Turing Church newsletter #4
Greetings to our 500 followers! This is Giulio Prisco, editor of Turing Church. Reaching 500 followers is an important milestone.
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. The narrator is “Artificial Friend” (AF) Klara, an Artificial Intelligence who is very different from humans (the differences gradually emerge in the story), but perhaps more human and much nicer than us.
Renowned astrophysicist Avi Loeb tells the ʻOumuamua story in his book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” (2021). Loeb’s book is a masterpiece of popular science writing. Besides explaining in detail, and very persuasively, why he thinks ʻOumuamua is an alien artifact, Loeb criticizes the hostility that his hypothesis has found in the scientific community. He does so calmly and reasonably, but forcefully. See my review titled “Bet on the stars: ‘Oumuamua’s Wager.”
All fans (and critics) of Zoltan Istvan’s “The Transhumanist Wager” will want to read “At Any Cost: A Guide to The Transhumanist Wager and the Ideas of Zoltan Istvan” (2021), by Chris Armstrong. Chris has done a wonderful job at analyzing and clarifying many aspects of the novel. I especially appreciated the passages on spirituality. Chris shows that Zoltan is not entirely closed to spirituality or even religion — an impression that many readers had. In Zoltan there’s less of Jethro Knights than a first-time reader of the novel might suspect, and more of Zoe Bach.
Recently published in Turing Church
Bet on the stars: ‘Oumuamua’s Wager
Following Avi Loeb, I “dare to wager that ‘Oumuamua was a piece of advanced extraterrestrial technology.” I bet on the stars.
Oh Blessed Simulators, deliver science from the thought police
That stupid word again. “Pseudoscience.” Oh Blessed Simulators, please deliver us from thought cops and control & cancel freaks.
Downward, backward, teleological causation and divine action
Nature (and/or God) combines all forms of causation (e.g. efficient, backward efficient, downward, teleological) in one package.
Fake/real free will and consciousness in cellular automata universes
There’s plenty of room for free will and active consciousness in digital universes built on probabilistic cellular automata.
Black hole adventures in new book by Dr. Abhas Mitra
With every page the black hole adventure unfolds and the reader is compelled to move on to the next.
A conversation with Cometan: Astronism, Cosmism & Humanity’s Space Salvation
I had a nice long Zoom chat with Cometan, the founder of Astronism, on spaceflight, metaphysics, religion, and our cosmic destiny.
Downward causation in simple probabilistic cellular automata
Probabilistic cellular automata let us investigate, intuitively and mathematically, simple models of downward (top-down) causation.
Moving Turing Church to Discord, exploring decentralized Scuttlebutt
I’ll gradually move Turing Church’s group from Facebook to Discord. I’m also exploring the decentralized Scuttlebutt for future use.
Video: Zusammenfassung von “Tales of the Turing Church,” Einleitung
Thomas Ruhm has produced this video with a summary of the introduction of my book “Tales of the Turing Church” (in German).
Turing Church meeting, January 17, 2021
I recorded the first Turing Church meeting (Discord), on January 17, 2021.
Turing Church meetings (Discord)
I will host regular Turing Church meetings using the Turing Church Discord server, Voice/Video chat channel.
Russian cosmism and Western transhumanism: Friends or foes?
Perhaps there’s more tension between Russian cosmism and contemporary Western transhumanism than appears at a first glance.
In support and praise of psi research
I stand for the right of scientists to do psi research, and the right of the public to be informed, against scientific cancel culture.
Talk (video): Yet another spaceflight manifesto
Video of my AZIMUTH talk on spaceflight today and tomorrow, politics, culture, our bright future among the stars, and our cosmic destiny.
The cover picture is a stylized image of the evolution of the Life pattern in Turing Church’s logo, with a background of stars. The pattern leaves a permanent memory wake behind, a never ending stairway to infinity that looks like a DNA helix.
The book “Tales of the Turing Church: Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology” (2020), by Giulio Prisco, is available for readers to buy on Amazon (Kindle | paperback).
Cover picture background from Wikimedia Commons.
