JASON SILVA: So we're gonna answer some questions from Twitter, fellow Twitter followers.
So ThyJojo asks, "Do you think that some of the predictions regarding the time-frame for
the singularity are a little too optimistic?"
You know what?
I don't.
And that's because of the exponential nature of the progress that we're making.
See it only seems optimistic to our linear brains and our way of projecting things in
a linear fashion.
So yeah, of course it sounds impossible that in 25 or 30 years we're gonna be merging with
our computers because that sounds like it'll take a thousand years!
But exponential growth again is counter-intuitive so for that reason I don't think that those..that
people are too optimistic.
I think that we're all going to be pleasantly surprised.
B_Shay asks, "How will our ideas on existence chance during the decades approaching the
singularity?"
We used to give ourselves a special position in the cosmos and then science started getting
rid of that cloak of arrogance and we increasingly started to feel less and less significant.
We're just a bleep suspended in a sunbeam, you know, as Carl Sagan says in Pale Blue
Dot.
So we've moved away from feeling that we matter into this increasingly existential crisis
of thinking we're nothing but a grain of sand in a grain of sand in a grain of sand and
yet the increasing power that we have to transform our world, you know, for example just the
island of Manhattan.
The topography of Manhattan is shaped more by the mind and by commerce and by culture
and economics than it is by geology.
So mind over matter is becoming increasingly real.
We are terraforming the planet.
We are changing the rules and reprogramming biology.
We are infusing intelligence into matter with nanotech.
So I think these things all of a sudden bring us back into focus and saying that it turns
out that we do matter after all and I think that's one thing that's gonna change about
how we see ourselves.
JoeyP03 asks, "I am not religious, but I feel that man will always be around to create his
own heaven or hell.
How would you be able to defer?"
No I think that's true.
Technology can extend our best attributes or our worst qualities and I think we can
always create our heaven and our hell.
I can't disagree with that.
TylerGGreen asks, "Will women still need men in the future?"
Look, I don't know.
I think there's going to be all new ways in which lovers can intermingle in the future.
I mean we have sex to try to become one but there's still that problem of friction but
like maybe with like when we connect our neural patterns together we might be able to become
each other during sex.
It'll be like greater than any tantric shamanic ecstasy you've ever had.
I mean imagine becoming your beloved in a moment of losing yourself completely.
I mean, who knows?
We might be able to induce that in ourselves without needing anybody so I dunno.
You can go off on any direction with that one.
Sinxsinx asks, "Jason, what kind of role, if any, do you think psychedelics will play
post-singularity?"
Wow, well, you know, I think that psychedelics were..are..uniquely valuable to the human
experience in that they can pull people our of context so dramatically that they can gawk
in amazement at the ubiquitous everyday wonders they're culturally disposed to ignore, to
quote Tom Robbins.
And I think their ability to sling-shot us into radical different modes of perception
can be quite useful for couples therapy, for self-reflection, for out-of-the-box creative
thinking, etc. etc.
And I think that psychedelic experience will definitely inform our post-singularity consciousness
because a lot of our consciousness will be increasingly mind-manifesting, you know.
We will think our worlds increasingly into existence which is the very hallmark of the
mind-manifesting nature of psychedelic experience.
So, yes.
Hiatuz asks, "Any idea at what point will religious fanatics go outside their box and
see the world for what it really is?"
Well, you know, religion is a technology too.
It was a way to keep people in line, to assuage their fear of death, to provide them a narrative
and a moral compass.
I mean, there was a time when you could appreciate the technology behind religion, but it also
has been so corrupted and so politicized and used to justify heinous terrorism and what
not and I think people cling to religion out of fear, fear of change, fear of the unknown.
And I think that we need to provide better narrative alternatives, you know, to religion,
you know, there are better ways to tell stories and to teach people how to live moral lives.
We don't need to say that God's going to punish them if they don't, you know.
So I think, yeah, I think we'll wake people up.
Good questions.