 transfigurism.org, and we welcome those who are joining us online, and thank you of course for all of you here and here in person, we appreciate your support, and look forward to the conversations that this should provoke and inspire throughout the day. My name is Lincoln Cannon, and I'm currently serving as President of the Mormon Trans Humanist Association by appointment of the Board of Directors, which is elected by the voting members of the association, and I'll be leading this morning's session of the conference. We have an excellent lineup of speakers prepared for you. Our key notes of course will be Mormon philosopher Adam Miller later on this morning, and this afternoon we'll have Natasha Vita Moore who is a transhumanist designer. Also backed by popular demand, and some of you heard them warming up this morning, is the Mormon transhumanist Barbershop Chorus. They sound absolutely awesome, and I look forward to hearing them more. Thanks to Mustache Power Productions. We are streaming live on transfigurism.org, and I appreciate the support that they've been providing to us both at this conference and in conferences in previous years, and we're also creating recordings of this conference that will be available on our YouTube channel afterwards for those who aren't able to participate live. Very importantly, I'd like to thank the leaders of the association for preparing this conference. A lot of very hard work has gone into preparing for it, the marketing, the logistics, people who have prepared presentations, and you know fundraising, all kinds of work, really hard work goes into preparing a conference. None of the leaders of this association is paid for the work that we do, and all of us have families, and all of us actually have things that we like to do sometimes other than work, and the sacrifices and contributions that the leaders of this association and various members of this association have made to prepare this conference are greatly appreciated and make this possible. One request that's coming up, if you would, those of you who are here in the room, maybe if you're sitting on the edges, you might want to scoot in just a little bit. As people come in, they may have a hard time sitting if we are taking up the edge locations, or at least observe as they come in and maybe offer them space. So last year at this conference, I expressed the purpose of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, which stands for the proposition that we should learn to become gods and saviors, not to raise ourselves above others, but rather to raise each other together, as exemplified and invited by Jesus. I often express this in secular terms as the pursuit of a radical flourishing in creation and compassion through technology and religion. With that purpose's context, this year I would like to adjust focus a little bit, and focus instead of focusing on the association as an organization and what we stand for, I'd like to talk about Mormon Transhumanists as persons, and I'd like to explore with you and perhaps start a conversation that will go on throughout the remainder of this day and on into discussions online and so forth about what it is to be a Mormon Transhumanist. Who are we, generally speaking? What do we do and what do we think? And the first place we can look to get an idea of what a Mormon Transhumanist is, is at the membership records of the association. And so Nathan, how do I close that? There we go. When we look at the membership records of the association, we see that the association is experiencing some very strong growth. You can see that over the last couple of years, in particular, the association has grown remarkably well. Currently, or actually as of the end of 2013, we had 379 total members, 30 of which are voting members, and what a voting member is, is somebody who supports the association financially or otherwise through in-kind donations through the work that they do to help us, for example, put on conferences and things along those lines. The growth rates of the association, as I mentioned, in particular the last two years have been very high. In 2013 the growth rate was over 50%. We gained 133 new members, and the year before that was even more remarkable in the number of persons that joined the associations. And meanwhile, our attrition rates are also very low. In 2013, we lost only seven members, and more than half of those seven were lost simply because we could no longer contact them. And the way that we manage membership in the association is if we can't contact a person, we no longer can consider that person a member of the association. So in 2013 only lost seven persons. As far as the location where these members are located goes, we have about two-thirds of our members in the United States and about a quarter of our members in the state of Utah. So the flip side of that, of course, is that we have an international audience, an international membership, and we also have quite a few members of the association outside of Utah. All of the members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association support the Transhumanist Declaration, as well as the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation. And as of this week, we actually have 413 members of the association. So since the beginning of the year, we've added quite a few. So much then for the membership records of the association. Let's talk about the members in more detail, you know, not just from a membership record perspective, but about what they think can do. And a good way to do that is to dive in to the annual member surveys that we put out every year, where we collect information about the backgrounds and thoughts and positions of the members of the association. And I'm going to be going through a bunch of data up here on the screen and it will go quickly at times to help you in the audience and those of you who are participating online, keep up with the flow of data and perhaps jump around back and forth between different things that show up on the screen. I'd encourage you, if you have a computing device, to open up the survey results right now. You can do that either by scanning this large QR code here up on the screen, or just by typing in that short URL there into your web browser on your device. Either way, you should be able to access the survey data that we'll be looking at here. So while you're opening that up, I'd like to invite two members of the association to join me up here. My friends Brent Alsup, who's standing up right here, and Carl Hale, who is making his way from over here. Brent, here on my left, is a co-founder and former director of the association, as well as the current manager of our annual member survey, the results of which we'll be looking at today. And then Carl is also a co-founder of the association, and he currently serves as a director and the chief financial officer of the association. A very good chief financial officer, I might add. So I've invited these guys to join me because even by Mormon transhumanist standards, these guys happen to be unusual. And you might wonder, well, okay, they're already Mormon transhumanists, how much more unusual could it get than that? Well, as it turns out, Carl, he is a conservative, and Brent is an atheist. And of course, those aren't unusual characteristics on their own, but remember, they're both also Mormon transhumanists. So by deduction, that makes Carl a conservative transhumanist, and that makes Brent an atheist Mormon. That's unusual. So I've invited Carl and Brent to share their thoughts with us as we look at some survey data up on the screen together. And the hope is that this will give us a better sense for some of the diversity among our organization, among the members of the association. And while we're doing this, I suppose that I'll be in the unusual position of standing in for a mainstream view, if such a thing can be said to exist among Mormon transhumanists. So I'd like to start by asking Brent, if you would, Brent, could you tell us a little bit about why you are a member of the Mormon transhumanist association? Okay, yeah, well, the reasons are legion couldn't cover them all, but just I think MTA is just way cool. And I love being a part of it intellectually stimulating just friends to talk with that have similar views. So it's just a lot of fun for me. I prepared my words because I want to make sure I get a whole bunch of stuff in in 30 seconds or less each time. So here we go. Before that, in addition to being members of the MTA, Brent and I are friends. I want that to be clear. So why am I a Mormon transhumanist? First, transhumanist ideas strengthen my faith in and give me a deeper personal relationship with my father in heaven who is God. Second, because I have seen that transhumanist ideas when illuminated by the traditional teachings of the gospel of Christ are a powerful guide and anchor for many sincere seekers of truth. I have seen the efforts of this organization bring people to and back to God and Mormonism. I believe I am a better Mormon and a better child of God because of the Mormon transhumanist association. Thanks guys. So let's go ahead and then hopefully you have it up on your devices. We're going to jump in to the survey results and look at some of that together. In 2013, about a quarter of our members actually participated in the survey, so 96 members total. And they reported that about 80% of them live in the United States. Well, as you probably recall from a previous slide that I showed you, actually, our membership records indicate that a lower percentage of our membership actually is in the United States. So what you can deduce from that is that members of the association in the United States participated in the survey at a higher rate than our members outside of the United States. So keep that in mind as we look at the results. If more of our members outside of the United States had participated, some of these results would be different than what you'll be looking at. How different? It's a hard to say, but they would probably have been a little bit different. Here's some of the demographic data regarding the association members. Our age distribution centers in the late 30s. And if you'll take a look around you, this isn't surprising, but we are almost certainly too white and too male. Now, wonderfully, we do have some non-white and non-male supporters here with us today and hopefully more online. And hopefully we can figure out ways of reaching out beyond these demographics as well. But please, the white males among us, please continue to participate. Most of us are married with children. In fact, I'd say that this is a rather remarkable demographic among transhumanists generally. Mormon transhumanists are far more likely to be married and far more likely to have children. And if you'll notice down there at the bottom of the slide here on the on your right, we're far more likely to have a lot more children than your typical transhumanists. Several members of our association have seven or more transhumanists. And remember, these are just the ones that participated in the survey. Our education and income levels also skew towards the high end. We're a remarkably well educated and high income group on the whole. So before we move on to the ethics, I just want to give both Brent and Carl an opportunity to comment on their thoughts on the demographics of the association. Well, as some of the results will show that we've got some increasing in diversity, particularly in the number of atheists. Of course, most people are, are religious and Mormon and theists, but the percentage wise, you'll see that there's declining slightly and the atheists are suffering increasing. But I think it and so that's great. More diversity is better. We can find that moving that into other more women, more other people increasing diversity. I think it'd be great. So transhumanist ideas are largely appealing to the linear thought processes of the analytical mind. Linear thinking and analysis are characteristics of the young side of our nature, which is generally stronger in men. If we are to develop a sustainable message, we need to learn how to better engage the lateral thought processes of the intuitive mind. Lateral thinking and intuition are characteristics of the inside of our nature. And I'm trying to be very careful here to make clear that I'm not talking about men and women. I'm talking about the in and young sides of our nature. And however, the inside of our nature is generally stronger in women. This is why in my view, our demographics are skewed so strongly to the male side. Thank you guys. All right, let's talk now a little bit about politics and ethics and the perspectives of our members in this area in a general sense, we'll dive in a little bit deeper into some specific areas later on. As it turns out, most of us are social progressives, or at least social moderates, unlike Carl. Carl is very definitely in the minority there. You can see that there's about 10% of our members identifying as social conservatives. However, on the economic side of things, our perspectives are much more mixed. One area where we have a great deal of unanimity in our perspective is on the benefits of embracing technology. So there are certainly opportunities and risks both that come along with embracing technology, but most Mormon transhumanists, like most transhumanists generally think that we're better served by embracing technology and working to mitigate the associated risks than by avoiding it. Another place where we have a great deal of unanimity is in our thoughts around intelligence and the augmentation, the improvement of intelligence. Almost all the members of the association think that it would be a very good thing if we became many more times intelligent than we currently are. Another area where a lot of us agree is on health and the improvement of health and the extension of healthy lifespans. Most of us think that everyone should live in good health for a very long time, maybe hundreds of years or longer. That's not a particularly controversial thing among Mormon transhumanists. Most of us, we tend to base our sense of morality on universal happiness and well-being. And when I say universal, I'm talking about the happiness and well-being of humans, but also non-humans, whether that's non-human animals as we know them today or potentially artificial intelligences or post-human intelligences that may arise in the future. We generally like to consider, take into consideration as we assess what is moral and how to behave morally and live morally. We like to take into consideration this broad universal sense of well-being. And finally, on this section, we're more inclined overall to think of life as a test than as a war, but you can see that there's quite a few who don't really buy into either of those analogies for how life should be thought about. So Brent and Carl, your perspectives on these politics and ethics issues. Pundits like to paint people in antagonistic black and white colors. However, when I talk with my friends across the political spectrum, I see a much more colorful and nuanced picture. I believe sincere seekers of truth, regardless of political or religious position, generally agree with King Benjamin's and ultimately Christ's counsel to care for each other. The differences in philosophy really only come in implementation. This is why in my view, members of the MTA are generally socially progressive, but disagree on the implementation or economics. We will begin to make progress in our political and ethical discussions, and I would say that we do make that progress inside of the MTA. Once we learn to evaluate a person's beliefs based on their definitions of our shared nomenclature, rather than on our own definitions, only when we have learned their definitions, will we be able to discover and hopefully correct the real weaknesses in their and our own philosophies. Yeah, for me, morality is all about finding out what everyone wants, unconditional lovingly for everyone. And then once you know what that is, having that as your ultimate goal and getting it all for everyone, whether in this life or the next life, you never give up on any of that for anyone. Thanks, guys. Next up, we're going to look at members' perspectives on God and religion. And among transhumanists in the most general sense, this is a controversial topic. Transhumanists, by and large, are quite secular. Many of them are atheists, many of them are agnostics, or just simply non-religious. And some of them just don't even care too much about the questions, but some of them are very passionately even anti-religious. You get that full spectrum among transhumanists generally. Of course, Mormon transhumanists are rather different in these regards, but there are some carryovers from the broader transhumanist perspective into Mormon transhumanism. So first of all, most of our members are members of the Church, also members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest Mormon denomination, the one that will be holding its worldwide general conference here in Salt Lake City tomorrow and the day after. And also, most of our members are theists, have belief or faith in God in some form or another. However, as you'll notice, that's not most in the sense of like 80 or 90 percent. It's actually around 60 to 70 percent of our members fit those characteristics, and the others fall in a whole bunch of other kinds of categories. So for example, we have members of our association, like Brent, who are a minority, but who are atheists. And Brent is not alone. As you can see, we've about 10 percent of our membership consists of atheists. We also have agnostic members. We have members of the association that are not members of the LDS Church and that are not even Mormon. In fact, there are several in the audience here who are not Mormons, who may be practicing other religious traditions, such as Christianity in a non-Mormon sense, or even say Buddhism or other religious faiths. And then, of course, we even have some members of the association who are not religious at all, but for various reasons support the work that we're doing and see value in it. Over time, we've noticed that the composition of our membership is adjusting slightly. Over the last few years, we've seen the composition of our membership that are agnostic or atheist, or have no opinion on the perspective, on the view of God, has increased while the composition of our theist portion has decreased a little bit. Likewise, we've seen that there's been a slight decrease in the LDS composition of our membership while the composition of our non-LDS membership increases slightly. Now, why is that happening? Some may suggest, oh, it's because the darn atheists are chasing away our good theists, right? Some are tempted to say things like that, but our statistics don't bear that out because the LDS theists are staying with the association, and we're getting more of them. But what we are also doing, I think, and you might be able to interpret this data in different ways, I think that we're showing that we are a place where people who have lost faith in God, or who never had faith in God, can come and have important, meaningful conversations about shared values with people who do have faith in God. And as our reputation for being a place like that improves and becomes more well-known, we attract more atheists and agnostics to our association, and personally I think we are the better for that. So moving on, talking a little bit more about what we actually think about God and religion, most of us think that God created us, but we're not sure necessarily about the specific mechanisms. Up here we have our perspectives on cosmoforming, in particular, displayed, and you can see that we're divided on that. We tend to agree with the idea of a fine-tuned universe, whether that was done intelligently or not would depend probably on whether you happen to be the an atheist or atheist, but overall we do think that the universe seems to be fine-tuned for the emergence of life. On the other hand, most of us don't embrace the idea of intelligent design, that some kind of intelligence is necessary to the evolution of life on earth. Although some do disagree with that, as you can see in the statistics. We're more inclined, if asked to kind of choose between them, we're more inclined to a panentheistic view of the universe, of the world, than toward a pantheistic view. The difference being a pantheist view is God and nature are exactly the same thing, whereas a panentheist view is that, well, nature might be part of God or a manifestation of God in some way. We're more inclined to that in general. We tend to think that even God evolves. In fact, you can see that there's quite a strong amount of agreement in that area. But most of us also think that God currently exists in more than just potential, more than just an evolution toward a possible God, but that God does presently exist. Almost all of us think that we should become God, or gods, or like God. And that if we do, we would almost certainly not be the first. Many of us even think that we cannot become God unless God already exists. But there is resistance to that idea, as you can see from the data. Most of us see importance both in our works, the things that we do to improve the world and to relate with each other and improve those relationships. We see importance both in that and in God's grace as a contributor to improving the world and towards the pursuit of salvation or enlightenment. We also tend to see just as much importance in our grace for each other, one human to another, one family member or friend to another, as we see in the importance of, say, for example, God's grace in our work. Most of us agree that agency and opportunity, opportunity, for example, to thrive and become like God, require a context that includes a risk of suffering and the actuality even of evil. Most of us think that God intervenes in the world, but in a limited way. And then, of course, there are people who disagree on those. You know, some of our atheist members of course would not think that God intervenes because they don't think God exists. Some think that the limited interaction with God may even be necessary for the preservation of agency and a capacity to flourish in creativity and compassion over the long run, that God could perhaps thwart our ability to progress if we, if interaction was less limited. So let me give an opportunity for both Carl and Brent to comment on these thoughts about God and religion from members of the Association. Yeah, so my view on what we are is Mormons have the concept of an intelligence. And to me, I believe that if you take the right stuff, whether it be the physical stuff and the spiritual stuff, if you must, and if you organize that into the right state or design or whatever you want to refer to that, it will be indistinguishable from you. And that's a fact. That's a necessary fact that is true in all possible worlds in the pre-existence, the future and everything. And so to me, when you talk about intelligence, that's what we are. And that has always existed, could not ever not exist. And so to me, before and between death and resurrection, that's all that exists. But then I also believe in a spirit world that is dependent on the brain. And so we have this knowledge of ourselves. And so as long as we have knowledge of our ancestors, then we have spiritual knowledge of them and memories of them. That's what they are. And so I believe that that exists. But I believe it's dependent on the brain and must be resurrected and restored. So I thought that was coming later, but I can do that now. Okay. So yeah. And my perspective on God is if you look a thousand years in the future and you imagine that we're creating simulations or alternate worlds for the purpose of our children and raising more spirit children, then I imagine calling over your God buddies and saying, hey, watch, they're about to crucify Jesus or hey, come over and watch this. The Lamanites are about to completely wipe out the Nephites. And to me, doing that would be more, it seems to me that that's more evil than anything that humanities already done. And so I think we could do better than that. And that's why I'm an atheist. And while I haven't solved the problem of evil entirely, this is one area where transhumanism has strengthened my faith in God, frankly, through the simulation argument. And it's very difficult for me to argue against the statistics of an existing God. As a Mormon, I grew up learning that as many as God once was and more significantly as God is, man may become. I also learned that God is subject to natural law rather than being supernatural and the only creator he is inside of nature and one of an infinite regression of God's who organize already existing matter. Knowing that these radical religious ideas were given to Mormonism almost 200 years ago makes the likes of Ray Kurzweil seem like a bit of a Johnny come lately. The thrill these radical transhumanist ideas gives this conservative Latter-day Saint is not because they are new, which they are not, but because they are being presented in the terminology of science. I will also admit feeling a little smug knowing that the efforts of some proponents of transhumanism to further dismiss God have instead revealed him. One quick comment on the subject of grace. I do not believe that we have yet effectively answered the criticism that we transhumanists are trying to reach God through our own works. I believe we must provide an answer. However, I am comforted knowing that this flaw of ours is not something that separates us from but is rather shared with traditional mainstream Mormons. Alright, let's talk for a moment about our perspectives on premortal existence and birth. Most of us think we existed before birth, most Mormon transhumanists, although perhaps with an inferior quality of consciousness in some sense. We also have a generally favorable view of cloning as a reproductive technology, but our views on abortion are a bit complicated and even more complicated are our views on the genetic engineering of children. Brent and Carl, I want to comment on any of this. I believe that as we've seen in other synchronicities with Mormonism, transhumanists will eventually propose the radical idea that we existed before hitting planet Earth. I think the reasoning will be sound and based on concepts such as substrate independence or preservation of data. My confidence in this eventuality is strengthened knowing that most of you intelligent individuals agree with me. I also believe that this newfound concept will change the discussions of topics related to birth, including those around cloning and abortion. Yeah, basically as I described before, I believe in the intelligence that Joseph Smith talked about and I described what that was and I also believe in spirits that are knowledge in our brain, but I don't believe in ghosts and to me if ghosts really exist that would be a scary thing. All right, some of our perspectives on death and post-mortal existence. Most of us think we'll continue to exist after death and before any resurrection, but we have mixed views on conscious, on the state of consciousness between death and a potential resurrection, whether the quality of that consciousness might be inferior or superior or about the same as what we currently experience. Nearly all of us think that preserving records or end or DNA of our family and loved ones and friends is a good idea, but our views on cryonics are more mixed, whether we think that cryonics is a good idea or not. Most of us would consider mind uploading if it were the only way to go on existing. We'll be hearing more about that from some of our speakers later on today. We also think that human minds could be simulated on sufficiently powerful computers. That's an area of pretty strong agreement among us. Most of us expect similar or superior consciousness, superior quality of consciousness in any eventual resurrection that may happen when when persons are brought back from the dead. So Carl and Brent, any thoughts on that? So for me, preservation of everything is impossible, as much as impossible. So of course DNA, genealogy, all of the church is also working on, but I also believe that our minds and our brains and our memories are also a lot of that is in our brain and if we preserve that and chronically preserve that, more of us can be preserved. And so for me it's the choice between do we throw our ancestors away and rot them in what is to me the hell of the grave or do we preserve more of them? And I believe that future generations will judge us if we instead of preserving as much of them as they can, which we can now easily do, if instead we throw them in the grave, away in the grave, then we will offend and if the better you're preserved, the sooner and easier it will be to resurrect more of us and recover more of us. So the people that are preserved most completely, chronically preservation of all that will be effectively resurrected in the morning of the first resurrection, while people that are thrown away, rotted, cremated, will have to wait for a much more significant technology potentially a thousand years before they can be resurrected. And if you think what those people will miss, the future generations will judge us if we throw them away when we could have saved more as being more evil as say an old slave owner back in the slave days when a slave owner would torture and murder a slave or something like that, because you're doing more damage and more evil when we could do better. And this is where I wish I had a smile, if I could smile at Brent, so he knows that we are friends. But let me just vehemently disagree. These concepts, the general concepts we just talked about are have clear correlation with Mormon thought. Both the MTA and mainstream Mormons generally believe in an afterlife for ourselves and our dead and our highly and highly valued preservation of data. But it appears that both groups also disagree about what data. I personally do not think resurrecting our dead is going to be dependent on a technology only available to a very limited set of the human race who just happened to have a deep freeze available at point of death. The technology we and or God use will be sophisticated enough to resurrect the entire human race regardless of their degree of decomposition. In fact, the discussion reminds me a bit of a letter Mormon sent to his son Moroni regarding infant baptism. That is the last book in the Book of Mormon for those of you do not know that reference. Thanks guys. Finally, let's briefly talk about some of the perspectives of members on the association itself. The main reason why people join the association and associate is for intellectual stimulation. Other reasons are for spiritual stimulation, friendship, networking to support diverse views among Mormons and transhumanists and for a smaller number to engage in activism. Most are satisfied with the association and most consider the association to be important. And almost all of us as it turns out, it looks like there is like one person who doesn't qualify for this. But almost all of us are ready to invite you to join our association. And if you're not a member of the association and it does resonate with you, even if there's somebody in the association that you disagree with or that disagrees with you, I invite you, we invite you to join the association and participate in the discussion, participate in the conferences and lectures and help us do things better. Even if you, because if you do disagree, maybe you have an idea of how we can improve and we would appreciate that. So, finally just some brief words maybe from Brent and Carl about why you think others should join the association. Where else can someone who walks in conservative, well, let me say this way, in liberal circles and sacrament meeting be considered a conservative. It's extremely exhilarating. It makes me question my own beliefs and makes me formulate them better in my own mind. I sincerely have developed a deeper faith in God through joining this organization and thoroughly enjoyed the conversations and that faith has come about because I have walked with people like Brent and discovered how I also consider myself an atheist in certain respects. It's a wonderful place to discover, for me, faith. Yeah, for me it's all about cooperative works. We can't do anything alone and if there's a problem it needs to be solved to usher in the millennium. As soon as you find enough people that agree with you that you want that then it'll spontaneously just happen so it's cooperative works getting things done. Thanks a lot guys. Alright, we're now going to move on. Next stop is our yeah thank you very much for your help.