Robot Cultists Ready For Some Re-Branding

In the comments section of a piece in which transhumanoid luminary and "cosmic engineer" Giulio Prisco admits he is a Robot Cultist but then complains that I call him one, but then totally agrees he is one again anyway, some other Robot Cultists make some awkward efforts at some last ditch re-branding.

Mormon Transhumanist Lincoln Cannon declares, "If 'robot' is understood to mean creative and compassionate posthumanity then I worship robots." There is a fly in his ointment, however. "The problem is that almost no one understands 'robot' in that way," he gamely admits, somewhat deflated.

James Carroll tries to take a different tack. "All robots are not necessarily the cold, science-fiction, de-humanized kind of thing," he assures us. "After all, our current bodies already ARE Robots." Brilliant! Copy keeps failing to live up to the original? Claim the original IS the copy, and then the copy lives up to the original by definition! Wait, will anybody really fall for that? Whatever! C'mon, roll with this, we're brainstorming here, we're pitching ideas, we're being thought leaders!

If we are already robots, Carroll goes on to insist, then the REAL "question with regard to transhumanism is only about whether we [who are robots, recall –-d] can make them [also robots, but somehow different enough not to be us though there is no real difference --d] better or not [yes, indeed, robots better than the original us who he said were already just robots anyway in the last sentence, but that was the last sentence, stop living in the past, this is the FUTURE we're talking about, man! --d]." And about that REAL question, the question of whether "we" Robots will ever be able to make "them" Robots better than the Robots we already are, he adds: "I think that the answer to that question is remarkably obvious." Despite the actual evidence remarkably obviously being an infinitely creepy and dysfunctional mountain of landfill-destined FAIL, one suspects, being a Robot Cultist, he thinks what is remarkably obvious is indeed the opposite.

Prisco himself seems very enthused about this re-branding effort. "Of course I totally agree," he cheers Carroll on. "[A]s you say robots are not necessarily the cold, science-fiction, de-humanized kind of thing," not necessarily at all… only, you know, so far factually and stuff they are. So what's your point? Anyway: "[A]nd (especially) our current bodies already ARE Robots." Right. EVERYBODY knows THAT now. That was settled a whole paragraph ago. Presumably, this means sexual reproduction is already making new robots all the time, so it is hard to know why even Robot Cultists don't show pictures of squirming infant mammals when they are writing all their paeans to robots, but instead keep talking about and showing the same stiff plastic and dodgy metal mechanical artifacts everybody else in the world is talking about when they talk about robots. Weird, huh?

That Robots are actually "creative" and "compassionate" and "warm" and soon Soon SOON to be better Better BETTER "is evident to us, but many people still see robots as cold, metallic and de-humanized (even anti-human), and of course bioluddites use this in support of their positions." Damn those bioluddites and their dumb facts!

Later in the comments, Prisco adds: "It makes sense to assume that the universe is the fastest computer that can compute itself." You know, it's worth reading Robot Cultists even if for no other reason than that they can be counted on to say things like this on a fairly regular basis. He goes on, "[T]he existence of a faster-than-the-universe computer would lead to logical contradictions. This 'solves' the Problem of Evil, because God is unable to predict with complete accuracy that certain events would lead to, say, Auschwitz and can only work with incomplete resources and information, like us." Well, it's certainly a relief to find that little pickle solved at last, isn't it? And if this ends up failing "to make sense" to enough people for it to become a problem, too, well, hell, there's always time for a little re-branding!