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On advancement
- Max Planck - science advances one funeral at a time. When one generation passes away do new theories have a chance to root out old ones
On happiness
- Epicurus:
outlined an entire ethic of dos and don'ts to guide people to along the treacherous path to happiness
- Despite our unprecedented achievements in the last few decades, its far from obvious that contemporary people are significantly more satisfied than their ancestors
- Life sciences:
happiness and suffering are nothing but different balances of bodily sensations
- We never react to events in the outside world
- but only to sensations in our own bodies
- depression is a kind of unpleasant bodily sensation
- our biochemistry adapted to increasing our chances of survival and reproduction, not our happiness
- biochemical system rewards actions conducive to survival and reproduction with pleasant sensations
Food
- mates
Studying History
- Aim: Loosening the the grip of the past
- Enables us to notice possibilities that our ancestors could not or did not want us to imagine
- It does not tell us what to choose
- it gives us more options, to image alternative destinies
Agricultural deal:
- Farmers justify their exploitation of domesticated animals in the name of new theist religions
Body is an algorithm
- Body feels hunger, fear, trembling
- He experiences a storm of sensations, emotions and desires
- These are nothing but the process of calculation
Individual versus Group
- Large numbers of people behave in a fundamentally different way than do small numbers
Sunk Cost Bias and Meaning
- We want to believe our lives have some objective meaning
- our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head
- Meaning is created when many people weave together a network of stories
Non-material entities / religion
- An entity is real if it can suffer
- religion / belief system is a tool for governing defined by its social function
- confers superhuman legitimacy on human laws, norms and values
- legitimates human social structures
- Asserts we are subjected to a system of moral laws that we did not invent
- Helps the state collect taxes without itself lifting a finger
- regulations on biochemical pursuit of happiness
good drugs - strengthen political stability, social order and economic growth
- bad drugs - threatens stability and growth
Religion versus Spiritualism
- Religion seeks to cement the worldly order
- Spirituality seeks to escape it
- Spiritual wanders most important obligation is to challenge the belief and conventions of dominant religion - Zen Buddhism "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him"
Transition from Religion to Humanism
- From What God/central authority said is true
- What you feel is true. Its far more important to know what you think about these matters
- Assumes each human has a single authentic inner self
- The central question is if *human can choose his desire in the first place*
- Transcranial simulators has proven to be able to alter human consciousness, resulting in enhanced capabilities
- The divide between the Identifying self versus the Experiencing self
Decisions are made by the Identifying self that functions without the ability to have comprehensive data
Modernity, the rat race and technology
- In the capitalist world, the lives of the poor improve only when the economy grows
- Despite all our achievements, we feel a constant pressure to do and produce even more
- every generation destroys the old world and builds a new one in its place
- Continued belief in the growth story that is being supported by belief in the hi-tech Ark
Hi-tech Ark
- is currently one of the biggest threats to the future of man and its eco-system
- Humans are in danger of loosing their economic value because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness
- Automation
Types of job
Agricultural
- Industry
- Services
- The coming technology bonanza can probably feed all humans. But without something to do humans will go crazy
- AI which first starts out as an Oracle will eventually turn into sovereign
Forthcoming Techno religions:
- Techno-humanism
technology enhanced humans: cyborgs
- Data-religion
having enough data means knowing what to ignore
- machine can know us better than ourselves
- organisms are really just algorithms
- Intelligence versus consciousness