Uploading to black holes: The transcension hypothesis

Giulio Prisco
Turing Church
Published in
4 min readOct 29, 2020

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I have been revisiting the transcension hypothesis proposed by John Smart, and considering parallels with my own ideas [*].

According to the transcension hypothesis, advanced civilizations in the universe learn to control space, time, energy, and matter (STEM) at increasingly small scales and high densities. Advanced civilizations migrate to these “inner spaces” and eventually to black holes, which are ultimate high density, high performance substrates for intelligent life.

See Smart’s paper “The transcension hypothesis: sufficiently advanced civilizations invariably leave our universe, and implications for METI and SETI” (Acta Astronautica, 2012). See also Smart’s book chapter “Evo Devo Universe? A Framework for Speculations on Cosmic Culture” in “Cosmos & Culture” (2009), and Clément Vidal’s book “The Beginning and the End: The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective” (2014).

Smart’s response to the Fermi paradox is that we don’t see ultra-advanced alien civilizations because they’re confined inside black holes. “If the transcension hypothesis is correct, inner space, not outer space, is the final frontier for universal intelligence,” he says. “Our destiny is density.”

Of course, migrating to black holes (or better, uploading to black holes) entails leaving organic bodies behind and becoming what Robert Freitas called gravitational beings. According to Freitas, gravitational beings “could be the most efficient creatures in the universe.”

The late lamented John Barrow classified advanced civilizations by their ability to control STEM scales and densities all the way down to the Planck scale, explains Vidal.

“What are the densest objects in the universe? Black holes. They are fascinating attractors, not only because of their staggering gravitational field but also because they offer the greatest potential for an intelligence.”

This short outline doesn’t do justice to the transcension hypothesis. If you want to know more, please read the detailed and totally fascinating material in the references above.

In a recent paper titled “Black Holes as Brains” (2018), Gia Dvali considers “the potential similarities between the underlying mechanisms of the enhanced memory storage capacity in black holes and in brain networks” and “an artificial quantum neural network based on gravity-like synaptic connections.” Is this preliminary transcension research?

One catch is that, once you are inside a black hole, you can’t get out (as far as current physics can tell). But Smart’s advanced civilizations observe the universe at ultra-high resolution, meet and merge with their peers in black hole fusion events, and eventually give birth to new universes.

I totally agree with the core of Smart’s hypothesis: Advanced civilizations learn to control inner spaces, and eventually upload to the fabric of deep reality.

However, I have some reservations on the idea that “inner space, not outer space, is the final frontier” that advanced civilizations explore and settle. In our more and more timid, defeatist, locked-down culture, I prefer not to promote the idea that inner space is more important than outer space. I prefer to think that advanced civilizations advance toward both the inner and outer space frontiers, and make this universe a better place.

Advancing civilizations like ours must go to the stars and experiment with black holes. Only experimental physics in the extreme conditions near a black hole can produce the detailed understanding of quantum gravity and deep reality needed for transcension technology.

I’m persuaded that, regardless of how advanced science is at any given moment, engaging with physical reality always provides unexpected surprises that force the development of new science. This implies that any civilization hiding in a black hole is missing out a lot of fun, knowledge, and new options.

Uploading to black holes is a good starting point, but perhaps ultra-advanced intelligent beings don’t stop there. Perhaps they go on and explore deep reality underneath black holes and quantum gravity as we currently understand these things, perhaps in a fractal process without end [*].

Scientists are suggesting that quantum fields can be thought of as deep neural networks that memorize information and learn [*], and exploring parallels between deep reality, whatever that is, and neural networks.

Contemporary physics suggests that every pixel of spacetime is non-locally connected to every other pixel of spacetime through deep reality. If so, inner space and outer space blend into each other.

My response to the Fermi paradox is that we don’t know enough yet. Perhaps some advanced entities are benevolently smiling at us right here, right now. I think I just saw one in the corner of my eye, but when I turned my head nothing was there.

[*] My book “Tales of the Turing Church: Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology” is available for readers to buy on Amazon (Kindle | paperback).

Please buy my book, and/or donate to support other Turing Church projects.

Cover picture from Wikimedia Commons, picture from Pixabay.

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Writer, futurist, sometime philosopher. Author of “Tales of the Turing Church” and “Futurist spaceflight meditations.”