 President of the Mormon Transhuman Association, and I think he has some interesting news for all of us about what's going on in his area of expertise. Thank you, David. Thank you so much, Peter, for letting me borrow your computer up here. I forgot my adapters, and I was going to have to go without my slides, and that would have been unfortunate, it would have been less interesting to watch. And also, Mike, Harry, thank you so much for the invitation to speak. It's a pleasure to be here. So I'm going to be talking about Mormon transhumanism today, and I'm going to approach that in four steps to help you understand why it might even be something that exists. I think that might come across to some of you as just like a mindbender. How could Mormonism, this traditional religion, and transhumanism, this very emerging cultural phenomena, how could they possibly come together? It just strikes so many people as just completely bizarre and for good reasons. So I'm going to try to approach that gradually for you, say a little bit about Mormonism to start out, and then from there I'll explain some things about Mormon transhumanism, how they come together. From there I'll talk a little bit about a popular logical argument among Mormon transhumanists called the New God argument, and finally I'll end with just saying a few things about an association of Mormon transhumanists that I currently serve as the president for, and I'll tell you a little bit about what we do and what kinds of members we have, the kinds of people we are. So first of all then on Mormonism, just as a kind of a get to know your audience, like in customize what I say or for a second, if you would raise your hands if you identify as a transhumanist or a singularitarian or an extropian or something along those lines. Okay, it looks like almost all of us are there. I'm there with you, I identify as a transhumanist too. I bet the numbers are going to be lower here though. How many of you are religious? Okay, so I'm guessing I'm seeing about 10% of us maybe are religious persons. One final question, is anybody else out there a Mormon? Besides my wife, that's cheating. Oh, there's two of us, that's right. So there's three Mormons in the room. Excellent. So let me tell you first a little bit about Mormonism and what Mormonism is at its heart, and this may help you start to understand why transhumanism is compatible with Mormonism. Mormonism at its base is an immersive discipleship of Jesus Christ. Now you've all heard of Christians, but what I mean by immersive in this case is very important. Mormonism is not so much a religion about Jesus as it is an aspiration even to live the religion of Jesus. So with Jesus Mormons aspire to trust in, to change toward, and to fully immerse our bodies and our minds in the role of Christ. Christ is not Jesus' last name. Christ means Messiah. Christ is the Greek word that's the equivalent of Messiah in Hebrew. And Messiah is something like a savior or a person set apart or anointed for a special purpose. And that special purpose from the perspective of the ancient Jews going up to the Christians was salvation or helping humanity, helping us be relieved of our oppressors. Of course, many ancient Jews thought that that would be more of a political relief for oppressors and then Christians took on this idea that it should be a relief from death and a relief from hell. So Mormons have this notion that we should immerse ourselves in this identity of Christ with Jesus, that we should become gods and saviors with Jesus, that we should console each other, heal each other, raise each other up together. And from that very beginning of what Mormonism stands for at its heart, you might start to see why Mormonism and transhumanism have this compatibility, this desire for transformation towards a state of being that would reach out and try to change the human condition so dramatically. Just a few brief comments on the history of Mormonism. It was founded in the early 1800s by Joseph Smith. He claimed to have visions and revelations from God throughout his life, leading up to the time when he was killed. He lived about age 38. And during his life, Joseph Smith published a book called The Book of Mormon. That's where the name of the religion comes from. Mormon is not our God. Mormon is one of the characters in the Book of Mormon who purported to write the book that Joseph Smith received. So that's where we got the name of our religion. When Joseph Smith died, the early Mormon Church fractured and some people stayed in the eastern United States and some people went to the west. Most Mormons went to the west following the person up here in the upper right corner, which is Brigham Young. Brigham Young led most of the Mormons to the west where most Mormons still live today in the state of Utah. And today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the formal name of the Mormon Church, numbers about 16 million members worldwide, about half of them living in the United States and half internationally. Mormonism has an unusual metaphysics. Joseph Smith described the metaphysics along these lines. First of all, God was not always God in Mormon metaphysics and matter was never created. Mind and matter merged simultaneously with God and God sought to organize them according to existing laws and to institute new laws whereby others could progress to become God's themselves. So Mormonism is consistent in many ways with many accounts of physicalism or naturalism. Now, do all individual Mormons go that direction with their interpretation of the religion? No, but many do. Consistent with its kind of unusual metaphysics, Mormonism also offers an unusual theodicy or its account of evil. Why is there evil in the world when we claim that there is also a God? Why does a God just solve that problem? Well, from a Mormon perspective, that is because God is optimizing for something other than the mitigation of suffering. God is optimizing for the creation of more gods and that requires certain kinds of experiences conducive to creative and compassionate growth from a Mormon perspective. In Mormonism, there's a story of a premortal war in heaven or a premortal council that resulted in a war. In that premortal council, there were two plans presented to God. One plan was to create the world with people in it that would not suffer, and it was kind of below risk of the two plans. Second, the other plan was that the world would be created with real risks, real opportunities. The opportunity to create more gods, more demons, more angels, more suffering, but also wonderful risks. And as the story goes, God chose to follow the plan of risk, of taking the risk, knowing that real suffering would result from that, but also recognizing that real opportunity would stem from that choice. The Mormon account of the future begins with the time that we're in now. We, Mormons, describe the time that we're living now as the fullness of times when God is revealing unprecedented amounts of knowledge to humanity and that with that knowledge we're preparing for greater things to come. Mormonism as a Christian religion does anticipate the return of Christ, and I'll talk to you in a few minutes about how Mormon transhumanists view that. That may strike a chord with some of you who are interested in artificial intelligence. Subsequent to the return of Christ, Mormons also hold to this notion that the world will be transformed into a millennial paradise beyond the present notions of suffering or death. And that in that millennial paradise, the living will be transfigured to immortality, and the dead will be resurrected to immortality. And in Mormonism, again going with that unusual metaphysics that I mentioned before, everything is material and embodied. Immortality is not something far away or supernatural in another worldly place, but immortality is embodied. More robust bodies, more glorified bodies than we currently enjoy, but still embodied, even God in Mormonism is embodied. And so the anticipation of a Mormon that is that during the millennium, the living will be transfigured, the dead resurrected to embodied immortality, and then go on to learn more, to grow more, to become more compassionate, and to become more creative and eventually attain to what Mormons consider God's to be. So that's the background on Mormonism. Let me now shift into Mormon transhumanism. The first thing I want to say about Mormon transhumanism before talking about some of our views related to technology and science, is to help you understand that Mormon transhumanists are not limited to traditional or secular accounts of the religious phenomenon. What I mean by that is that oftentimes if you ask a traditional person, what is religion? They might say, well, religion is to have faith in God as that particular person understands God. That's what religion is to that person. If you were to ask a secular person, what is religion? Well, they might say it's this thing that's starting to die off because people are becoming wealthier, better educated, and we're really entering kind of this post-religious phase where religion is going to go away. Those are some typical accounts you get of the religious phenomenon. Well, not all, but many Mormon transhumanists embrace more of a post-secular understanding of religion. For example, a Mormon transhumanist might look at God as a post-human projection, and that there's a function that God fills by being that post-human projection. One of my Mormon transhumanist friends, in fact, on Facebook just sent me a message the other day saying, wouldn't it be cool to start a presentation saying something like, God is the asymptote of human potential. I laugh, he laughs, and Mormon transhumanists understand that kind of perspective on God that you probably won't get out of mainstream Mormons typically. So I'm warning you on that. One thing that a Mormon transhumanist might mean by post-secular religion is looking at religion itself as a technology, perhaps the most powerful social technology, one that's used to excite or provoke strenuous communal behavior towards a shared goal. Now that can be a good or a bad thing. We've seen religion do horrible things historically, but we've also seen religion do beautiful things, wonderful things historically. So a Mormon transhumanist might say, hey, why can't we direct religion towards these good ends and try to mitigate its risk of becoming destructive and super sectarian and divisive? And then likewise with prophecy, a Mormon transhumanist from a post-secular perspective might say, well, the function of prophecy is not to be a kind of fortune teller. The function of prophecy, if you look at it historically, is to provoke the community to interact with the prophecy, to pursue desirable futures and to avoid undesirable futures. So this post-secular perspective is something that many Mormon transhumanists do adopt. Mormon transhumanists also don't only look to secular roots when they think about transhumanism. Oftentimes when you hear secular transhumanists describe the origin of transhumanism, they'll emphasize the secular parts. They'll emphasize early Greek philosophy. They'll emphasize some of the non-religious humanists of recent centuries. But as it turns out, that's only part of the story. Religious humanists have also contributed quite substantially to the emergence of modern transhumanism. We can go as far back as to the early Christians, many of whom talked this idea that humanity should become God, humanity should become Christ. But we can also come much more recently. I've got a couple of pictures up here. The man on the left is Fedorov. Fedorov is a cosmos of the Russian Orthodox tradition. He was a Russian Orthodox priest. And he taught the very interesting idea that humanity's common task should be the technological resurrection of all of our ancestors. On the right, we've got a French Jesuit priest, Pierre de Chardon. And he had an idea of humanity using technology and evolution to make this communications network all throughout the planet where we became eventually one with God. He emphasized technological evolution and its unity with the Christian faith. And in many ways, if you read the book The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, many of the ideas that Ray Kurzweil shares about his various ethics of technological evolution, he was clearly informed by de Chardon's views, whether directly or indirectly, I don't know, but if you go read de Chardon, you'll see Kurzweilian ideas in there. So religious humanists have also played an important role in the emergence of modern transhumanism. And more than transhumanists, the Bible emphasized that, because we don't want the secularists to think that they're their only game in town. Alright, so a vision of the future from a Mormon transhumanist perspective, I want to emphasize that there's not just one. Mormon transhumanists have many visions of the future. We don't insist on any particular one of them. And we're also usually reasonable enough to acknowledge that we could be wrong about lots of things. So what I'm going to share with you is maybe just one vision of the future from a Mormon transhumanist perspective. So that begins with this fullness of times idea that I've expressed to you before, that mainstream Mormons will have this idea that God is hastening his work and revealing humanity more knowledge than ever before in our day. When Mormon transhumanists will associate that with the technological advances that we're perceiving all around us, we get very clear at this point that information technology has produced a revolution. We're on the verge of starting to see that revolution, I think, in biotechnology. And many of us hope to see such revolutions in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence development going forward into the future. Whether it will follow Kurzweil and trajectory or not, I don't know. I don't think anyone really knows. But it would be wonderful if we can harness the power of that technological change to do some very good things in the world. And I think most of you in this audience would probably agree on that. Mormon transhumanists are not necessarily singularitarians, but many of them are. And there are some very interesting relationships between religious transhumanism generally or even just religiosity generally, and singularitarianism. If you think about the singularitarians that you might know personally or if you are one, you'll know that singularitarians very often talk about apocalyptic risks associated with the advance of artificial intelligence. They also talk about millenarian-style opportunities. It may be able to help us produce abundance. It may be able to help resuscitate the dead. It may be able to help us live in a world beyond present notions of suffering and death. And of course, as I'm sure almost everyone here knows, we've been chided for that as singularitarians. This is the rapture of the nerves we might have heard a second time. But there's a reason why that joke goes around and it resonates with people because these are not new ideas except in the way that we're explaining the ideas. The emotions and the sociology related to this phenomenon are very, very ancient. When people anticipate these sorts of great events in the near future, they behave with the full range of apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian behaviors, and we see that both among secular transhumanists, not all of them, but many of them, and more than transhumanists as well. Of course, one of the notions of Christianity is this idea that Christ will return. And some women transhumanists will adopt a very traditional notion of what that means. Jesus of Nazareth will come back and the world will be different as a consequence. Many women transhumanists take the idea that if Jesus or Christ was born of a biological body the first time around, why couldn't Christ be born of a technological body the second time around? Why couldn't the emergence of artificial intelligence and horror, even integration with it through enhanced intelligence, produce a sort of global Christ consciousness or elevate the compassion, empathy that we have for each other as we experientially connect in a worldwide network? Perhaps not so different from what Thayar, to show down the Jesuit priests I mentioned to you previously, imagined. So, women transhumanists will adopt Jesus of Nazareth at times as well. Transhumanity. So, subsequent to all of these changes of our time, many of us, particularly Dionysus, anticipate the day will come when we will have the technology to quite radically change or improve or resuscitate our bodies. Women transhumanists embrace this idea quite strongly. Our scriptures are filled with reasons for women transhumanists to do this. Immortality and Mormonism is physical and embodied. It's not supernatural and far away. Heaven and the millennial paradise are not far away or supernatural in Mormonism. This earth, this planet is supposed to be transformed to become heaven, transformed to become earth. So, we have this incentive to use what tools we observe around us to try to achieve those ends. I'll talk a little bit more later about this mandate, spiritual mandate that Mormons can describe as stemming from their own scriptures to engage in the transhumanist work. But basically, there's a strong parallel between Mormon prophecies about transfiguration, resurrection, and immortality and transhumanist notions that we can use technology to engineer better bodies and better minds. Finally, some transhumanists look into the distant future and imagine what post-humanity might be like. And of course, we hear interesting discussions about mega-scale engineering or the creation of simulated worlds and things along those lines. This stuff ends up being very resonant with Mormon transhumanists and with many Mormons, many mainstream Mormons, even this idea that in the distant future, humanity and our descendants may have the capacity to create whole new worlds. Mormons, as you might know, are very interested in family history. We have gigantic genealogical databases and we're working on making them ever larger every day. We probably know who the ancestors of every one of you in this room are. And while most Mormons wouldn't tell you what I'm about to say, they would probably have a much looser notion of why we're doing this, what I would suggest to you is that maybe that information could help for those of you who believe in such ideas. So most of you are going to, as chronicists, believe in the idea, at least to hope, that we have the potential to resuscitate cryonic stations of something because of the information that is preserved by the structure of the brain. Well, some people speculate that there might be information preserved even more broadly than our brain embedded in our environment and that idea is called quantum archeology that we might be able to tease out that information from the environment. And then of course, some people would speculate that if our world is running in a computer simulation, like a simulation hypothesis, and maybe the programmer of that simulation is maintaining information as well that can help in a resurrection. In any case, all of the genealogical work that Mormons are doing could contribute to the same sorts of endeavors that mind files are contributing to or directly might contribute to as preserved by transhumers. Just briefly, if this were a Mormon audience, I would spend more time on this, but basically you can use Mormon scriptures to develop the notion that there is a spiritual, a religious, even a divine mandate for Mormons to engage in the transhumanist project that our scriptures even require at this of us. And one of the interesting things that results from this that may interest this group is Peter actually mentioned in his talk that he thought it more likely that we would be able to advance in AI work than in enhanced intelligence work because of the FDA, and I agree that that's a major risk. Well, have we considered what happens according to the laws of the United States when this advanced enhanced intelligence actually becomes an issue of freedom of religion? So we actually have had lawyers, their members of the MTA, make the case that the Mormon transhumanist association and Mormons generally may be in a unique position to help advance enhanced intelligence work because of our ability potentially to get around some of the issues related to regulation of those sorts of endeavors. All right, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this argument, but I want to give you a flavor for it because the New God argument is a very popular argument among Mormon transhumanists. Now, I told you a few minutes ago that Mormon transhumanists often embrace a post-secular religious understanding, and that might mean that for some of the Mormon transhumanists and I've got friends who are this way, they might believe that God just doesn't exist yet, that God is something that we're supposed to become. However, most Mormon transhumanists do believe that God now exists and the New God argument is one of the reasons that many Mormon transhumanists would suggest from a rational perspective, they would also appeal to various emotional and spiritual reasons, but from a rational perspective, many Mormon transhumanists would appeal to the New God argument as a reason to trust in the existence of God. And I emphasize the word trust because this is not an ontological argument. The argument does not purport to prove that God exists. What it purports to do is to give a moral and practical reason to trust that God exists because the existence of God may correlate with our future. And so basically the New God argument begins with an assumption, the faith assumption is what it's called, and it's an assumption that many transhumanists that are secular also hold, and that is the idea that humanity will not go extinct before evolving into a super-intelligent post-humanity. So from that small assumption there, now this might be wrong, right? This is an assumption that's made to inform the remainder of the argument. Based on that assumption, the New God argument branches into two directions. One is called the compassion argument and the other is called the creation argument. So first the compassion argument. The compassion argument basically says, the basic notion of it is that if humanity continues to progress in destructive capacity, if we do not simultaneously ensure that our good will for each other, our instrumental cooperation with each other and ultimately our internalized compassion for each other does not also increase, we're going to destroy ourselves. And then as a consequence of that, if we don't destroy ourselves, that suggests that we've probably learned how to be more cooperative and more compassionate. And the reasoning from there goes is that if there is a super-intelligent post-humanity that managed to navigate those risks already, it would probably be more compassionate that we are presently today as the gist of that argument. The creation argument is a generalization of the simulation argument that is fairly well known among trans-humists. As a simulation argument goes, if we ever go on in the future as super-intelligent post-humanity to run many family history simulations or ancestor simulations, then we almost certainly are already living in one ourselves. Well that argument can be generalized. It's agnostic to any particular creative mechanism. So it might be computation. It could be cosmoporning. Maybe we can create baby universes. Or maybe it's just terraforming to go out and create other worlds in our universe. Whatever your preferred mechanism might be, personally I think computation seems like the most likely scenario of any of them or likely to create new worlds. Well then what you can do is generalize from that and you arrive at the same conclusion that the simulation argument arrives at which is generalized that if we ever go on to create many worlds in the future based on any of these sorts of creative technologies then we're probably already living in a creative world now as the argument goes. So that's the creation argument. Combining the compassion and the creation argument conclusions together a Mormon trans-humanist would suggest that this shows that we, based on this assumption that we're not going to go extinct ourselves, we should conclude for practical and moral reasons that super-intelligent post-humanity probably would be more compassionate than us and that super-intelligent post-humanity probably also created the world that we're already living in. So something to scratch your head about tonight. Interesting note on that there are some potential unwilling endorsements to the new God argument. If you've ever read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, he acknowledges the probable, his word probable, existence of God-like extraterrestrials. He calls them God-like rather than God because he's talking about the traditional notion of God as more of like a supernatural superlative which of course is not what a Mormon trans-humanist would mean by God anyway. The God of a Mormon trans-humanist is an embodied God that became God through natural means. And then also, if you ever are interested in kind of an amusing short read you can look up Sam Harris's post in the title Should We Be Mormons in the Matrix? He acknowledges also that he paused. This argument gave him pause when he encountered it. Alright, some final words about the Mormon trans-humanist association itself. The Mormon trans-humanist association was founded in 2006. There were 14 of us that co-founded it together. And it's grown since that time to just shy of 500 members today. The rate of our growth has picked up in the last few years and we hope that's a sign of things to come. And we're working hard to make that the case. Some demographics for you on Mormon trans-humanists. Most of us are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which is by far the largest Mormon denomination in the world. But not all of us are. And most of us do consider ourselves theists, believers in God. But again, not all of us do. We do have atheist members who are not Mormons. There are other kinds of Christians and people who aren't even really particularly religious but who support the work that the association does and want to be affiliated with us. In case you're interested in learning more about the demographics of the actual members of the association there's a short link here at the bottom and I'd be happy to give that to you later if you're interested in doing that. All members of the Mormon trans-humanist association support the trans-humanist declaration. I agree with that. In addition to that, all members of the association support what we call the Mormon trans-humanist affirmation and it basically restates the same kinds of things that are in the trans-humanist declaration but in a little bit more religious labor talking about the potential of humanity through science and technology and our risks that present themselves and our duty to try to mitigate those risks as well as the opportunities that we have before us to pursue. We spend a lot of time doing online promotion of the association and have had quite a bit of traction there and finally we also we have an annual conference that we sponsor where we invite people that are from the whole range of trans-humanist thought from Mormon thought and even people who aren't Mormons who are trans-humanists can speak on the themes of technology and religion and you'll recognize some of the speakers that are there that have been keynotes at our conference and Josh I think will be speaking here tomorrow she was our most recent keynote at our conference in 2014 and so our effort, our work as an association is to try to encourage really an extraordinary conversation about technology and religion and about how these things inform each other and even about science and religion and spirituality in this broad discussion do these things, do they conflict with each other if not can they be compatible and complement each other those are the sorts of questions that the Mormon trans-humanist association explores do I have time for any questions I get this question very regularly how does the general Mormon population respond to this most Mormons have never heard of trans-humanism so yeah so when they first hear about it they will think just like every other person who has ever exposed to trans-humanism for the first time they'll think that's kind of weird however most Mormons most are not hostile to the idea once it's well explained to them by somebody who's not already trying to poison the well most Mormons will respond with kind of a cautious interest however a minority of Mormons will do one of two things they'll start doing back flips with excitement because they'll say wow I've always been a trans-humanist that's how I've looked at it my entire life and finally I've found these other people who see it the same way all the time and then an even smaller number will just go oh this is some kind of demonic aberration and I honestly get that very very rarely but it does happen occasionally that happens much more often though from non-mormon religious persons who have very different metaphysical view and different view of traditional scripture first I'd like to say I thought it was a astounding, fascinating presentation I'll be honest I thought it first it was another whole video it was an oxymoronic and I've been on the vanity website I thought it was interesting but what percentage of that 470 something are assigned cryonists? Not enough you will be interested to know that I'm actually presently leading a project for the association to try to come up with a way of doing a group cryonics to sign up on some sort and I've been working on this for about six months or so now and I know Rudy that you do life insurance for cryonists and I've actually contacted you I don't know if you remember a few years back so yes Mormon transhumanist some of us, not all of us some of us are interested in cryonics and we have a formal project where we're trying to figure out how we might be able to do it as a group we're very communally oriented people I would hate to be resuscitated without my family and friends but that doesn't sound strange why not because the world is so exciting right well I want to enjoy that with people that I already love I want to meet new and cool people too but I want to be there with people I love and care about On the scale of 10, about the week and the moon, the orbit so let me respond in two ways to that question, excellent question in case people didn't care he asked about just one of the many controversial issues in Mormon history that are very strange and merit to skepticism and this particular one that he mentioned was an angel giving the golden planks to Joseph Smith did I get the right one now so what is my belief he asks in that question let me contextualize my belief in two ways shortly and I need to wrap up quickly contextualize it in two ways number one, if we lived in a world that was created by a great programmer in the sky and a matrix architect it's really not very hard to imagine that that matrix architect can give golden planks to people okay but B let's say that the gold planks didn't come from an angel let's say that Joseph Smith found them, had a dream of an angel and thought that they or even lied let's even say he just lied from a post secular perspective the function that Mormonism fills in my life in the lives of people I probably care about a great deal is very valuable Mormonism is the reason why I'm here with you today at this cryonic conference I'm not here to spite my Mormonism I discovered the word transhumanism in my adult life and I was one of those people who pointed at it and go I believe that my entire life so from a post secular perspective even if it is a lie, which I don't believe it is I think that the question is not closed and I'd be happy to discuss that in more detail with you but even if it were a lie there is a great deal of practical value that comes from the religion is God omnipotent and if there are any limitations what are they excellent question is God omnipotent in Mormonism there's two kinds of Mormons those who think that God can no longer progress in knowledge and power and those who think that God does continue to progress in knowledge and power most Mormon transhumanists are of a latter sort we think that God continues to progress in knowledge and power we don't look at God in superlative terms except as kind of an approximation or as like a shorthand description of just how advanced God is compared to us so I guess the answer to your question more directly would be I don't think God is literally omnipotent but I think he might as well be compared to you or she by the way because we also have this notion of heavenly motherhood in Mormonism