Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hsshhshshjk 421 days ago
> it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.

Isn't this just a restatement of Christianity? Created by an unknowable, all powerful deity with the goal of becoming one with that deity during the rapture?

Ironically, many of the alien species in Banks's novels have "sublimation" as their goal. Their idea is to transcend space and time. https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sublimed

So I guess it's just super intelligent turtles all the way down?
2 comments
rsynnott 421 days ago
> Isn't this just a restatement of Christianity? Created by an unknowable, all powerful deity with the goal of becoming one with that deity during the rapture?

Yeah, honestly most Nerd Religion (EA, LessWrong-style 'rationality', etc), is basically just reheated Christianity. Notably, Roko's Basilisk (you should work for the furtherance of magic robots at all costs, lest a future omnipotent magic robot torture a perfect replica of you forever for not doing so) is just a restatement of Pascal's wager, with all the attendant problems.

link
giraffe_lady 421 days ago
It's just a similarity between millenarian religious movements, which christianity is and this is also. But it isn't the only, most immediate, or most similar predecessor imo.
link