My thoughts on that subject, at TCS.

How bitterly disappointed liberal Catholics would be in the United States and Europe to see a "hardliner" forever Pope.

Paul,

I have a feeling that, in that case, the Episcopal Church might see a large influx of members...

I wouldn't worry about achieving clinical immortality in the next couple dozen years. I am sure there are a couple more things that we will die from instead of heart attack and cancer if we get those beat. But 50 more ailments cured and there might not be any more left! It reminds me of Douglas Adams's _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_.

Clinical immortality will make AARP more powerful at first. Generational thinking will get sclerosis worse than AIG's recently departed chairman. Unless there is more turnover, the "youth" will violently overthrow the system after no more than a few hundred years. Therefore it might be worth imposing some kind of acuity standards on Supreme Court justices after they hit 100.

It is a little hard for me to distinguish an artificial brain replacement for an upload to a computer, so maybe a Vernor-Vinge-style technological singularity will occur right around the time we hit clinical immortality.

According to the "Prophecies of Malachy," the present Pope is the next to last one.

Now that's spooky.

According to the "Prophecies of Malachy," the present Pope is the next to last one.

I wonder if the Biblical prophecies were foreseeing the Singularity...?

A Pope who lives long need not remain inflexible regarding issues and doctrine.

We become conservative as we age, of course. But is that a reaction to our impending demise? If you knew that you could live far longer than (say) 120 how might your outlook change?

I think it would, could, change slowly. To imagine the Pontif would remain an inflexible reactionary is not very credible.

If by modernity you mean technological advances, then I don't see how the Catholic Church has ever been "a bulwark against" it.

After all, it was the Church that founded universities and created the very intellectual framework that made scientific research an independent discipline from theology.

What the Church has resisted is the immoral use of technology - such as the creation of the H-bomb or an artificial plague weaponized into a WMD, not the fact that atomic reactors can be invented or biology can be improved upon.

And all the hot-button issues revolving around sex aren't terribly modern either inasmuch as the Roman Empire had legalized contraception, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and homosexuality. Even so, the infant Church was "against" such things not because they were new for those times, but because the Church believed they were wrong. And if they were wrong, and human nature hasn't changed, then they are still wrong. Having jet planes and cell phones don't make today's Europeans a different species than the ancient Europeans.

The Church continues to support scientific enquiry all the time. Its sole proviso is that technology ought to serve the best interests of humanity, not merely become a search for what is simply possible because not every invention should be developed, especially if it would lead to widespread harm.

When "environmentalists" insist on doing away with this or that chemical, they're not called backward or standing against modernity...but if the Church says certain chemicals ought not be produced, the hue and cry is raised that the Church is anti-science, standing against modernity, when in reality the Church is the only coherently humanitarian voice for not just the current generation (the modern), but the ones to come- who won't arrive at all if "modernity" means science without moral safeguards or qualms.

I wonder if the Biblical prophecies were foreseeing the Singularity...?

I've never heard of the "Prophecies of Malachy," but I've often wondered whether the religious impulse was a longing for the Singularity. As you pointed out in your post, fear of death (or perhaps more charitably - dealing with death) has motivated the faithful.

We think of ourselves as incomplete in many ways. We are smart enough to realize and become dissatisfied with our limits - which could be lifespan, intelligence, isolation, or whatever.

All of which is Singularity related.

Well, just look at the events described in the Book of Revelation: the combination of the Rapture, seven years of domination, death, and destruction under the Anti-Christ, and the subsequent banishment of all things evil when God does his thing. That fits "singularity" in the sense I think you mean, Stephen.

Rand, in the future, I think that institutions that don't replace the top leadership every so often will become discredited. I suspect that the collective membership of the Karl Hallowell Admiration Society will continue to support my indefinite possibly infinite tenure as supreme leader, but who wants a church, country, or court with the same leadership century after century?

> wonder if the Biblical prophecies were foreseeing the Singularity...?

> I've never heard of the "Prophecies of Malachy," but I've often wondered whether the religious impulse was a longing for the Singularity.

Mostly, I've heard about the "Malarkey Prophecies". Perhaps the believers in technology and science will be uplifted in rapture while the others stay behind and die. But I do suspect that the visions of future singularity spring from the same source and impinge on the copyrite of the Biblical narative.

The only thing certainly true is that neither will come to pass in any way shape or form that looks recognizable. Consider just uploading yourselve if it becomes possible. If you stay the same, you'll simply run out of capacity and cycles to review your past and you'll also become obsolete and have your cycles cannibalized. So, uploadees will be forced to continually rewire and expand their brain, grow with the tide.

In either of these scenarios, the "you" will not survive, not even 1000 years. Something will live on but it will soon have a measure zero overlap with the "you" you were. Thus, "death" is inevitable even as the greater flow of life moves on leaving us in exactly the position we are in today -- a part and contributer to LIFE, but a still just a temporary ripple in the stream of time.

To paraphrase the 60s: "The rapture will not be televised", but it will be a nifty computer game for the uploaded.

Gary