For my annual update to my Optihumanist Principles, I made changes to a couple of the sections. In the "Life is limitless" section where I wrote "We welcome the propagation of life throughout the Universe", I changed "life" to "sapient life". Initially I had wanted to change it to "sentient life" -- but then I learned the difference.
My "Optimism is effort" section is now "Progress is perpetual". I wanted to retain the idea that effort is required to make things better over time while incorporating my thoughts from my previous blog entry Evolution as Purpose, including Perry's concept of the "divine attractor". Here is the new final section as updated for 2025:
Progress is perpetual.
We hold that the purpose of evolved life is to evolve.
We embrace continuous improvement as a path toward divinity.
We applaud incremental growth.
In the new Kurzgesagt video We Found a Loophole to Survive the End of the Universe, the narrator speculates that an intelligent race that could upload their minds to a digital utopia might "activate their pleasure centers and experience perfect bliss forever". If the purpose of evolved life is to evolve, this would seem to be a dead-end. I prefer to think that progress might continue forever, always striving for some unreachable ideal state, at least until we can figure out what our post-evolutionary purpose might be.
We seem to be currently sliding toward a digital utopia but without the benefit of individual immortality. Addictive entertainment such as YouTube Shorts is providing the intermittent reward dopamine hits of a slot machine. If we choose videos that are educational entertainment, "edutainment", we can get some long-term benefits from our investment of time.
In our family, we moved our Digital Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. This seems to work better for our children as it gives them a chance to recover from school on Saturday by playing computer games. Sunday then becomes the day to focus on homework assignments due on Monday that were put off the day before.
I tell the children that they can get on their laptops on Sunday if they are doing homework, blogging, coding, drawing, or otherwise creating. I think that it is important that we are not just consuming content but also synthesizing it to produce new works. They say you learn more by doing.
I am concerned that many retirees are spending their final days watching old television shows when they could instead be volunteering, sharing their wisdom through writing, or otherwise contributing in some fashion that they find self-actualizing. As someone who never has enough time to work on all of the projects that I want to, it is hard for me to understand those who are satisfied with merely consuming and never contributing. Rather than as a rest stop on the way to heaven, I see my future retirement as a potential producer paradise.
Recently I finished listening to Fight Oligarchy, another audiobook narrated by the author Senator Bernie Sanders. I liked much of what Sanders wrote in his latest book, especially his Medicare for All proposal. I also follow his speeches that are posted on his YouTube channel.
Can I be a Sanders supporter and still call myself a libertarian? Certainly there is some element of what Sanders is doing that seems to be anti-authoritarian. I also consider myself to be a transhumanist so maybe I should start looking into techno-progressivism?
Previously I concluded that the purpose of life is to reproduce. Thinking about artificial intelligence and uploading has put a spin on that for me. I suppose it is possible in the future that there could be a sentient being that achieves immortality by not dying rather than by having children.
Today my eleven-year-old son asked me whether a mosquito is alive. When I asked what he meant, he clarified by asking whether it is conscious. No, I replied, it is too small for that; it is just like a robot following the instructions of a computer program. That answer made him chuckle.
If we could snapshot a mind and instantiate a copy as a chatbot, would it be alive? Suppose further that it could not learn but only respond to prompts in a manner similar to the original based on knowledge acquired prior to the snapshot. Effectively it would be an interactive memoir.
To me this seems more like a ghost than a living being. If instead it could continue to learn, I would then say that the copy is a continuation of the original. Perhaps the hypothetical snapshot process could capture both the memories and the mechanisms for forming new memories.
The fact that we have goals is a byproduct of evolution driving us to survive long enough to propagate our genes. Even if they can no longer pass on their genes, sentient beings uploaded from evolved life snapshots might continue to evolve in
the sense that could adapt over time to their changing environments in
responsive pursuit of their goals. For both the originals and their uploaded snapshots, I conclude that the purpose of evolved life is to evolve.
Ettinger finished writing this book when he was ninety years old. I remember seeing Ettinger active on cryonics-related discussion electronic mailing lists when he was in his late eighties. At that time, I had not known that he was a leading founder of the cryonics movement.
As part of a book discussion group, I dug through each chapter looking for a concise explanation of his philosophy. I was particularly interested in a suggestion that he made that there could be some sense of absolution. I did not find what I was looking for in this book but I might have another go at it by picking up a copy of The Philosophy of Robert Ettinger, edited by Charles Tandy.
His penultimate chapter, "A Little Night Music", is a collection of poems and songs about personal death and the loss of a loved one. I wrote a poem in this style entitled Just Rest about losing a spouse and the hope for a future reunion. I wrote this fictional piece back when I was a traveling consultant and maybe a little homesick.
Ettinger had lost two wives by the time of writing his capstone book. In the final chapter, "The Terminator", his quip about both of his wives being revived with him being "a very high-class problem" made me laugh out loud. This autobiographical chapter reminded me of the book that I listened to recently providing life advice from elders.
In this last chapter, in which he considers what he might work on next in his remaining time, he states, "Probably the best thing would be a physically close community of kindred spirits. There is one in Arizona, and at some point, we'll have one in Michigan, [...]." This reminded me of efforts like those of David Pizer and others to create a Cryonics Community.
Fyodorov was a Christian who proposed that we should all work together to use future science-based technologies to resurrect our ancestors for the purpose of saving them from Judgment Day. Fyodorov's Universal Salvation reminded me of the Mormon practice of proxy baptism. It also helped me connect the dots with the renaming of the Transhumanist Church to the Society for Universal Immortalism.
Twice within the last few days, someone that I was conversing with from the Transhumanist community mentioned a far future technology that I had originally learned about from the Bobiverse science fiction book series by Dennis E. Taylor. The two technologies recently discussed were O'Neill cylinders and von Neumann probes. This hard science fiction series introduces readers to many more future technologies in an accessible and entertaining manner including a couple of my favorites, cryonics and uploading.
I have recommended this series to my friends in the Church of Perpetual Life multiple times as it frequently relates to topics discussed in our Zoom parties before and after the main service. Although not part of the Bobiverse series, I am looking forward to listening to the author's latest book, Flybot, available in audio format from Audible.
I have been talking about moving to Michigan for a couple of years now because it is too hot in Texas and it is getting hotter. Many of my family members have moved to the Great Lakes region in the last few years and I would like to join them. I am up in Michigan this week checking it out.
Specifically I am exploring the area around Lake St. Clair because of the opportunities for recreational sailing. I participated as crew in a regatta again a couple of weeks ago and we came in second place. I am hoping to buy another sailboat after my next move.
This area is also home to the Cryonics Institute (CI). I am currently signed up with Alcor but I will switch to CI if I make the move. My thanks to Andy Zawacki and Joe Kowalsky, pictured below with me, for the tour of the CI facilities.
I just finished listening to the audiobook 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans by Karl Pillemer, Ph.D. After gathering data from interviews with over a thousand older Americans, whom the author refers to as the "experts", Dr. Pillemer provides the advice of the elders in a consolidated form. I appreciated that the author ended the book with a list of ten questions for readers to use when conversing with their senior relatives and neighbors.
I am always on the lookout for good advice, especially if it is something timeless that I can share with future generations. What I found in this book is nothing that I have not heard before. It did remind me, however, that one of the keys to a long life is to eliminate chronic stress.
When I was younger, I used to hear stories from World War II and Vietnam War combat veterans. I had noticed a trend in that most of them seemed to have been very lucky in escaping close calls. Then one day it dawned on me that I had been only speaking with the survivors.
I see some of the same data bias in this book. The main criterion to be considered an expert by the author was to have lived a long life. Many of the interviewees had enjoyed stress-free lives for multiple decades due to not having significant responsibilities since retirement.
I started thinking about this bias because one of the lessons was that people get out and see the world while still young instead of waiting until later when they might be too old for travel. This contradicts the make hay while the sun shines philosophy of the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement. Until one has actually achieved financial independence, as almost by definition most retirees have, one will not have the hindsight to know whether any travel experiences leading up to that point were life-enriching or just doom spending.
James Rawls Williams, my Uncle Jim, passed away last month at the respectable age of seventy-nine. My Uncle David died at age sixty-seven from a brain tumor that changed his personality before he passed. My Uncle Donald passed at fifty-nine from the same type of blood cancer that took Uncle Jim.
For most of my life, I always felt not quite grown up, even well into middle age. I used to say that a man is not fully an adult until he has raised a
child and buried his father. Thankfully my father still lives.
Cadets at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs are often paired with volunteer sponsor families living in the area. When I was a cadet, I was fortunate to have my actual family members as my sponsor family. From that four-year period, I learned to love my Uncle Jim as someone who gave good advice and lived a life of dignity.
I did not see much of Uncle Jim and family after I graduated. When Aunt Janie and Uncle Jim last visited us here in Dallas over a decade ago, Uncle Jim recounted his experience during the University of Texas tower shooting when a man with a brain tumor became a mass murderer. As he concluded, I could tell that Uncle Jim was still moved by that event even though it had transpired nearly a half century earlier.
From that visit, I have a picture of Uncle Jim and Aunt Janie with my wife Shannon just after I gave them a tour of my backyard pumpkin patch. In that picture, you can see that Shannon was pregnant with the last of our six children. My youngest son, James, is Uncle Jim to my two grandchildren.
I think that Universal Basic Income (UBI) is inevitable as technology makes more jobs obsolete. When enough voters lose their jobs, they will seek political change. That change will stabilize when UBI becomes law.
People will then shift from finding meaning in their work to finding meaning in spending time with each other. Whether those people are mostly old friends or mostly new family depends on the affordability of housing. Raising children is meaningful work but it requires an extra bedroom.
I propose Parental Basic Income (PBI) as a first step towards UBI. Since the invention of birth control, many potential parents have chosen to reduce the risk of childhood poverty by not having children. PBI will create a future in which parents are confident that they can raise a happy family.
What I am hoping to find in his book is something describing what I have been seeing in those countries that have
adopted the Nordic Model. Those countries seem to be doing better
across the board in multiple categories. I think we should start adopting some of their policies to see if those would also work for us.
I think I voted for Bernie some years ago in a primary election. When I tell people that I am a libertarian that wishes Bernie Sanders were President, I know I am telling a bit of a joke as most will perceive that there is some cognitive dissonance there. I am still trying to figure out what the common appeal is for me between libertarianism and the Nordic Model as they seem to be opposed.
Like my parents, Bernie is his mid-eighties now so I imagine he will be retiring soon. I am hoping to learn what I can from him while he is still politically active and distill those lessons into some general principles. I will also be looking for the "Bernies" of succeeding generations.
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