e/acc x Christianity | Is Effective Accelerationism Compatible With The Christian Faith?

Connor Mahoney 0:00
Well, I got I got a few speakers up. I sent an invite to Ian and John, if you guys want to jump up. I don't know if you're seeing that. Otherwise, send me. Send me a request, and I'll bring you up. But I am super excited to be hosting this space. Obviously, the conversation has been popping off over the couple past days about yak and Christianity. So we got it. We got a crew here, and we got more people slipping in. We got Christians. We have tech optimists. We have EAC folks. We have tech skeptics, even a number of non Christians. I know base Lord, one of the founders of EAC, is also going to be popping in. I don't think I see him yet, but we got we got quite a diverse crew here. So to start the discussion off, I thought I would just maybe give a little bit of a rundown of what brought me here and where we are today. So the other account that was running the music, and I apologize for that, a little bit of a ghetto solution, trying to figure out how to stream music through Twitter spaces. I guess it's not as easy as I thought it might be. So that's account. Was the crypto conversion podcast that I run with a couple of the folks. And we speak to Christian builders in emerging technology, starting out with web three blockchain, and we've kind of expanded to AI and to virtual reality, all I mean, even some life extension topics. We're kind of all over the place now. And recently, we hosted a conversation with Ian Ian Wyatt on the thinking of teho de Chardin. I don't know if anybody here is familiar with that name, but I think some of that thought has pervaded to some extent the E act space, and I'm really not that familiar with E act so I'm kind of curious to really see what the origins are and where there might be compatibilities with Christianity. But we hosted that Convo, and then we did the convo with a frank Tipler on some more astrophysics related discussions of the Omega point and the progress of human development. So so we did that. And then I got, actually, I got a response from a drew with an EAC in his bio about the Frank tipple conversation. So if Drew's here, he's kind of my origin to thinking about Yak. And so I started diving into it, trying to figure it out. I listened to a clip of Beth, Beth Jesus on Lex Friedman probably about a week ago. Didn't really dive that deep into it. And then I just posted on Thursday. I said, Hey, any Christians in the EAC space, just kind of curious about it. And obviously that's where it popped off, and that's where we are today. That's pretty public history. So obviously, a lot of Christians, a lot of you responded and said that, yeah, you are Christians in the space, and you think there's a lot of synergies between EAC philosophy and Christianity. So that's what we're going to be discussing today. I do want to make it clear I'm not an expert. Obviously, I like just explained. I've probably listened to the highlight reel of the LEX Friedman podcast, and then I just engaged with the conversations on Twitter. So I'm kind of rare a lot of you, I think, in this space as I don't really know a whole lot about so we're going to be learning, um, but lot of, a lot of EAC folks who are Christians, including nominist. So if I sent you an invite too, if you can pop off, pop on, send me a request, because I want to bring you up first. I think because you were the one who initially responded to my tweet and explained really what the tenants, or what you thought were the tenants of the app. So I think if you give us a rundown of that, that could be super helpful for listeners here, but I will say I'm not familiar with the act, but I am very much familiar with the conversation surrounding tech optimism and tech skeptics, particularly in the church and Christianity. We've talked to a lot of folks like I said in emerging technologies. Ian on concepts relating to Christian optimism of the future. Michael Whittle with pulpit AI development of AI in the church. Father Ian Van Heusen, who's developing virtual reality, lots of people, and I will say all of them, are facing opposition, not from atheists, not from transhumanists, but from voices within the church. And these voices, I will say, I think in general, the direction of the thought is a scrooge on Christian thought and Christian effectiveness. I am firmly a Christian futurist. I think we need to be developing the technologies that will define the landscape of the future. I think this is highly important. And although I understand some of the reasons Christians particularly might be skeptical of of new technologies, or at least the thrust of new technologies and where they're taking us. I think that we can't allow opheos to get the better of us. We really have to be diving forward into the Christian future. So I'm a tech optimist because I'm a future optimist because I'm a Christian, and so that is my standing point. And if we can work with EAC folks, great. I think Christian Futurism and. A effective accelerationism. Do have a lot of similarities, but there's some of you that have voiced some concerns, particularly about the language in the space, so I want to hear about that too. So we have a we have a pretty good group, but let me throw it over to nominus, if that's how you pronounce your name, because you originally shared what you thought were the tenants of the act, and it was really good. So why don't you just give us a rundown for that, and if I can find it, I will put you a tweet on the Jumbotron. Nominus. Are you there? Can you unmute? I'd be having some trouble. Alright, I don't know your name, but just use a pen. Do you want to unmute and maybe give us your perspective on the ACT you said you're definitely a tech optimist, and you've been dealing with this conversation?

Justice Eapen 5:50
Great. Yeah, I'm really glad that I get to go first and maybe frame the conversation a little bit here. My name is Justice, actually justice Ethan. It happens to also be a sentence. And I definitely believe that Christianity and effective acceleration ism are not incompatible, and I've got a pretty important theological reason for this, and so I hope that I can maybe frame the problem for everyone listening, which is, you know, the the original question, maybe five or 10 years ago, about artificial intelligence and super intelligence was a question of value alignment. And I think that's still the problem. And the Doomers, I think, have been very over represented in their analysis of this problem. But value alignment is not a new problem. People think that it's a new problem because we're short we have short term memories, but value alignment is an ancient problem. In the Garden of Eden, we had a value alignment problem. And so in the Christian worldview, there is no new value alignment problem. God has been preoccupied with value alignment since the lapse in the Garden of Eden. So we shouldn't be surprised that man made in the image of God, suffers from problems of aligning the values of its creation with itself, right? Like God. God is dealing with this problem with man. Of course, man will deal with this problem with his his creative endeavors. And so the question of value alignment shouldn't be looked at like as a new and novel problem to solve, but it should be looked at as an ancient problem that we have been that we have been dealing with now for 1000s of years and getting progressively better at it. I might add God is God is good at dealing with this problem, and he has offered us many solutions to dealing with that problem. And then so I'd like to start with that as just an orienting suggestion, and then I'd like to also look at some of the Christian worldview and what it says about technology in particular, and the kinds of technology that is more prone to generating value misalignment. So again, just,

Connor Mahoney 8:19
I think that, I think that conversation too was, yeah.

Justice Eapen 8:21
So if I could just put forth maybe kind of two models for looking, or two examples of kinds of technology that we have in the Christian worldview. As early as Genesis, you see technology. And the first instance of technology, that thing matters, here is the technology of the ark. Okay, so God commands Noah to build an ark, and Noah, out of his obedience to God, builds the ark. And the Ark is a salvific mechanism. It is. It's what saves mankind from the flood. And so there's, at least in Scripture, at least one instance. There's actually multiple instances of technology being commanded by God, but there's one case of technology being commanded for a salvific effect, and that's the ark. And it's obviously very well known. There's probably multiple examples that I haven't even thought of, but the Ark is an example of salvific technology in obedience to God that is effective. And then in the same in the same book of the Bible, you've got the Tower of Babel, which is an example of technology that is built against the will of God and for the glorification of man. So they build the Tower of Babel so that they can reach the heavens and be like God. And God obviously tears the Tower of Babel down and screws man all over the world with different languages, etc. And so what you have in the Christian worldview is that technology can be good by means of its obedience, and it can be evil by means of its disobedience and its self aggrandizement. It's glorification of the self. And so these are basically the three points that I was hoping to just lay down as early in the conversation as possible, and kind of provide the, what I think is a Christian framework for dealing with technology and the creative endeavors of man, which is that a this problem of value alignment is not a new problem. It's an old problem. It's one of the oldest problems ever. B, that we have examples of technology being commanded in the Bible for salvific effect in obedience to God, for the glory of God. And C, that we have the counter example, which is that technology that's made to glorify man is destined to fail and destined to be a disaster. So with those things in mind, I think that effective accelerationism is very much compatible with Christianity insofar as that it is subservient to the glory of God and the advancing of his kingdom. So that's all I had to say. At least at the top, I'd be happy to hear people's objective objections. I don't think any Christians here will have any problem with those comments.

Connor Mahoney 11:11
I really appreciate that rundown nominist. If you want to unmute and give us a brief introduction, maybe to EAC and what brought you to the space and to anybody who joins, if you want to just give very briefly, an overview of what you do in the space. Hopefully you're building something. If you're one of these people who just do nothing but think all day, you know, that's great. But I think we have

Justice Eapen 11:32
a lot of Christians. Sorry, my introduction out there too. Sorry, I should have done that. I I'm not just nobody just thinking about this all day. I work at truth, social Trump Media Technology Group. We are building social media for freedom of speech at scale with a very small, tiny team. And so, yeah, we're building stuff all day, and I run out internal to this team. So it's not like I'm just a non tech guy who has no idea what I'm talking about. Yeah, sorry, I should have introduced myself. Thanks. Yes.

Connor Mahoney 12:00
Appreciate it. And all right, nominist, if you want to unmute and also base Florida if you want to request all history,

Nominus 12:08
hey, yeah, I'm glad there was such a turnout. Yeah, I had some complications earlier, because I'm recording the space, so there should be a transcript available, and I'll probably run it through some type of AI model to summarize it after. But, yeah, I'm mostly a builder, actually, more so than I mean, I think a lot about things, but mostly a builder. But this is one problem that I've thought about for a long time, going through, you know, engineering school, taking classes like that, you know, since I was a teenager, and reading sci fi books since earlier than that. But, and also just being part of the faith. Since I was born, really, I was born Catholic, but I've been a part of basically every denomination at this point because various reasons. We just switched around. But yeah, so one thing about the denominations is that that might be relevant here actually is, is that God tells us not to like compete amongst ourselves, or to argue amongst ourselves, over over little things. And Jesus's main point when he arrived in the New Testament was basically overarching focus on the big things. You know, don't let these little things get in the way of what we should really be doing towards God, which leads you into kind of this conclusion that of value alignment, or I'm not sure what technical what other technical terms could apply, but that Just use a pen was getting into is really, God put us here to toil, right, um, and honest, and to have some dominion over this realm. Of course, we messed it up a little bit, a lot of it, but, but he's, he's commanded us many things to multiply, like go forth and multiply, to do your work with all of your heart and all of your effort. And to me, all these things basically point theologically. I. Towards technology is not a bad thing. It's just part of existence, right? It's like if, if more technology is a bad thing, then, you know, using sticks to make fire would would have been a bad thing at one point, or something like that. Like, I think, I think it's actually like a little bit of a, it's a, it's a little bit of an underestimation of the infinity of God and and what he's able to create, to say that that any one technology could be a boon to his kingdom and the spreading of it, right? And like in books like Hyperion,

Connor Mahoney 15:55
if I could just correct you a little bit, yeah, sure, yeah, please. Can you just briefly give us maybe the what you would say are the tenants of EAC, you know, just brief headline that you think are compatible with Christianity. Because I think that's what this the rest of your tweet. Oh,

Nominus 16:14
um, my the tenants of EAC. Basically, I would rather have bays Lord go over the tenets of eak, but I, but I could respond basically from a Christian perspective.

Connor Mahoney 16:30
Yeah, we want to hear the Christian perspective. So that's if you could just provide that. That'd be

Nominus 16:35
great. Um, yeah, sure. That's basically, yeah, yeah. My perspective is basically that though, that that basically technology and hyping it up is not against God, God's will or anything like that, as long as you don't worship it as an idol. Okay, yeah, which is probably going to be a new problem coming up with more secular people. So Well, I

Connor Mahoney 17:10
think that's kind of what the conversation is. And some of the people that are concerned about things I know, Ali just put a thumbs up there is mainly about the language, the memetic language that we're using in the space. So I do, I do think that is probably, I think most of the people here own some degree or another tech optimist. The question is, really, is EAC compatible enough without Christian tech optimism that we can also identify as as I act along with identifying as

Joseph Hurtado 17:37
Christians? Can I interrupt Connor? He's talking, yeah. I

Nominus 17:42
hope that explains some things, though. So I'll

Connor Mahoney 17:46
yeah, Joseph, if you wouldn't mind if you have, if you have some time, I would like to bring up John Stokes. I think

Joseph Hurtado 17:51
absolutely no, no problem. Perfect. Thank

Connor Mahoney 17:55
you. Is John still in his face? Okay? I don't see John. He's probably going to, I know he was having some audio issues, so he's probably hopping off and hopping back in. Okay, oh, there he is. Alright, perfect. And I want to bring up John, because he is a Christian building an AI right now, and he's expressed some issues that he's had a lot of audio Why don't you just go ahead and tell us exactly why you say you identify, well, associated with EAC as a Christian building an AI.

Jon Stokes 18:29
Yeah. I mean, I, I guess what I would say is that I don't, um, I'm happy to fellow, travel with yak and to be associated with it in the same way that, like, you know, for a long time, I was kind of like happy to more or less associate with some elements of classical liberalism or some of these things like this. I mean, I have kind of a transactional relationship to any human institution that's not that's not the church. The church isn't supposed to be a human institution. It's supposed to be human and divine, right. So you know, whether it's, you know, concepts of democracy or human rights, or whether it's EAC or whatever it is, you know, I'll check it out if it, if it seems to be something that, like I can use and, you know, or something that is not like in conflict, or will help create a space where my church can do the kind of work that it wants to do, or where the church in general is like, safe and can prosper, then I'm interested in it. And like, I can, I can vibe with it for a while. If it turns, if it takes a turn, well, you know, then I'm out so, so that's kind of where I'm at with Yak. I don't feel like, you know, I'm, I'm a techno optimist. I'm not scared of AI. I. I am not scared of it as a technology. I'm not scared of it, you know, as some form of non human agency. So I don't have that, like fear factor that the EAS have, you know, so I would just say I don't, it doesn't pattern match to me as any sort of enemy, and then, like in what I guess tower COVID would call a mood affiliation, way, you know, I get on with the kinds of people that are involved. But, you know, it's one of those things where I will happily, you know, identify as yak and share foxhole with yak while we fight for open source AI and distributed, distributed. Ai, they are decentralized. Ai, you know, decentralized money, these kinds of things, but first and foremost commitment is, is my Christianity?

Connor Mahoney 20:53
Amen. That makes total sense. And as building an AI, you've had a lot of pushback from Christian voices right about some of the tech you've built that, but your tweet up there on the Jumbotron, is that, right?

Jon Stokes 21:05
Um, yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't know. I would say I've had a lot of pushback. I don't know which tweet is up here. I think this is the one. Yeah. I mean, the church. I find that in my church, so I'm, my background is American, Pentecostalism, I find that, you know, my church, people have different kinds of attitudes towards this. Some are very much opposed. Some are, you know, interested or cautiously optimistic. But it's not like a big topic that that I get a lot of friction over. I mean, I hear, you know, different reactions to it, but we're, we're less far advanced. I mean, you know, Pentecostal Pentecostalism is, is often anti intellectual, which is something that I love and hate about it. I'm speaking later, and I'm speaking in mid February at the encounters Conference, which is a Catholic Conference on I'm on a panel on AI and Christianity. I have generally been more active in like an ecumenical context than in my own church. But most of the time I find church people are mostly just curious about this, and I think that there's, there's different, you know, mostly I find curiosity and hostility, I guess is where I should leave it.

Connor Mahoney 22:32
Okay, perfect. Well maybe, and I want to bring a base to really give us, I guess what Yak is seeing as he is the co founder, but first, if I can throw it to Michael, if you're willing to jump in and just explain what you're doing with pulpit AI, and maybe really the conversation that's going on between tech optimists and tech demos with D cells, as the people call them in the the Christian sphere. Think that's an important element to this conversation.

Michael Whittle 23:01
Yeah, totally, Thanks for, thanks for having me jump in, John, it's good to hear from a fellow Pentecostal building in AI, I appreciate that love born and raised Pentecostal. So not born and raised got saved as a Pentecostal, yeah. I think, firstly, you know, I would echo a lot of what John says. I'm building a company called pulpit AI. We right now, we're essentially a content repurposing app for pastors. You upload a sermon to the platform, and afterwards it turns it into various content, very simple, actually, basic usage of AI. Anyone just building in this space would know that just by looking at what we're building, you've got about over 1000 people using the platform, and have gotten we've actually developed what we think is going to be a pretty incredible unlock for pastors. That being said, you know, my background is not in AI, I'm not a techno I'm not a builder in the sense that I'm not a developer. When we announced and launched, we got a lot of pushback from not necessarily people in the church, and I would divide the kind of response we got into two types of people. First of all, let me step back and say people thought that we were an AI sermon writing app. And so I can actually understand the fear and or worry that would come in the church from from well meaning Christians, because as a pastor and a preacher and a teacher myself, I wouldn't use AI to help me, you know, write a sermon. That wouldn't be how I would use it. But that being said, that was initially why we got a lot of pushback. You know, doing doing what we're doing now, you know, we've essentially found that people who work at seminaries and who are Christian bloggers and journalists and people who like to kind of pontificate around theology, want to maybe not love kind of really. Use of AI in the church. But you know, we've we, we talked to pastors of churches all the way from, you know, 30,000 people, all the way down to 25 who are using the tool and love it. That being said, I think that, you know, there is a imperative. You know, our thing that we're doing is specifically being built to build the local church, which, by the way, if you're a builder and a developer, we just close on around the capital and are looking for some help. Please. DM me. We are ready to build something pretty cool to serve the church. But I think what we really need are people building in the non church space, and who are being faithful. I think it all comes down to, you know, what are we walking and how are we building under the Lordship of Jesus? And I think if we're doing that, and we ask the question, how we're being held accountable, I don't call myself, you know, a follower of eak. I don't like to live kind of under a label of anything other than disciple, but I would certainly be a techno optimist, and I would certainly believe that anything we can do to see people flourish and to see the church built. And also, just as important, you know, for Christians to have an authority and a say so in the space in general, I think the coolest thing, honestly, for me, has been to see the amount of like founders and investors and people at massive tech companies, companies like Andrew and Founders Fund and a 16 Z and like, you name it, people have reached out to me and just said, Hey, I'm a Christian. I'm cheering you on. Thank you for doing what you're doing, and we're really building something. Again, very, very simple. So that being said, I think there are a lot of Christians like building and in this space. I think, probably, though, I will say what I have seen is that everyone that's building in the church space and people who are putting capital towards that are are, yeah, are, I guess, less than inspiring, something I thought was interesting though. You know, we're talking Connor. You just tell me. If this is what you want me to share, you tell me. But there was a recent survey that that I read from a company called Barna, and they asked about 12,000 pastors and Christians, some different thoughts on AI. Now, you know, if you know Barna, you know it's sort of most of who they reach is sort of the kind of seeker sensitive Boomer Andy Stanley crowd. So that's a certain subset of you know, the Christian faith. But you know, like 26% of people say that they're like strongly against knowing that their church uses AI, or knowing that anyone who worked at their church uses AI in any form. So while I do think there's a lot of people who are optimistic about it, I do think that Christians at large, unfortunately, can tend to be, you know, a Doomer or fear based when it comes to technology like this, a lot of it, I think, is around just then really not knowing what it is. So yeah, I just appreciate all you guys being on here and talking and learning learning from all of you like I say, I'm kind of brand new to this, so it's just good to hear a lot of smart people give their perspective. So I'll let somebody else go for it.

Connor Mahoney 28:03
Thank you, Michael, so much. And I do actually have my twin my my pinned tweet on my profile is a breakdown I did of of the pulpit AI controversy, and maybe some of the forces that were involved there. If anybody wants to check that out, I want to throw it to base Lord. He at least his Twitter bio says, and I don't really know a whole lot about Yak, but I guess he's one of the founders of this space, so that's no disrespect. I really just don't know. I really don't know this, but we're going to bring you up and I, and I and I will say this is primarily a conversation for Christians in the space we really need to walk this out between ourselves. But base has expressed he's not, you want to call himself a Christian. He's not anti Christian, but he does have some things to say, so let's all be respectful and hear about what, what he kind of envisions as E act movement, if you want to go ahead and unmute,

Bayes 28:57
yeah. Hey, how's it going? Everyone? Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me just, like, mostly here to, like, kind of try to understand how people are thinking about this question. I think, like, yeah, probably there are a lot of similar questions. People are asking related questions in this cluster. I'm not gonna, like, go on a long, you know, monolog about what Yak is. I think there's plenty of stuff out there. I mean, I don't know, a piece came out in pirate wires today, friend Nadia and I've put put there in pirate wires. You know, there's podcasts Beth. Beth and myself both have done podcasts about this. I think, yeah, yeah, that all should be sufficient. I mean, there's a sub stack, there's some information there, but I think, like, yeah, for me, I'm mostly just, like, curious about how everyone is thinking about this, this question. Because, to me, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I. You know, as you, I think you quote, tweeted the thing where I said this earlier, it's like, yeah, I mean, I consider myself, like, pretty just uncertain about things, and I just don't, I don't have, like, strong opinions on this, this kind of question. But I don't know, yeah, I think I see, see things as generally compatible. I think part of this is up to people for you know, to decide for themselves, right? Like, I think, you know, if right, for example, as was just discussed, right? Some, some churches, some, some groups of Christians may think that, you know, using chatgpt at all is a bad thing, right? And, of course, like, there are going to be people who, you know, just think that for other reasons. I think, I think there's like variants here that's hard to kind of capture in one go. So, yeah, I think I'm just kind of curious to hear how, how people who are like, you know, self sampling into this space, right, are thinking about the questions of, like, yeah, yeah. I think I'm also, I am genuinely, like, unfamiliar with, like, what people mean by like, you know, like practicing, like Christianity, like, what, what kinds of beliefs that entails, like, about God and like, what, is, what kinds of things are and aren't compatible with that? I really, I really, actually don't know. Like, yeah, yeah. So I think I don't, I don't have a huge amount to say at the moment, but I think, like, maybe if we come up against points where there's, there's questions, or like, yeah, like, points of contention or something. I think I'm very happy to, like, weigh in, but, yeah, I don't. I don't have, like, a strong stance here. I'm actually, I just really don't know, not being a Christian, I can't tell you if they're compatible.

Connor Mahoney 31:54
Okay, appreciate it, and feel free to jump in if you have points of clarification. So I brought up a

Nominus 32:00
few. Say something about that?

Connor Mahoney 32:03
Dominus, yeah, go ahead. Um,

Nominus 32:06
yeah. So there's a lot of different theological branches, but basically what we believe is that the world is broken, right, and it's because of sin, and it's because we chose to disobey God, which is sin, because God is perfect. And so later on, Jesus was sent down by God to there's some different, you know, theological ways to say it, but basically he's, he saved us, right? And you've heard that before, but he basically paid the cost to allow us to be once again in harmony with God, and basically washed clean of our sins, because in the yeah in the past, the law, the Hebrew ancient law is, like the 10 Commandments and more, but it's like impossible to follow. And yeah, so those are some points about, like, what we believe and stuff. But

Connor Mahoney 33:37
yeah, and I think actually, Ian might be able to speak a little more to this too. And I did just want to say, in response to faze I mean, let's not, let's not make any pretense here, like, obviously this is something of a meme. So I tried to bring on some people who strongly identify as in Christianity. And I think in general, most of the speakers so far say, Well, maybe I'm aligned with the act, but I don't want to, you know, fully identify with it. But if there is somebody in Ian, if you strongly identify with Yak, I would be happy to hear it, because I put EAC in my Twitter bio. So I'm a Zuma brand. I'm going full in tech optimist. We need to just blow this thing up so maybe somebody disagrees with that. But Ian, why don't you explain to us exactly what the alignment is with Christian tech optimism? And, yeah,

Ian Huyett 34:30
yeah, you'll notice I don't have yak in my bio, but I think it's fine too. Can you hear me, by the way? Connor, Yeah, you're good. Oh, good. All right. Well, I should add to what I think it was John said about just kind of the basic definition of the cardinal doctrines of the faith, obviously incredibly central throughout all of two millennia of Christian history is that Christ was killed and was resurrected and God condescended to us through the incarnation and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now. Now something that follows from that that's really central to this conversation is that through God's incarnation and history and the person of Christ, God established the church. God established this covenant people that we as human beings can choose to be above. And the function of the church is to grow and fill the world and redeem history and transform the world. So Christ has all these famous metaphors that many Christians know in Matthew 13 about the Kingdom of God is like a leaven. The leaven kind of transfixes and transforms, transforms the world. The way that bread is is leavened. Or the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It's small now, but it's going to fill the world. And we've seen that, you know, happen in human history. Christianity was a small group of people in a little corner of the Levant, and is the Lost religion on earth with billions of adherence. But I mean, the way to, I think, to answer the basic question that is the sort of title of this space is to ask, I think, and I'll set the labels aside for a minute. Just for the sake of simplicity, I like the label e act, but just for simplicity's sake, I think maybe the easiest question to ask is just, should Christians have a view of technology that is optimistic, that's cosmic in scale, and that's engaged. So, you know, an active agential role. We're not just passively watching God do stuff. We have an engaged eschatology. And I think clearly the answer to that is yes. So we can see in the Bible that the scope of eschatology is cosmic in scale. Psalm, chapter eight talks about, God has created all of the stars, all of the heavenly host, and he's placed all of this under our Minion. Everything that God has created is under the feet of man. And Romans, chapter eight talks about all creation will be set free from its bondage to decay, or its bondage to corruption, which that's a chapter that always kind of sends chills down my spine, because it seems to really like pre figure entropy and the heat death. Almost all of creation is decaying. This is something an Aristotelian at the time, or maybe like an epicurean wouldn't have known, but Paul knew it somehow, that everything was decaying. It needed to be set free from this decay. So we've got cosmic and scale eschatology, and then that just leaves us with the question of, Do Christians have an engaged role in that eschatology? And we talked about Matthew 13 a moment ago, the kingdom of God transforms the world. You can see this in Daniel chapter two as well. It's not just God that grows and grows and fills the Earth. It's the kingdom. That's the people that God establishes on Earth, that's us. And then, of course, the concluding chapters of Revelation, 21 and 22 you've really got both. You've got this palpable, visual description of the transformation and renewal of the entire cosmos. People have commented the concluding chapters of Revelation sound like science fiction. I mean, this is not a new observation. This goes back many decades, but you've also got a role for God's people in an engaged way. There the leaves of the tree of life are used for the healing of the nations. So you've got both elements. You need to answer that question eschatology, that's God's story for the future. It's cosmic, and scale encompasses the cosmos, and we have an engaged role in it. So insofar as that is Yak, you know, optimistic, cosmic, engaged view of technology. I think Christianity requires that it's not just that it's not incompatible. I think it's mandated.

Zack Grafman 38:44
Can I add to that?

Connor Mahoney 38:45
Awesome, really?

Justice Eapen 38:48
Can I add to that? Because I think that he's making a very important point.

Connor Mahoney 38:54
Yeah, it's fine to see who's talking. So, yeah, go ahead.

Justice Eapen 38:59
I just want to echo here, because especially if we're speaking directly to Christians, I think that there's a few. So first of all, my brother here is saying that first of all, you have to get your eschatology right. And if you have a pessimistic eschatology, you're naturally going to be incorrect on the question of technology, which is a forward looking optimistic and technology. Technology is intrinsically optimistic. There is an expectation that with creation of new technology, there will be positive outcomes. And so if you have a negative or a pessimistic eschatology, you're gonna get this wrong. And then I'm seeing in the replies, you're seeing this well, Christians, they generally hate technology, and that's true. It is true that Christians so often hate technology, but that's to their discredit, and also a symptom, I think, of their disbelief. We see this. You know, in Scripture, we're taught that we are freed from the bondage of the fear of death. And and really that we're taught that there's only one, one entity worth fearing. There's only one thing that we ought to fear, which is Christ or God. And so first of all, we have to get our eschatology right. Second of all, we have to stop being afraid of of change and progress. Because, again, as my brother said Romans eight, you know, the whole of creation is groaning for redemption. And so then the question becomes, well, how does that redemption take place? And what is the working of God in His creation, through his image in that creation? And I think the answer that's becoming apparent to many Christians who are astute observers of reality, is that God seems to prefer to work through his image in creation. So not only is technology implicitly good because of its, generally speaking, its intent, not it's not always intended for good, but it's often intended for good and sort of implicitly carries with an optimistic it's implicit, implicitly optimistic. But we have to have an optimistic eschatology. We have to be looking forward to the redemption of all of tech, all of creation. And we also have to be understanding that through Scripture and through natural revelation, we can understand that man is participant or or at least an instrument of God's redemption of that creation. And so what does that what does that mean? It just means that we should expect for the redemption to take place through the means of God's preferred instrument of redemption. Which is man, right? I mean, like even when he decided to redeem man himself, he sent a man himself in the form of man, to redeem man. So I just wanted to add on to that. I really liked what he was saying. And

Joseph Hurtado 41:51
I just wanted to kind of expand

Ian Huyett 41:53
a little provocative there. Do you want to stay on this initial

Connor Mahoney 41:59
No, you can. You can tag something on, I was just going to say, so I do have a few people that have already requested, and we have a limited amount of people that we can bring onto the speaker space. So if I kick somebody, it's because I'm trying to bring somebody on. Ian, go ahead and again, Connor.

Isaiah Taylor 42:15
And Connor, this is Isaiah here. I'll pop in after that, if that's okay. Yeah, we'll

Connor Mahoney 42:19
bring you on, and then we're going to get to we're going to get to we're going to get to you skeptics, I promise. But I think we kind of need to outline the optimist side both.

Ian Huyett 42:27
I thought I might just quickly kind of provoke some debate here, so that we're not all just sort of agreeing with each other. I want to just for a few sentences here, in sort of a friendly way, also go on the offensive against secular futurism or techno optimism. I was looking at Andreessen techno optimist manifesto recently, and almost anything in here, you know, Christian with an optology would agree with the vibes are good. You get down to the bottom of it, and he's got a list of patron saints of techno optimism and just two quick things I want to point out about this list that I think might be helpful here. One is that there's no Christians on the list that I recognize, except John von Neumann, who became a Christian on his deathbed. Although a lot of people on here were influenced by Christians, and it's notable there's no Christians on the list because Christians were futurists before a lot of these people. So tehard de Chardin and World War One is saying Christians need to be engaged with technology, with the fire that inspires the conqueror, and then definitely before anyone on this list. Nikolai Fyodorov, the Russian Orthodox theologian said, specifically, human beings need to fill the universe and colonize every planet, and Christians should be driving this process late 19th century, before any of these people. So it's notable there's no Christians here. But point number two, this is what's important about that is there's people on this list who said a lot of things that are definitely not compatible with Christianity at a deep, fundamental level. I'm talking about Bertrand Russell, Nick land, I mean, just, you know, fairly nihilistic thinkers. But what's important about that, I think, is those people, not only are their fundamental beliefs really not compatible with Christianity. They're not compatible with Sunny, optimistic view of technology, with his techno optimism. I mean, Bertrand Russell, here's a guy who said, Love is nothing. It's an accidental collocation of atoms. All things are destined to extinction in the void, there is no hope for redemption from the extinction of all things. And therefore, Russell said, of course, famously, in a free man's worship, we must build our habitation only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, the complete inverse of techno OPT. So I want to also suggest that, you know, again, in a friendly way, I admire a lot of the things that our secular futurist friends have said about yak and about techno optimism. But really, secular techno optimism, not only does it kind of have to plagiarize from earlier Christian futurists, but it really can't, I think, sustain itself in the absence of at least something like Christianity, it's going to end up being kind of rudderless. It's going to lack a certain oomph. Or telos, if you are relying on people like Bertrand Russell, who ultimately were not optimists, ultimately ended in despair, whereas these earlier Christian futurists, like Fyodorov had the techno optimism, optimistic view of technology and also ultimate hope. And I think that's what techno optimism or EAC requires, and Christianity can provide it.

Connor Mahoney 45:52
Thank you so much, Ian, that was perfect, and I'm going to throw it to Isaiah, but I want to point out too, I was just speaking with Ali, who we're going to bring up after Isaiah about the memetic language in the EAC base. And it's just, it's undeniably religious. So it's a testament, really, to what Ian is saying here, that you have to borrow something, we would say, I would say, from Christianity to really make the tech optimist point. And I would be curious to base load, if you could engage with that after perhaps, because, I mean, there's, there's just untie something religious about this space. Cool. All right, let's jump to Isaiah. Go ahead, give us EAC and Christianity. Why you think they're compatible? Yeah,

Isaiah Taylor 46:29
thanks, Connor So, yeah, I'm Isaiah. I'm the founder of Valor atomics. We're using nuclear fission to pull oil and gas out of thin air using, I think I said using nuclear fission. We're working on building the largest nuclear plant in the world to make really, really cheap oil and gas. I'm also a passionate Christian. I, you know, I think that it sounds silly to say that Christianity is the most important thing in my life. I think it's just the ground in the center of existence. So, like, it just kind of sounds like silly to say, but I'm also like, deeply, yeah, I was, I was kind of following this from the beginning. I'm not sure. I think, I think you follow me base. I'm not sure if sub stacks and all that kind of stuff, but I think that in the early days, I hesitated to put yak in my name. And I'll first, I just want to say where it's compatible, but then I'll highlight, like, why I originally hesitated to do that. So first on the on the compatibility front, I, like some other people, pointed out, like Christianity is deeply accelerationist, like if you read, if you read the Old Testament promises, I'll just read one little piece from Isaiah here. So the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the little child should lead them. So that's, that's one little piece. It's an interesting like, man having, like, this really deep dominion over nature. So that's, that's one piece here. There's another one in Isaiah 65 it says, No more shall there be an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days. For the young man shall die 100 years old. In the sinner 100 100 years old shall be accursed. So this, I mean, this is like, very, very directly, what we call like life extension, right? So apparently, in the future, people are going to live a lot longer than the living right? Now and then there's this like discourse, of course, about whether or not that's referring to some sort of thing that arises of a spiritual reality, or if that's sort of technological in nature, and that's that's certainly a discussion you could have, but one way or the other, Christianity is, I would say, infused top to bottom with promises of what we would recognize as techno accelerationism, right? We'd want, from my perspective, building an energy company like I want humans to have abundant energy. I wanted us to be exploring across the universe. I want there to be trillions of humans on, you know, planets as far as we can see. And that is completely in line with the Great Commission. It's not just in line. It's really the reason for what I am doing the commission, and the garden Be fruitful and multiply the earth, subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea. And if you think about what technology is doing, it's fundamentally, it's lengthening the arm of man. That's what technology is doing. It's making our hands and our arms and our minds stronger, and it's increasing the leverage that humans have over everything around them. And then there's a moral question after that, which is like, Okay, now your your arms are much stronger. You know, one man can now command, you know, an army of drones, for instance, whereas, you know, 100 years ago, that was impossible, our arms, our hands have gotten longer. Now, what do you do with that? And that's a moral question, right? But technology itself, and sort of the increasing dominion of man over nature is, is, is deeply infused in, you know, in Christianity. Now, the original reason that I would say, is a little bit hesitant EAC movement at first, even though I'm deeply optimistic about, you know, the future courses. Of of history, and specifically technology. You know that we're all going to be, you know, in O'Neill cylinders and 100 years, if I have anything to do with it. But the the one mark of hesitation there is, and I'm curious to get your input on this base, is, is the transhumanist part. So there's this understanding. And in EC, as far as I can tell, that there's a sort of an allegiance primarily to intelligence as an emergent feature of organization, sort of an ex tropic emergent property, rather than humanity, there's, there's this allegiance to intelligence wherever it may wherever it may form, you know, whatever embodies intelligence maximally, rather than to humanity itself. And I think that arises out of sort of a materialist understanding of the universe. And fundamentally, you know, Christianity is at odds with that, because in the in the Christian frame, Christ is the central, and, you know, ultimately, authoritative figure of history and of reality, since he created it. And you know, he came to Earth and became a man who's resurrected. And now all things have been put under his feet. And because of that, the church is also under his feet. And we are now the rulers of all creation. And I think that's like, very evidently, being played out through history. We are seeing man become more and more the rulers of all creation. So when you have EAC come into that and say, well, it's not really that man will be the ruler of the universe, it's that intelligence will be the, you know, anti entropy, right? So base, I'm curious to know what to what you say about that.

Bayes 51:37
That's a lot of because, I

Connor Mahoney 51:38
mean, there's, yeah, if you could respond to that, and also about the religious terminology in the space, and then I'm going to throw it to colleagues also give his concerns about the language. Go ahead, yeah,

Bayes 51:47
yeah. I mean, okay, so to this question about transhumanism, I think like, yeah, maybe I'll give my personal opinion later, but yeah, I think that, like, we're, my first point would just be that we're already transhumanist, right? Like we are already doing this. Like, every time we invent a new tool, we move beyond the way we were before. And it does, like, pretty substantially change us, right? If we use medicine that's some advanced biologics, or some new, new thing like this. I mean, these are all, these are all manifestations of that. And so I think there's a question to me about how one would derive the line from, you know, you know, whichever sources of truth you know you might want to refer to. Like, I actually just am genuinely confused about how you would derive, like a boundary there, right? So if I, you know, replaced my, you know, language production module in my brain with an LLM, that's like, way better and faster. Like, is that too far? And then, like, the question would be, why? And it's like, well, what if I had a stroke, right? Totally,

Isaiah Taylor 52:57
totally agree with the there being ambiguity in that line. And I certainly don't have an extremely clear answer for you. You know, I'm wearing ear pods right now, and how different does it become when that, you know, becomes a brain implant? But I think the larger question that I'd like and maybe this is a straw man. So tell me if this is a straw man. But it seems like in EAC that the main allegiance is to intelligence, and there's nothing necessarily human about that.

Bayes 53:23
Yeah, there's something in this word allegiance that I don't like, which is like, so to me, like the many of these, these aspects here are, like, observational it's like, what is what? What any evolution of the universe, what seems to kind of be favored? What are the trajectories that seem more likely? I think there's some, like emergent physics here, or something. And I think, like, part of these are early things that you're referring to is really writing to referring to. It's like attempts to try to capture some of what's going on there and what it might be about. And, yeah, to me, I don't know this, this thing about, you know, it may be an uncomfortable fact that, like, if we sort of zoom out away from Earth, you look at, like, the whole universe there could be like, I mean, we really don't know what, what, what's going on out there. We don't know what we're encapsulated in, right? We don't, we don't really know where any of this came from, right? So it's like, there, I'm very, very comfortable with, you know, the the Christian perspective, that, like, the ultimate source is known. That's that's fine. I think I don't, I don't feel as certain about that, but that's okay. But like, there are many, many stones left unturned so far. And so to me, I think something that is troubling is like, I yeah, I think my concern would be that we may very well just get out competed at the universe scale, right? And so the question is, like, like, like, and I mean, in the sense of like, in an ecosystem being out competed, I think we don't know like, what? So, yeah, then my thing here to kind of draw a line, or to draw a path between the. To regimes is like, I would say, if we have free will, you know, given by God, and we have the ability to build technology, and part of the sort of space of programs that we can write on the universe computer is, you know, includes things like modifying our bodies or improving our brains, you know, extending our brains or moving our consciousness to new substrates. I think, like, it's hard for me to see these as things that are would would somehow be wrong, like, if I, if I put myself in, like a kind of Christian base, a Christian simulator, I would say my sense would be like, Why would God give us the tools if those were things he didn't want us to do? Like, that's confusing to me. If the answer is we shouldn't do those things, there's, there's a boundary to the question about the language, you know, the thermodynamic God and so on. I think, like, this is about the first, first of all, yeah, obvious. First Order thing is, yeah, it's like a meme. It just sounds like kind of funny and like, catchy and like, you know, it's, it's such a meme that we're still talking about it, you know. But the other part of this is just trying to understand, like, telos, I think, and I'm still trying to understand this in more detail for myself. I think, like, there is something very interesting here, and I don't think it's well understood. I don't think anybody has really explicated the full thing. I am, you know, in the process of making attempts to understand it better, not just with respect to this thermodynamic God thing, but like, yeah, What? What? What is, what is going on? Like, what is the purpose of technology? Where, what is the trajectory that we're we seem to be on? And, like, where are we going to end up? What is the, you know, what? What are we going to find? What tools are we going to find in our hands? I think, like, there is, there is actually, like, a, yeah, I don't know. I'll have some pieces on this soon, but it's there is definitely a thing here. And, yeah, so wherever you want to, kind of, like, assign that the the origin, or, like, sort of the, you know, the location of the, you know, the generating function for, for those observable trends or patterns in the universe. You know, that's, that's totally up to you. I think for me, I'm, like, as I said, kind of fairly agnostic, like, I just don't, I don't have a strong opinion about this, but it does seem that it's there, and I think it's, it's, it's perfectly reasonably compatible, if, yeah, so I don't know, does that, does that kind of answer some of the thing here. I think this is quite deep, and it's like something that's very live in my thinking and writing right now.

Joseph Hurtado 58:10
Yeah,

Connor Mahoney 58:12
based and, and, I'll say the transhumanist to the transhumanist argument. That's going to be probably a big part of this space. So I'm glad you brought that up, I would make the contention, and I've made this in tweets before, that the conversation around Transhumanism is, unfortunately, very vague and also often gets misapplied, especially in Christian circles. I don't really think a lot of what you described is technically transhumanism, and I know Ian also has some thoughts on this, but before we throw it over there in Isaiah, great, great. I'm glad to

Bayes 58:42
say one more thing.

Connor Mahoney 58:43
I'll give you a quick moment. Isaiah. We got like a million people who want to speak and I want to throw it to all the afterwards. Go ahead,

Isaiah Taylor 58:50
yeah, yeah, totally get it. But you know, I'm funny and interesting, so I'll take another couple seconds. Yeah, no. So base, I think that's, I think we are kind of hitting on, like, the core of where Christianity can actually be helpful to the movement. And I'm sorry, my friend Augustus is in the UK right now. I'd love to have him in jumping in here as well. But yeah, so you're kind of talking about, like, Man, I have no idea what kind of tools we're going to find here. And I think in some of those earlier writings, like you were saying you have this exploration of, like, you know, trying to, trying to think through that and like, where's it going, and what's the point I would just put forward my own viewpoint, which is, it's going to trillions of humans on, you know, every planet in the known universe, and it's going to be amazing and beautiful. But the reason is because Christ is on the throne of all of it. And

Bayes 59:42
with that, I think that's, I would almost say that's amazing. And like, let's let's go. But like,

Connor Mahoney 59:48
Wait, did you just say you agree Christ is on the throne of all of it.

Isaiah Taylor 59:51
Let's go, base, base.

Bayes 59:54
Christian confirm on record, yeah, no, but I think that's almost like the mundane future. To me, like, that's like, that's like, table stakes for futurism. To me, right? Like, I think there's more, yeah, I have a lot. I have a lot more state about this, but let's yeah anyway. All right, cool.

Connor Mahoney 1:00:11
Yeah. The other thing about Isaiah is he's got like 5000 followers. So you know, anybody who has clout is definitely gonna be brought up. All right, let's move to ollie, because he has, this is somebody who is a Christian, who is a tech optimist of some sort, but he has a lot of concerns about the E act space. So this is maybe the first of that. And then I want to throw it to Ian to answer some of the transhumanism arguments. And then we'll go back to ocean. And some of you, other people who have your your hands up, go ahead, Ollie.

Oli 1:00:40
Yeah, I wouldn't specifically say that I have concerns. Well, I guess, I guess I do have some concerns. But it's like the the cultural like pendulum is always swinging, and we're always trying to oscillate towards this, towards a sane way of looking at the world, right? And you can see EAC as the pendulum swinging away from the diesel movement, right? But I think that what I have, what I have seen, and then once I kind of clicked, I really couldn't unsee it was one the like, obviously religious language. But I think that is not in, in and of itself, a problem because, well, of course, this type of language is very, is very captivating, because it like it describes the patterns of our world, right? But what I think, what we all need to keep in mind, and I think even the most secure, the most materialist person can can agree with, is that everything needs to be in its proper place, because if you take some lower good and you place it as the highest good, as your you know, as your loss function, right? In COVID, we saw that safety was put as the highest thing, right? And then we saw what happened to that. You can see now in schools, safety is put at the highest and then that comes to the detriment of other things. And you can see that in lots of other different places in culture, where, if things aren't put in there, in there, right? Like, for example, equality as well, if you put equality there as the highest, then you see what happens, right? So you can see in the all the time, it's, we're putting technology as the as the very highest thing that everything else is subservient to. And you can see this in in all, in all the language where it's like, you know, just accelerate technology with no kind of, with no like, with no barriers or no recourse. And it's also, I'm loving how people are talking about like, with the purpose of the technology. What? What is the tellers of the technology, right? Are we creating this technology to self glorify, to to are we creating the technology for the bestment of the individual, or for the bestment of all, or for service to God, whatever type of language you want to use, right? And then, speaking specifically about about the language, I just want to give an example, I'll just read out a Beth tweet, and then just kind of, if you can just kind of interpret what I'm saying from this kind of, kind of a theological kind of lens, right? So basically, on his docs account, whatever he he makes a tweet about some for Theory of Everything. He's talking about some physics stuff. And he quote tweets. If

Connor Mahoney 1:03:33
you want to share the tweet, I'll put it on the Jumbotron. Ali,

Oli 1:03:37
yeah, I'll just, I'll just DM it to you real quick.

Bayes 1:03:40
I think you can just put it on the jumbo charm. It's

Oli 1:03:44
okay. So basically, he's saying, in order to get answers, we will have to ascend the Kardashev scale. This ascent will unlock perception into this higher energy band. Then we will need the intelligence to understand what we see Energy Plus AI scaling are the truly fundamental missions. So you can kind of see this, like these symbolic parallels, right? In order to get, like answers. And it's a very kind of vague thing, answers. And then when you kind of look at it from from this lens, you can see the Kardashian scale is, kind of being is acting as a replacement of the of the ascent to heaven, almost right. And it's like this high energy band. It's like, you know, it might be hard to interpret what I'm saying, but when you when you look into it, sometimes the technology is replacing just being as the primary loss function. It's in place at the very top of the hierarchy, and saying, in order to get all of our answers, all of our answers, all of our problems can just be solved with technology. You know, what? If we just develop these certain, you know, these certain technologies, and then all of humanity's problems will be solved. And I think that is the real I think that is, that is the real problem here.

Connor Mahoney 1:04:59
And. Think that's kind of the argument when it comes to transhumanism, specifically, which is what on what order of creation is, is humanity, and where do we place machines? I mean, I was responding to somebody on my Twitter feed who was obviously not a Christian, who was suggesting that a DI was eventually going to ascend to the point where we would compete with humanity. I don't see it that way, but I know there's a lot of people who are concerned with that, and so those are the questions transhumanism. So if I can throw it to Ian, because I know you have a pretty direct, succinct response to this, and then I'm going to throw it to ocean to also share some of his concerns. Thanks,

Ian Huyett 1:05:37
Connor and Isaiah. Great stuff, man. I really just want to affirm everything that you said. I forgot Connor's rule, by the way. So I'm not a builder. I've just represented builders in court, builders. I don't understand technology well enough to do what you do. I do understand technology well enough to beat up the people that are trying to stop you from building. The base question about, you know, what is kind of the Christian response to transhumanism? Where do Christians draw and in line to the fact that, you know, we wear glasses, we have pacemakers, etc. Aren't these things transforming what it means to be human and transforming the image of God? And I think that Christianity does provide some pretty clear cut responses to that. Obviously, the responses a non Christian might not agree with, but just by way of some explanation, there's definitely some very specific parts of our createdness and what it means to bear the image of God that are ordained as positive goods in the Bible and in Christian tradition, Christian philosophy, and a lot of those goods are things that traditionally self identifying transhumanists have kind of looked a scan set or wanted to do away with. And just the main one that I'll highlight is biological sex. So Christianity has always had this very exalted view of biological sex. Of course, Christianity, you know, the whole notion of the Trinity, really, if you could summarize it in one sentence, is that God is first and foremost, relational and interpersonal. In fact, God himself is this relationship of different persons with different roles, and the different persons kind of have different strengths. And there's a lot of stuff in especially the New Testament, about God. When He created humanity, created two biological sexes to embody this inter relational nature of fundamental reality. So Ephesians, five, male and female, represent Christ in the church. First. Corinthians, 11 actually just comes, comes right out and says that the relationship between men and women is kind of like the Trinity. So this is a positive good that God ordained, and he created this reality to teach us something about him and his design. And transhumanists, I think, can kind of have a Mott and Bailey problem on this, because you read a lot of you go to a transhumanist website, and you go to the what is transhumanism section, and it'll say, you know, we just believe in using technology to maximize human well being and human capabilities. And you think, you know, well, that's good. All Christians agree with that. But then you read, you know, basically any transhumanist thinker. You go, look at Vitalik, for example. And Vitalik wants to abolish pregnancy, you know, just have all babies grown externally and sort of bats. Blair Osler, to take a lesser known transhumanist wants to kind of use transhumanism to carry forth this Andrea Dworkin, sort of critique of the existence of biological sex. Andrea Dworkin, the feminist thought the mere existence of biological sex is oppressive. It kind of imprisons women in their biology because they're weaker, they're vulnerable. We've got to get rid of this biological sex thing. And Blair Osler, the transhumanist philosopher, says, you know, great, yeah, let's abolish sex. No more male and female. Create 10 new sexes. Let's make sex totally fluid. Let people change their sex at will. So, you know, again, it can. It's Ahmad and Bailey in that when you get the one sentence definition, it sounds unobjectionable, but so much of the time, people who self identify as transhumanist in particular will end up denying core parts of what Christian theology says about, you know, having the image of God and being human. So there are some clear lines there.

Nominus 1:09:20
So I

Bayes 1:09:21
have a question like that would seem to preclude, for example, like, if so you mentioned the that one of the lines would be around, sort of gender, biological sex. So that would seem to preclude, like, if we, if we were able to sort of technologically sort out how to be substrate independent, and like, sort of move our minds into like, right? You can live in a computer. You could you could live your life out as a Tesla driving around town, you know, just like, whatever you know, you could imagine something like that, perhaps, like is that that's that that would be something that's not okay. And you. View. Well, not necessarily. I

Ian Huyett 1:10:02
mean, I'm not affirming this, but just as a hypothetical, if the simulation hypothesis is true, we exist within a substrate, a computer substrate, and biological sex exists. You know, I'd kind of go with the David Chalmers view, that stuff that exists in a computer substrate is real. So if you've got biological sex in a computer substrate, I think it is biological sex.

Bayes 1:10:21
Okay, so then that's, like, a pretty specific claim. That's, that's actually quite interesting. I've never heard anyone claim that,

Ian Huyett 1:10:27
yeah, I just think the Bible and Christian history are just pretty clear cut on this. Yeah,

Joseph Hurtado 1:10:31
yeah, yeah.

Bayes 1:10:34
I actually, if you guys don't mind, I have two questions, and I would love to, like, just get some thoughts about them. I actually have to go in just about 20 minutes or so, and so I was just hoping to put these questions forward, maybe just get some thoughts, something that go ahead, something that confuses me, in general, about existence, is, you know, this classic problem, which you know, Christian, Christian thinkers have written about, and non Christian thinkers have written about, and many people have thought about this problem, but, yeah, you know, so, right? Like, a lot of people are a bit obsessed with this notion of, like, are we in a simulation or not? And I've talked about this before, I think this is not actually that interesting of a question. I think, like, the answer to that question, like, if I tell you the answer is no, like, what does that even mean? First of all, like, it doesn't really right. Like, if we had an Oracle for the problem of answering, we would just be like, Okay, what does that mean? But if you said, Yes, well, like, right now, you have this problem of, like, you just kind of pass the buck. So it's like, we know we're inside a simulation. That means, like, there's some kind of stuff that we're some hardware that we're running on somewhere, you know, out there, and, you know, like, let's assume that we can, like, break into that, you know, you immediately kind of recover this classic, you know, problem of the regress, right? And I kind of wonder, like, how you guys think about this problem? Because to me, it seems like, almost like, logically, very difficult to answer, like, just at sort of a foundational level. So, like, it seems to me that, like, the Christian answer would be like, yeah, yeah, you know, regress as long as you want, but like, finitely many times. Maybe it's, maybe it's, you know, this universe is not a simulation. Maybe that's the case. Maybe there's two, maybe there's 20, maybe there's, like, you know, 10 to the 220 but eventually you will find that sort of first mover, you know, which would be the Christian god. Is that? Is that? Is that correct? And what is it that substantiates that for you, like, where does that? Where does that feeling like that, that tracks comes from,

Isaiah Taylor 1:13:00
if I could answer that one, Connor, do you mind? Yeah? So, yeah, I think What's always interesting, and I've been kind of thinking about this question since Elon kind of popularized it pretty early on, which was, you know, oh, maybe we are all living in this computer simulation, because there are actually, I think it's interesting. The original reason that, I think he said that was because of evolution. He looked at, sort of the evolutionary odds of us being where we are, sort of in the total matter space.

Bayes 1:13:31
The Bostrom argument is that, right, the, you know, in that you can imagine, in our current far future, there will be many, many civilizations, or, you know, many, many computers where there will be simulations. And so if you think about like, the measure over those that correspond simulations versus non simulations is, like, very small percent are in the base reality. And so why wouldn't that be the case for us now? It's like, yeah,

Isaiah Taylor 1:13:55
yeah, yeah, exactly, so, so, and this is actually one of my problems with evolution as a as a, I don't think that it's empirical. I don't think that evolution is empirical, even though it kind of looks that way from how we practice it. But I think it's actually sort of the it takes the sort of like matter space, and applies probability to it and says, here's the, here's the recursive argument for reality. And I it's not, I'm not compelled by it, but I think that the Christian answer here is, is sort of Yes, like yes, it is a simulation, in the sense that there's actually a philosopher named Berkeley who kind of said this. But the the hardware, if you will, is just the the Word of God. So in Scripture, it says that God spoke, and there was light. And this is sort of the, this is like the the simulation substrate, if you will, is like God's ever present, speaking and words, and so the, I guess, if you want to translate that to the terms that you originally put out, it's like, no, there's it. Sort of like, yes, but there's only one. There's only one regression. If that makes sense. In theory, I'm sure you could say, like, oh, well, God. Like, you know, is speaking it in a world in which he's been against speaking it. So, like, I guess in theory you could regress, but meaningfully, there's, there's only one, like, core regression. And it's, it's like, God's continuous, you know, extant will. And then that also, I think, kind of aligns the like the probability problem as well. Because I think that the physical world we're in is is arbitrary if you look at it within the picture of the simulation, but then it's actually completely intentional if you're looking at it from the like from godspring, if that makes sense,

Connor Mahoney 1:15:40
okay. And I think we want to keep saying on this topic, because base load only has so much time. I will just say that we had a conversation with Frank tiplow, I said recently on a podcast, and his response to the simulation question, which I think is probably shared by a lot of people here, but it's kind of a nonsense question, exactly like you were saying. The real question is, okay, then who's the simulated and how complex is the simulation. I do want to just pop over to Jeremy real quick, because he said he has a very critical point, and he has to drop off. So if you want to make your point, and then hopefully it's in line with this Convo, we'll get back. Yeah.

Jeremy Welch 1:16:13
So great to to see everybody here, and thanks for for having me on and the there is a point that relates to this topic, but I but I want to just introduce something real quick, the context, real brief, on my my background. I've been building technology companies for a while now, mostly in the Bitcoin and security space, non Connor platform, and then I let all the products at Kraken exchange for a number of years. But I'm here because, you know, prior to that, and one thing that that enabled me to even see how, how Bitcoin could grow, was that I did spend a number of years down the rabbit hole with Nick land. I got an opportunity to listen to him and ask some questions and learn from him direct and and it was really deep down the acceleration hole. And, you know, in the last few years, I've actually had to convert had a conversion that brought me what I would say, to the opposite side, and would perhaps put me, you know, going from kind of base camp to something that's different. And the problem that I want to introduce is just the notion of the approach to technology, the approach to the world, and specifically a kind of more Marian view, or a view of how Mary approached God, versus what I would position as more of A kind of Promethean view of technology, and my phone might be freezing up, it's been kind of going in and out. So just telling me, for some reason, and that basically says, I think, in the accelerations view of things, that there is a little bit of a Promethean approach to this, where I think that the Christian, the Christian view, and kind of how God commands us is, is, is more towards this view of, of, you know, God is in control. God is in charge. He does give us brains to go solve problems. But there is this notion of, not, you know, tasting from the tree, right, and, and so there is this. It's not so much full restraint as as there is a level of caution. Now you go to something like the parable of the tenants and or the parable of the talents, excuse me. And of course, in the parable of the talents, the servant that does not invest the resources they've been given is actually the one that that is, is kind of given the most flak by the master, by the the owner. And so there is this view of like going full safety ism is also not the answer. But I just want to ask Bayes how he would approach something like this, you know, this question of prometheanism versus a view, you know, more of God being in control and us taking a view, more towards technology of revelation more than just pure human, rational, driven, kind of Promethean steel fire from the gods. I

Bayes 1:19:28
would love to answer the question, but I think slightly like terminology laden, and I'm not super tracking what you mean. I don't know if you want to try to, like, rephrase it. Maybe that would help

Connor Mahoney 1:19:41
me. Jeremy, could you hear baseball? Pardon, I'm asking Jeremy if he could hear you. He's

Joseph Hurtado 1:19:48
not responding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Connor Mahoney 1:19:51
If you're having a problem with your mic, Jeremy, just pop off and pop back on. We'll get you to rephrase it. Was there anything that you could respond to base? Or should we move on?

Bayes 1:19:59
I would love to just get just a rephrase of that question before I try to answer it, because I do think I just didn't quite understand what he meant.

Connor Mahoney 1:20:09
Okay, I do.

Bayes 1:20:10
I have, oh, I'm really glad to see telechiato is here. Hi, it's been a while. Hope you're doing well, yeah, I have just, like, one more question before I before I head off, if you don't mind, yeah. So I think, like, one thing I kind of wonder about here in this conversation, I've heard like pieces of this, which is like, there's like, I me, right? So it's like things in Christianity will like, and the like interpretation of it, and the way that manifests beliefs and opinions about the world, like, will say, like, alright, like, these certain kinds of outcomes are not good outcomes in the world, and, and, and and, like, I think Christians would want to not have those things happen, right? And the thing that I am getting some sense of, I think, right now that I do think kind of like differentiates a little bit is just like the amount of variance that's like, maybe like acceptable, or considered like tolerable or Okay, or even ideal. And so to me, like, I think, I guess my kind of high level heuristic is that, you know, lot more variance is probably good. It increases, like, the robustness of this, this thing that we have of life and its continued existence in the universe. And so when I think about like, constraining it in various ways, I think like, it seems like I'm not arguing that any particular thing is this way, but it seems that you could, you could have sort of a fragilizing effect, right? And this is sort of like the same argument that that I would make about, you know, the way, like, over regulation of AI or something like this, right? Where it's like you have a policy that you set at a certain time step with a certain amount of information, with a certain amount of constraints, and the number of, you know, yeah, like, the number of constraints just kind of overwhelms the sorts of policies and the fitness of the policies that you can put forward, and then you end up sort of with outcomes that are generally, like, worse for the overall kind of organism of civilization. And I think the thing that I really want to ask, like, sincerely, is just like, what is the world? Because it seems to me that we are already in a world that has many features that, you know, I mean, I think all of us don't like, but in this context, Christians would, wouldn't like, and don't, don't think are good. And I think, like, what is, what is the, what is the like response to like, I guess what my claim would be that, like, we probably will live in a world where many things are are like, not to the to spec, like, what is the way to to move forward in that world? Like, I think, right, so. Like, I mean, there will probably continue to be other religions. They will probably have, like, fundamental disagree. I mean, I know even sex, within sex of Christianity, there will be disagreements. I think this will ultimately, I mean, manifest, maybe in like, very radically different subs, sub components of civilization, right? And so, what is the, what is the way that you know? What is the Christian response to that? Is it to, you know, like, like, is it just whatever? You know, it's up to the individual. It's up to the group. How do you guys think about that?

Isaiah Taylor 1:23:47
So the, I think the general question base was, like, is variance good if I could, like, really, really simplify it down,

Joseph Hurtado 1:23:54
or maybe, maybe I'll

Bayes 1:23:54
simplify it a little bit more. Let me just say this, it seems likely to me that things that at least some Christians don't like will happen. And I'm curious, like, how you think about what to do in that case. Because, yeah, again, it does seem likely. And I think, yeah, yeah. And then yeah, you want to make sense something about variance in general. That begin, yeah,

Isaiah Taylor 1:24:18
so, so first off, I would say, like, on the point of variance, there's, there's no such thing as variance without constraints, being able to even define variance at all, like, I think includes some sort of concept of constraint, even just like, in a directional sense. So obviously, we don't, we don't want to be variance maximizers, but, but you know, beyond that, of course, there is, you know, there is a ton of valued variance against fragility and all sorts of things, even just sort of motion that said, like your general question of, What does Christianity do with variance, which you would call, and actually, let me back and say, like, two, two types of variance. One is one. One is the type of variance where you simply don't understand it. And then another is where you like, no, it's bad. And by bad in the Christian frame, we mean, like, pretty explicitly what God does not enjoy, or does not, you know, find pleasing. And that sounds like sort of a flippant definition, until you kind of think about God as sort of the author of all things, and in that, in this sort of like authored reality that he's writing, there are things that you know displease him and don't displease him, and that sort of the grounding of Christian morality. So I would say, as far as, what are those things like, what do we do with with those sort of bad variances? I mean, the general Christian program is that the world be saved, be reshaped in the image of the things that are good, the primarily the gospel. There is obviously a political component to Christianity, wherever it is. But I don't think that this is sort of a, oh, we will allow, you know, absolutely no civilizational level variance within that, you know, do not align with one very strict orthodoxy, mostly just because the like, primary component of Christianity isn't political. It's, it's, you know, it's about belief and so not, not that there's no political component. But that's not the primary component. That's what I'd say. It's definitely

Connor Mahoney 1:26:16
not the primary component. And I think I'm going to throw it to John Stokes the responses. He has his hand up as well. But I also want to just make the point that one of the fundamental claims of Christianity is that to use simulation theory, there is a simulator, and he's running a simulation with a with a predefined endpoint. And I'm, I'm also curious if you could respond to the question of if IAC, or your concept of EAC, Bose, any language from, specifically, Theo de chadan, Frank tiplow, physics of mortality, Omega point, but

Bayes 1:26:51
ultimately, but, but from cosmism, there is some connection to cosmism, perfect.

Connor Mahoney 1:26:57
But I would say, by the way,

Bayes 1:27:00
I am going to leave in about 10 minutes. But intelligent has been around the Yak scene, like, I mean, since the beginning. She knows as much as I do about it. So, yeah, we'll bring it up. And she is, she's Christian, so

Connor Mahoney 1:27:14
Okay, yeah, well, I can throw it to John to respond to you as well, unless you get something off the

Bayes 1:27:20
base. No, I love to hear from

Connor Mahoney 1:27:23
John. Okay, yeah, let's go to John. Yeah. I

Jon Stokes 1:27:25
just, I guess, I guess the question, like, it was just too abstract for me, so I, I would ask, like, what are, what are some examples? Like, what's an example of a, of a thing that Christians, I said, one would imagine Christians don't like, that seems likely to happen, like, like, something, yeah, great, yeah. I

Bayes 1:27:47
think we already, we already kind of hit on, like, the annoyingly, like, hot button sort of thing of, you know, like, this biological sex stuff around, you know, EXO wombs, you know, maybe it's, you know, certain variations of substrate, independent consciousness or existence. Maybe it's, you know, you know, practicing other religions, you know. I mean, I don't know, not, not. I don't have, like, a great compass for what these kinds of where, where these kinds of lines might be, because I don't really have a great model of what kinds of things, you know, are considered like, I guess, cynical or not, not in line with Christianity. But, yeah, those are just some, some guesses. I mean, right? I mean, if we look around society, there's a lot of variance in what people would, where people sort of draw this boundary over time and over, over space. So I think,

Isaiah Taylor 1:28:46
yeah, I do have a couple quick points. I think we'll answer your question base, but go ahead and John, if you if you want to kick in first,

Jon Stokes 1:28:53
yeah. I mean, I guess I just, I think it's interesting. It's kind of deep, like I think about the stuff myself as a person of faith, because then I'm, I'm like, you know, what would be? What would be a thing that would happen, that I'd be like, Okay, well now I guess I was wrong. I guess I've been wasting my time on Sundays. You know, is that a or like, what would that look like? I don't know that artificial wombs, our consciousness being on a different substrate would qualify, because I sort of expect that my consciousness will be on a different substrate at some point when my biological flesh passes away. And you know, the womb thing is, like, I feel like we've already kind of crossed that Rubicon with, like, surrogacy and stuff like this. So there's not that much of a difference for me, theoretically, between like, oh, we rented a womb briefly, versus like, there's a, you know, one in a bat somewhere.

Isaiah Taylor 1:30:00
I've got a pretty easy one, John, that I can throw out, sure. So I, you know, I think that probably the most extreme case that would answer your question base is the death of God. And I would, I would position that, you know, Nietzsche and the and the death of God itself, you know, couldn't have happened and in a peaceful way, where we could have peaceful atheists out and about and doing their work. And, you know, science and the spread of science, if there had not, as a precursor, been the peace of Christ, and it's only through Christ and through the awareness of the victim. Gerard, actually. Renee Gerard, if you haven't read any, Renee Gerard does a does a great job of explaining the details of this, but the you know, all the work of science, including many innovations that we don't Christians maybe would not support or subscribe to or use themselves, and many discussions and many positions and world views and lifestyles, all of these things can emerge and be in a peaceful community because of, you know, the revelation of Christ. And so I think that you know that, again, the very existence of new things is dependent on on Christ. And I apologize this earlier my some reason, my mic was going and out, and I actually did not hear your response. But I appreciate you jumping on and answering questions. And I do have to jump here in a minute. Let

Jon Stokes 1:31:26
me, let me also just say to base that I think the Well, I think, I think Jeremy raised a good point about, like, the death of God stuff, and like, it's true. It's true. It's like, if Christianity went the way of, like, you know, the Greek religions, like, yeah, that would be a thing, but that I'm not going to be around to see that. And so then I think about, like, what would are probably not going to be around to see that. But then I think what would be something in my lifetime that would happen. But like, you know, I went to, I spent like, five years at Divinity School, and then I went and did a PhD at Chicago in this and like, I've seen a lot of people have crises of faith. Well, it happens a lot, especially, no, I did not come out of a fundamentalist background. Like I said, I was Pentecostal. We were not fundamentalist Pentecostals or biblical literalist. That's more of a Baptist thing, although many Pentecostals now, I think, are probably fundamentalists. So I've seen a lot of fundies like show up at div school and realize that Paul did not, probably did not write Ephesians. He certainly didn't write Hebrews. And then they just like, it's all out the window. They leave their wife, they dye their hair blonde, you know, the whole, the whole nine yards, right? And so this, this thing of, like, what if I encountered something that are like? Just to give another example, you know, there are Christians who believe that the Age of Miracles is over, and the miraculous was confined to acts in the time of the New Testament, and that people don't get healed anymore, and then they go to some church, some, you know, evangelical church, and somebody gets healed of something, and they see it, and they're like, Okay, well, now I was wrong, and I have to convert to this other sect of Christianity. So my point being that this happens within Christianity, where people are like, I was raised in a particular particular tradition, and now I've have this ontological shock, and I realized that, like, we were wrong about this thing. And now I'm going to convert to this other thing. Are they were raised in something, and then they go to school and they find that the thing that they were raised in, it's sort of ontologically or, you know, it's like, it's untenable in light of, like, what they know, what they can read. And so this is a common thing that happens in the faith, and Christians are, like, pretty good about adapting. For the most part, Christianity is pretty adaptive. And so my expectation would be that whatever happens with, you know, artificial wombs are faster than light travel, or whatever, there'll be some version of Christianity that, like, incorporates that and and people are able to, are able to kind of accept it and incorporate into their faith and move on. And I think it comes, it comes down to just the idea that there is, like, an actual, like a super agent sovereign, that we're in some kind of relationship with. And I think if you can accept that, then a lot of other things are made flexible, and, and, and you can adapt, as long as you have this like relationship with this, this entity, you know, this, like, you know, super powerful entity through this community. And that's maybe my kind of Pentecost mysticism talking. But I expect that that it would probably go that way.

Connor Mahoney 1:34:51
I don't know face does say yes, drop off. I don't know if you wanted to make some final points here base before you leave.

Bayes 1:34:56
Yeah. I mean, I have some a few more minutes now. So. So no, that's, that's interesting. I mean, I think, like,

Connor Mahoney 1:35:06
if you do have sometimes, could you respond also, because I'm also confused, like John was, what the thrust of your question is, because you would also agree that there were less than desirable outcomes. And so how you know, how do we all respond to that? Obviously, we want to work towards the best future. And I will just say that again, Christian cosmology is essentially that we win, that we're not really ultimately concerned with the ultimate future. It's just, how soon can we get there? And you know, how much net good can we bring into the world in the process? But go ahead.

Bayes 1:35:38
Yeah, no, just in response to what John said, like, I think,

I yeah,

I think, yeah, my view is that great? Like, if indeed it is adaptive, then it may find willing hosts over time. And that is probably, you know that is the way that to survive, right? There are no willing hosts for for Greek, Greek myths, in some sense, right? It's like these things are there, but they're kind of a curiosity. And I think, like, maybe the case that people took them rather seriously at some point in the past. I think yeah, yeah, no. I mean, I think it does matter, right? If you're, if you were, if you have belief in something and you want to assure its continuation, you have to look at the actual landscape that you're in. And I think that what it probably will require, like, adaptation of some kind, right? I do think there will be, you know, just radical changes to civilization over the next 100 years or something, and may challenge a lot of people. That's why I asked the question. Just curious, what people think about this.

Connor Mahoney 1:37:01
Appreciate it. Did you have some final response to that, John, I see you still unmuted?

Jon Stokes 1:37:05
No, yeah, I think it's, I mean, look, this is the stuff I think about as well. You know, again, I That's why I asked for specifics. Because I kind of, I guess, not that I didn't understand the question, but more like I wanted to know what specific things you were thinking of because I but again, I this is a really common Christian thing to see people sort of like, leave because they got their world rocked by some particular like, they just have, they were a young earth creationist, and they finally saw some dinosaur bones and, like, holy crap, it's Definitely over 6000 years old, like I'm out, like I'm done, you know. So, so this happens, you know, and, and you, you, you either, you either find a way to to incorporate the new thing into, you know, what you already thought are, you know, you exit? Well,

Connor Mahoney 1:38:02
yeah, that's true. And another aspect too, I appreciated engaging with Meg's IO and I don't know how central she is. I imagine that you've engaged with her account. To some extent, she's in the in the space, but I shared a tweet of those about the future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for help. And that was a teho Uh Chauvin quote. And I think that really, fundamentally is what Christians are advocating for, is that Christianity is what is going to give the next generation help, and what gives all of humanity help. So again, like our cosmology is just that Christianity is going to go to 100 is going to approach affinity through time. And so we're working towards that future, just that inevitable future. And to some extent, I I feel like the compatibility with EAC is that you guys also express some sort of cosmological belief that that we are approaching infinity of human knowledge and human Yeah,

Bayes 1:39:07
I think so. I think that, yeah, there's, like, a lot of temptation, just vibes temptation around like, discussion of any kind of teal is, I think it's a complex question. And I think my, my baseline thing is, universe is a computer. There are a lot of, like, trajectories of programs that can run on it. And I would say, I don't, I don't know the, you know, the like, I mean, there are some bounds on this, but, like, the space of final states is probably pretty big, and it's unclear that final state is defined.

Connor Mahoney 1:39:44
Maybe you're not like you're not as much of a tech optimist as maybe some of us on the on the stage, you don't think that is inevitable consequence.

Bayes 1:39:52
I, I, yeah, I think it's ill defined, like what we're even saying at this moment.

Connor Mahoney 1:39:57
No, that's fair. I'm. Trying to get a gotcha? I'm just curious, because I

Bayes 1:40:01
know you're just maybe, but, yeah, no, I think, like, it is just, it gets into like, I think we would just need to be quite specific about what we're saying. So if you're saying that, like, there is a point where the universe, like, stops or something, and, yeah, like, I don't, I don't know. Like, this is, like, the Tipler thing. Like, I don't know, it's quite, quite a weird theory, and I think it's been fairly like, you know, like, admonished, but yeah, like, there are certainly, like,

Connor Mahoney 1:40:34
trend Well, it's not a meme. If I, if I can just express, I mean, whatever tip low specific theory is true, but the Christianity, it's not a meme that we we do believe, ultimately, that there is an end point, a defined end point, prophetically, where, where we are reaching towards in the yoke of time is, is pointing towards. So that's not belief. What

Bayes 1:40:56
is that? How do you think about that as like a thing, like, what is, what what is.

Connor Mahoney 1:41:01
I mean, it's broad, but it's, it's the Christian religion. It's, it's the concept of all of humanity unifying in one, the Mystical Body of of the church, of the Bride of Christ. I mean, that's just religiously. That is what Christianity professes. And it's professing that that future is inevitable, developed, designed by the simulated in this simulation that we are, that we're living in. And that's, I mean, that's fundamentally what Christianity is. And so that, thought, to me, is what aligns it with elements of what Yak is, quote, unquote, meaning,

Bayes 1:41:37
yeah, what do you think about the Turing there is a Turing quote about this, right? Like, what

Connor Mahoney 1:41:44
do you think about that? Exactly what it's like,

Bayes 1:41:49
Yeah. John, do you know what I'm talking it's like, science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

Connor Mahoney 1:42:00
Zach, do you know what? Anybody here?

Zack Grafman 1:42:06
No, sorry, I'm not familiar with that specific quote.

Connor Mahoney 1:42:10
I'm sorry. I wish we would. It's interesting, if you find it and you can share it. No, that's taken

Bayes 1:42:16
that I just gave the quote.

Connor Mahoney 1:42:19
Can you repeat it, I'm

Bayes 1:42:20
sorry. Oh, yeah, yeah, science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

Ocean 1:42:29
Yeah, I think, I think I know what you're trying to say. If I can hop in here real quick, yeah, you've had your hand up forever, yeah, man, my hand is hurting. Connor, you had like for a whole hour, but now I'm just playing with you. So I would say, to a certain degree, relax. Religion is a boundary condition to the differential equation of what science is only in the fact that humanity, in of itself, is broken. We naturally are propence to want to sin against one another. Most of the technologies that we have today are kind of evidence of that we can look at it like with the light bulb. Right? Initially it was created to be able to burn for much longer than what it is now, but because of the idea of profits, it had to have a shortened lifespan, whereas the idea of Christianity is that of building everything prefaced by love to be able to give life to others. But that is not that profitable. We could look at like the idea of economy as well, right? Like the economy is structured in a way that only a select few are really profitable at the end of the day. And the more you know how to play the game, the more profitable you become, whereas the the way that the kingdom of God functions in an economy is one in which everybody is profitable. And it can be argued whether that is communistic or socialistic to a certain degree. And so right now, humanity kind of does need those boundaries to a certain degree, which is why like, even like biblically, we have the idea of a law. Given the idea that God gave us 10 Commandments, is because humanity without a law is pretty much lawless. Without us knowing what is right from wrong, we will go into two extremes, which is what I think one guy here just a pen earlier he was here, he said earlier about humanity at one point, did have like a boundless existence at one point, and what they did with that is created the Tower of Babel. And even in Scriptures, God says if, unless, if God came down and put like a restriction on them. In that case, he came to confuse their languages so they wouldn't be able to communicate with one another. It says that they would be able to do whatever they purpose in their hearts. Now he didn't do that because, obviously, he doesn't love humanity. He does want us to advance. The whole goal with the Tower of Babel was so that mankind could try and exalt themselves above God and try and dethrone God from his position. And that in itself, is destructive to mankind, because. We are not wise enough to actually, like lead ourselves without the guidance of God himself. I mean, evidence of that is the fact that we disobeyed initial commandment of just not eating from one tree. It was just a simple commandment from just don't eat from it and you won't die. But you know, we choose to eat from it because we are prepared to want to disobey to a certain degree because of our curiosity. It's part of having free will, right? And so then religion, to a certain degree, is that boundary to when we think about science. And I guess that's where I would say I differ to a certain degree to some of the other believers here on the panel, because I do believe that, for example, even though I am a futurist, to certain degree, I will stop at technological advancement till the point that it goes into your brain, or in your right hand, only because, prophetically speaking, that's when we get into what we would call, like a B system. But that's a whole different conversation. But we could have that if we want to open that. But I hope that kind of answers that quote, be

Bayes 1:45:56
curious what you think so people already have, you know, like, for example, people with Parkinson's. It's rather common now. I think there's like, probably on the order of millions installed in people's brains, deep brain stimulators and the basal ganglia and parts of the deep brain to improve people's Parkinson's is this, would this be considered not, not alone? Well, that

Ocean 1:46:16
would be where, where we would consider, like, the motive as to the why? So we could say the same thing with like, drugs, right? Pharmaceuticals, the word pharmacy comes from a Greek word armaca, which translates into sorcery. So one could say, oh, any kind of pharmaceutical is a sorcery. But there are people who would need an opiate for a post op surgery, right? There are people who I've seen use cannabis, who have Parkinson's disease, who it actually does help them out. When we're talking about, like, what you just said, I think the thin line is in who is the one that ministering the chip inside of your forehead, for example, because there is an Escalon et logical view where there is a figure in the future who arises eventually, who we call the Antichrist, who eventually wants people to get either a chip in their hand or in there for it as a sign of allegiance to him personally. But in this case, what you're talking about, we're talking about like a medical good for somebody, for them to be able to function normally. Like I would say people could probably get a biological, a technological arm, sorry, installed on them if it's what they need. Oh, because if they don't have another arm, then I guess you could say a robotic arm is good. So in that sense, it wouldn't be a bad thing for them to be able to do that. Does that answer your question? That answers

Bayes 1:47:32
that question? Yeah, no. I think that's great. And

Connor Mahoney 1:47:35
well, in one thing to hear based is obviously there's going to be an amount of personal interpretation too, when it occurs some of these things

Bayes 1:47:44
a family. I mean, to be quite honest, like, just to be very transparent, I my model of Christianity is that it's a family of related beliefs, like most things that have a single label, which is really good yet, yeah,

Isaiah Taylor 1:47:55
that's that's very much true base. There's obviously a lot of, like, intramural stuff here. Unfortunately, the intramural stuff does actually have a lot of effect on this question, like, whether or not you think that the prophecies in Revelation are about 70 ad or are about some point in the future does end up, I think, determining a lot about what you think about this question. But I wanted to just quickly address your quote. I have to reset my phone about science as a differential equation, religion is a boundary condition. I think, if I understood you correctly, you were sort of applying that to this, like historical endpoint thing. And I just wanted to say, like, yes, but that's not just a historical thing. It's not just defining historical starting endpoints. It's actually deeper than that. My son is running around, by the way, sorry if it's a little hard to hear, but it's also, it's also sort of integrated throughout. It's a boundary condition. In fact, I would turn around and say, it's sort of like religion is the question. It's the question being asked, in the sense that it's there is a sort of a grand question being asked. And like, yes, science is sort of a differential. It's describing the curve of reality, but it's all answering that fundamental question. And I think that question is really, what is the nature of God in all of this sort of physical matter? And what is playing out in real time is sort of an answer to it, if that makes sense.

Bayes 1:49:24
Yeah. I mean, that seems like a very open flavor of this, right? And I think, like, I mean, I would almost say, like, we could, like, my intuition here is that we could, like, probably permute like labels across it, and it would look very similar, like, sort of functionally internal to itself. Oh, yeah,

Isaiah Taylor 1:49:43
absolutely, absolutely, but, but then you have to ask the question, like, Could you, could you do that? Could you pyramid it, and can you put labels across some theoretical space? And the answer is like, yes, but also, there is one particular permutation that we're in. And. I want to like, very much, like, contrast the fact that, yes, it looks arbitrary with it, like, like we spoke of before. But actually, it's not like, it is arbitrary considered inside the simulation, if you will. It's permutational. But then let's step out of that frame, and it's not, and that's that's sort of like a fundamental, well, it's a characteristic of any transcendent system

Bayes 1:50:23
at some at some level, right? Like, this is the, this is the kind of fundamental thing, right. Like, right, we're thinking about, you know, the boundary can maybe the boundary conditions of, like, the universe we can observe right? But, like, it may be that there's other stuff going on that eventually we could observe, right? And the range of things that are like, you know, imaginable universes, computable universes, like, stable universes,

Isaiah Taylor 1:50:51
pretty broad, well, in that you're including

Bayes 1:50:55
different, you know. So the thing about the theuring quote, right, is like the boundary conditions will give, like, the conditions under which, like, the initial conditions, and you will have an evolution given, you know, the this sort of differential equation. And I think, like, probably, I think a lot of Christians would disagree with that. My understanding would be like, yeah, no, like, the hand of God actually matters. There's, there's stuff outside of science that that, that, that would steer the universe, you know, inside of the time evolution in a certain direction that would, that would sort of violate, like, quote, science or something. I think other Christians might say that actually there's a compatibilist view with science, where it's like, no, if you notice, if you observe some kind of events, then we can capture, you know, an understanding of it with science. You know, I don't know. I think it's a bit a bit fuzzy, but yeah, take your point.

Isaiah Taylor 1:51:46
And actually, I'd love to hear until it pronounce it. She's had her hand up for a little while. You're early. Yeah, and Christian, I'd love to hear

Bayes 1:51:54
you tell it is awesome.

Entelechiada 1:51:56
Hey guys, Hey Bayes, it's great to talk to you. It's been a long it's been so long. No, I'm really happy that this discussion is happening. I think it's an important one. I can speak from having been involved for a long time with EAC and also having been a Christian my whole life. And I hope that you know, my views are helpful to people. It's one view of many views. One thing that I'd like to say just about humanity in general is there's just something about our nature that aspires to transcendence, and it's something deeply rooted within us, regardless of our background or our faith or, you know, any belief system we have, and that's actually been one of the great things for me about EAC, is it has attracted people from all walks of life, coming from many different threads, to come together around one goal, which is building a better future. And this is something that is very powerful. It's part of our nature, and I think it's been really nice to be able to gather around that goal with people, regardless if they're Christian or whatever they are, because it's a really important part of what it is to be human. Now, if I take that from a Christian perspective, and I say this a lot on my account, but, you know, Christians and people who believe in God and believe that God created humanity, believe that humanity was created for greatness, and that comes from being created in God's image. And part of this creation that, you know, we were given, you know, we were asked to be fruitful and multiply. And in many ways, for me, this more you know, this view that's come out on a lot of ways around it's time to build, or just build, is very much in the same vein. We were created and called to do something great with what we were given. And I think many people you know within that call to transcendence feel that deep within themselves. And you know, one of the key things for me that's really important about EAC today in 2024 or 2023 basically, our current age is something about our current culture, which is actually extremely old. It comes from the beginning. And this is going to be a little bit of, you know, very ancient history, going all the way back to when God created humanity. So we had all the angels who are these supremely intelligent beings without bodies. They're just spirit. And one of the most special ones. Of them was Lucifer. And he was really offended at the idea that God could possibly love such beings as humans who didn't, you know, have the same level of intelligence as the angels. And he rebuked God at the idea that he could love humanity the same as the angels. Yes, and in return, God thrusts Lucifer into hell, and that's why we have Satan. But the key thing is this, that, you know, Lucifer really despises humans. He doesn't want us to succeed. He doesn't want us to exist. And if you think about it from a Christian perspective, we live in a fallen world, and he's always been trying to trick us into thinking that we can we can never attain greatness. We are not great. We were not created for greatness. And somehow this view became really pervasive in our modern culture. And you know, we like to call it doomerism, or D cell thinking, but this idea that we don't belong on Earth, or we don't have the right to do wonderful things with our lives. And I love eyok for this, because it's an extremely broad approach to negate this view and to bring back the idea that the future is ours for the taking. We can build it as great as we want it to be. We just have to believe it's possible. And whether you come from a Christian perspective or any perspective, this is a deeply human call to transcendence that we all have and we can all share in together. And I think it's very powerful and extremely positive, and I really am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of

Bayes 1:56:19
it, bro, I told you she was based also, I feel like you've been waiting two years to say that, and you just said it perfectly. Thank you.

Isaiah Taylor 1:56:26
That rocked. That was sick.

Connor Mahoney 1:56:27
That was a beautiful statement. And to go off that to that expression of the image of God, the imago Day, which I've been posting about a couple times, is so central to Christianity that we are made in the image of God, and that we are aspiring to greatness, to image God, and that's just fundamentally built into Christianity. And I think that's something with not only the EAC space, but really our entire space here and and just the conversation we engage in daily is just so saturated with the framework of Christianity, the language, it's, it's everywhere around us. It's, it's definitely been one of the spoke notes for for the development of of the modern age. And I think that's just something that we have to engage with, and then also with ontology, with your expression about whether we can work with other people in the space, and he act that are not Christian I think that was another fundamental reason I wanted to host this space, because some people have said to me, okay, well, let's focus it. Let's do, you know, cross Act, or Christians act. I really don't like the ideas of of iterative derivatives. You know, I would rather just keep the message very basic, so that we can all work together. And I do think we can work with non Christians, you know, as long as they're not opposed to, ultimately, a vision of the future, then why not let's work together. So I do appreciate, I appreciate the diverse conversation. Zach, you have your hand up and you have, I know, a lot of things to add about, specifically, teleology, around the image of God. If you want to comment,

Zack Grafman 1:58:02
I really kind of hesitate to add anything after that, though that was, that was sick and, yeah, I mean, that's kind of, you know, I don't the thing I bring to this conversation, right? Is I'm fundamentally not a technical thinker or builder, but I have, you know, grown up in, grown up in, in Christianity, and I continue to, you know, I'm serving on

Connor Mahoney 1:58:30
exactly it, yep. Is there something with you? Mike's, uh, it's super removing. Let me

Zack Grafman 1:58:37
try and turn this. Is this better?

Connor Mahoney 1:58:44
That's a lot better. Go ahead. I

Bayes 1:58:45
just assumed he was in a cathedral.

Connor Mahoney 1:58:47
I honestly assume so I often write out a little, yeah,

Isaiah Taylor 1:58:51
kind of awful things, great.

Zack Grafman 1:58:54
So I, I currently am a full time, you know, servant of our church. I'll probably be ordained here in the next year or so. And so this is, this is the place that I approach all this from, right? Is this idea of looking at Scripture and seeing exactly what intelligent saying that there's a dual sided nature to people according to, you know, if you believe in the Christian metaphysic, and I am, I think I said the other day on this topic, I'm a Christian metaphysical extremist, like I approach this as you know this, if this is true, then this has to orient my entire life and and ought to completely reshape My approach to reality, right? And so because as Christians, we we it's revealed to us that we have a dual nature as humans, we're made in the image of God, and yet we're funded until he broken. And constantly there's this tension. We want to go on either side. So there's been whole generations of Christianity even that have wanted to over focus on this image of God, and they neglect the. Know that we're fundamentally broken, which is not good. We can't neglect that, that they that's the reason we have scripture and we have salvation, is we must be fixed in some way to enable us to be in God's presence. We cannot be in God's presence as broken, sinful beings. But I see, and this is kind of the thing that I can speak to and want to encourage, especially those of us who are believers, who are encountering these ideas, because I see this struggle they have now where we've gone too far on this other side, where, as Christians, we are over focused on the idea of the brokenness and depravity of humanity, which is true. It's fundamentally true, but we focus on that to the extent that we neglect an important doctrine in Scripture, which is the doctrine of glorification. And the doctrine of glorification says that we will be made like God. The ultimate end point of humanity those who are willing to accept God's conditions for being made like God is that we will see God as He is, that our fundamental natures will be changed, that we will become something that we don't know what it will be. It will be, you know, you talk about translating us to a different substrate. Like, yeah, in a sense, I do believe that I am expecting to be written to a different substrate as a being. And not only that, but I believe that my existence on the planet is training for that. And if that's true, then I have a huge responsibility as a Christian. But I'm claiming that I know the end point of history. I'm claiming that I understand how reality is going to be rewritten. I'm claiming that I serve, you know, the author of the simulation. I'm saying all that, and yet I'm sitting here and I'm saying, Yeah, but I shouldn't. I shouldn't work hard at remaking the earth in his image. I shouldn't work hard at writing wrongs. I shouldn't, you know, no, that's for someone else. You know, it doesn't really matter what your perspective on, you know, eschatology, and I'm sure some of you guys already discussed this in the space, I'm sorry I miss all that. It doesn't really matter what your perspective on that is. But you can't neglect that responsibility that you have as a Christian. You can't come to the world and say, well, this much technology is good, the technology that my dad had is fine. There's nothing the matter with changing the world by inscribing information onto silicon. But I don't accept that we can do AI, because that's somehow different. Now I'm not advocating wisely and thoughtfully. And I do believe, even as a Christian who is into getting acceleration, I do believe that there are directions we could accelerate that are dangerous and foolish and even sinful for us, but we can't get away from this idea that God has placed us. And I think Connor, you brought this up perfectly in the beginning of Genesis. We are placed in a perfection state, and God says, Go or think dominion, rule the earth and subdue it, meaning that even in a state of perfection, there are parts of the earth that were unsubdued that needed to be subdued. That's the initial call of humanity from God. And so, you know, to me, I just keep seeing this idea come up over and over. I believe, as Christians, we really cannot afford to stand on the side lines and point at technology or uses of technology and say that's wrong and have no answer to how we would order it according to a Christian metaphysics, if you want to say that, you know, and I agree that there are certain ways to say that technology shouldn't be used. That's great demonstrate how, according to God, according to a Christian ethic and Christian metaphysic, you should order the world with technology. Because if you don't choose to do that, you can't look at other human beings who are doing that and say, Well, you're wrong for trying. They're trying to act out of what they know, to reshape the world in the image that they believe to be good, and that's they should be applauded for that, because at least they're doing something. And too many times, the church has sat on the sidelines and said, it's wrong for us to take up that mantle, because we're we're depraved. And the answer is like, yeah, if that's true, but you're claiming to know God. You're claiming to be remade in his image. You're claiming to have the Holy Spirit. You say you speak to God. Has God not told you anything about how he wants this world to be? Does he have no opinions about how we should use our tools to reshape things? And I would just argue that that's he does. And again, this comes to me, this always comes back to this idea that aggressive optimism is like scripturally mandated hope. And you know, these things are not like options for us. They're just we are required, we are commanded to have a hopeful outlook, because we literally know the end of things. I know this sounds like a me, but I say to people who don't believe the way I do all the time. You don't understand, like I'm not planning around ending cataclysms, because I know what the world ending Cataclysm is going to be. So there's certain world ending cataclysms that I'm not interested in, because I know that I understand the end of things. So because of that, I think it frees us. It ought to free us. As Christians, i. Immensely to have these huge pursuits. And I certainly hope that we as a church will think about that more and be more eager to take that kind of to be willing to take up power,

Oli 2:05:11
use it in good ways.

Connor Mahoney 2:05:15
Thank you so much for that, Zach, and if you want to hop off and come right back in you you have it a few mic issues, though, I think we could do better. It wasn't that bad. We pretty much talked, but if you want to was, I think that was really beautifully put. And I do have to bring up this tweet that I reposted of yours base, and I can't help but think there was an amount of a sub tweet to the conversation that was just blown up since Thursday. I know it was a retweet, and you posted it originally in December, but you said your question was, will men deny their own divinity for want of a greater God? Can you really unpack that and you're thinking of that tweet,

Bayes 2:05:50
my pin, tweet, yeah. What do you think of me? I mean, what do you think about it?

Connor Mahoney 2:05:55
Well, I I mean, I express, I know you retweeted it

Bayes 2:06:01
pretty. Yeah, no. Saturday.

Connor Mahoney 2:06:02
Was it not a really no,

Bayes 2:06:04
no. That was totally, I just think it's like, really hitting at something I'm trying to like on Earth right now. And I yeah, like, I made this post in pyrowires today with my friend Nadia, and you know, you guys can check it out. You know, my kind of like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that speaks for itself. There's, there's a number of other like things that are kind of in that cluster of ideas that I'm that I'm working out, and hopefully there would be a lot more to say about this, but, yeah, what do I mean? Like, I think that in that tweet, right? It's a little bit of like a jokey thing about, you know, people who want to just not build better AI. So it's actually not that deep or anything, I think, like, yeah, right, if you, if you think about it, there is, like, a sort of, maybe a bit of a straw man, but just for fun, way to frame, you know, the sort of detail position on on AI and AI development is, like, we need some sort of, like, absolute guarantee about the character and nature of this thing that we're going to build. And therefore we need to, like, spend 5000 years writing math proofs and, you know, trying to assure that it will have, you know, all these properties and so on and so on, so on. And I think, like, in a way, like they're, they're imagining something that they can't really build. And I think that's part of the, the kind of fundamental flaw in that position set out by people like Ted Koski and so on, you know, so many years ago. And, yeah, yeah, no to me, like, when I say, like, the, you know, the divinity that humans have, like, I mean, I obviously mean this in a way that is, like, coming from my kind of agnostic, perennialist sort of perspective. But, you know, I do think that, like, in building technology, like, there is the thing that we're we're trying to get closer to, and there is something like, quite magical about it. And I think, like, as we build more, it gets more magical. And I also think that, like, yeah, yeah. Like, this way of there's like, a way that the the mind and the body respond to thinking about technology and the development of technology, and the kind of communal process of evolving civilization forward, when you when you use this kind of language, and when you think about it sort of in this way. And I think like, yeah, I don't know. I'm just experimenting with that right now. And I think, I think we are kind of, I think my core contention, and this, this piece, so I called the piece that we put in pirate wires, you know, the ethos of the Divine age. And I think my core, my core claim, or something. The thing that I see is happening is that, yeah, there is like a, you know, there's like a set of things that we could say are probably going to come with technology if we just keep evolving it forward. And I think, like, we ought to move there. And I think we're it would be wrong to say that we are not moving closer to like, an increasing our the expression of our like divinity in that sense. And so like, maybe the Christian way to say this is that we are moving closer to God. Maybe this is the right way to say it. I don't know Sure. But if there's something in me that feels like that, it is this the capacity to, I mean, do I mean really do things inside of the universe that are, like, absolutely incomprehensible to people in the previous time? Step of the universe, right? So it's like, yeah, you can imagine. In the not so distant future that we are doing things that, like radically change what's happening for, you know, any given part of space and like it will, it will just appear as magic, right? So we can think about, you know, really advanced manufacturing, really advanced AI and, you know, like, as we start to push up against the limits of what computers can do, like, on, on in the universe, as we start to push up against the limit, limits of, like, how much energy we can produce in a given chunk of space time. As we start to push up against the limits of how much intelligence we can squeeze into a chunk of space time, what we're going to see is that things just start to happen more like we specify them, and then they occur, and it's like the most minimal inputs can produce any outputs. And like it feels like we're trending towards this, this thing, and over time, it will just become more and more powerful. And what, to me, that looks like is we become much more powerful inside of the universe, right? And I don't know, I think this feels like something that is happening. It's already happened. If you look at our, you know, kind of power over time, over the universe, our mastery of the universe over time, it's like, increased significantly, and I think it's just going to keep increasing. And, yeah, I think there's a religious way to say this. There's like, a religiously sounding way to say this that appeals to me. And I'm a compatibilist. I think it's like, very reasonably, you know, you can very reasonably frame this is, like, compatible with Christianity or another religion that you might choose. It doesn't particularly, like, it's not, you know, particularly part of my goals here to be that to have that feature. But,

Joseph Hurtado 2:12:21
yeah, yeah. What do you what do

Connor Mahoney 2:12:23
you guys think about? Well, to respond to you, and I'll, I'll pop it over that day right after, but, you know, I will say, like, no doubt, like, that type of language is what's going to set Christians off and and so obviously, a number of Christians in the space the concept of assigning divinity to man on a higher order, above God. But to respond to you, as far as the actual language

Bayes 2:12:46
inequality, though, what's that? I don't know that inequality doesn't come out of it.

Connor Mahoney 2:12:53
Will men divide deny the Divinity in want of a greater god? Oh,

Bayes 2:12:59
yeah. Sorry that, yeah. Sorry. I thought you were putting that because I was just like a meme of just like, a meme about, like, people wanting to build, like an AGI that is, like, perfect or something. And, oh, yeah, I

Connor Mahoney 2:13:08
totally got you. You were applying it mainly to the AI space and not necessarily to the Christian conversation. Yeah. So I still think that the language that you're asking for language to, I don't think that's it's interesting. I don't think it's entirely incompatible with Christianity, to the extent that the the language is, is what Angela was, was saying was the imma go day, the concept that humanity is the image of God, and that we are approaching, you know, total mastery of the universe through the through the Genesis command, essentially to go out and to subdue the oath and to take dominion. And that's, I mean, that's frankly, why Christianity is so optimist and so prevalent in the space, is because of of those doctrines. Isaiah,

Isaiah Taylor 2:14:00
yeah, yeah. Well, I think absolutely what you're saying Connor is right? This is fundamentally, directionally, what Christianity is saying. And you can, just like, look back and see the evidence we have been increasing our power over time, over nature, and, you know, even, even in a magical sense, right? So, base you're talking about, we're going to see things that that we would call magic. And, you know, I'm in the business of magic rocks. I There are these rocks in the Earth's crust that have an enormous amount of energy when you when you break them apart. So nuclear fission, right? And, and honestly, like nuclear fission, is a very basic, somewhat old technology. At this point I'm working on it because it's already pretty developed, and you don't have to have a bajillion IQ to massively lever humanity with it, unlike fusion or, you know, AI, but, but, yeah, that's, I mean, that's, that's where we're going, for sure. But I think what is important about, like, Christianity's mix into. This is that a world where humans just become more and more and more powerful without, like, a transcendent, you know, direction or a transcendent meaning behind that power is, is something that I don't know, that I would find that compelling. And I'm curious, based on your on your personal, like emotional feeling about that. Like, do you find that world compelling, in which humans are more powerful, like we are, we are simply able to, as you say, sort of input, input into the universe, reality happens, type world. It's interesting. Like, that's an interesting world. It's also a gigantically terrifying world. And, like, I think the, you know, the Christian response to that is like, yes, and it will be, you know, and it will be moral, it will be good. And, like, the morality and the goodness of that is something that you have to have a transcendent frame for, yeah,

Bayes 2:15:54
I think that the thing so it's a complicated question, right? I think, like, we don't get to sit here and say what will or will not happen, right? Like we can determine some of it. And so there are things going on out in the greater, you know, world, and maybe much further away from Earth, that, like, in some sense, we just have to actually be, like, competitive with right? If we, let's say we all have some intersecting beliefs that we think are, like, pretty overlapping. We're like, alright, let's aim at this thing. We all just, like, shake hands. They all right, cool. We'll aim at that. Like, bunch of people don't agree. They want to, like, burn down museums. They want to, like, have, like, 1/50 as many humans every year until there's only 100 humans left, and let the other humans die. And then, you know, like, this is, like, these are real factions out there. And so I think part of, part of the, you know, one of my original things here, like one of the original critiques of ai humorism, that that, I would say, kind of ended up becoming part of, yeah, something that an argument that I was making for you know, a while before Yak was even a thing. There's just that yeah, like they're very clearly ignoring the competitive landscape. They're pretending like they're going to create some shiny new institutions so that we have perfect cooperation at, you know, national, national scale, at the, you know, state level, at the international scale. So, right? And I think that was just like, to me, delusional, mostly. And I think we've already seen, like, the consequences of what it looks like when you have, you know, AI, progress happen rapidly in a period, and, you know, institutions try to adapt. It's like, they basically just talk about it a bunch, and don't do much, and the regulations that do come out aren't very useful. They don't really prevent anything. Now we'll see what happens. Like, I'm not saying they can't pass legislation that will have an equal impact on AI or other technology. Clearly, we like, we know, like in nuclear it's had an impact, right? But I think, like, yeah, you know, we can't, we can't just sit here and say, like, oh, like, we don't like that thing. Like, I mean, like, unless we're willing to compete, right? And so to me, like, the way to compete is, it's like fitness. And I think that looks like, I mean, you can, there are other ways to compete, right? People in history, the way they compete is they they go to war, they kill and do terrible things. I don't I personally think that this is not a good strategy. It's not a great strategy. It has, you know, number of, number of downsides, Chief one being just kind of this an asshole thing to do. But yeah, so competitiveness, right? I think, like, you know, the world where this is a feature of our world. So unless we're planning to erase competitiveness, I think as soon as you allow that, there are, you know, dynamics where some people will get a little bit more powerful at time t, and then other people will observe that. And then, you know, time t plus one, those people who have made the observation will try to get a bit more powerful than those people who did at time t, and so on. You know, on, on, on forward. You know, over many, many time steps, like you will have that people get more powerful over time. And I think, like, this is just the case. And so there, and there are many incentives for why that happens, right? It's not just power over one another. It's power over the environment, right? So the ability to have more, you know, material wealth, the ability to have, you know, let's say, like, we need very large computers to do simulations so that we can invent perfect drugs or perfect treatments for diseases and so on, right? Like there are all sorts of ways this might manifest, but I think all of the incentives are there for us to keep going in this kind of iterated game of ratcheting up the power level. Goals and society. And, you know, another kind of fundamental thing that I think is like, you know, become kind of key pieces, like the act, like frame around these issues, around AI, is like, while people are very scared and frame, you know, powerful AI, when it comes into existence, as, you know, sort of like this massive, infinitely sharp spike in the power landscape, right? Like this is like the casket view, right? As soon as you invent a sufficiently intelligent AI, it will bootstrap itself up instantly. It's kind of infinitely powerful, right, right away. And it just kind of dominates everybody else. It's like a grand master chess player playing, you know, a bunch of kindergarteners who have never heard of chess, right? And I think that this is, like, a really, really silly way to frame the problem. But I think even if you accept it, the way to to stop it from happening is not to try to, you know, create totalitarianism, to shut down the world, to have, like, one government that just watches over everybody to stop the computers from being sold and developed to, you know, have, you know, all these very harsh sort of regulations on things and to try to clamp down variants, basically right around AI development. But because ultimately, what you're going to do is create a world where you have, like, like, stagnation in the government, in that, in that, in that pen Opticon totalitarian sort of world, like you're gonna have, probably have stagnation, probably have things kind of go wrong. Eventually you will have the potential energy build up that somebody will get their hands on a powerful AI, and it will create, you know, you know, it will discharge potential energy that is built up. And so a way around this is to try to ratchet up the power levels of everyone, you know, roughly, in a way that kind of conforms to the shape that we know is stable, which is like the one we have today, or, you know, sometime you sample, some time in recent history, I think we see that there's, like a nice equilibrium right now. Now the rules change a little bit like, how do you solve for an equilibrium with, with very powerful AIS, with the potential for, you know, new bio weapons, new, you know, you know, maybe like the unknown unknowns and new technology and so on. But I think, like for sure, in order to have the capacity for defense, in order to have the capacity for, you know, offensive security, in order to have the capacity to do any kinds of things like this, where we ensure and solve for an equilibrium, we cannot have like huge, huge power differentials between groups, between people. And so I think if you accept most of or any, or all of that, you end up with conclusions like we will end up in a world where the universe, where we've, like, really ratcheted up the power levels that are accessible, and how we manage that is like one of the modern problems that we must face. Because absolutely right. If you I mean, the reductio of this that you can talk about is like, would you, you know, many people are pro Second Amendment, but would you be pro Second Amendment if it included, you know, everybody having, you know, over the shoulder missile. Missiles as like a universal basic good. Every year you get one over the shoulder missile shipped to your house by the government. And, you know, it's like, most people would be like, No, that's like, too powerful, right? I think, like, at the moment, right? I mean, so I think this is a true reductio instance, like, kind of not to the point. It actually misses the point. And, yeah, one, I don't think AI works like this. And I think in general, most of the things that people want to do are like, creative, right? So, like, the destructive power that the kind of instantaneous entropy increase though these kinetic weapons of, you know, the conventional era, conventional war era, and previous eras of conflict and violence are not going to be the kinds of things that we have. One thing we haven't talked about here at all is, like the role like VR and like the kind of incentives for, like, the virtualization of society and stuff, which I think you're kind of not, I'm not a huge fan of like people like, in a way that seeds, that's a way to seed power, right? So you can imagine that a government that wanted to build a totalitarian regime might be very incentivized to try to coerce or even just nudge people over time, more and more into virtual worlds, because these are controllable worlds. These are worlds where people can't really do anything that's going to harm base reality as we know it. And so I don't know, personally, I'm not like a fan of that solution. I think it's kind of dark. I think it kind of creates this, these conditions where people, I mean, obviously, are quite disempowered, they may lose skill and ability to navigate reality. Means, like very much you can, you can imagine a lot of not. Great things, but yeah, so to me, this is, like, one of the big, the big, longer term trends that we're probably fighting against is like, and maybe the last thing I'll say about that is people are pretty incentivized to actually just go into those worlds anyway, because, probably just because of, like, basic reward hacking and sort of funness of those things, the how compelling those those environments will become. And I think like, yeah, it's good to keep the it would probably be good to have them correlated, to be correlated with reality, to have, you know, like, like base reality, as opposed to sort of, like an inception, like, world where there's just people who are, like, asleep all the time.

Connor Mahoney 2:25:42
Yeah, yeah. And to, I appreciate that base, and to maybe kind of realign the conversation a little bit too, because you mentioned the points about, you know, can it? Can we stop it? And these people developing AI, safety regulations, whatnot. Frankly, the way I see it is, we will, will call belligerence in this war. You know, the idea that Christianity really has any sort of institutional powers to stop these forces that be or even at these forces that be aligned with us, is is a complete myth. So we will definitely pro overturning these power structures. And I think that's why, what draws a lot of us to this space, open source technology, the development of all emerging technologies. So yeah, we're definitely co belligerence here, and I think there's a lot of alignment with Christianity and and EAC and again, though, I guess there are all boundary conditions, and I do appreciate you bringing maybe some of those types of technologies that you would oppose. I mean, I would say, like, just broadly, I don't know if, if you're into, like, eugenics or anything along those lines gene editing, but there's probably going to be a limit there where Christianity is is not going to carry forward. Yeah, I

Bayes 2:26:59
think this, this goes back to the thing like this goes back to the the dynamic, right? So there's going to be like, people are, people are going to do it. People are going to well again, but

Connor Mahoney 2:27:08
it's going to do it, but, but I'm saying that Christianity is not going to follow and it's going to pose that. And it comes down again to the imago day, this concept of the image of God and the eternal value of the human soul, even the least of these. And so you're going to say people are going to do it, sure, but Christianity is going to say the fruits of those results are not, it's not going to bear eternal fruit, like it's going to be shut down. Yeah, you know the thought that you're going to, you're going to rise, you're going to divide, deny your divinity, right? You're going to bow before God, you're going to kneel before God at the eternal judgment. So that's, again, that's just, that's just theologically, like, that's Christianity. So that's, that's our response. Go ahead,

Bayes 2:27:47
yeah, no, I

think, like, I don't know, yeah, that's like, an interesting sort of conversation, because it's like, it seems that probably most people are just going to be like, I want my kids to be taller and smarter and, like, whatever, like, whatever, these kind of relatively superficial properties are. Like, I think, like, we don't really know what the maximum, like, you know Max, Max stats are on these phenotypes, but it's like, probably people who were actually alive have, like, gotten closer hit them, so I don't know. Seems like whatever. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I do, like, I always just go back to this thing about, yeah. Well, I guess the last thing I'll say is, like, on this is just people are going to end up with very different viewpoints. They already have very different viewpoints. And I think as when, as you watch, like, power power levels or power potential power levels increase over time. Like, the thing that we ought to try to solve for is like, like, maintaining variance, but also maintaining, you know, peace, peaceful peaceful coexistence. And I think, like many cases, that may just be very much impossible to do in a way that's not like, coercive, like, like, you know, with we've had, you know, nuclear missiles pointed at one another for, you know, 60 years, or whatever, 70 years. I don't know when we got, when do we get ICBMs, actually, don't know. It's like 60s. I don't know, but, but, you know, so it's like, in a way, like, you could call that like, a peaceful period. But is it a peaceful way of solving for the equilibrium? No, but maybe it's okay, because it's, like, basically stable, so it's not, not ideal. But yeah, I think my, my kind of hope for for humanity, for, like, the evolution of civilization, is that over time, we just have it so that we, you know, we have the technological capacity, and we have the organizational capacity to allow people to like, live the way that they want to live, like, and if this needs to be enforced, like, you know, by the speed of light, right? Like, you know, like we have, like, true, like, you know, libertarianism, like enforced by the speed of light, maybe. One way to do it until

Isaiah Taylor 2:30:01
Eric Weinstein cracks that, of course, yeah.

Bayes 2:30:05
And like, you know, okay, like, maybe then we have new rules. Is like, Okay, we need to, you know, it's like, you kind of bubble yourself into a baby universe, and then, you know, maybe you can squeeze some of your most significant bits out. And then, you know, see, you know, we'll never see you on the other side. But like, Yeah, I think we do this now, right? We have, like, we allow, you know, people to live in remote parts of the world, kind of relatively undisturbed by modernity. We have, you know, there's Amish communities, there's, you know, there's many communities in the world that that kind of live, you know, parallel to and you know, we're not like in general. We respect their right to exist the way that they want to, I think, like, I don't know, I foresee that we're probably going to want to try to solve for having many, many, many, many more pockets of culture like that.

Connor Mahoney 2:30:58
That's Derek, if you're still here. He says he's a good Microsoft which we hate. No, I'm just kidding. No, if you want to jump in, I

Derek Broes 2:31:06
am. I just wanted to say, you know, before, before I go, because I'm running late on time here, listening to the space. Yes, I'm a former executive at Microsoft. Easy to look me up. I ran Windows strategy, ran global wireless, wireless strategy business development. Built digital division at Paramount Pictures. I ran the file sharing network because, you know, I'm a technology person, the guy that runs AI at Microsoft right now, the one of the main guys was the guy that I hired at Microsoft. So I'm deeply involved in technology, but I'm also a deep and dedicated follower of Christ. So what I want to ask is, this, is my issue with anything, is that, you know, I have a YouTube channel and I've got, you know, my, my here on, on x, and the thing that people say, are you a Christian? It's a yes or no question. And then they go, it's not a yes or no question, because I don't know what version of Christianity you are. I don't know which version of the 44,000 different denominations or the 22,000 different variations and iterations of the Bible. I mean, I'm a study or, I mean, I studied Sanskrit Hebrew, Aramaic, I speak, read and write it. I ran an Israeli technology company in 2001 2002 with 75 of the best hackers. And the head of the Technion Institute was my CTO. So I mean, I kind of know that the landscape of the world, and I definitely and definitively know the the understanding of Christianity, as far as it comes to me, what me has experienced as Christ, and it's not a religion. You know, Christ was kind of not liking religion too much because that's organized and becomes corporatized, and people tell you how to think, rather than you finding God on your own, seeking first God and and his righteousness, and all of these things that, as he probably pointed at his head, will be added unto you. You will learn and understand everything. All of his words point to what so here's what I want to ask you, Connor is, you know, from your guys's perspective here, and I'm going to, I'll say, I'll say this, 100% I came into this space. I have no idea what eACC is, all right, no clue. I'm simply a follower of Christ and base can laugh. That's not a laughing matter. I mean, come on, what somebody doesn't understand what you guys believe and you want to laugh at

Bayes 2:33:35
them. Come on. No, not no. I

Connor Mahoney 2:33:36
don't think he's I don't think he's being negative. Okay, well, I'm

Derek Broes 2:33:39
just saying I have no clue, but no, but I'm interested. I'm like, what is the idea? What is it? Because, see, this is what I do. I've been talking about this stuff now for a decade. I mean, I have audiences and people that I speak. I want to know what you guys are thinking, right? Because I have a whole different perspective on a lot of things. I don't follow anything except Christ's words, end of story. Because if he came here and he didn't say everything he needed to say what I didn't, he didn't need Paul or somebody to come after the fact to finish up what he fucked up. Sorry for the boards. He didn't. He didn't do that, right? So I'm sorry. I give that guy a lot more credit than even many Christians do. I'm like, I'm sorry. I only listen to his words. I don't listen to somebody else's, not even Peter or Paul, because they represent, in many cases, 12 elements of our psychological condition, our narcissistic aspects. He was using them and showing them and teaching them in different elements. I mean, this is a very deep lesson that we were learning from this man, and I think that we've kind of missed it. And when it comes to what's going on in the world right now and what's happening, oh man. I mean, there is so much going down. Down that I don't think people even realize what he meant. So, you know, I usually ask people, What was Christ's entire purpose in your mind? What was he trying to convey to you? What was the main message? Because there is one message. It's the gospel, right? The Way, the Truth to life. My name is Derek. In Hebrew, the name Derek means the journey the way. So he literally said, I am Derek. I kind of take that to heart, right? I am Derek, too. I am on that journey.

Connor Mahoney 2:35:35
Okay, appreciate that. You know, it might be helpful. I don't want to tell you this, but if we've just been debating this, this is the the question of the the whole space, right? What is EAC, and how does it relate to Christianity? And the discussions just gone all over the place. So it might be helpful just to go back and listen, because I'm actually in the same boat as you. I don't really know what IAC is, and that's what we're trying to come to terms with. And a lot of the conversation so far has been with base who does not identify as a Christian, and we've been looking through maybe compatibilities, yeah,

Derek Broes 2:36:08
like, what is the Chris, well, okay,

Connor Mahoney 2:36:09
yeah, do that? Okay, see that comment? If I Yeah, no, I appreciate it. If to that comment, I will just say, and the denominations people throw that kind of number out there. It's, it's really, it's not, it's not really quite accurate. There's denominations. There's a lot of, I'm not denying

Derek Broes 2:36:29
Connor. I mean, look, I've got a YouTube channel with 107,000 subscribers. I've done a lot of research on this stuff. Okay,

Connor Mahoney 2:36:36
I've, I want to talk to you more about this, and actually have a podcast, maybe we can get you to bring you on, but this is the song that I've done, is

Derek Broes 2:36:44
what I'm saying. So okay,

Connor Mahoney 2:36:46
yeah, I'm giving a second to respond, yeah, I'm

Derek Broes 2:36:48
Yeah, no, no, of course. I'm just saying, I'm not arguing with you, right? I'm just saying that this is the stuff I've done, and this is the great conversation you guys want to have it, because these are real questions that I have, and everybody that's ever followed me as so it's like, let's keep on that those questions. Because the longer we stay on these questions, the more refined the answers become, and the more truth we find within them.

Connor Mahoney 2:37:14
It is. It is a big question, and I appreciate you bringing it up. And I'll just point back briefly in response to you, what is a Christian? 90% probably even more Christian denominations are going to affirm the Nicene Creed, the Athanasius creed. So there are debates. There are obviously family disagreements, to an extent, but any any denomination, any Christian, that doesn't affirm those creeds is not going to be accepted in a broader concept of Christians, and we have a broad, diverse subset of Christians, a lot of Pentecostals here. I know we have a number with Catholics. It's really all over the place, so we're willing to have that conversation. But again, the creeds, and they're not very long, they're very short statements and the doctrines that we've been talking about here with the value of the human soul, the Imago Dei, these, these things are outlined in the creeds in very short couple of sentences. Anybody can go refer to those and and really see what Christianity is. At least. As it relates to this conversation with Yak,

Derek Broes 2:38:15
appreciate that I'm not quite sure that that gets into quite what is a Christian for? For me, like, for instance, you know, like, I don't understand what somebody's variation of Christianity is. I don't know, right? So it's well again.

Connor Mahoney 2:38:31
And another central aspect of Christianity is that total human unity that we're all going to be incorporated into the body of Christ. So we do see disagreements, not even just with between Christians, but obviously between Christians and non Christians as a lot of a discussion has been today. Well, Christianity, Christianity preaches that we're going to see total convergence as we approach the end of time, that Christ is going to subsume all of creation as he began 2000

Derek Broes 2:39:02
years ago. Ahead. Yeah, let me just, let me just, let me just finish up, and then I'll drop down and let some more space for some speakers to jump in. See I kind of look at the father in the way that Christ said. You know, do you have any kids? Connor? I don't. Okay. Okay, you're a monk. Okay, so I have two daughters and two grandsons. If my children were kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery and I managed to be able to rescue them after four or five years, or even a year or whatever, would I point my finger in their pace, in their face, and make them repent for their sexual immorality under duress of being a slave. No, of course I would, I would spend the rest of my life trying to get them to forgive themselves. Which is exactly? Which is exactly the message of Christ that you just need to accept the forgiveness that is over. Already offered. It's already been offered because you are already a slave, you are already a captive, you are already in captivity. So it's that allows you to operate. And Repentance isn't begging for forgiveness. It's turning away from right. It's like not doing that anymore, once you know that that's part of the enemy's plan. And I think people neglect to realize that this world isn't the Father's world, right? Even according to Christ. So people that are following Christ, Christ was in the wilderness for 40 days. Satan came and offered him the whole world and all the kingdoms that were in it. He couldn't offer that unless it was his to give. This is his world. Scripture says that time and time and time and time again. So Christ told you that this was the fact. So if you're a follower of Christ, separating yourself from this world and from the structures of it, seems to be what he was trying to convince people to do or speak to them directly about, because he didn't ever castigate any person walking on the street, he spoke directly and castigated the religious and political rulers, the Romans and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So he went to them. That's when he called them hypocrites. He never called a person on the street hypocrite because they're slaves. They're already prisoners. They were born into prisons that they cannot see the walls of and that's precisely what Christ was trying to explain to everybody. So as we go through this and we understand what it is, adhering, and I would say, espousing things that are contrary to that, regardless of the speaker, Christ didn't need to send somebody else to come and speak on his behalf, period, and the story he already said it all. Yeah,

Connor Mahoney 2:41:45
I don't, I don't think I would totally disagree with everything that you just said. I don't. I don't see why somebody who didn't commit a sin would have to repent for sin that didn't commit. But these are conversations maybe we can have another time. Go ahead base. Oh, I would just

Bayes 2:41:58
love to hear from them. Kelly, I think she's been wanting to say something for a while. Yeah, I

Connor Mahoney 2:42:02
agree. She's had her hand up. Go

Entelechiada 2:42:04
ahead. Thanks. Faye, yeah, I just I have to leave in a minute, because I have kids. I need to get them ready for school tomorrow. But I again, wanted to thank you, Connor, for hosting this space and for all the different speakers that have participated. I think it's a very constructive dialog, and one, I hope that people have come away with something to think about and to apply in their lives in some way. I've known Bates for a while, and I have a deep respect for him, and it's been a great opportunity for me to collaborate him. He and I both coming from different angles on something that I think is really important for humanity today, and again, that's, you know, building a better future. When I think about my kids, one of the things that's so beautiful about children is they have this an amazing sense of wonder about the world around them that adults can often lose. But we, I think, in EAC, we have a lot of, you know, discussion, memes, all kinds of stuff about the amazing technologies of today, and these are truly wondrous marvels that humans are creating. And when we're contemplating the universe and the meaning of it and why we're here and why it was created, and our role within it, that too, inspires wonder. And when I think about the role of wonder, it's it's wonder that truly inspires us to uncover and pursue knowledge. And in the end, you know, whether you're a Christian or you're not, what we're all in the end, pursuing is truth, and it's in this pursuit, you know, in the end of uncovering new knowledge, in that pursuit, we are actually making the world around us more human, not less. So I think a lot of people can get mixed up, thinking that technology is actually dehumanizing the world, but technology is something that we have created. So in the end, as we progress technology, we're actually making the world more human around us. Technology does not create humanity. We create technology, and this is a really important distinction. It's an asset, and it's not something that we should fear. It's definitely a tool that we should use for good. But in doing that, we're making the world more human. And something I really wanted to make a point about is in this pursuit of the truth, and in this pursuit of, you know, creating technology and putting it into the world, there's a great analogy, analogy about how a bird flies, and a bird has two wings, and it cannot fly with just one. So in this pursuit, we cannot rely on our reason alone, like we'll fail. There's got to be an element of faith that's also applied. We must have faith and reason. And in the end, whether you're a Christian or not, everybody has faith in something, and whatever you put your faith. In it definitely influences the direction of your life and what you pursue and how you pursue the truth, how you pursue knowledge, how you build technology. So it's really important to remember that and to question it and to develop it. It's going to guide your life in any direction. And I think the last thing I wanted to say is, today is the feast day of St Thomas Aquinas. And you know, he's a giant of Christian thought. And I tweeted it earlier today, but he had this, has this great quote about knowledge, and he says, Love takes up where knowledge leaves off. And it's really important to know that, as being human, love is an essential part of being human. It's part of our humanity. It was given us to us by God. He loves us. We're meant to spread love in the world, and you cannot have knowledge alone. Love also is a critically important part as a mother, I obviously know this very much. I can try to teach my children everything. The most important thing I can give them is my love, and through that, it inspires them to be better people, I hope. And that's the last thing I wanted to say, is there's a great quote that I love, which says, become who you were created to be, and you will set the world on fire. And I like to think about this with EAC, because we are all different for coming at it from different angles. I like to say, you know, be the EAC you want to see in the world. Just make the world better in your own way, however you are, whatever your talent is, whatever your interest is, whatever skills you can bring, just do it. Just build go for it. And I love that so many different people from different belief systems, backgrounds, etc, are doing that. There's so many good examples, and I'm sure all of you have many examples in your own life. Just keep doing it. It will make the world better, and that's the best thing we can do. So thanks so much. And just really appreciate you hosting the space.

Connor Mahoney 2:47:03
Thank you so much. I'm sorry I keep on your name every time

I'll get it, I promise. But I'm just curious to basically, are you saying you gotta, you gotta be heading

Bayes 2:47:18
out? Yeah, I'm gonna bounce. But you know, you know, thanks, thanks for the space. And, you know, hopefully, you know, my, my aim is just to kind of hear how people are thinking about things. And, you know, I actually hadn't heard that Thomas Aquinas COVID, but kind of like it. It's, I think it's sort of, you know, something that I think is lacking in the world is like epistemic humility and something that I really don't, don't like about rationalism. And, yeah, I think I don't know. I think I'm hopefully this was helpful and useful conversation for you guys. And you know, I'm down to chat whenever about these things, but, yeah, overall, my my impression is that, you know, people who are optimistic are going to be optimistic, and they're going to, they're going to find a way to be optimistic and like, that's just, that's just like, how the the human condition seems to be. And so I feel like that's pretty, pretty great. And I don't know it's a white pill for me. So yeah,

Connor Mahoney 2:48:28
I appreciate it so much, Baze, and I do think we're actually probably going to end the space too. I loved all the speakers, all the perspective, most of the speakers have dropped off. I don't think we really have any more to this conversation at the moment, and I've been burning for 72 hours, so I'm going to drop off. But thank you guys so much. Let's plan to have another space in the future. If you guys have topics you want to bring up, hit me up in the DMS. Otherwise, thanks guys for joining. Everybody. Have a great night. Bye.