that's one side of the argument

00:48:49.320 is I just don't think

00:48:50.360 that where we're going

00:48:51.460 is a world in which

00:48:52.700 all groups are equal

00:48:54.420 and that necessarily leads

00:48:57.140 to cooperation in that chain.

00:48:59.340 But also I don't think

00:49:00.820 when I look around the world today

00:49:02.900 that I see evidence

00:49:04.560 that this world was created

00:49:06.060 by a being that had compassion

00:49:08.640 in the way we as humans

00:49:09.680 understand compassion.

00:49:11.100 I think it has a goal

00:49:13.060 and I think that goal

00:49:14.380 is more important

00:49:15.620 than compassion

00:49:16.680 or any of the lower order things

00:49:18.460 that we humans

00:49:19.220 concern ourselves with

00:49:20.740 because we have emotions

00:49:22.440 and so we think

00:49:23.380 from the perspective

00:49:24.140 of an entity

00:49:24.740 that has emotions.

00:49:25.880 But this often influences

00:49:27.260 the way that we see things.

00:49:28.480 So we come from

00:49:28.980 a Calvinist tradition

00:49:29.840 and as we often mention

00:49:31.300 on our podcast,

00:49:31.880 we see both an indulgence

00:49:34.000 in positive emotional states

00:49:35.460 and negative emotional states

00:49:36.920 as equally sinful.

00:49:38.400 So an overindulgence

00:49:39.500 in happiness

00:49:40.160 or anything like that

00:49:41.340 insofar as it affects

00:49:43.540 your efficacy

00:49:44.380 is a sin.

00:49:46.340 And this is a reflection

00:49:48.240 of the way that we see God

00:49:50.620 is that God is just not concerned

00:49:52.780 with the bonfire

00:49:55.580 of human vanity.

00:49:56.400 So Malcolm,

00:49:58.760 I completely agree

00:49:59.820 with everything you said.

00:50:01.340 And I think that

00:50:02.720 if you had been supposing

00:50:04.500 that those were disagreements

00:50:05.840 with my positions,

00:50:06.720 then I didn't communicate

00:50:08.460 my positions to you

00:50:09.440 in a way that was

00:50:10.460 understandable to you.

00:50:12.240 On the first point,

00:50:14.260 regarding cooperation

00:50:15.800 only applying to an in-group,

00:50:17.220 that's exactly the point.

00:50:19.240 And therefore,

00:50:20.020 the reason to expand

00:50:21.260 that group

00:50:21.940 to decentralize

00:50:23.080 as a moral imperative,

00:50:24.160 the greater the

00:50:26.060 and decentralization

00:50:27.880 is not decentralize

00:50:29.160 decentralization in word,

00:50:30.900 because as you pointed out,

00:50:31.900 that doesn't actually work.

00:50:33.080 It has to be decentralization

00:50:34.680 in actual power

00:50:36.120 and therefore the necessity

00:50:38.280 of not just giving people a vote,

00:50:41.180 but actually enhancing

00:50:42.860 their capacities.

00:50:44.980 So anyway,

00:50:45.900 I completely agree

00:50:46.940 with your point

00:50:47.480 on on decentralization.

00:50:49.180 You're so far as I'm concerned,

00:50:50.740 you're perfectly correct.

00:50:51.640 And it's perfectly consistent

00:50:53.180 with the compassion argument.

00:50:54.780 The second point

00:50:55.900 about the kind of world

00:50:57.520 we live in,

00:50:58.400 I also agree with.

00:50:59.900 And that is that

00:51:00.900 if we define compassion

00:51:02.660 in terms of suffering mitigation,

00:51:05.580 then clearly God

00:51:06.780 is not compassionate.

00:51:08.320 This world is abundant

00:51:10.060 proof to the contrary.

00:51:11.880 Yeah.

00:51:12.160 But I don't define compassion

00:51:13.900 in terms of suffering mitigation,

00:51:15.600 nor do I think the scriptures.

00:51:17.560 I think the scriptures

00:51:18.640 define compassion

00:51:19.640 in terms of thriving optimization.

00:51:22.460 And that is very often

00:51:23.640 a difficult thing

00:51:24.720 that's consistent with,

00:51:26.820 as is pointed out by Paul

00:51:28.900 in the New Testament,

00:51:30.640 with suffering.

00:51:31.420 In fact,

00:51:31.920 according to Paul,

00:51:32.700 if we want to become

00:51:33.440 joint heirs in the glory of God

00:51:35.140 with Christ,

00:51:37.480 then we must suffer with him.

00:51:40.900 Interesting.

00:51:41.780 I guess my counter would be,

00:51:43.980 I'd love to understand

00:51:44.860 like the capacity.

00:51:46.520 I agree that compassion

00:51:48.020 could be like

00:51:48.960 if there was a deity

00:51:50.340 that allowed all humans

00:51:52.480 to improve themselves

00:51:53.840 in at least a somewhat

00:51:56.540 apparitive way,

00:51:58.380 I can then see that

00:51:59.280 as a compassionate God

00:52:01.420 from this definition,

00:52:02.560 from like the improvement definition.

00:52:04.480 However,

00:52:05.520 a lot of humans,

00:52:06.640 I feel,

00:52:07.460 do not get the capacity

00:52:08.860 to improve themselves.

00:52:10.640 They're born into situations

00:52:11.840 where that was never

00:52:12.900 an option for them

00:52:13.840 before their lives

00:52:14.860 were cruelly

00:52:15.940 and painfully snuffed out.

00:52:18.120 And so I think

00:52:19.380 that the way I could get

00:52:20.360 to a definition

00:52:20.980 of compassion here

00:52:22.020 is to say that

00:52:23.000 God is allowing our species

00:52:24.840 to intergenerationally improve,

00:52:26.780 but doesn't particularly care

00:52:28.680 for any individual,

00:52:31.100 which then,

00:52:32.360 yeah,

00:52:32.560 I totally agree with you

00:52:33.520 if that's something

00:52:34.080 that we're aligned on.

00:52:35.360 Maybe it's about

00:52:36.060 a definition of compassion.

00:52:37.660 Is that what

00:52:38.040 the difference is here?

00:52:40.560 Sorry,

00:52:41.060 could you repeat

00:52:41.560 what you just said there, Simone?

00:52:42.880 Is this about

00:52:43.960 a differing definition

00:52:45.020 of compassion?

00:52:45.980 Like if compassion

00:52:46.880 is about the opportunity

00:52:48.020 of like humanity

00:52:49.840 on the whole

00:52:50.580 to achieve great things

00:52:52.520 and become better,

00:52:53.400 then we would probably agree

00:52:54.940 that God

00:52:55.980 is extremely compassionate

00:52:57.140 and that humanity

00:52:58.100 has been given

00:52:58.800 ample opportunity

00:52:59.760 and has been able

00:53:00.640 to thrive and flourish

00:53:01.520 and grow.

00:53:02.160 However,

00:53:03.320 on an individual level,

00:53:05.080 no,

00:53:05.360 and I guess we see compassion

00:53:06.560 as like

00:53:07.280 stopping individual suffering.

00:53:10.240 So is this

00:53:10.620 a definitional problem?

00:53:12.260 Yes,

00:53:12.480 it is.

00:53:12.880 a definitional problem

00:53:13.960 and I almost agree

00:53:15.480 with what you're saying

00:53:16.760 about God being compassionate

00:53:18.020 towards the species

00:53:19.160 where I'll disagree with you

00:53:20.780 and that I think

00:53:21.660 is exactly right.

00:53:22.960 God is compassionate

00:53:23.720 towards humanity

00:53:24.500 and the potential of humanity

00:53:25.500 but where I would disagree

00:53:27.160 with you

00:53:27.700 is the conclusion

00:53:29.880 that,

00:53:31.760 to speak coarsely,

00:53:32.900 individuals be damned 0.62

00:53:34.040 and that is 1.00

00:53:35.260 and that is

00:53:35.320 because

00:53:35.780 I trust

00:53:37.380 that while

00:53:38.420 of necessity

00:53:41.120 God must relinquish

00:53:43.540 power

00:53:43.980 in order for us

00:53:44.940 to have the opportunity

00:53:46.060 to truly thrive

00:53:47.100 and relinquishing power

00:53:48.700 requires

00:53:49.320 serious risk

00:53:50.500 and requires

00:53:51.080 the fallout

00:53:51.660 that we see

00:53:52.120 all over the world.

00:53:53.060 That doesn't mean

00:53:54.100 that the story

00:53:54.720 must end at death.

00:53:55.900 From a Mormon perspective,

00:53:58.500 the story

00:53:58.820 doesn't end there.

00:54:00.180 The story

00:54:00.820 is one of eternal progression

00:54:02.100 and individuals

00:54:03.600 who may not

00:54:05.000 have had

00:54:05.680 a full opportunity

00:54:07.040 in this life

00:54:07.980 will,

00:54:09.360 from a Mormon perspective,

00:54:11.580 eventually,

00:54:12.500 and I don't know

00:54:13.720 exactly how,

00:54:14.500 but my trust is

00:54:15.320 and that I ought

00:54:16.720 to contribute

00:54:17.160 in making this

00:54:17.880 the possibility

00:54:18.460 that they eventually

00:54:19.440 will have that opportunity

00:54:21.280 to participate

00:54:22.060 in the thriving

00:54:23.340 according to their

00:54:24.900 desires and works.

00:54:27.220 It's interesting

00:54:28.140 that for our perspective,

00:54:29.420 it's not that we don't think

00:54:30.320 that God doesn't care

00:54:31.020 about any humans,

00:54:32.340 but we believe,

00:54:33.320 you know,

00:54:33.460 again,

00:54:33.640 coming from a Calvinist tradition

00:54:34.800 and the concept

00:54:35.460 of the elect,

00:54:36.520 God cares about

00:54:37.240 some humans

00:54:38.120 and not in any

00:54:39.560 sort of a fair way,

00:54:41.400 but many lives

00:54:42.480 he just consigns

00:54:44.060 to hopelessness

00:54:45.820 out of capricion,

00:54:48.580 I would say.

00:54:49.080 Not out of capricion,

00:54:49.920 I mean,

00:54:50.060 it's all calculated.

00:54:50.820 It's all meant

00:54:51.460 to lead to some end,

00:54:53.480 but yeah,

00:54:54.520 that's sort of

00:54:54.960 our perspective on this

00:54:56.160 and how we split

00:54:56.920 the difference here.

00:54:58.280 Or if we were

00:54:58.780 to word it differently,

00:55:00.440 go ahead.

00:55:01.020 I remember Ramon said

00:55:01.940 just recently,

00:55:02.960 a day or two ago

00:55:03.880 in the episode

00:55:04.420 that I watched,

00:55:05.680 that you really

00:55:06.480 cannot judge

00:55:07.760 who is elected

00:55:09.360 or not, right?

00:55:10.500 And so,

00:55:10.940 if you're taking that

00:55:13.640 to its full extent,

00:55:16.340 you basically need

00:55:17.440 to interact

00:55:18.140 with everyone

00:55:18.900 you encounter

00:55:19.660 as though

00:55:20.560 they might

00:55:21.240 be elect,

00:55:22.940 right?

00:55:23.600 100%.

00:55:24.000 From the perspective

00:55:24.840 you guys are taking here.

00:55:26.260 But this even means,

00:55:27.260 though,

00:55:27.400 that people

00:55:27.760 that were like,

00:55:28.360 oh my gosh,

00:55:28.800 almost certainly

00:55:29.420 they are elect,

00:55:31.640 they may not be

00:55:32.660 and not everyone

00:55:33.460 will be,

00:55:34.000 so that still means.

00:55:35.540 And for us also,

00:55:36.380 like,

00:55:36.580 we don't have

00:55:37.300 this concept

00:55:37.940 of like a persistent soul.

00:55:39.520 Like,

00:55:39.640 we sort of see ourselves

00:55:40.420 as part of an unbroken chain

00:55:41.840 from all of our ancestors

00:55:42.960 through all of our descendants.

00:55:44.020 So if neither memetically

00:55:47.180 nor genetically

00:55:48.000 we've made any impact,

00:55:50.300 you know,

00:55:50.500 or logistically

00:55:51.500 we've made any impact

00:55:52.600 as humans,

00:55:53.100 meaning that we're not

00:55:53.760 among the elect,

00:55:54.780 there will be no

00:55:55.860 conceivable version of us

00:55:58.620 that gets to,

00:56:00.940 you know,

00:56:01.220 get the better roll

00:56:01.920 of the dice,

00:56:02.320 get the more enjoyable round,

00:56:03.760 have God's grace,

00:56:04.880 you know,

00:56:05.100 enjoy the nice round.

00:56:08.420 Whereas I think

00:56:09.240 maybe the difference here

00:56:10.460 is the Mormon view

00:56:12.120 is that there is

00:56:12.780 a persistent soul

00:56:13.760 and this soul

00:56:14.800 will get a good roll

00:56:16.360 of the dice,

00:56:17.060 like a good round

00:56:18.020 at some point up ahead.

00:56:19.620 Whereas like for us,

00:56:20.580 it's more.

00:56:21.320 I don't know.

00:56:21.980 I don't think

00:56:22.480 this is exactly

00:56:23.460 their perspective.

00:56:24.840 No.

00:56:25.500 It's,

00:56:25.960 it's,

00:56:26.360 it's,

00:56:26.720 I think where our perspective

00:56:27.580 differs from them

00:56:28.260 is they actually believe

00:56:29.000 everything you just said

00:56:29.960 of what we believe,

00:56:31.040 but we believe people

00:56:32.300 meaningfully differentiate

00:56:34.060 from other people

00:56:35.500 when they branch from them

00:56:37.500 genetically or memetically.

00:56:39.340 So if there is

00:56:40.600 someone alive today

00:56:41.700 who does not have

00:56:43.100 any significant contribution

00:56:44.180 to the memetic future

00:56:45.020 of humanity

00:56:45.420 or the genetic future

00:56:46.440 of humanity,

00:56:46.920 they do literally die

00:56:49.180 and never exist again.

00:56:50.980 Whereas I don't think

00:56:51.580 that's a perspective

00:56:52.140 they have.

00:56:53.260 No,

00:56:53.500 Mormon,

00:56:53.980 Mormonism

00:56:54.540 is essentially

00:56:57.940 pragmatically universalist.

00:57:00.100 And I say

00:57:00.900 it's essentially

00:57:01.500 pragmatically so

00:57:02.500 because there are

00:57:03.560 exceptions

00:57:04.580 to,

00:57:05.460 to salvation

00:57:07.520 in Mormonism,

00:57:08.520 but there are

00:57:09.660 the exceptions

00:57:10.460 that don't wish

00:57:11.540 salvation.

00:57:12.940 There are people

00:57:13.240 who don't desire it.

00:57:14.840 In Mormon eschatology,

00:57:16.640 everyone

00:57:17.120 ultimately goes

00:57:18.980 to the heaven

00:57:19.800 that they desire.

00:57:21.880 Yeah,

00:57:22.360 if you want it,

00:57:22.940 you'll get it

00:57:23.400 or you'll get what you want.

00:57:24.500 You'll get what you're

00:57:25.020 working toward.

00:57:25.700 And if you're working toward...

00:57:27.120 It's possible

00:57:27.700 to not desire

00:57:28.680 any degree of glory

00:57:29.980 whatsoever

00:57:30.480 in which case...

00:57:31.740 Yeah.

00:57:31.960 And we are called

00:57:32.760 to participate

00:57:33.380 in that work

00:57:34.120 and that's the salient point.

00:57:35.600 The salient point

00:57:36.380 is not the passive,

00:57:37.980 oh, God will take care

00:57:38.980 of things.

00:57:39.800 The salient point

00:57:40.580 is God calls us all

00:57:42.500 to create worlds

00:57:43.460 without end

00:57:44.020 in which

00:57:44.840 we raise each other

00:57:46.840 in the ways

00:57:48.900 that we think

00:57:49.380 are best

00:57:49.760 if we can,

00:57:50.800 but in their own way

00:57:52.380 if we can't.

00:57:53.480 In other words,

00:57:55.380 when God is calling

00:57:56.440 for things to happen

00:57:57.640 or when God is

00:57:58.600 doing things

00:57:59.860 as we describe...

00:58:00.580 We're describing things

00:58:01.700 God is doing,

00:58:02.840 supposedly,

00:58:03.380 from your perspective

00:58:04.100 and from ours.

00:58:04.780 We would say

00:58:06.500 that none

00:58:07.060 of those actions

00:58:07.840 can take place

00:58:08.620 unless the agents

00:58:10.400 of God

00:58:10.920 are actually

00:58:11.400 doing that work

00:58:12.360 and that would be us.

00:58:14.760 Because remember,

00:58:16.720 according to Mormonism,

00:58:18.280 God's purpose

00:58:19.680 is to bring to pass

00:58:20.660 the immortality

00:58:21.560 and eternal life

00:58:22.380 of humanity

00:58:23.020 and by definition

00:58:25.000 in Mormonism,

00:58:26.340 eternal life

00:58:27.140 cannot be imposed

00:58:29.540 against one's will

00:58:30.900 and no one

00:58:32.680 can be forced

00:58:33.600 towards it

00:58:34.420 and so essentially

00:58:36.080 in order for God

00:58:38.200 to achieve

00:58:38.940 these purposes,

00:58:39.800 we have to

00:58:41.180 voluntarily choose

00:58:42.440 to follow a certain

00:58:43.300 pattern,

00:58:43.940 a certain principle.

00:58:46.040 I love how pluralistic

00:58:47.760 that is.

00:58:48.280 I didn't understand

00:58:49.660 this concept

00:58:51.540 of sort of

00:58:52.240 everyone gets

00:58:52.960 the heaven

00:58:53.860 they're working

00:58:54.280 toward,

00:58:54.560 the heaven they desire

00:58:55.200 and there is no

00:58:55.960 universally similar

00:58:57.300 heaven for everyone

00:58:58.200 and that it's going

00:58:59.540 to be a very different

00:59:00.100 experience

00:59:00.780 for different people.

00:59:01.800 I love how pluralistic

00:59:03.140 that is.

00:59:03.540 I've never really

00:59:04.060 heard of anything

00:59:04.680 like that before.

00:59:05.940 I only really

00:59:06.600 understand the LDS 0.94

00:59:07.620 church culturally

00:59:08.620 from having a lot

00:59:09.820 of friends in it

00:59:10.500 and growing up

00:59:11.460 in a lot of the

00:59:13.040 lifestyle but not

00:59:14.140 seeing any of the

00:59:15.020 actual philosophy

00:59:16.380 personally.

00:59:17.800 So that is

00:59:18.620 absolutely fascinating

00:59:19.420 and I love that.

00:59:20.800 Pluralism within

00:59:21.840 an ideology,

00:59:23.200 within a religion

00:59:23.920 is so cool.

00:59:25.660 Mormons

00:59:26.300 underappreciate it

00:59:27.420 even and will

00:59:28.280 mischaracterize

00:59:29.580 our theology

00:59:30.240 and our eschatology

00:59:31.140 to people

00:59:31.680 outside of the

00:59:32.320 church.

00:59:33.180 For example,

00:59:34.580 it's entirely

00:59:35.380 true per Mormon

00:59:36.520 scripture that

00:59:38.000 Christians will 0.99

00:59:39.560 go to a heaven

00:59:40.420 that matches

00:59:41.120 what they aspire

00:59:41.920 to.

00:59:42.860 The account

00:59:43.900 of what we

00:59:44.840 call the

00:59:45.240 terrestrial heaven

00:59:46.240 in Mormon

00:59:48.740 scripture is

00:59:50.100 exactly what

00:59:51.100 most Christians

00:59:51.960 aspire to live

00:59:52.800 in and Mormon

00:59:54.760 scripture says

00:59:55.380 that they will

00:59:55.900 go there and

00:59:56.620 they will get

00:59:57.100 that and so

00:59:58.420 many Mormons

00:59:59.260 are too

01:00:00.440 hesitant to

01:00:01.980 fully point

01:00:02.980 that out

01:00:03.440 because Mormons

01:00:04.480 are taught

01:00:04.940 that there's a

01:00:05.820 better heaven

01:00:06.420 called the

01:00:07.220 celestial heaven

01:00:07.980 that they should

01:00:08.800 want for other

01:00:09.580 reasons and

01:00:10.880 they end up

01:00:11.560 making it a

01:00:12.260 sticking point

01:00:12.840 when it ought

01:00:13.460 not to be a

01:00:14.020 sticking point.

01:00:14.560 What it should

01:00:14.980 be is a 0.95

01:00:15.980 description of

01:00:16.700 hey, here's

01:00:17.840 what a

01:00:18.220 terrestrial heaven

01:00:19.160 entails.

01:00:20.420 Here's what a

01:00:20.980 celestial heaven

01:00:21.580 entails.

01:00:22.160 What do you

01:00:22.800 want?

01:00:25.020 Huh.

01:00:25.740 So it's almost

01:00:26.420 like there's too

01:00:27.000 much brand loyalty

01:00:27.880 around one

01:00:28.600 like, yeah,

01:00:29.620 you know, and

01:00:31.240 one other thing

01:00:31.840 I would add to

01:00:32.460 all this discussion

01:00:33.180 of sort of

01:00:34.320 pluralism is a

01:00:36.400 great interesting

01:00:37.600 person to read

01:00:38.860 as Immanuel

01:00:39.540 Swedenborg.

01:00:40.380 I don't know if

01:00:40.800 you guys have

01:00:41.280 been exposed to

01:00:42.840 any of his

01:00:43.240 writings, but he

01:00:43.820 was highly

01:00:44.280 influential to

01:00:46.160 subsequent thinkers.

01:00:47.320 He was, I

01:00:49.280 think he died

01:00:49.860 sometime in the

01:00:50.640 1600s, but

01:00:51.860 his, he wrote

01:00:53.560 very detailed

01:00:54.560 views of

01:00:55.220 heaven and

01:00:55.900 he essentially

01:00:56.600 took Paul's

01:00:58.220 metaphor of

01:00:58.740 the body of

01:00:59.260 Christ to

01:00:59.760 extreme literal

01:01:01.640 degrees and

01:01:02.980 described heaven

01:01:04.380 as that if

01:01:05.640 you were to

01:01:06.280 zoom out on

01:01:07.620 heaven, you

01:01:08.060 would see a

01:01:09.140 perfect human.

01:01:10.500 Oh, oh,

01:01:11.660 interesting.

01:01:12.460 And what he

01:01:12.880 said was that

01:01:13.800 different members

01:01:15.260 of this body,

01:01:16.540 of this massive

01:01:17.780 infinite, like

01:01:19.680 infinite community

01:01:21.340 of exalted

01:01:23.280 beings or

01:01:23.920 whatever, that

01:01:25.200 they gravitated

01:01:26.680 towards the

01:01:27.880 parts of the

01:01:28.580 body that they

01:01:29.840 found most

01:01:30.460 affinity with

01:01:31.380 and that the

01:01:31.900 affinity that

01:01:32.660 they held had

01:01:33.860 nothing to do

01:01:34.640 with their

01:01:35.040 earthly kin.

01:01:36.300 So he claimed

01:01:37.360 that like people

01:01:38.520 would gravitate

01:01:39.380 towards the, to

01:01:40.180 the communities

01:01:40.740 that really

01:01:41.640 resonated with

01:01:43.020 them and that

01:01:43.920 there were even

01:01:44.380 some members of

01:01:45.480 these communities

01:01:46.120 who, whose

01:01:47.900 preference was not

01:01:49.600 to be a part of

01:01:50.380 a single community

01:01:51.220 but to be a

01:01:51.980 communicator between

01:01:53.100 communities.

01:01:53.820 Right, like you're

01:01:54.360 like a total red

01:01:55.400 blood cell kind of

01:01:56.180 soul.

01:01:56.640 So here's a

01:01:58.040 question I have

01:01:58.720 because I actually

01:01:59.180 don't know if this

01:01:59.760 is an area of

01:02:00.260 differentiation is

01:02:01.980 one core

01:02:03.060 differentiation seems

01:02:04.600 to be the, the

01:02:06.800 level of

01:02:07.620 distinction you

01:02:08.760 believe that the

01:02:09.920 exalted beings

01:02:10.860 which are represented

01:02:11.660 as God have

01:02:13.260 from each other

01:02:14.040 whereas we

01:02:15.360 believe much

01:02:16.020 more that God

01:02:17.860 is an emergent

01:02:18.480 property of the

01:02:19.440 communication of

01:02:20.600 these exalted

01:02:21.180 beings but is

01:02:22.020 very much just

01:02:23.100 one single

01:02:23.940 entity.

01:02:25.020 Yeah, so to

01:02:25.760 respond to that

01:02:26.580 point I think

01:02:27.360 that probably

01:02:28.480 where maybe we

01:02:29.360 differ a little

01:02:29.940 bit is that I

01:02:30.880 see godliness

01:02:31.860 manifest at

01:02:33.600 many different

01:02:34.740 levels of

01:02:35.440 emergence and

01:02:36.380 not just at

01:02:37.120 one if that

01:02:37.960 makes sense.

01:02:38.500 So I see

01:02:39.420 godliness

01:02:39.980 manifested in

01:02:41.420 my neighbor.

01:02:42.720 I see the

01:02:43.380 image of Christ

01:02:44.280 in my neighbor

01:02:45.280 but I also see

01:02:46.980 the image of

01:02:47.580 Christ in a

01:02:48.820 community of

01:02:49.540 beings working

01:02:50.260 together harmoniously

01:02:51.520 and maybe even

01:02:53.380 in the entire

01:02:54.020 world, right?

01:02:55.240 And so I

01:02:56.320 don't, I

01:02:57.160 don't confine

01:02:58.920 my view of

01:03:00.560 transcendence to

01:03:02.100 one emergent

01:03:03.200 level if that

01:03:04.100 makes sense.

01:03:06.580 Hmm, so it's

01:03:07.560 more like

01:03:07.900 distributed divinity

01:03:08.900 rather than

01:03:09.600 there being some

01:03:10.280 kind of entity

01:03:10.920 that's formalized.

01:03:12.300 Well, it's kind of

01:03:12.600 like how things

01:03:13.220 echo, right?

01:03:14.160 Like if you

01:03:14.680 look at the

01:03:15.660 way spiral

01:03:16.420 galaxies, you

01:03:17.940 know, are

01:03:18.580 mirrored in a

01:03:19.640 toilet flush, you 0.97

01:03:21.440 know, it's like

01:03:22.880 we have these

01:03:23.680 properties in the

01:03:24.560 universe that

01:03:25.160 repeat themselves.

01:03:26.280 So like Fibonacci

01:03:27.100 divinity.

01:03:28.140 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:03:29.000 I mean, yeah.

01:03:29.840 In Mormon theology,

01:03:30.900 God is both one

01:03:31.740 and many.

01:03:32.460 In fact, there's a

01:03:33.020 passage of

01:03:33.500 scripture, the

01:03:34.720 93rd section of

01:03:36.280 the Doctrine and

01:03:36.840 Covenants from

01:03:37.500 Joseph Smith, the

01:03:38.460 founder of

01:03:38.880 Mormonism, where

01:03:40.020 he says that in

01:03:40.840 the dispensation of

01:03:41.820 the fullness of

01:03:42.360 times, which is the

01:03:43.340 time that we now

01:03:44.080 live in, that

01:03:45.320 whether there is

01:03:46.080 one God or many

01:03:47.400 gods, all will be

01:03:48.960 manifest.

01:03:50.240 And of course, what

01:03:51.140 he's getting at, which

01:03:52.080 he talks about in

01:03:52.800 other discourses he

01:03:53.920 gave, was that there

01:03:55.740 are ways of thinking

01:03:56.600 about God as being

01:03:58.040 just one, and there

01:03:59.380 are ways about

01:03:59.900 thinking of God as

01:04:00.800 being many, and

01:04:02.020 that they're both

01:04:02.980 true.

01:04:05.460 There's both, you

01:04:06.720 can approach God

01:04:07.520 from either

01:04:08.240 perspective.

01:04:08.800 In fact, the

01:04:09.720 Book of Mormon

01:04:10.400 emphasizes over and

01:04:13.080 over more strongly

01:04:14.040 than the Bible, that

01:04:15.820 God the Father, God

01:04:17.300 the Son, and the

01:04:17.880 Holy Ghost are one

01:04:18.780 eternal God.

01:04:20.040 It's like

01:04:20.500 Trinitarianism on

01:04:22.660 steroids, and yet

01:04:23.520 Mormons will insist 1.00

01:04:24.320 that we're not

01:04:24.760 Trinitarians for good 0.98

01:04:25.720 reason, because that's

01:04:27.000 just one account of

01:04:28.440 our theology.

01:04:29.180 There's a lot more

01:04:29.740 to it.

01:04:30.340 And then in another

01:04:31.080 book of Mormon

01:04:31.660 scripture, the Book

01:04:32.880 of Abraham, Joseph

01:04:34.460 Smith describes the

01:04:35.420 creation, and in the

01:04:36.320 creation, it's the

01:04:37.560 gods, plural, who 0.88

01:04:39.460 create the heavens and

01:04:40.520 the earth, and go

01:04:41.600 through the various

01:04:42.260 stages of creation

01:04:43.480 that we know of from

01:04:44.240 the Book of Genesis.

01:04:45.460 So there's many

01:04:46.400 accounts of theology

01:04:47.460 and oneness or

01:04:48.320 manyness of God in

01:04:49.580 Mormon scripture.

01:04:50.080 You know, in fact,

01:04:51.260 Lincoln gave a really

01:04:52.120 good talk on this,

01:04:53.460 these multivalent

01:04:54.700 manifestations of God

01:04:56.220 in our last

01:04:56.860 conference.

01:04:58.260 And so if you guys, I

01:04:59.860 can share you the

01:05:00.560 link of that, but it

01:05:01.760 would be interesting

01:05:02.360 if you want to

01:05:03.180 explore more sort of

01:05:04.680 this concept of like

01:05:05.900 different ways that

01:05:07.120 God may emerge and

01:05:09.700 be manifest.

01:05:10.540 Interesting.

01:05:13.040 Oh, so a question I

01:05:13.820 had for you guys is,

01:05:14.980 as Mormon

01:05:15.360 transhumanists, do 0.99

01:05:16.560 you believe that

01:05:17.560 Christians get 1.00

01:05:18.580 Christian heaven, like 0.99

01:05:19.560 non-Mormon Christians 0.89

01:05:20.340 get Christian heaven? 0.95

01:05:21.440 And what do you think

01:05:22.500 is the mechanism

01:05:23.120 there?

01:05:23.460 Do you think it's an

01:05:23.980 emulation of some

01:05:24.920 sort?

01:05:25.280 Do you think it's

01:05:25.740 like, how does that

01:05:26.280 work within the

01:05:26.880 transhumanist framework?

01:05:27.900 Whereas we just think

01:05:28.700 people who aren't

01:05:29.900 following, are not on

01:05:32.600 the path of the

01:05:33.080 elect, get no

01:05:34.240 meaningful reward.

01:05:35.320 And even the elect

01:05:35.960 get no meaningful

01:05:36.580 reward other than

01:05:37.400 their own efficacy.

01:05:38.160 Yeah, in Mormon

01:05:39.940 theology, everyone's

01:05:40.940 elect.

01:05:41.920 Everyone's elect and

01:05:43.020 everyone has potential

01:05:44.140 and possibility.

01:05:44.840 Everyone has potential

01:05:45.720 to become God, but not

01:05:47.460 everybody will want to

01:05:48.420 because that entails a

01:05:49.500 lot of hard things, that

01:05:50.780 it's not a simplistic

01:05:51.760 notion of God.

01:05:53.180 And so, yes, most

01:05:54.400 Mormons who 0.99

01:05:55.240 understand our theology

01:05:56.280 will say, yes,

01:05:57.480 Christians will get the 1.00

01:05:58.540 heaven that they're

01:05:59.080 aspiring to.

01:05:59.620 And the mechanism is

01:06:00.960 that they will make

01:06:01.700 that heaven through

01:06:02.580 their actions, through

01:06:03.760 their relationship.

01:06:04.300 That's what I was

01:06:05.680 going to say, like

01:06:06.340 that it's just

01:06:07.600 important not to

01:06:08.420 think of this as some

01:06:09.380 sort of like final

01:06:10.360 destination that you're

01:06:11.440 plopped into, but that

01:06:13.480 it's more like, you

01:06:15.300 know, Brigham Young

01:06:16.080 actually said something

01:06:17.040 really profound when he

01:06:18.240 said essentially like a

01:06:19.620 lot of people asked me

01:06:20.840 all the time, like

01:06:21.960 reveal to me the

01:06:23.240 mysteries of the gods

01:06:24.620 and where people end

01:06:26.580 up and what the

01:06:27.240 heavens look like.

01:06:27.960 He says, allow me to

01:06:29.280 inform you that you are

01:06:30.440 in the midst of it all

01:06:31.440 now, that you are in

01:06:33.180 as great a kingdom as

01:06:34.360 you will ever, ever

01:06:35.640 inherit unless you make

01:06:37.480 it yourselves and that

01:06:39.280 you cannot even

01:06:40.160 appreciate a kingdom

01:06:41.280 that you have not

01:06:42.380 labored to make

01:06:44.080 yourselves.

01:06:45.300 Right.

01:06:45.600 So essentially, if we

01:06:46.940 were to be zapped into

01:06:48.060 heaven without the

01:06:49.820 operating manual of

01:06:51.180 heaven, it would, it

01:06:52.540 would be a hell to us

01:06:53.780 essentially.

01:06:54.540 So we very soon at

01:06:56.140 least.

01:06:56.920 Yeah.

01:06:57.520 Pretty soon things would

01:06:58.600 break down and we

01:06:59.260 wouldn't know how to

01:06:59.800 fix them.

01:07:00.260 Right.

01:07:00.420 So the point is that

01:07:01.840 we can only inherit the 0.96

01:07:03.640 kind of glory that we

01:07:05.500 have like personally and

01:07:07.420 collectively labored to,

01:07:10.360 to create and

01:07:12.160 establish.

01:07:13.120 Collective being key

01:07:14.160 here.

01:07:14.440 Heaven is more than just

01:07:15.580 an individual thing in

01:07:16.560 Mormonism.

01:07:17.000 It's definitely a

01:07:17.760 community thing.

01:07:19.160 Yeah.

01:07:21.480 Yeah.

01:07:22.100 Mormonism is really

01:07:23.020 interesting because it

01:07:23.700 has this weird

01:07:24.700 combination of like

01:07:26.820 fierce independence with

01:07:28.680 communalism.

01:07:29.820 Right.

01:07:30.020 Right.

01:07:30.420 Where it's like Mormons, 1.00

01:07:32.300 for example, during the

01:07:34.220 Great Depression, Mormons 1.00

01:07:36.120 had a really strong

01:07:37.180 welfare program and

01:07:39.640 within the church,

01:07:40.840 within the church.

01:07:41.680 Right.

01:07:42.000 But it was because the

01:07:43.320 church was so strong on

01:07:44.380 the Wasatch Front.

01:07:45.280 It was practically the

01:07:46.280 community, whether,

01:07:47.560 whether you were an

01:07:48.640 active member of the

01:07:49.480 church or not, you were

01:07:50.340 getting sustenance from

01:07:52.780 this program.

01:07:53.460 Right.

01:07:53.800 And when, even during like

01:07:57.380 the Depression, when some

01:07:58.640 research was done into how

01:07:59.720 to deal with some of the

01:08:01.220 challenges that various

01:08:02.480 communities were experiencing,

01:08:04.100 some observers were sent

01:08:05.600 from Washington to Utah to

01:08:07.460 try to understand what

01:08:08.780 they're doing well.

01:08:10.480 And yet there was also a lot

01:08:12.280 of suspicion about government

01:08:14.520 welfare programs that were

01:08:16.380 being implemented later on,

01:08:18.580 precisely because they didn't

01:08:20.260 want competition.

01:08:21.100 like the Utahns, the Mormons 0.63

01:08:23.080 in Utah wanted to said,

01:08:24.480 it's working for us.

01:08:25.880 Just let us do what we're

01:08:26.820 doing, you know?

01:08:27.660 And so I think there was

01:08:28.840 some natural suspicion

01:08:29.880 around something that would

01:08:31.600 be administered by a

01:08:32.940 governing body that did not

01:08:34.400 also have all the other

01:08:35.560 trappings that, and

01:08:37.580 strengths of Mormonism,

01:08:38.740 right?

01:08:39.020 Whether that suspicion was

01:08:40.240 warranted or not is another

01:08:41.280 question, but it's an

01:08:42.200 interesting historical

01:08:43.900 anecdote, right?

01:08:45.140 To, to see that, that

01:08:47.280 combination of self-reliance,

01:08:49.980 independence, and

01:08:50.980 communalism at the same

01:08:52.000 time, right?

01:08:54.040 That is, I, I love that.

01:08:55.460 There, there's so many

01:08:56.320 things about the LDS

01:08:57.400 church that are just like,

01:08:59.320 I mean, well, and also

01:09:00.540 it, it, it, it, it shows

01:09:02.560 that a lot of the things

01:09:03.580 that the church and the,

01:09:05.040 the broader lifestyle and

01:09:06.280 culture have tried and

01:09:07.820 done really work because

01:09:09.100 there aren't very many,

01:09:10.760 like, we'll say new

01:09:13.120 versions of Christianity

01:09:14.680 that have done well and,

01:09:17.400 you know, sort of been

01:09:18.260 relatively new.

01:09:19.000 I mean, I, the LDS

01:09:19.940 church is the only one

01:09:20.700 that I know of, like

01:09:21.900 post.

01:09:22.620 The Millerists, they 0.92

01:09:23.860 split into a number of

01:09:25.040 movements that still

01:09:25.680 exist today, but.

01:09:26.700 Millerists? 0.96

01:09:27.120 I've never heard of

01:09:27.720 them.

01:09:28.240 And so, so Jehovah's 1.00

01:09:29.920 Witnesses are probably the

01:09:30.760 biggest branch, but so

01:09:31.920 are the.

01:09:32.380 The Adventists, I think, 0.98

01:09:33.460 are doing.

01:09:33.800 The Seventh-day Adventists,

01:09:34.780 yeah.

01:09:35.460 Yeah, it is interesting

01:09:36.680 though, like, I think for

01:09:37.620 every religion that

01:09:38.620 succeeds, there's probably

01:09:39.660 hundreds that fail,

01:09:40.680 right?

01:09:40.920 So, yeah, it's, it's

01:09:42.620 rarer to see the

01:09:44.400 emergence of a new world

01:09:45.800 religion that, that has 0.91

01:09:47.540 traction, right?

01:09:48.880 Well, and that is

01:09:49.300 influential.

01:09:49.900 I've never met a Seventh-day 0.95

01:09:51.360 Adventist.

01:09:51.960 I've never met a Jehovah's 1.00

01:09:53.280 Witness.

01:09:53.900 And yet, like, all my

01:09:55.700 friends in college were

01:09:56.860 Mormon.

01:09:57.240 I went to a Mormon

01:09:57.800 preschool.

01:09:58.700 I've met many Mormons

01:09:59.720 just randomly, like.

01:10:01.220 Yeah, that is

01:10:02.020 interesting.

01:10:02.780 I'd say one thing that's

01:10:03.800 different between those

01:10:04.800 three groups that we just

01:10:06.060 mentioned is that Mormons

01:10:08.280 are strongly encouraged to,

01:10:09.880 like, be out among the

01:10:11.000 world and be involved.

01:10:13.480 And we're also not

01:10:14.680 anti-tech and we're not,

01:10:16.460 like, cloistered that

01:10:18.300 much, right?

01:10:18.940 So, so I think that.

01:10:20.540 Did you live in the

01:10:21.080 Western United States?

01:10:22.460 Yeah.

01:10:23.340 In California.

01:10:25.240 Lots of Mormons in the 0.80

01:10:26.100 Western United States.

01:10:26.620 Except, when I went to

01:10:28.400 school and all my friends

01:10:29.200 were Mormon, I was in

01:10:30.040 D.C.

01:10:31.200 Yeah.

01:10:31.860 So.

01:10:32.500 Well, lots of Mormons in 0.99

01:10:33.460 D.C.

01:10:34.040 Yeah.

01:10:34.260 Yeah, there are.

01:10:34.980 Anyway, this has been

01:10:35.960 fantastic.

01:10:36.780 Yes, thank you so much for

01:10:38.080 joining.

01:10:38.380 I really appreciate you taking

01:10:38.580 the time to talk with us.

01:10:39.640 I really do want to have

01:10:40.560 you on again if you end up

01:10:41.340 starting this organization so

01:10:42.620 we can help you get members

01:10:44.620 because I think it would have

01:10:45.780 a lot of overlap with the

01:10:46.880 things that we do.

01:10:48.140 And I think it is very

01:10:48.980 interesting the huge amount

01:10:51.220 of overlap in our belief

01:10:53.920 systems, which better helps

01:10:55.460 you understand when I talk

01:10:56.260 to Mormons that, like,

01:10:56.940 your belief systems are

01:10:57.720 very, very Mormon.

01:10:59.300 In fact, the one thing that

01:11:00.840 we often say, like,

01:11:02.220 distinctly, I know for a

01:11:03.400 fact, this is something that

01:11:04.400 I disagree with Mormons on 1.00

01:11:05.360 is we disagree with the idea

01:11:06.480 of a central church.

01:11:07.280 And I was like, but, you

01:11:08.860 know, you guys also said

01:11:09.960 that you thought that it

01:11:10.880 might be better to have

01:11:12.100 unique, local central

01:11:13.940 churches.

01:11:14.800 So even there, we have a lot

01:11:16.320 of similarities.

01:11:16.840 So it's been great to have

01:11:17.940 you on and have a

01:11:19.520 spectacular Christmas.

01:11:22.220 Yes.

01:11:22.580 Merry Christmas to both of

01:11:24.180 you.

01:11:24.740 Yeah.

01:11:25.140 Thanks so much, guys.

01:11:26.200 I love these discussions and

01:11:27.600 we need a round two for 0.97

01:11:29.720 compassion versus like

01:11:31.720 austerity in divinity.

01:11:33.880 Right.

01:11:34.080 So whenever you guys are

01:11:35.660 ready, let's do it again.

01:11:37.400 Have a good one.

01:11:38.600 Hey, thanks, guys.

01:11:40.120 Just like we said, there

01:11:41.600 is a creator.

01:11:46.200 No.

01:11:46.940 Yep.

01:11:47.360 You said it was some

01:11:48.100 all-powerful dude living

01:11:49.880 in the clouds.

01:11:50.960 Our creator's nothing like

01:11:52.000 that.

01:11:52.380 It's still a creator. 1.00

01:11:53.380 It's fucking Kevin. 0.99

01:11:54.200 He was doing the Lord's 1.00

01:11:55.220 work.

01:11:55.420 He was doing a senior

01:11:56.120 project.

01:11:56.880 Eh, semantics.

01:11:58.360 Okay.

01:11:58.660 You know what?

01:11:59.260 Hey, Kevin.

01:12:00.580 Hey, just had some

01:12:01.340 questions.

01:12:02.460 Um, first, I'm actually

01:12:03.660 just curious, how long

01:12:05.360 did this take you?

01:12:06.180 Okay, well, don't tell

01:12:08.380 my mom, but I kind of

01:12:10.240 procrastinated on the

01:12:11.260 thing.

01:12:11.840 Uh, we had the full year

01:12:13.040 to work on it, but I

01:12:14.700 waited until probably the

01:12:16.920 last week, worked for

01:12:18.480 like six days straight,

01:12:19.880 got it done, and then I

01:12:21.380 rested for like a full

01:12:22.540 day after that. 0.99

01:12:27.780 Are you fucking kidding 0.99

01:12:28.660 me? 0.99

01:12:29.000 Okay, was this like a

01:12:30.000 team project or?

01:12:31.280 Nope, just me, one

01:12:33.160 programmer.

01:12:35.380 Okay, how does this

01:12:36.840 program work?

01:12:37.980 Well, first it calls a

01:12:39.040 function.

01:12:39.740 I just called it, let

01:12:40.640 there be light.

01:12:41.780 Then you know how an

01:12:42.440 iRobot, the robots must

01:12:43.860 obey the three laws?

01:12:45.060 Yeah.

01:12:45.400 Well, this program has

01:12:46.160 laws it has to follow

01:12:47.000 too.

01:12:47.800 Uh, the first four are

01:12:48.800 the fundamental forces,

01:12:50.260 and then there are

01:12:51.000 actually six natural laws

01:12:52.680 of human nature.

01:12:53.860 So, ten in total.

01:12:55.260 Yep.

01:12:55.860 And the program must

01:12:57.000 obey these laws or else

01:12:58.240 it just falls apart.

01:12:59.260 So, you might say

01:13:00.580 they're like the

01:13:02.540 commandments of the

01:13:03.380 program.

01:13:03.940 Yeah, that's pretty

01:13:04.820 much exactly what they

01:13:05.620 are.

01:13:06.000 Yeah, that makes a lot

01:13:06.880 of sense actually.

01:13:10.020 What language is this

01:13:11.100 written in?

01:13:11.960 C.

01:13:12.760 Wow.

01:13:13.140 Actually involves some

01:13:14.040 others, but what's

01:13:14.660 nice about this

01:13:15.360 language is that it

01:13:16.140 highlights any

01:13:17.020 individual mistakes in

01:13:18.500 red.

01:13:18.840 So, when I was

01:13:19.700 debugging, all I had

01:13:20.760 to do was part the

01:13:21.940 red C code from the

01:13:23.420 rest and then see

01:13:24.740 what the issues were.

01:13:25.980 Mm-hmm.

01:13:26.380 Yeah.

01:13:26.720 Then all the bugs

01:13:27.680 were swept away and

01:13:29.080 the good code was,

01:13:30.140 you know, free to be

01:13:30.940 executed. 0.99

01:13:32.460 Okay.

01:13:33.300 So, was there like a

01:13:34.140 flood that covered the

01:13:35.040 entire earth and a

01:13:36.160 dude who built an arc

01:13:37.160 and put a bunch of

01:13:37.880 animals on it?

01:13:38.580 That was in another

01:13:39.260 file.

01:13:41.160 Doesn't count.

01:13:41.860 Totally counts.

01:13:42.440 Doesn't count.

01:13:43.120 Different files.

01:13:43.760 That's like, wait,

01:13:44.420 different folders?

01:13:45.160 Yep, different folders.

01:13:46.020 Different folders.

01:13:46.600 That's like a different

01:13:47.140 universe.

01:13:47.540 Bible never says

01:13:48.280 it all happened in

01:13:48.820 this universe.

01:13:50.300 You make people 0.98

01:13:51.520 crazy.

01:13:52.200 Yeah, my computer, I

01:13:53.000 have one column of

01:13:54.180 final design folders

01:13:55.260 that I actually sent

01:13:56.200 to my teacher, and

01:13:57.340 then I have another

01:13:57.840 column of just, like,

01:13:59.000 junk folders for fun

01:14:00.100 stuff.

01:14:01.840 Are you trying to say

01:14:02.760 it happened in a

01:14:03.320 parallel universe?

01:14:04.080 No, I'm just saying

01:14:04.640 different folders.

01:14:05.320 Okay, what happens 0.89

01:14:06.400 after you die?

01:14:07.520 You're removed from

01:14:08.180 the active program, but

01:14:09.360 all your info is still

01:14:10.240 stored on an external

01:14:11.100 hard drive.

01:14:11.880 Wipe that smirk!

01:14:13.880 You know what?

01:14:14.500 No.

01:14:15.160 You said you were

01:14:15.860 going to go to heaven, 0.85

01:14:16.840 above the clouds or

01:14:18.420 whatever, not a hard

01:14:19.840 drive sitting on some

01:14:20.820 dude's desk.

01:14:21.800 So after that, I knew

01:14:22.540 I needed another method

01:14:23.500 of storing these files,

01:14:24.560 so I started backing up

01:14:25.700 the hard drive to the

01:14:27.140 cloud.

01:14:27.460 The cloud?

01:14:27.840 Yeah, exactly.

01:14:29.300 But I'm very impressed.

01:14:30.960 What'd you get on the

01:14:31.640 project?

01:14:32.180 B minus.

01:14:33.020 Wow, strict teacher.

01:14:33.900 Yeah, for real.

01:14:34.620 But I'm thankful for

01:14:35.320 what I got.

01:14:36.280 Oh, and speaking of

01:14:37.000 that, one sec.

01:14:37.460 Dear Lord, I just want

01:14:41.120 to say thank you for

01:14:42.120 guiding me through this

01:14:42.860 project.

01:14:43.580 I managed to get a B

01:14:44.800 minus, which is passing.

01:14:46.640 Wait, are you praying?

01:14:49.200 Yeah.

01:14:49.760 To who?

01:14:50.540 God.

01:14:51.260 You have a God?

01:14:52.560 Duh.

01:14:52.960 You think we just came

01:14:53.740 from nothing?

01:14:54.280 I don't know, maybe

01:14:55.040 you're part of a simulation. 1.00

01:14:56.500 That's the dumbest thing 1.00

01:14:57.520 I've ever heard. 1.00

01:14:58.060 Wait, how do you know

01:14:59.000 you guys have a God?

01:15:00.420 He talks back to us.

01:15:02.260 Hey, Kevin, just want

01:15:03.220 to say good job on the

01:15:04.060 senior project.

01:15:04.800 Thanks, you know, I

01:15:05.480 worked really hard on it.

01:15:06.380 I know you did, but

01:15:07.500 maybe don't procrastinate

01:15:08.440 as much next time?

01:15:09.400 Yeah, definitely.

01:15:10.300 Okay, wait.

01:15:11.540 Who is your God?

01:15:12.760 You want to see?

01:15:13.620 Yeah.

01:15:14.140 Hey, sending up one

01:15:15.000 of my characters, too,

01:15:15.820 now.

01:15:16.420 You can do that.

01:15:21.120 And no idea what's

01:15:22.080 going on, super confused,

01:15:23.220 super confused, weird 0.97

01:15:24.060 shit in my life, and... 0.99

01:15:27.180 Whoa. 1.00

01:15:29.180 Nice place.

01:15:30.880 So, what? 0.99

01:15:31.700 Are you fucking kidding 0.99

01:15:33.140 me? 0.99

01:15:33.700 Hi, there.

01:15:35.100 So, what does this

01:15:36.260 mean?

01:15:36.580 Like, the Mormons 1.00

01:15:37.120 got it right?

01:15:37.600 We'll see you next time.

Based Camp - January 05, 2024

The Mormon Transhumanist Movement (An Interview)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript