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Articles by Turing Church
The spirit of the internet
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first: I have been watching again the awesome TV show “Wild Palms” (1993). This time I decided to complete the experience with “The Wild Palms Reader.” I had been looking for an electronic version of the book for years, but last December I gave up and bought myself the paper edition as a Christmas gift.
The Expanse: last (?) TV show season and last novel
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first: “Public theologian” Ted Peters is writing a series on H+ (1, 2, 3). “Should we Christians, Jews, and Muslims board the transhumanist train?… Is a religious transhumanism conceivable?” Among other players, Peters mentions the Christian Transhumanist Association, the Mormon Transhumanist Association, and Turing Church.
My current take on (non)determinism in physical reality
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first: On February 9 I will participate in a webinar titled “Spirituality and the Moon,” organized by the Cultural Considerations Working Group of the Moon Village Association. The webinar will be moderated by Remo Rapetti and Arthur Woods and last approximately one hour.
From Russia with awe and wonder: Cosmism
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first: I found a 1995 review of Frank Tipler’s Omega Point cosmology by John Polkinghorne, the physicist/theologian who passed away last year. One of my heroes criticizing another! “Tipler develops his arguments with fantastic ingenuity,” said Polkinghorne.
Reply to a critical review of my book
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first: A great man passed on two weeks ago: Edward Wilson.
Exploring Space
Happy New Year. I have turned a space explorer in 2022 and this my first post of the year. I attended the Terasem Space Day Colloquium 2021 on Tuesday, July 20, 2021, the anniversary of Apollo 11, via Zoom. The Terasem Space Day covered spaceflight, geopolitics, future scenarios, space philosophy and culture, and spiritual implications.
Happy 2022!
Greetings and happy 2022 to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! I added my one-minute clip to the video titled “Why Me to the Moon?” produced by the Cultural Considerations Working Group of the Moon Village Association (MVA). To me, building a sustainable and permanent human presence on the Moon is our next step upward and outward before moving on to Mars and beyond.
Fly me to the Moon!
Merry Christmas and happy 2022 to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! I am NOT one of those who feel forced to refrain from using the word “Christmas.” So again, MERRY CHRISTMAS! And happy 2022! I’ll be back in January. Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter and a reading list. But first: Terasem Colloquium, December 10, 2021: VIDEO and impressions.
Subscribe to the newsletter & podcast at turingchurch.com
The Turing Church newsletter & podcast at turingchurch.com, hosted by Substack, is emailed to all subscribers. I try to keep a frequency of one update per week, more or less: this means that there aren’t exactly seven days between updates, perhaps some more or some less, but I won’t invade your mailbox every day, and I won’t stay silent for a month. Newsletters and some podcast episodes are snapshots of what is currently on my mind, and cover many topics.
(podcast) Futurist spaceflight conversation
This podcast episode is about spaceflight. Space expansionism is a cornerstone of Turing Church, and I plan to talk a lot about spaceflight in future writings and podcast episodes. A few days ago I was interviewed by Agah Bahari for the NEOHUMAN show. We discussed my last book “Futurist spaceflight meditations.” Our conversation covered the political, cultural, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of spaceflight and human expansion in the solar system and beyond.
Terasem Colloquium, December 10, 2021: VIDEO and impressions
Here is the full video of the Colloquium, with all talks and Q/As: Susan Schneider was expected to give a talk, but unfortunately she wasn’t able to participate. So in the first 15 minutes I opened the Colloquium, introduced all participants and talks, said something about Susan’s ideas, and offered some thoughts on consciousness and its preservation.
Terasem Colloquium, tomorrow (NEW ZOOM LINK)
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! The Terasem Colloquium on December 10, 2021, 10am to 1pm ET via Zoom, will explore consciousness, and how to preserve consciousness beyond physical death. You are invited! Please note that for technical reasons the Zoom link has been changed.
Futurist spaceflight meditations: interview
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter and a reading list. But first: Please come to the Terasem Colloquium next Friday, December 10. Susan Schneider, Randal Koene, Max More, Ken Hayworth, Martine Rothblatt, and Robert McIntyre will discuss consciousness and how to preserve it beyond physical death. CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE COLLOQIUM (ZOOM).
Martine Rothblatt will speak at the Terasem Colloquium on December 10
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Gabriel Rothblatt will be unable to give a talk at the Terasem Colloquium on December 10, 2021, 10am to 1pm ET via Zoom. So Martine Rothblatt will present Terasem’s view on consciousness and how to preserve it beyond physical death. Martine Rothblatt is a technologist responsible for several satellite communications systems and new medicines.
You are invited! Terasem Colloquium on Dec. 10
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! The Terasem Colloquium on December 10, 2021, 10am to 1pm ET via Zoom, will feature a stellar lineup of speakers: Susan Schneider, Randal Koene, Max More, Ken Hayworth, Gabriel Rothblatt, Robert McIntyre. The topic: What is consciousness, and how to preserve it beyond physical death? You are invited! This post (and upcoming Turing Church newsletters) will be updated with the Zoom access coordinates. Stay tuned.
Terasem Colloquium, December 10, 2021
The Terasem Colloquium on December 10, 2021, 10am to 1pm ET via Zoom, will feature a stellar lineup of speakers: Susan Schneider, Randal Koene, Max More, Ken Hayworth, Martine Rothblatt, Robert McIntyre. The topic: What is consciousness, and how to preserve it beyond physical death? You are invited! This post will be updated with the Zoom access coordinates. Stay tuned.
(podcast) The simulation hypothesis
The simulation hypothesis is the idea that our reality is a simulation computed in another reality. In simpler words, the world is some kind of game universe and we are characters in the game. I think that, on the one hand, the simulation hypothesis is a simple intuitive metaphor for a reality that is probably much weirder and hopelessly beyond our current imagination. But on the other hand, he simulation hypothesis is a coherent and useful mental picture of reality. Picture by Extropia DaSilva.
Robert Pirsig on universal evolution
As anticipated in the last newsletter I did a few days of total immersion in the world of Robert Pirsig. Share For those not familiar with Pirsig, he is the author of the two awesome philosophical fiction cult novels “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values” and “Lila: An Inquiry into Morals.” I have read both books many times, but every time I read them again I find something to think about.
The universe is striving toward a goal
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! I haven’t been feeling so well for a few days so I decided to rest for a full week. Perhaps others would feel guilty for not being doing this or that instead of resting, but I’m wiser than that. Rest is important, and sleep is important. You can’t function without resting and sleeping, so don’t even try.
Turing Church newsletter 10/16/2121
Greetings to all readers and subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Some readers ask why I don’t discuss politics, social issues, culture wars and all that. Read my last book “Futurist spaceflight meditations” if you are curious about my take on these things. I don’t have much to say about these things that hasn’t already been said much better.
Do we live in a game-world or in a brane-world?
I have been revisiting the simulation hypothesis recently, see my review of “The Simulated Multiverse” by Rizwan Virk and references therein. TLDR: the simulation hypothesis is the idea that our reality is a simulation computed in another reality. In simpler words, the world is some kind of game-world and we are characters in the game. Fine with me, but perhaps you want to be a real physical thing in the physical universe instead of a simulated game character. If so, read on.
Turing Church newsletter 10/09/2021
Greetings to all subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! If you scroll to the end you will find a link to my review of “The Simulated Multiverse” by Rizwan Virk (to be published on October 15). This book (like its predecessor “The Simulation Hypothesis”) is a very good introduction to the simulation hypothesis for everyone. Warmly recommended.
The immanent divine
Today many people say “the Universe” where their parents would say “God.” In “The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success,” Ross Douthat envisions a religious renaissance. It could come from “a general belief in the immanent divine… that’s interwoven with the material world rather than standing outside it as a Creator God.” This sounds like a good description of the personal religion, often unconscious, of those who invoke the universe.
Turing Church newsletter 10/1/2021
Greetings to all subscribers, and special greetings to the paid subscribers! Yesterday I was discussing with a journalist and I realized that I am still very much of a double mind about whether Turing Church should or shouldn’t become a more organized church. I am thinking about this, comments welcome. Leave a comment Much to my surprise, I found that I like doing the podcast.
Turing Church podcast 9/27/2021
Here I talk about technological resurrection, which is a cornerstone of Turing Church. The idea of technological resurrection is that future engineers with superior science and technology will find ways to resurrect everyone who was ever alive.
Turing Church newsletter 9/24/2021
Greetings to our about 60 subscribers, and special greetings to the full (paid) subscribers! I consider paid subscriptions as donations, and therefore most posts and podcast episodes are free for all and sent to all subscribers. But full subscribers deserve something more, and therefore some content will be for them only.
Turing Church podcast 9/19/2021
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Turing Church newsletter 9/17/2021
This week has been the Inspiration4 week. I’ll have much more to say about the importance and especially the cultural importance of Inspiration4, but I’ll wait for the end of the mission. Turing Church podcast and meetings I have launched a Turing Church podcast and posted the first episode. I have been thinking of doing a podcast for a while, but I never implemented the idea so far because I didn’t understand why people want to listen to podcasts and watch videos instead of reading.
Turing Church podcast 9/13/2021
In this first episode I talk about why I started this podcast, and say a few things about Turing Church.
So what the f# happens after death?
Of course this is the question you want to ask. Isn’t it? You are stored in the fabric of reality (quantum fields or something underneath and beyond quantum fields). The fabric of reality is alive and aware in some sense. Or better, super-alive and super-aware. So you go on as a small part of Mind at Large. You can call Mind at Large - if you want - Brahman, God, or God by any other name.
Turing Church newsletter 9/10/2021
The developing structure of this newsletter is: one weekly post like this one, with a similar title, public; other posts on specific topics, one or two a week, some public and some for paid subscribers. I’ll post thoughts and interesting links as they come, without trying to polish everything. I’ll post more polished and complete writings in turingchurch.net (I’ll post links with summaries here), and I aim at consistency and crystal clarity for my book in preparation.
Bitcoin el salvador?
I was a very early adopter of Bitcoin. I started weeks after Satoshi’s whitepaper magically appeared in a cryptography mailing list. If I still had the BTC that I mined at the time I would be very rich today, but I wanted to use and spend my BTC to stimulate the nascent Bitcoin economy. I have written Bitcoin software, consulted and participated in many projects. For years I made a good living as a journalist and editor for the Bitcoin trade press. Been there, done that.
Turing Church newsletter 9/3/2021
I haven’t fully decided yet how to structure this newsletter. I guess I’ll just follow Rumi and trust that the Way will appear after I start walking. Suggestions welcome. I’ll try to write fast and refrain from overthinking. Following a discussion in the Turing Church Facebook group (link in the About page), I’m considering the idea of doing a podcast (one of the many nice features of Substack is that it supports podcasts).
I have resigned from the IEET Board of Directors
I have resigned in protest against a recent decision, which hasn’t been publicly announced yet. Like much of today’s liberal left, the IEET has embraced certain currently fashionable but dangerously toxic trends. Identity politics, #MeToo, cancel culture… These trends start with good sentiments, but become toxic and dangerous when pushed to unreasonable and often ridiculous extremes.
Books
Writer, futurist, sometime philosopher. Author of “Tales of the Turing Church” and “Futurist spaceflight meditations.”
Namrata Goswami will speak at Terasem Space Day, July 20
Namrata Goswami, co-author of one of the most interesting spaceflight books published recently, will speak at the Terasem Space Day Colloquium on July 20. In “Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space” (2020), Goswami and Peter Garretson provide a detailed analysis of current geopolitical aspects of spaceflight.
Futurist spaceflight meditations: Book draft for early readers
Perhaps I’ll forget to invite some friends who should be in the group. If this is your case, please let me know! This book goes from here and now to the far future and the stars. But it is a very short book, about 25,000 words. Chapter titles: 1 Introduction; 2 Political preamble; 3 Lockdown; 4 Spaceflight now; 5 Spaceship Earth; 6 Cultural reflections; 7 Interplanetary; 8 Interstellar; 9 Cosmic engineers. Thesis: We must strenuously push toward our cosmic destiny among the stars.
Terasem Space Day (July 20) and more space stuff
Among the confirmed speakers, Namrata Goswami, co-author of “Scramble for the Skies: The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space” (2020), and Steven Wolfe, author of “The Obligation: A Journey to Discover Human Purpose on Earth and in the Cosmos” (2015). These two excellent books examine, respectively, plausible scenarios for the next few decades of spaceflight, and why we must (yes, MUST) expand into outer space.
Redeemed Earth, immaterial Heaven, or neither/both?
Both authors emphasize that Christian eschatology affirms the resurrection of the body in a redeemed Earth. Many Christians believe that the immaterial, immortal souls of the righteous go to an immaterial Heaven after death, but this is not what Christian eschatology says. The concepts of immortal souls and immaterial Heaven come from other belief systems that “contaminated” early Christianity. Wright and Middleton ground their arguments in the Bible and the history of early Christianity.
Turing Church newsletter #4
Some reading recommendations: Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, has published a science fiction novel titled “Klara and the Sun” (2021). A delightful, deep and poetic masterpiece, the novel is set in a disturbing future that exacerbates some trends visible in today’s world.
Bet on the stars: ‘Oumuamua’s Wager
In a paper titled “Could Solar Radiation Pressure Explain ‘Oumuamua’s Peculiar Acceleration?” (2018, open access), renowned astrophysicist Avi Loeb and his collaborator Shmuel Bialy considered the possibility that ‘Oumuamua “is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as debris from advanced technological equipment,” or even “a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.” This is the simplest hypothesis consistent with the data. I loved this.
Oh Blessed Simulators, deliver science from the thought police
Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist whose YouTube channel, titled “Science without the gobbledygook,” has more than 200k subscribers (actually 227k and growing). “I tell you what you really need to know about science, as simple as possible, but not any simpler,” says Hossenfelder. “From me you will get the real story, not the hype.” With YouTube ads and Patreon, Hossenfelder is (or will soon be) able to earn a good living as a free agent doing something that she likes and is good for the world.
Downward, backward, teleological causation and divine action
Contemporary science is bringing Aristotle back, sort of, but most scientists don’t (want to) realize this. “Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science” (2019) is in my to-read list. Downward causation, or top-down causation, is the idea that the whole of a system can influence its parts in ways that cannot be reduced to the local interactions between the parts. Reductionist philosophers and scientists claim that there’s no downward causation.
Fake/real free will and consciousness in cellular automata universes
Simple cellular automata (CA) like Rule 110 or Rule 30, which generates complex patterns similar in appearance to the seashell in the cover picture, are computationally irreducible. This means that there’s no way to predict their evolution faster than running the computation step by step and observing the results. In Wolfram’s words, “the actual evolution of the universe… can only be observed, not predicted.” The idea was anticipated by Christian theologian C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity” (1952).
Black hole adventures in new book by Dr. Abhas Mitra
When Dr. Abhas Mitra‘s Magnum Opus “The Rise and Fall of the Black Hole Paradigm” (2021) launched, I was particularly excited. I have had a keen interest in the subject for quite some time now, and I have been looking for a “real” story behind the Black Holes. A renowned astrophysicist, Hon. Adjunct Professor, Homi Bhabha National Institute, and former Head, Bhaba Atomic Research Center, Mumbai, Dr. Mitra, is a true Bengali Indian at his core (something that I relate to).
A conversation with Cometan: Astronism, Cosmism & Humanity’s Space Salvation
Here’s Cometan’s summary: “Ending Season 1 of ‘A Conversation with Cometan’ is Italian cosmist and author of ‘Tales of the Turing Church’, Giulio Prisco! He and Cometan sit down discuss the present condition of human life and our spacefaring futures, both in the short and long terms.
Downward causation in simple probabilistic cellular automata
Downward causation is not a mystery. We call it a mystery because we are still mentally conditioned by the reductionist science of the 19th century, according to which everything that happens can be derived, at least in principle, from the causally closed micro physics of particles and fields. But quantum mechanics shows that micro physics is NOT causally closed.
Moving Turing Church to Discord, exploring decentralized Scuttlebutt
Please join the Turing Church Discord server (click here) and come to our regular voice/video meetings. Of course I’ll continue to actively participate in the Turing Church Facebook Group (unless, that is, they ban me for posting this — see below), but I think it’s time to start moving. This is my small contribution to the (very important I think) goal of making the world less dependent on a handful of internet giants. Smaller is more beautiful.
Turing Church meetings (Discord)
Please join the Turing Church Discord server (click here) to discuss science and religion, spirituality and technology, engineering and science fiction, mind and matter. Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology. Exploring outer and inner spaces. In short: weird metaphysics, even weirder science, science fiction, and the future of humanity out there among the stars and beyond. At this moment Discord is independent of giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.
Russian cosmism and Western transhumanism: Friends or foes?
But perhaps there’s more tension between Russian cosmism and contemporary Western transhumanism than appears at a first glance. See this insightful essay by Juliette Faure, published in The Conversation (French original).
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