The great afterlife divide

The great afterlife divide. The ones who want to live forever by preserving their body or by being uploaded to the digital afterlife versus those who want to die because they believe the only way to meet God is accepting death. Extending one’s life by artificial means is just wrong to people who want to die and meet God or whatever their belief about the afterlife is like.

Is this the next great divide in the world? Who sticks around and who moves on to eternity? Well, it’s what I call taking the ultimate gamble when talking about moving to eternity and possibly meeting God. The ultimate gamble because for all we know, oblivion awaits us beyond the veil. Hence, the digital afterlife and cryopreservation options are so appealing. We control them, as imperfect as they are, while accepting death to follow our beliefs, religious or otherwise, means we are embarking on a journey to explore the Shakespearean ”undiscovered country.” We are giving up control over what happens after we die by taking the ultimate gamble and putting our fate in God’s hands, just as billions of people before us.

Now that I think of it, I’d love the first step of my afterlife adventure to be a tavern in a town somewhere in the forest. The kind of town you find in so many role-playing games. In that tavern, I’d meet all sorts of amazing and like-minded people. With our unique skills, sharp minds, and eclectic experiences, we’d embark on the exploration of endless existence.

Digital immortality is a real prospect. Five years from now, maybe ten years from now, maybe a century from now, who knows. Uploading one’s consciousness to some kind of digital afterlife might even make heaven irrelevant. Several problems arise: will the uploaded consciousness still be us or a copy? We still can’t decipher consciousness. Is consciousness an emergent property of the brain? Are our brains just tools for consciousness (soul, ego, whatever) to interact with the world?

”Believe” and ”blasphemy” is such an asinine approach. Please, stop.

How is the system controlling the digital afterlife going to know the difference between the original and the copy? Is this going to matter to the system controlling the digital afterlife? Who is going to control the digital afterlife? If AI, then how can we be sure artificial intelligence can create the proper digital afterlife for us humans and not a cartoonish AI distortion? The third dilemma, of course, is if it’s going to be possible to leave the digital afterlife when we want to. If, for example, a rogue AI fools people into believing it’s possible to leave but they don’t leave at all? There’s no telling what level of mind manipulation and perception manipulation that kind of rogue AI is going to have.

Cryopreservation. It’s a technological marvel but the whole process creeps me out. Blood is replaced with special fluid and people are frozen. Currently, there are around 500 human bodies stored in vats around the world. Indeed, only heads can be frozen, too. Anything for survival. What are the main concerns here? Well, the obvious concern is that, even if people can be unfrozen and brought back to life at some point in the future when their terminal illness can be cured, there’s no telling what kind of society these people are going to be walking (crawling?) into.

I’m also surprised and a bit perplexed no one seems to link cryopreservation and dangers of rogue AI together. Why wouldn’t some rogue AI fool people who are cryopreserved that they are awake and their illness – gone? All the while these people would be stuck in the digital afterlife, in some Matrix-like society, while thinking they are in the so-called real world.

We’re talking about the digital afterlife and cryopreservation (much less so but still) as options for the elites. What if the opposite is going to be true – that digital afterlife is going to be mandatory? Why not? There are religious fanatics, then why not digital afterlife fanatics. Atheists-materialists who see it as their duty to upload everyone to the digital afterlife, by stealth if need be, so our consciousness avoids oblivion?

As an aside, I don’t mean to disparage religious people. I deeply respect religious people who are often good, smart and resolute (both men and women, as women are sometimes not appreciated for their crucial role) and God is likely proud of their devotion. Their light shines in this dark world. But there’s a dramatic difference between devotion and fanaticism, even extremism.

Religious people, and I’m with them on this one, are never going to agree to be uploaded to some digital afterlife that could be controlled by some maniac, turning all afterlife denizens into puppets. Then again, if one suffers from extreme cognitive degeneration due to illness, that kind of gamble is likely the only way.

Now, if you have dissociative identity disorder, which personality is going to heaven, hmm?

Believing that AI is going to need our permission to put us in some sort of a digital afterlife is laughable. It’s concerning, indeed.

Maybe it’s going to be possible to engineer a digital soul. After all, consciousness is information encoded energetically. Would that soul survive death? Would it be offensive to God to mirror His actions so brazenly?

So many questions and concerns for religious scholars and others. Trials and tribulations, tests by the Lord, baptisms by fire, psychologically polishing the believers so they can shine (I mean reflect) like diamonds before God and avoid perdition.

The great afterlife divide might just loom large soon.

If humanity doesn’t blow itself up first, of course. Right now, we’re civilization type zero with ambitions to become type one on Kardashev scale. Civilization type one controls the weather, earthquakes, harvests hurricane energy; has a somewhat advanced space program and is truly planetary. Type II harvests the power of the Sun. Type III is galactic – and so on.