Charles Stross: Three arguments against the singularity

Paul Crowley

I periodically get email from folks who, having read "Accelerando", assume I am some kind of fire-breathing extropian zealot who believes in the imminence of the singularity, the uploading of the libertarians, and the rapture of the nerds. I find this mildly distressing, and so I think it's time to set the record straight and say what I really think.

Short version: Santa Claus doesn't exist.

- Charles Stross, Three arguments against the singularity, 2011-06-22

EDITED TO ADD: don't get your hopes up, this is pretty weak stuff.

Short version: Santa Claus doesn't exist.

- Charles Stross, Three arguments against the singularity, 2011-06-22

EDITED TO ADD: don't get your hopes up, this is pretty weak stuff.

More to the point, I sincerely doubt religious people would really have a problem with (other people) uploading in the first place.

I think you underestimate the ability of some religious people to have problems with things, and overestimate the ability of many other religious people to speak against their pushy, controlling brethren. See, e.g., gay marriage.

Gay marriage is actually a good example of the secular side winning, since gay marriage is spreading to more states and countries, and everyone thinks it will continue spreading in the future. That is in spite of the fact that their scriptures are totally opposed to homosexuality, whereas I don't believe brain uploading is mentioned.

15Nornagest15y

I'm honestly not sure that the social conservatism we associate with religion has all that much to do, in the average case, with religion per se. Fundamentalism is kind of a special case, but most of the time what we see is religious opinion reflecting whatever the standard conservative-leaning package of social beliefs is at that particular place and time. Change the standard and religious opinion follows, perhaps after some lag time -- it's just that religiosity is correlated with a bundle of factors that tend to imply conservatism, and that church events give you a ready-made venue for talking to other conservatives. For that matter, most of the analysis of fundamentalism I've read treats it as a reaction against secular influences, not an endogenous religious phenomenon. Its phenomenology in the wild seems to be consistent with that -- fundamentalist strains first tend to pop up a decade or two after a culture's exposure to Enlightenment values.