Quantum Gravity Research’s mission statement is: To discover the geometric first principles unification of space, time, matter, energy and consciousness.
For me, that mission is a means to an end for the purpose of accomplishing a more important mission: To elevate the consciousness of the human race.
Why do that? Because we’re all in this together as a species, biosphere and universe. And it’s more fun to invest our limited but growing consciousnesses learning and creating beauty to grow rather than competing, fearing and resisting change.
Many influential leaders are transhumanists, including Microsoft’s David Kelley, David Sonntag and Nick Bostram, who garnered a lot of world press with his famous paper showing that it is more statistically probable that we are a simulation than not. There is a political party called the Transhumanist Party. Singularity University is a transhumanist group, whether they adopt that term or not. So, what is this party and movement about and how is it similar and dissimilar to the philosophies implied by the PEL (principle of efficient language) and emergence theory?
SIMILARITY
Transhumanist philosophy is similar to QGR’s view in that they believe we should be focused on society’s grand challenges as a global village and not distracted by trivial transient things.
Transhumanists are optimists that believe they can create a brighter future by understanding our psychology and all sciences on a deeper level. They are committed to personal and societal growth, but they are particularly interested in exotic cutting edge science — such as robotics, genetics, strong AI and quantum computing — and discovering how humans will integrate with this technology.
Their commonality with QGR is that they seek to understand science and nature with the goal of improving harmony with one another, our planet and our descendants. They are about planting seeds for the future and playing the “long-game”, focusing more on where we are going than where we may be at some bump in the road today.
DIFFERENCES
Emergence theory, with its undergirding axiom (the PEL), strongly implies a “spiritual” transhumanism. This implication comes from deduction from the general “ouroboros” retrocausal aspect of emergence theory. (This document drills into the detail of that.) Emergence theory philosophy also looks optimistically toward high impact transformative technologies that will inevitably lead to alleviation of suffering and cruelty. However, it also makes plausible core essences of many spiritual philosophies of shamanism and world religions as well as people claiming to have had “supernatural” experiences.
Our view is a humble one.
We suggest that until humanity scientifically understands the fundamentals of the construct we exist in, we cannot pound our fists on the table of materialism and say this or that is impossible. We hold a view similar to Arthur C. Clark’s statement:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
That is, something we may term metaphysical (above physics or nature), such as spiritual ideas, may turn out to be real and part of a new physics based on a more complete understanding of the fundamentals of nature.
Clearly, we do not yet understand the fundamentals of nature. We do understand a few ways to interchange or relate some measurement values — gauge symmetry theories, such as electromagnetism, quantum mechanics and general relativity. We have NO idea why any of the values in these theories are what they are. And the two most important ones, GR and QM, imply that the other is incorrect.
If we were Neo in The Matrix having just taken the red pill to discover the true nature of reality, the pill has not yet kicked in. We still don’t have the slightest idea what this construct is or what the fundamental things are (we don’t know the value of fundamental constants past a few places after the decimal) and even if we did, we don’t know why the values are what they are. I personally believe that understanding nature via fundamental physics, such as our first-principles approach, leads to a more plausible and fun ontological viewpoint that happens to allow a critical thinker to assume realism of certain spiritual ideas.
Different than a non-first principles theory, such as string theory, emergence theory will take root in the not-too-distant future as a rigorous new fundamental view of physics. It will lead to startling technologies that will help humanity avert a catastrophic meltdown. However, the deeper transformation will result from a world-wide community of followers who don’t fully understand or even care about the technical details of the physics. These people within our secular minded word will gravitate toward a modern spiritual view that ontologically converges with the PEL/emergence theory philosophical implications.
And to make that point, I invite you to watch a harbinger of what is to come with many people finding value in this new spiritual/scientific view.
Below is a 13-minute talk about emergence theory philosophy done by Alan Saakyan. Enjoy!
– Klee