Beth Singler
University of Cambridge, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Associate Research Fellow
Beth Singler is the Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich. Prior to this she was the Junior Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Her work explores the social and religious implications of advances in AI and robotics.
Her background is as a social anthropologist of New Religious Movements, and her PhD thesis is the first in-depth ethnography of the Indigo Children - a New Age re-conception of both children and adults using the language of both evolution and spirituality. The monograph of her PhD is now available from Routledge: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1472489632/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_4GD-zbHWAE5V0
She has also written on the development and legitimation of Jediism and Scientology through social media and online conversations.
@BVLSingler
Her background is as a social anthropologist of New Religious Movements, and her PhD thesis is the first in-depth ethnography of the Indigo Children - a New Age re-conception of both children and adults using the language of both evolution and spirituality. The monograph of her PhD is now available from Routledge: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1472489632/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_4GD-zbHWAE5V0
She has also written on the development and legitimation of Jediism and Scientology through social media and online conversations.
@BVLSingler
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Papers by Beth Singler
Gulio Prisco made this appraisal in a presentation given at the 2014 Mormon Transhumanist Conference. Prisco, a computer scientist, futurist and transhumanist, was presenting on a “Religion for The Cosmic Frontier”, discussing what he saw as the need for “new positive, solar, action-oriented spiritual movements”: New Religious movements based upon a positive attitude towards science and technology, particularly life extending ideas and the potential of AI. Prisco also called for a return to theism from cold deism but a theism in which the gods have been created by man: the superintelligences promised by advancing technology and science fiction.
In his paper he gave the example of the now failed ‘Order of Cosmic Engineers’ (OCE), an intentional ‘UNreligion’ that he founded with sociologist of religion William Sims Bainbridge, which used the methods and modes of religion with a secular agenda. He also recognized the success of “irrational” but emotionally appealing NRMs such as the Raelians, and the flaws of the fictional Elohimites based upon them in Michel Houellebecq’s novel “The Possibility of an Island”. Beginning with the example of the OCE, its antecedents, and subsequent forms such as the Turing Church, this paper will examine the wider creation of New Religious movements from the often linked realms of Science Fiction and Artificial Intelligence.
Let's divide the factors that lead to memetic success into two classes: those based on corresponding to evidence, and those detached from evidence […] Religion is what you get when you push totally for non-evidential memetic success. All ties to reality are essentially cut. As a result, all the other dials can be pushed up to 11[…] there's no contradictory evidence when you turn the dials up, so of course they'll end up on the highest settings.” – Ciphergoth, 10th April 2009
This quotation is taken from the ‘LessWrong’ wiki on religion, and the larger post it came from was written in response to a question on whether theism was a “uniquely awful example” of irrationality. The LessWrong community, both on and offline, are dedicated to applying “the discovery of biases like the conjunction fallacy, the affect heuristic, and scope insensitivity in order to improve their own thinking” (LessWrong home page). Their stance is overtly secular, admires rationality, aims to counter irrationality, and draws in narratives currently dwelling around future tech such as the potential for Artificial Superintelligence (the Singularity), Transhumanism, and existential risk.
Using the example of LessWrong, this paper will employ a social anthropological perspective to consider how similarities with theological propositions illustrate the moral boundary work - between the religious and the secular - being done, both consciously and unconsciously, by futurists and rationalists. It will also argue that secularity operates as strategic posturing: presenting the members of the forum as forerunners of Homo Economicus, a figurative human being characterised by the infinite ability to make rational decisions, and itself arguably an eschatological aspiration with religious overtones.
Please discontinue all further discussion of the banned topic.
All comments on the banned topic will be banned.
Exercise some elementary common sense in future discussions. With sufficient time, effort, knowledge, and stupidity it is possible to hurt people. Don't.
As we used to say on SL4: KILLTHREAD" (Yudkowsky 2010)
This KILLTHREAD command came in response to a post written only four hours earlier on the LessWrong community blog by ‘Roko’. A post which had introduced a rather disturbing idea to the other members, who are dedicated to ‘refining the art of human rationality’ according to LessWrong literature.
Roko had proposed that the hypothetical, but inevitable, artificial super-intelligence often known as the ‘Singularity’ would, according to its intrinsic utilitarian principles, punish those who failed to help it, or to help to create it. Including those from both its present and its past through the creation of perfect virtual simulations based on their data. Therefore, merely knowing about the possibility of this superintelligence now could open you up to punishment in the future, even after your physical death. In response to this acausal threat, the founder of LessWrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky responded with the above dictat, which stood on the forum for over five years.
Roko’s Basilisk, as this theory came to be known for the effect it had on those who 'saw' it, has been described by the press in florid terms as ‘The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time!’ (Slate 2014). It has also been dismissed by members as either based on extremely flawed deductions, or as an attempt to incentivise greater ‘effective altruism’ - directed financial donations for the absolute greatest good. In this case, donation specifically to MIRI, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which works towards developing a strictly human value orientated AI, and which is also directly linked to the LessWrong forum itself. Others have dismissed it as a futurologist reworking of Blaise Pascal’s famous wager, or as just a fanciful dystopian fairy-tale.
This paper will not debate the logic, or validity, of this thought experiment. Instead it will approach the case of Roko’s Basilisk with a social anthropological perspective to consider how its similarities with theologically inclined arguments highlights the moral boundary making between the religious and the secular being performed by rationalist forums of futurologists, transhumanists and singularitarians such as LessWrong and the AI mailing list ‘SL4’ that Yudkowsky referred to. This paper also raises wider questions of how implicitly religious thought experiments can be, and how this boundary making in apparently secular thought communities can be critically addressed.
Made by Dr Beth Singler (Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmunds College, Cambridge, and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge). Written & Directed by Colin Ramsay & James Uren. A Little Dragon Films Production. Co-funded by the Faraday Institute, ARM, and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence is on the march and it seems destined to play a bigger and bigger part in our lives. Gut feelings about AI tend to be negative but could it be used for good? How might its development affect religious belief or religious practice? With Ed Kessler to explore AI are Beth Singler of Homerton College, Cambridge, and Gorazd Andrejč of ZRS Koper and Univesity of Groningen.