Techno-Transcendentalism

Discussion

Johannes Jäger:

"The cult manifests among people who completely hyperbolize the potential of AI, and who tend to greatly overestimate the power of technology in general.

Let's give this cult a name. I'll call it techno-transcendentalism.

It emanates from a group of heavily overlapping techno-utopian movements that can be summarized under the acronym TESCREAL: transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, the rationality community, effective altruism, and longtermism.

This may all sound rather fringe. But techno-transcendentalism is very popular among powerful and influential entrepreneurs, philosophers, and researchers hell-bent on bringing a new form of intelligence into the world: the intelligence of machines.

Techno-transcendentalism is dangerous. It is metaphysically confused. It is also utterly anti-democratic and, in actuality, anti-human.

Its practical political aim is to turn society back into a feudal system, ruled by a small elite of self-selected techno-Illuminati, which will bring about the inevitable technological singularity, lead humanity to the conquest of the universe, and to a blissful state of eternal life in a controlled simulated environment. Well, this is the optimistic version. The apocalyptic branch of the cult sees humanity being wiped out by superintelligent machines in the near future, another kind of singularity that can only be prevented if we all listen and bow to the chosen few who are smart enough to actually get the point and get us all through this predicament.

The problem is: techno-transcendentalism has gained a certain popularity among the tech-affine because it poses as a rational science-based worldview. Yet, there is nothing rational or scientific about its dubious metaphysical assumptions.

As we shall see, it really is just a modern variety of traditional Christianity — an archetypal form of theistic religion. It is literally a medieval cult — both with regard to its salvation narrative and its neofeudalist politics. And it is utterly obscurantist -- dressed up in fancy-sounding pseudo-scientific jargon, its true aims and intentions rarely stated explicitly."

(http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/machine-metaphysics-and-the-cult-of-techno-transcendentalism)