Bob Cross

The invention of gunpowder was a lot of progress. As impactful as the invention of nuclear weapons has been in our time. And there was no REGRESSION of progress in Africa, the Americas, or Oceania. Whatever technological level they were at they at least maintained that level. Furthermore, even Europe wasn't fully dark. The Byzantine Empire remained literate and civilized. It was only Western Europe that suffered a dark age. So...as I said, on a world-wide basis, technology continued to advance throughout this supposed dark period. Regardless, there is no looming dark age stretching before us today. What we see looming before us is a tidal wave of accelerating advancement of technology like never before in history. It's gonna take your breath away! And that means that what I've been postulating is plausible enough for rational people to believe in its eventual achievment.

I think I put a lot of details into mind capture and storage (nano-machines, etc.). Beyond that, I'm looking far beyond the horizon - millennia in the future. In that case, we just can be sure that technology is going to be expanding to unimaginable advances. As such, anything plausible that doesn't violate the laws of physics can be expected to come about. That actually was my point. Scientists can predict the climate far into the future without needing to get specific about what the weather will be like on a given day far in the future. In the same way, I'm forcasting technology into the far future. I don't have to file for a patent for that technology to do so. Very Euro-centric of you. The middle east and the far east had no such dark age. Overall, world-wide, there was no regression of technology. In fact, gun powder was invented during that period (9th century).

I can't tell you what the weather forecast will be next month either. Tell that to the climate scientists. Forecasting based upon the known facts isn't WAG. And technology has been advancing steadily for millennia and exponentially for centuries. It's not WAG to expect that to continue. In fact, anyone predicting technology to stagnate would be the one making baseless claims.

Plausibility coupled with near infinite technological advancement is all that is required. If technology is advancing to infinity (and that's what the evidence shows) anything plausible is a sound basis for belief. And, as I said earlier, we can't even navigate life without belief. What route you take to work depends upon your immediate beliefs about traffic. The stock market, the weather, romance, politics, all require belief to navigate. Even science requires belief! The ancients had no interest in the laws of physics because they didn't believe they were unmutable. Today they've been tested enough for us to assume that they are unmutable - but it has never been proven. It's a belief. Then there's Quantum Mechanics. "Does God play dice?", as Einstein asked. If probablities are involved reality becomes a dice game. It's not WAG that technology is heading for near infinity eventually. And, as I've said earlier, mind contents will be captured via nano-machines. Then those contents will just be broadcast to the distant star by radio and reconstituted on-site.

Pardon my absence, but life can sometimes knock projects like this to the bottom of the priority stack. Except that "human technological advancement" does not involve the supernatural. "God" does. Nothing in my thesis involves the supernatural. I am postulating a basis for a belief, but that belief is in the ingenuity of mankind, not the supernatural. Rational people can still believe things. In fact, they have to to navigate life. Not every facet of existence has been solved to perfection. As I posted earlier, what I am doing is best characterized as “Technology Forecasting”. By definition, that means forecasting technology that doesn’t exist yet. There would be no point in forecasting existing technology, like jet engines, would there? So, since the forecast technology doesn’t exist yet, certainty cannot be a requirement. Only plausibility can be. And, in any event, my thesis was a basis for a belief only. Again, that only requires plausibility, not certainty. Nevertheless, my forecasting has employed historical trends in technology (exponential advance rates), coupled with the current state of the technological horizon (AI assistance looming). So, my forecast is based on the best evidence. Anyone forecasting a technological dark age on the horizon would be making a forecast without any factual basis. Even if a dystopian world came about technology would still be the vector of survival and therefore even more prioritized. Finally, even if the advance is slower than I have anticipated, the time available for mankind is virtually unlimited. Mankind will get to the advanced state I’ve predicted eventually. Wonders will ensue. I again postulate that the astronomical advance of technology that the future surely has in store for us makes my prediction possible: Secular people have a sound basis for belief in a wonderful afterlife. That should be a source of positivity in this troubled world we live in. I was refering to technology in general. Not a specific invention. I'm assuming that my prediction is plausible. That's all that is required for predictions. That's all that is required for belief. We have a basis for a secular belief in an afterlife. As an aside, just for fun, I want to revisit my prediction that teleportation will be the method of interstellar travel. Once we have mind storage/recovery, teleportation will be possible. Instead of physically traveling between stars, with the risk of slamming into some unknown object in deep space at 10% of the speed of light, machines will do that traveling, prepare the way, and then human mind contents will be teleported at no risk and at the full speed of light, to the distant star. 😊

Of course we do!! Many people suffer spinal injuries disconnecting themselves from their sensory inputs. They remain the same consciousness. And, we know that the brain's data processing must be hard wired. Otherwise how could it come into existence? You can't think your thinking system into existence. It has to be built in before you can even think!! So that part of the brain must be contained in the DNA blueprints. So, we only need the DNA to reproduce that part. And you are not grasping the magnitude of human technological advancement. Sure it's a brain function. The sugar in the coke interacts with the sugar receptors in my tongue and alerts the brain. (Much like the chemical transfers between neurons!). And....the brain is keeping secrets from itself??!! I feel like the discussion has gotten off-track. We seem to be mired in the minutia about the implementation of the specific steps required, which was never the point of my thesis. I’m not in any way claiming to know how those steps will be implemented (never mind that I’ve almost got about half the paperwork filled out for the patent on mind-saving 😊). My thesis was about the accelerating advance of technology and its consequences for ourselves and those who came before us. Take a minute to think about that accelerating advance. It’s been advancing at an exponential rate for centuries now. And we’re about to add machine intelligence to that process. Machine intelligence itself is not going to remain static either. Its algorithms will be exponentially improved (including by machine intelligence itself) as will the power of the computers it runs on. So, machine intelligence itself is going to be advancing exponentially. Therefore, the technological advances it will engender are going to advance even faster than exponentially. They’re going to go into hyperdrive! Furthermore, there really isn’t any limit to the time that the hyper expansion of technology can run. Centuries, millennia, tens of millennia, hundreds of millennia, etc. can be expected in our future. The combination of hyper advance of technology and unlimited time will mean that technology will ultimately be advanced to the edge of infinity. Under that paradigm, any task that is within the laws of physics will be achievable. And, if that isn’t enough, don’t forget that the world’s population continues to expand as does its wealth. That means more and more minds and more and more technology devoted to the advancement of technology. Can you say “hyperhyperdrive”?

Most of that is irrelevant to recreating "you". What sensory inputs or specific thoughts you happen to be having at the moment can be discarded without changing yourself. Furthermore, many of the brain's systems are hard wired in your DNA and wouldn't have to be saved. Once nano-machines are available, we will, over a few centuries, figure out just what is needed to be recorded for restoration. This is a solvable problem that will be solved. Have a little faith in human ingenuity! So...not even the brain can recover it!!?? And, I guess when I sip a coke (exchanging chemicals) I'm doing quantum entanglement?? This is getting sillier and sillier. Whatever is required to transfer our minds to hard media will not be able to resist the expansion of technology to the edge of infinity.

You were presenting the brain as a quantum computer as if it were an established fact. Wikipedia describes it as speculation, even as admited by its proponents: "These hypotheses of the quantum mind remain hypothetical speculation, as Penrose and Pearce admit in their discussions." Regardless, I'll repeat what I said earlier: If the brain can recover its contents (and it must be able to) then a nano-machine can do so as well. And exchanging chemicals is a lesser act than chemical bonding in that there are no quantum mechanical aspects. Again, what I'm doing is sort of like "Technology Forecasting". I don't have to file a patent to do so. If everything we don't yet have figured out is "implausible" then that means all blue-sky research is implausible. Who's going to fund implausible research? And plausible today is not the same as plausible centuries or millennia from now.

Your claim that the brain is a quantum computer doesn't seem to have much acceptance yet, that I can find. Regardless, it is still made up of neurons and their connections. Anything a neuron can detect a nano-machine can detect - and record. That's only chemistry. Do neurons even bond chemically with each other to interact? They exchange chemicals but that's a lesser operation. If neurons aren't even doing chemical bonding how could they be doing quantum mechanics?

"Quantum" can mean lots of things. It does not equate to Quantum Mechanics.

You "think"? I thought you had discovered a law of nature. Quantum mechanics operate on the scale of atoms. Neurons are far too macro for this.

Plausibility is subjective. Those who have faith in the ingenuity of mankind will see this task as plausible. Stone-age men couldn't draw up the blueprints for jet engines. We still have them. It's definitely a collection of neurons and their connections. And if the neuron can detect its own state, a nano-machine can too. For sure, EEG sets detect enough of the brain's activity to decern emotions. The brain's structure is not a law of nature.

Again, if the brain is just a collection of neurons, their connections, and the states of those connections, it is possible to collect all the necessary information using nano-machines - as I've described earlier. Even if it's more complicated than that, the issue will not withstand the tidal wave of technological advancement to the edge of infinity. These are simply techological speed bumps that will get flattened in that wave. Regardless, I'm not filing for a patent on the technique. I'm just making a case for belief that it will be solved. That's a lower bar that I'm sure I've met. As I said in my initial post: "There are some issues with insuring that it really is our consciousness that gets restored and not just a duplicate of ourselves, of course." So, yes, that is an issue that will have to be resolved. Even the science isn't sorted out yet for that, so no point in my speculating how it might be achieved. But, work on machine consciousness may be the vector that allows human consciousness to be sorted out. And, again, my scenario includes extrapolating technology to near infinity. That should bulldoze any solvable problem in our paths eventually. Oh, and I just said "snapshot", not "quantum snapshot".

I'm not loading anyone into a computer. I'm just storing a snapshot of our minds in one to enable it to be restored after our deaths. That storage is finite but, after restoration, our prospects will be as infinite as in any other living organism. I guess I got some bad info on Kurzweil. Nevertheless, what I said about his nano-machine prediction stands - and that's what matters. Among the many revolutionary advantages they will bring will include repair to cells and other bodily structures. So, pristine cells and arteries, for example. Like a "fountain of youth"! The brain is a collection of neurons and their connections. That - and their states - can be recorded. If it's more complicated than that, we'll have centuries to figure out those details. Again, I don't have to solve all the technical details this minute. I just have to make a plausible case that they will be solved. And they will be. In fact, once nano-machines become available (maybe pretty soon) the opportunity to make such a recording of our minds might be a good idea. That's even if it will be centuries before restoration becomes possible. That storage will eliminate the need for some sort of time-travel like technique to recover that info later.

Earlier I said I didn't care how it was categorized, and I still don't. But I want to go back to this anyway. I wouldn't categorize it as science fiction since that doesn't have any constraints. I'm postulating a basis for a belief - that constrains me to plausibility. I think a better categorization would be "Technology Forcasting". But, since this concerns belief in an afterlife, it should continue to fit nicely here in the General Philosophy category. The brain is the only part that has to be reconstructed precisely - for restoring the mind contents recorded earlier. But that recording - using nano-machines you'll recall - can also record the spacial locations of all neurons as it does so. Then, when the body - including the brain - is constructed, the brain will be identical to the original. Our bodies change continuously and there is no need for such precision for that. Catch up! You're stuck in 2023. This is happening centuries from now, after centuries of AI-assisted technological advancements. I never said anything about "digital heaven". The contents of the human mind is finite and that was what was being recorded to memory for future restoration. The subject will be physically restored to real life - in a future that I expect to be sort of equivalent to something we might call heaven, but just as infinite as any other time in the universe has been. I want to add that last year Ray Kurzweil (one of the founders of Google, famous for technology predictions) predicted that Nano-Machines were only about eight years away! That sounds a little early to me, but if he's right that will be Earth-shattering!

Explain cloning then.

So...unless you can conceive of how to do it right now in every particular, it's impossible?

I don't care how it's categorized. But I wanted to counter the notion that the concept of an afterlife has been scientifically disproven. We just had Arnold S. declare that Heaven doesn't exist. A few years ago non-believers posted declarations on billboards that "there is no afterlife" on US-59 here in Houston. No room for discussion. That seems to be the understanding among non-believers - that science has disproven any afterlife. Well, it hasn't. There's room for it if what I proposed gets figured out. A technological speed bump. Obviously, I don't have the details figured out yet. Stone age men didn't have the blueprints for jet engines either. It's been a long time since mankind has regressed, technologically, if ever. Soon we'll have AI to help us - the current rate of advance will accelerate! I mentioned that the issue about who's consciousness is restored would have to be figured out. Another techological speed bump. I am in no way suggesting this is a basis for discounting the life we have.

Postulating a Basis for Belief in a Technological Afterlife by Bob Cross I’ve been thinking about the implications of the accelerating advance of technology in our world. Extrapolating this to the far future has led me to postulate the plausible expectation of a non-supernatural afterlife – a Technological Afterlife. Think about the advance of technology we’re experiencing. Compare 2023 vs. 1923. Compare that to 1923 vs. 1823, etc. It’s advancing exponentially. So, imagine what will be possible – not just in a century – but in millennia. I like to use Arthur C. Clark’s idea about what vastly advanced civilizations will be like to us (he meant extraterrestrial civilizations, but it would apply to our own civilization millennia from now as well). He said their technology will basically appear to be magic to us. So…just about anything that you can imagine will be conceivable (so long as it doesn’t violate the laws of physics). Try conceiving that in the far future mankind will be able to transfer the contents of our minds to hard memory – to be restored upon the event of our death. (I can imagine nano-machines effecting this – one machine detecting at each neuron). Our bodies will be quickly reconstructed to perfection from just our DNA – to then be repopulated with the stored memory of our minds. This probably isn’t actually that far off – maybe a century or two. (There are some issues with insuring that it really is our consciousness that gets restored and not just a duplicate of ourselves, of course. And we still haven’t figured out just what consciousness is - so, anticipating it does require a leap of faith that that will be figured out.) Once achieved, humans will basically be immortal. (And, as a side-effect, it might also mean teleportation, like in “Star Trek”, with DNA-code and mind contents teleported wherever desired to then be used for restoration on site. This may be how real interstellar travel is effected – robots sent ahead first to prepare the way with whatever planetary terraforming is required, followed by teleportation of mind contents.) This step isn’t that controversial. And I’m hardly the first person to postulate the “minds to hard memory” thing. It doesn’t really require much foresight to foresee its advent. It’s my next step that goes off the deep end: Now take a much bigger leap into the far, far, far, far, future – multiple millennia from now. Now technology is so advanced that mankind will be able to see back in time with perfect clarity – enough that the minds and DNA-code of long dead people can be saved to hard memory in the same fashion. And – boom! - long dead people will be able to be restored to life! OK, this is a real leap into the unknown! Note that I’m not postulating actual time-travel as there are paradoxes linked to that. Rather, I’m just postulating seeing into the past with perfect clarity. No paradoxes there. We can at least say that this expectation doesn’t violate the laws of physics. In fact, a current tenet of physics is that “information cannot be destroyed”. (In fact, this was one of the final things Hawking solved regarding black holes). And, since we’re extrapolating technology to near infinity, it’s only natural to anticipate a way to recover it. But how such recovery will actually be possible is unknowable for us. If I were writing a science fiction story, I might use sci-fi buzz words like “manipulating parallel universes” or such. But the real technology used will be many orders-of-magnitude even more unimaginable to us (like stone-age men trying to anticipate jet engines or smart phones). Again, I invoke Arthur C. Clark: It will appear to be magic to us. So, it must be taken on faith. But note that it’s not faith in the supernatural. Rather, it’s faith in human ingenuity. Note that if a few millennia won’t suffice then just wait for a few tens of millennia, a few hundreds of millennia, etc., with technology advancing exponentially throughout. The combination of information indestructability and extrapolating technology to the edge of infinity renders the expectation plausible. Let me be clear: I’m in no way saying that I KNOW this technological advance will occur. I’m only saying that it has enough basis to warrant a belief that it will. In other words, all I’m saying is that secular people, sans religion, have a plausible basis for an expectation of an afterlife. What will this be like for us? After death, we won’t experience the intervening millennia – we’ll be inert. Our next conscious thoughts will be millennia later, upon being restored. So, the intervening millennia will zip by in a flash for us. The world we enter will be like heaven to us, comparably – living in perfect health for eternity with the Universe to explore. Why would such distant people want to restore us? They won’t. But they will want to restore their parents. Then their parents will want to restore their parents, and so on – eventually getting all the way back to us. Don’t leave descendants that far forward? No problem. Some ancestors of yours will do so and be restored, and then will want to restore any of their children that didn’t. Then those children will want to restore their children, and so on. Will there be space for us? Of course. By then mankind will be expanding throughout the galaxy and will need warm bodies – or at least will have space for them. There may even be planets devoted to each civilization and era – and that’s probably where we will be restored: Populating them without needing space travel (or even teleportation!). I realize this almost sounds religious. But it’s not, since there is no supernatural factor involved. The assumptions are purely within the bounds of science and rationality. But, having tumbled to it, I admit that it’s about as comforting as religion. But, don’t worry if you don’t join in the belief. This faith has no penalty for non-believers – they will be restored the same as everyone else. Of course, some of history’s most evil people may not be cleared for restoration – but that will be independent of their beliefs.