God’s Debris is a fictional thought experiment written by Scott Adams, who is more famously known for writing Dilbert (the comic strip). In summary, the central theme of this novella is that God, being an omnipotent, omniscient timeless being wondered about the one thing it couldn’t know, would it be able to survive its own death? So this thought experiment suggests God has destroyed itself and the remnants of God are matter and probability. Over time matter and probability have led to evolutionary processes that have created humans, or conscious life, and now through human evolution and technology we are essentially rebuilding God.
Here is a link to the PDF of
God's Debris A documentary with a related theme is Transcendent Man.
Here is summary of the film:
Quote:TRANSCENDENT MAN chronicles the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist that presents his bold vision of the Singularity, a point in the near future when technology will be changing so rapidly, that we will have to enhance ourselves with artificial intelligence to keep up. Ray predicts this will be the dawning of a new civilization in which we will no longer be dependent on our physical bodies, we will be trillions of times more intelligent and there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. Human aging and illness will be reversed; world hunger and poverty will be solved and we will ultimately cure death.
Also a quote by Ray Kurzweil, from the dialogue at the end of the film
Ray Kurzweil wrote:“In the future everything will become intelligent. Nano bots will infuse all the matter around us with information; rocks, trees, everything will become these intelligent computers. So at that point we can expand out into the rest of the universe, we will be sending basically nano technology infused with artificial intelligence, swarms of those will go out into the universe and basically find other matter and energy that we can then harness to expand the overall intelligence of our human machine civilization. The universe will wake up, it will become intelligent and that will multiply our intelligence trillions of trillions fold. You know we can’t really fully contemplate it and that’s really the main reason this is called the singularity. So regardless of what you call it, it will be the universe waking up. So does God exist, well I would say not yet.”
And here is link to a trailer of the film on YouTube, It’s all they have
Transcendent Man - Official Trailer (2011)But I strongly recommend watching the full film, it’s available on Netflix instant stream if you subscribe to that or you can probably find it elsewhere for streaming online.
I would appreciate if you took the time read God’s Debris, which should only take about an hour or so and if possible watch Transcendent Man, before engaging in discussion.
So my question is what do you think about the notion of humanity rebuilding/building God? Do you think we will achieve the singularity? Will we reach a point in which we transcend our biological limitations? This seems to be the direction evolution is taking us, man merging with technology and losing distinction between "real" reality and virtual reality.
Transcendent Man made me think about, what if we already exist in a virtual reality indistinguishable from “real” reality. Such as, what if an older more advanced civilization has already progressed through this evolution, invaded and absorbed the universe with its intelligence and our universe as we observe it, is just a simulation or by-product of that process? Could our reality as we know it be a continuation of that process; a process that could loop on forever? I imagine the universe waking itself up, creating another universe or multiple universes within itself and that universe waking itself up ad infinitum.
Disclaimer:All these thoughts,
words arranged in this message,
come from the Tao
and return to the Tao.
Yet they do not touch it.
Each of us will perceive the message,
Yet to each our own interpretation.
I'll see you when the river meets us