Kayla: Fyodorov defined the common task as regulating the forces of nature to defeat death and bring ancestors back to life so we can all achieve a utopian society and govern the universe. So, like, the cosmism part of cosmism, of russian cosmism, kind of grows out of this defeat of death. Like, if we elevate ourselves to this, like, to this technological status of being able to defeat death, we also have the capability to, like, go out and colonize the universe. Okay, today is kind of a weird episode of culture. Just weird. I'm Kayla, by the way. I'm a tv writer. I write tv, and I also watch a lot of tv. And I also do this.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Who are you?
Chris: I'm Chris. I do this as well. And I guess my background is in game design and data analytics.
Kayla: The perfect people to be talking about cults. Welcome back to the podcast again, where we talk about cults. Also talk about just weirds. If you'd like to support our show, you can head over to patreon.com culturgesweird. And if you'd like to talk more about the cults or the weirds, you can find us on discord linked in the show notes.
Chris: You know, I like what they say. I like what Michael Hobbs says on his shows, where it's like, if you like to support the show, you're already doing that by listening.
Kayla: That's true.
Chris: I like that he starts with that. I think that's nice.
Kayla: Let's just steal from other podcasters.
Chris: That's all we. All we do is steal. Great artists steal.
Kayla: Before we hop into the show proper, we just want to say one quick, I guess, mia culpa.
Chris: Oopsie.
Kayla: Do a little oopsie in season six, episode 14. So episode 14 of this season, I don't know why it's recursively probably cut it. The episode is titled the Future of Humanity TESCREAL. It was one of our interview episodes with Doctor Emile Torres. In our discussion, you referenced a columnist named Mary Harrington to talk about how birth control is one of those things where we see a widening income gap between countries that have easy access to birth control versus countries that do not have access to birth control. And that was a point.
Chris: Or people. Or people. Yeah, it was sort of in response to what Emil was talking about regarding the idea of upgrading inequality. Like, when we get a new technology, does that make inequality better or worse? And the contention, the sort of the supporting point there was, I had seen this TikTok with this person who was saying that, hey, we already have an example of that with a transhumanist technology, birth control in her estimation. And that sort of was a point in favor because that also upgraded inequality, quote, unquote.
Kayla: And so while we thought this was an interesting point on, like, how transhumanism is already here and how, you know, the ways it might affect our future, we've done a little more research into Mary Harrington's journalistic voice, and I should.
Chris: Not have quoted her on the show.
Kayla: The kinds of things that she's reporting on and the stance that she's reporting from, and we find her stance to be particularly anti trans and not. She's not necessarily somebody that we would be quoting on the show.
Chris: Otherwise we're going, it's not just Andy Strahm.
Kayla: There's a lot of stuff going on. She's not somebody that we would really want to.
Chris: She has a whole little package platform on the show, and, like, the people that she credulously talks to and the organizations that she gets platformed by, I.
Kayla: Forgot that she did an interview with the Epoch Times.
Chris: Yeah, that's what I'm kind of dancing around.
Kayla: We will be probably leaving.
Chris: Yeah, we'll leave it in and we'll maybe put, like, a little blurb before that to be like, hey, this point might still be okay, but, you know, maybe not because this person's not good.
Kayla: But for anybody who has already listened to the episode and wasn't planning on going back, we wanted to make sure to drop this little bit of information in here so we didn't, you know, platform somebody that we wouldn't have wanted to platform otherwise.
Chris: And as the heartbreaking meme tells us, even the most odious people can still be right twice a day. But it's worth pointing all of this out because it makes it. It pushes her way further out of the trust network.
Kayla: Oh, yeah.
Chris: So it calls into question, like, I don't know, like what she said, that the data supports the fact that birth control exacerbated inequality. I don't know that's true. Now I would have to. I would have to look in a bunch of different places that aren't her right. To confirm that cute little point.
Kayla: Don't know if it stands. All right, back to the episode. Why did I say that this is a weird episode, and we need another word besides weird? Because every episode is weird because this is cult or just weird.
Chris: Even the cult episodes are weird. Yeah, it's more like cult or cult and weird, right.
Kayla: This is anomalous episode, and that's because it's kind of two episodes, but not in a, like, part one, part two. Just in a like. We're gonna do two episodes in one.
Chris: Oh.
Kayla: Because if you remember from last week, we're tackling cosmism, but there's kind of, like two cosmisms, and they're both. There's two different kinds of cosmisms, but they're both kind of tied up in this big, weird, like, TESCREAL cryonics, life extension futurist bundle that we've got going.
Chris: So is this like one of those situations where when you're pregnant with twins and then one twin, like, consumes the other one or whatever, and then they have DNA from two entirely different people? Is that like, this episode? Is that chimera, I think it's called?
Kayla: I don't know. Hold that question and answer it yourself when we're done.
Chris: Okay, that was totally, like, a legitimate question. In good faith, too.
Kayla: Okay, let's start with a little game. I'm going to make a series of statements without knowing anything. You are going to tell me if you think I'm talking about russian cosmism.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Or modern cosmism. Or just cosmism.
Chris: Okay, so russian cosmism would be. Sounds older than modern because there's a modern.
Kayla: I don't have the word modern.
Chris: Ok. Ok, sure. Yeah, let's do it.
Kayla: Let's start with an easy one. This philosophy was founded by Nikolai Fyodorov.
Chris: That's russian cosmicism.
Kayla: That is russian cosmism. This philosophy grew out. This is a new question. This philosophy grew out of the Ekstropian movement and has roots in the singularity movement and shares DNA with long termism.
Chris: That's modern. Condom. I feel like I know some of this. I feel like I'm cheating based on the fact that I already.
Kayla: Okay, this is just a little gimmick. You're right. That's cosmism. Modern cosmism. New question. Proponents of this philosophy popularized the term artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
Chris: Modern.
Kayla: Correct.
Chris: Wait, so it was cosmists that introduced AGI as a term.
Kayla: Correct. Or popularized it?
Chris: Popularized it. Okay.
Kayla: The founder of this philosophy developed an idea called humankind's common task, which seeks to defeat death.
Chris: I'm gonna go with that. Sounds russian to me.
Kayla: You're right.
Chris: I.
Kayla: Okay, that sounds russian to me.
Chris: It was the backwards r. This philosophy.
Kayla: Promotes ancestor worship and discourages romantic relationships.
Chris: Oh, what? Jedi?
Kayla: It's the Jedi. I threw that in there.
Chris: Russian cosmism.
Kayla: Correct.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And I should say that. I should say more like a philosopher in russian cosmism. It's not necessarily all russian cosmism, but.
Chris: Hashtag, not all russian cosmists.
Kayla: Exactly. The founder of this philosophy purports that humans will develop scientific future magic much beyond our current understanding and imagination.
Chris: Cool. Yeah, that sounds like an Arthur C. Clarke thing. Russ, Russian.
Kayla: Oh, I'm sorry. I knew it.
Chris: I knew that was the one you're gonna like.
Kayla: That's a modern cosmos thing.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Okay, two more.
Chris: All right.
Kayla: This philosophy is considered to have birthed transhumanism and is one of its early iterations.
Chris: Okay, well, based on the timeline, that's russian cosmism.
Kayla: Correct. Last question. This philosophy is considered to have been birthed by transhumanism. And is its next iteration modern cosmism? Correct. Okay, does this help separate these two out a little bit?
Chris: Yeah. So it's like cosmism is the grandfather. Sorry. Russian cosmism, grandfather, transhumanism, father and modern cosmism, son, one birth the other, but then rebirthed back into cosmos.
Kayla: I wish there was a way to make, like, a holy trinity comparison, but no, it's that. You're right.
Chris: No, because it's a timeline.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: If there's one thing I want listeners to walk away from this episode with, it's this. Russian cosmism is the precursor to transhumanism, which is the precursor to modern cosmism. It's a pretty clear and steady continuum. Okay, but let's break things down a little further. First, russian cosmism.
Chris: So just to be clear, this is the sea in tesreal. When we did those TESCREAL interviews, the sea.
Kayla: The sea in tescreal is specifically modern cosmos, not russian cosmism. However, modern cosmism doesn't exist without russian cosmism, even though they're different ish.
Chris: So should it be Rc TESCREAL?
Kayla: No, because the TESCREAL bundle. These people are nothing. Russian cosmists. They're not, like, 18th century russian philosophers.
Chris: So should it be Rick Tescriel?
Kayla: I don't think so.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: I don't think so.
Chris: Should we just add every letter to it?
Kayla: It's just gonna be the Alphabet. Yeah, it's just the Alphabet. Interestingly, russian cosmism is a good place to start here because it's a direct jumping off point from our last three episode arc about the church of perpetual life. Because if you remember, that church, which was founded by buy and for life extension enthusiasts, had two prophets, Arthur C. Clarke, who you already mentioned, and russian philosopher. From our questions up top, Nikolai Fyodorov.
Chris: So one of their two prophets is the father of russian cosmism.
Kayla: Correct. Wild Fyodorov, like you said, father of russian cosmism. His writings and teachings inspired a number of folks in the test krill bundle, including that congregation. But let's get into who he was and what he was doing.
Chris: Oh, boy.
Kayla: I like him.
Chris: You like him?
Kayla: I like him.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Nothing wrong. I mean, I'm sure there's stuff wrong.
Chris: Yeah, there's always something wrong.
Kayla: If he had a twitter, I don't think it would have been a good place. However, what we do know, he's got some interesting things. Russian cosmism emerged as a movement in Russia, generally around, like, the 19 hundreds. Like Fyodorov lived. He was born in 1829. We'll get to that. It's a broad philosophy with a number of representatives outside of Fyodorov, but he's largely considered the most influential. It's a philosophical, spiritual, cultural and scientific movement combining religion, ethics, history, evolution, the origins of existence, and the future of the universe and humanity.
Chris: Yeah, you always gotta get all this stuff.
Kayla: It's the Alphabet.
Chris: It's gotta be everything. You know, it's like when we did theosophy. You know, it's like everything all at once, all the time.
Kayla: It's also a bit syncretic in that it draws from eastern and western philosophical traditions, but uniquely, it also draws from the russian orthodox church.
Chris: Really?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: That does sound interesting. I like their onion domes.
Kayla: Yeah, me, too. While there are a number of thinkers, writers, scientists and artists that make up this movement, just focusing on Fyodorov for a moment, because he's, you know, he's the prophet, he's the father, he's the. He's everything we want. When we're talking about the history of a movement, he is referred to by some as the Socrates of Moscow.
Chris: Socrates of Moscow. That's a good title.
Kayla: He had a lot to say about philosophy, art, futurism, religion, and all the things that would blossom into transhumanism, he was really big into his idea of humankind's common task, which we'll define a little more deeply, but essentially, it's defeating death. And he really wanted to resurrect people.
Chris: Like, actually bring back from the dead.
Kayla: Wanted to resurrect everyone who has ever died.
Chris: That doesn't sound as scientific as some of the other things that.
Kayla: He's not a scientist, he's a philosopher.
Chris: Okay. Okay. I also. If he posits that the common task of mankind is defeating death, totally understand why? That he would be a prophet in the church. Perpetual life.
Kayla: Yes. A quote from him. We can become immortal and godlike through rational efforts, and their moral obligation is to create a heaven to be shared by all who ever lived. He wanted to resurrect everyone.
Chris: That sounds nice, but how?
Kayla: Well, we haven't done it yet. So, Fyodorov was born in 1829, like I mentioned, in the village of Kliuchi in what is now Russia. While he was an illegitimate child, his mother was of lower class nobility, and that granted him access to education until about 1851, when his trust fund essentially ran out. He became a teacher for many years and eventually a museum librarian. And he was one of the first librarians there to systematically catalog the books, which I just. Like, what were they doing before that? Thank God for Fyodorov to be like. Here's a system for categorizing books.
Chris: Yeah. Had Dewey decimal been born yet?
Kayla: I don't think so. I don't know. I don't think so. He had his name, something.
Chris: Dewey.
Kayla: His name wasn't Dewey Decimal.
Chris: I think Decimal was the.
Kayla: No, his name was Dewey Decimal.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Kayla: He also held a weekly intellectual discussion club, naturally.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. This is so, like, what is with Russians, man? This is exactly like Ayn Rand.
Kayla: Oh, yeah, well, no, this part isn't. He was an ascetic.
Chris: Oh. Never mind.
Kayla: Owned little property, gifted most of his pay to others. Refused.
Chris: No, that is very not randian.
Kayla: Refused raises and walked everywhere he went.
Chris: Wow.
Kayla: He refused any photographs or portraits, so the few, like, painted images of his likeness were made in secret. Any drugs?
Chris: Why did he refuse?
Kayla: I think he thought. This is me speculating. I think he thought it was narcissistic individual. He was against the idea of books and ideas as property, and so therefore, he never published anything while he was alive. He died in 1903 in a poor house. Was buried at the Saro monastery, which is the coolest.
Chris: Sorry, there's. What is it called? The sorrow monastery.
Kayla: The sorrow monastery. Extremely cool. Again, unpublished and poor. His grave was eventually destroyed in a mass grave desecration practice carried out by the Soviets. Eventually. While Fyodorov never published his writings while he was alive, they were published posthumously, which obviously helped bring him to a more widespread audience outside of his weekly discussion group. He was a big utopia guy, so his vision for the future included the eventual perfection of humanity as individuals, and that included things like immortal lifespans, space colonization, and then again, the resurrection of the dead.
Chris: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. We've mostly been talking about them not wanting to die. But it's called cosmism. So is the centerpiece like, that transhumanist, I don't want to die bit, or is the centerpiece, let's go into space for Fyodorov.
Kayla: It's the resurrection thing.
Chris: The resurrection.
Kayla: Defeating death and resurrecting everybody.
Chris: Why is it called cosmism? Why isn't it called resurrectionism?
Kayla: And these beliefs kind of go hand in hand. Okay, we'll answer some of these questions along the way, but a lot of the folks who were interested in russian cosmism or contributed to russian cosmism had these kind of. They were, like, early TESCREALists. They had these overlapping Venn diagram beliefs. So some guys were more like, cool, let's go to Mars. And some guys were more like, cool, let's defeat death.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: The resurrection thing kind of kept tripping me up because it felt so specific.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: But I think it ultimately ties back to what can be described as anti individualist stance adopted by Fyodorov.
Chris: Anti individualist. To resurrect people. Why? What is hedgest?
Kayla: He felt individualism, by definition or by necessity, made other people expendable in favor of the individual. Remember, this guy was a proponent of ancestor worship. So to him, people's genealogical relationships were extremely important to their place in the world. Essentially, he was saying, you did not just fall out of a coconut tree and you existed in the context of all in which you live. And what came before you. That was his thing.
Chris: Kayla, let's not get political here, okay?
Kayla: Like, your place in the world, in history, in society, is directly tied to your genealogical lineage. So, like, if the people alive right now or alive whenever immortality is achieved, if they get to live forever, it's philosophically unsound to not also try and resurrect the dead and grant them immortal life. We cannot say we've defeated death until death has not affected anyone. It's, like, only half of the equation. If the people who are alive right now never die, that's not fully completing humankind's common task.
Chris: Right. Okay. I both understand that and think that it's a little bit crazy.
Kayla: Yeah, I don't think that's wrong.
Chris: I get the logic of, like, well, no. Defeating death means defeating all death, not just some death. That sounds logical, but also, holy shit. And again, totally impossible. But, man, if you could bring back, like, Alexander the great and Jesus and Genghis Khan, even just a regular God, we could all do the thing where it's like, who would you have at a dinner party. That'd be amazing.
Kayla: I also think it's.
Chris: Capitalism would absolutely eat all of those historical figures for lunch.
Kayla: Well, it was not a capitalist society that he was living in.
Chris: Oh, right.
Kayla: So maybe he had a better view of it.
Chris: I don't know. No, he was living in Tsarist Russia.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: I don't know if that's better.
Kayla: Yeah, that's true. I also think that there's something kind of like. Again, philosophy is not a hard science, and there's some poetry in it, and it's something that's very poetic to me. And it reminds me of the Marconi project or Marconi belief, the guy who invented the radio. Forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, but I. And again, this isn't philosophy. This is, like, this guy should have been, you know, really thinking logically. But alas, sometimes poetry creeps in. He had a whole thing of, like, sound never actually, like, stops. It just fades to a level that is, like, too quiet to be perceived. And that theoretically, we could invent, like, a machine or something that could pick up ancient, essentially ancient sounds.
Chris: Like, if you built a receiver powerful enough, you could hear ancient sounds.
Kayla: And he was really big on. He wanted to hear Jesus sermon on the mount.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: And to me, that's something very, like, I don't think that's true, but it's very, like, poetically beautiful.
Chris: Oh, yeah. It's a really beautiful belief to have.
Kayla: Yeah, I kind of think that of this.
Chris: Yeah, I see the analogy there mainly for the dinner party, which you'd have to subscribe to the dinner party app on your iOS device. And then what I could do is.
Kayla: Strangely, or maybe actually not strangely, he was a pro religion guy, and he viewed his beliefs as a true expression of Christianity, particularly his advocacy of humankind's common task. He was like, this is the right way to be a Christian.
Chris: I mean, Jesus stuff sometimes does talk about defeating death. Like his sacrifice.
Kayla: He did it.
Chris: He did it was to defeat death for mankind. So I can see that's, like.
Kayla: The crux of being Christiane is that you don't die.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: To expand on his beliefs a little bit, like, Fedorov defined the common task as regulating the forces of nature to defeat death and bring ancestors back to life so we can all achieve a utopian society and govern the universe. So, like, the cosmism part of cosmism, of russian cosmism, kind of grows out of this defeat of death. Like, if we elevate ourselves to this. Like, to this technological status of being able to defeat death. We also have the capability to go out and colonize the universe.
Chris: We're gonna have to, because it's gonna get crowded if we do that.
Kayla: To him. This was not just the greatest goal of science, but a cause that could unite everyone on earth, regardless of their nationalities, differences, class disparities, et cetera. He was essentially that guy in watchmen. Spoilers for watchmen. I get to spoil watchmen.
Chris: Yeah, I think the statute of limitations is out on watchmen, but spoilers for watchmen. It's funny you said cause, and I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be funny if it was causism?
Kayla: It was actually spelled differently.
Chris: C a u s e. Cause.
Kayla: He should have spelled it like that. He viewed the existence of death as an indicator of humanity's imperfection and the root cause of evil. And he also viewed humanity as the pinnacle of evolution. As evolution sought to increase intelligence, and for mankind to evolve into masters of the universe, we would need to increase our intelligence to achieve the common task. So in order to get smirt enough to be able to resurrect everyone, we'd have to become cyborgs.
Chris: Did he use the word evolution? Cause. Wasn't this right around when evolution was being posited as a thing?
Kayla: I think he did.
Chris: Interesting.
Kayla: I can learn.
Chris: I wonder what the timeline is specifically between him and Darwin.
Kayla: Me? Look. Yeah, I just double checked, and Feodorov specifically used the term evolution. He said that the human evolutionary process, or the evolutionary process, is about increasing our intelligence.
Chris: Okay. While you were looking that up, I also looked up the published date on the origin of species, and it was November 24, 1859. So I guess if we're talking, like, late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, when Fyodorov Washington, you know, publishing all his stuff, then, yeah, that tracks with the timeline. But it would have been, like, super fresh.
Kayla: I mean, he was on top of his stuff. He knows what he was doing.
Chris: He was a fresh dude.
Kayla: I also think it's interesting that he views death as indicating humanity's imperfection and the root of evil cause. That, to me, kind of speaks to terror management theory kind of stuff.
Chris: Like, absolutely.
Kayla: If humans are bad, it's because we're scared of dying.
Chris: Absolutely. I think that is a very particular belief. I don't think. I don't share that belief, but I think it fits very neatly within terror management theory. Yeah.
Kayla: So what does this have to do with transhumanism? It's easy to see the roots of something like you already mentioned. Life extension. Bill Flunes church. But what about becoming cyborgs and uploading to the cloud and having robot bodies? And like, I just mentioned that, yes, that is exactly what he advocated to achieve his common task. He believed that humans needed to adapt the power of technology to overcome the inherent weakness of the human mind and body.
Chris: So what was the technology back then that he was, because, like, computers were like 80 years away, like a boat.
Kayla: I don't know.
Chris: What was he gonna upload his mind to?
Kayla: I don't think he was, he definitely didn't say, like, upload your mind. But he was like pro technology guy and human. I think he saw the connection between humans and our technology are like, so symbiotic and they make our technology makes us separate from animals and is like grows with our intelligence or our evolution or whatever you want to say. And so I think that he could, you know, even if he doesn't have the Internet, he can see things like, I don't know, what's the technology they had back then?
Chris: Trains.
Kayla: He could see like, yeah, trains.
Chris: No, I think.
Kayla: And he could be like, you could merge with a train and go extra.
Chris: Oh, that would be cool. You'd be like a transformer, but like a steampunk transformer, you know? Like it's probably has something to do more with like, medical technology. Like observing the advances in medical technology, extrapolating out and saying like, well, we keep eradicating this disease and that disease. So, ergo, 40 years from now, we will eradicate all forms of death.
Kayla: And I also think some of this was just like having good imaginations, like Arthur C. Clarke.
Chris: That's true.
Kayla: Had foresight and like, Isaac Asimov had foresight, and all these guys had foresight into like, what the future would look like and sometimes had very accurate predictions, even when they didn't necessarily have the realities that we have now. They were living in like, a pre Internet world, right? But they still predicted hell or whatever the fuck. This guy Fedorov, he wanted people to improve their bodies with technology to achieve things like flight. So, like, if you see the, I don't know when the Wright brothers were, but people were doing flight way before the Wright brothers or talking about flight or thinking about flight. So if you could see somebody be like, oh, I could sit on an airplane versus I could become the airplane.
Chris: I think Kitty Hawk was like, 1905 or something. I want to say.
Kayla: Yeah, he died in 1903, but like, da Vinci was talking about.
Chris: Yeah. Oh, no. People have been talking about human flight for eons.
Kayla: So he wanted flight. He thought we could enhance our vision. He thought we could, you know, alter ourselves to carry out space travel and space colonization. Honestly, colonization in any type of environment, he also wanted, like, he wanted to see ocean colonization.
Chris: Mmm. This also sounds like Superman powers.
Kayla: I mean, it's not. Not that Superman. He was. He wasn't a transhuman. He was an alien. But he was definitely, like, ubermensch.
Chris: Yeah, he was definitely conceived. Superman was definitely conceived as, like, his original iteration was. He's, like, the pinnacle of man or whatever, not necessarily, like, superpowered.
Kayla: So Feodorov's thing was like, how can we defeat death if not by improving our intelligence of the mind with the intelligence of technology? So, yes, you can trace a direct lineage from some of Fyodorov's beliefs to what transhumanists eventually have now come to believe and advocate for.
Chris: Okay, is he pro Mars or pro Venus in terms of colonization?
Kayla: I have absolutely no idea.
Chris: That's important.
Kayla: And they knew about Mars and Venus back then. They knew about Mars and Venus for a long time, right?
Chris: Yeah. Yeah, we knew about those.
Kayla: I don't know. He'd probably be both. He'd probably say both.
Chris: Both. Okay. Why? Porcay nolos dos?
Kayla: Yeah, exactly. The defeat, as much as we've been talking about the defeat of death and the promotion of transhumanism weren't Fyodorov's only beliefs. So, like, just touch on a few more, he was pro renewable energy and wanted to see a shift from coal mining to solar and wind energy.
Chris: What? Dude, this guy was, like, so far, I'm, like, having trouble with the timeline. I know, because he was so far.
Kayla: That one kind of threw me, because.
Chris: That was right around when were like, oh, shit, we can use oil. We don't have to keep killing whales.
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: It's, like, a hundred years ahead of his time.
Kayla: I think part of it was because it was coal mining was very dangerous to the miners.
Chris: Okay. Huh. Wow.
Kayla: He was pro climate engineering and praised russian experiments with cloud seeding because apparently they were doing.
Chris: Didn't even know you could cloud seed back then.
Kayla: He was critical of progressivism and nationalism, as he viewed these ideas as essentially like, newer generations rejecting their ancestors. And wherever he was, like, you should.
Chris: Worship your ancestors woke mob. Yeah.
Kayla: He criticized socialism as materialistic and focused on replaceable individuals, while he believed all people who had ever lived are irreplaceable.
Chris: But I thought he was.
Kayla: I just think he was kind of anti anything that wasn't his stuff.
Chris: Yeah, that's what I'm getting here.
Kayla: Everything was about. If it wasn't, like, focused on the common task, then it was admitting that human beings are replaceable. And he did not believe that.
Chris: If I disagree with 5% of what you say, I disagree with all of what you say.
Kayla: He disliked standalone cemeteries, preferring cemeteries to be connected to churches, or, as he proposed, built in universities.
Chris: This guy's got an eclectic set of beliefs, man.
Kayla: He promoted the scientific study of the afterlife and resurrection, coming up with experiment ideas reminiscent of the modern day practice of cloning.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: He believed in eradicating poverty so that everyone had the means to study science. He believed all people must have access to universal scientific education so that we can all participate in humankind's common task.
Chris: See, now that he's talking about poverty, I'm like, he's not billionaire oriented enough at this point, so.
Kayla: No, he was ascetic. He was like, oh, you gave me $5. I only need one. You take.
Chris: Yeah. No, he needs to realize that this is all for the billionaires.
Kayla: He had a negative view of sexual and romantic relationships, believing that also, like, a very heteronormative view, obviously. He believed that men becoming involved with women isolated them from their ancestors because they were like, I'm focused on this bitch and not focused on those bitches behind me. I don't understand it. But that was his thing. Okay, so he lived as. As a result, he lived a celibate life.
Chris: So when you're a teenager and you're, you know, participating in activities that teenagers do frequently, and you're, like, get stressed out or anxious that, like, your ancestors are, like, watching you. So it's. He actually thought that.
Kayla: No. Cause I think he thought it was like, that your ancestors are all dead, but, like, you should be worshipping them, not like, trying to make a new generation. I don't really know. It doesn't really follow for me, and he's not alive for me to, like, ask him.
Chris: I mean, if my ancestors were Pamela Anderson, then that would work.
Kayla: I don't think he was advocating. I think he just. I think he didn't like sex.
Chris: Yeah, I know he was a sex. It sounds like he may have just been, like, asexual without a word for.
Kayla: It, potentially, but he also found, like, a philosophical reason for it to, like, fit in his framework for him. Anyway. He had answer to the Fermi paradox before it existed.
Chris: What? He believed Fermi wasn't even born yet.
Kayla: I know, but he had answer. He believed that aliens probably existed but did not participate in the common task, hence their absence.
Chris: Okay, so aliens existed, but they're like, eh, we can die, it's cool. And then they die.
Kayla: That's. He was saying, if aliens participated in the common task, we would see them, we would meet them, but instead, they're just accepting death.
Chris: I have to say that of my favored Fermi paradox explanation, that's actually pretty good.
Kayla: It's not bad.
Chris: And that's pretty close to modern explanations, too, because you don't necessarily need radio telescopes to come to the conclusion that, where are the aliens? It's not necessarily that you can't see them. We might even expect them to be everywhere if their civilization lives long enough and they have a way to travel between stars. It's not just why can't we see them in the telescope. It's why aren't they right here?
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So that's actually not a bad explanation.
Kayla: Especially because he views the common task as being achieved by super duper ing our technologies. If you super duper your technology enough, you'll achieve space colonization via this attempt to solve the common task. So if the aliens aren't trying to solve the common task, they're not enhancing their technology, and therefore they're not hanging out with us. Okay, got his answer.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And most notably, he viewed his beliefs as objectively morally right. And specifically morally right in a christian framework.
Chris: It's one of those he'd feel at home on.
Kayla: Less wrong, probably. And that's a pretty quick rundown of Fedorov and his contributions to russian cosmism and eventually transhumanism. It's not a comprehensive. It's not a comprehensive view. There's a lot more here, obviously. It's very interesting. It's a very interesting field. So if you're interested, go to your library, because he was a librarian.
Chris: So, again, going back to why it's called cosmism, it's sort of like the idea of destiny among the stars is that even though that's not necessarily the central bit, definitely does still seem to be the conquering death bit.
Kayla: Right. And again, that was very much his thing. Other cosmists came along or came up at the same time, actually. Let's touch quickly on some of those other russian cosmists and their beliefs to give us a more well rounded picture. Along with Fyodorov's philosophical branch of russian cosmism, there were also early artistic and scientific branches.
Chris: Cool.
Kayla: There's one guy. Oh, hold on to your butts. Alexander Scribiande, an artistic cosmist, russian cosmist believed that art could be used to achieve the common task. And I don't mean in a, like, make art about the common task. Then you inspire people to go be scientists. I mean, his unfinished musical work, mysterium, was proposed as a week long performance in the himalayas with no audience, only performers, including an orchestra, a choir, dancers, visual effects, incense and other sensory items, and a continually changing atmosphere. And after the performance was complete, it would be followed by the end of the world, and humans would be replaced by nobler beings. He died before he could finish the work. And I'm very sad.
Chris: I. Okay. Whoa. Is mind blowing.
Kayla: Yes. I love him.
Chris: I don't have words. Should have sent a poet. Speaking of cosmis stuff, in regards to.
Kayla: The scientific branch, early russian cosmists proposed ideas concerning rocket propulsion, space exploration, cosmonautics, space colonization, pan physicism, which is the, like, I think it's the idea that, like, everything is conscious kind of thing, or the universe.
Chris: Oh, panpsychism.
Kayla: Is it called panpsychism? I can't read. So panpsychism, explain it to me.
Chris: Yeah, no, I don't have to explain it. It's what you said. It's the idea that everything has some modicum of consciousness, whether it's a lot or a little. The universe itself is.
Kayla: And kind of following that. Some believed, didn't believe in capital g, God, but believed in some sort of cosmic being that governed humans. So they had these big cosmic beliefs, hence russian cosmism.
Chris: Okay. Okay. Actually, that makes a little more sense even then, because it's not just cosmism in the outer space sense. It's cosmism in the cosmic beings and other worldly, unknowable big thought stuff.
Kayla: It's putting the fun science stuff of, ooh, how do we travel among the stars in also, it's like Sci-Fi it's just, it's all, like, big high concept Sci-Fi stuff. What if we go to Mars that has tangible things like rocket propulsion?
Chris: Yeah. Like, what if we travel to Mars and also God is there?
Kayla: Yeah. And, like, that's not an invalid question.
Chris: No, I mean, there's. Yeah, I don't want to get too much into stuff that I don't know about, but, like, the idea that heaven exists as this separate dimension from ours is not the only formulation of where God might exist.
Kayla: Right. And God is defined by Christianity is not the only definition of God, particularly for scientists and science minded people. I think many of them, if they have a view of God, it is more similar to the universe, or is a very specific word.
Chris: Totally understand.
Kayla: Now, other cosmists believed in the possibility of human rejuvenation, be it via things like blood transfusion, like, talking about blood boys.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: But I read this one thing where it was, like, symbiotic blood boy. Where, like, not only would the elder person benefit from the young blood, but the young person would benefit from the old blood.
Chris: So would they, like, get smart from it or something?
Kayla: I think so.
Chris: That'd be cool as fuck. Yeah.
Kayla: Others propose the concept of the neurosphere. No oo sphere, which is essentially.
Chris: What is the noosphere? Again, I knew that.
Kayla: It's a biosphere of humanity's rational activities. It's like its own biosphere, but it's like humans. Like.
Chris: Like the human thoughtosphere.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Okay. T h o u g h t. Not thought. T h o t. Although that's its own sphere, composed of lots of very excellent spheres.
Kayla: Yes. We're also talking about heliobiology or the sun's effects on biology. Some concluded that communism is necessary to support future space colonization.
Chris: That's interesting because we sort of have the. I feel like at least in the west, we might have the opposite take. Like, well, the only way. But, I mean.
Kayla: Yeah, I mean, theater.
Chris: Soviet Union did. Like, they were neck and neck with us for a long time.
Kayla: Yeah. I don't think you can say capitalism and the way we have capitalism is the only way you can do space travel. Because case in point, right?
Chris: It was done.
Kayla: It was done. One russian cosmist even discovered lunar tectonic activity.
Chris: Wow.
Kayla: Yeah. So, like, in short, these guys were cool as hell.
Chris: Yeah, these guys were bonkers, man.
Kayla: But, okay, what do they have to do with the second topic? This episode covers modern cosmism. We're on to part two.
Chris: Now, I've been chewing on that question, like, how does this tie into the t and then back into the circumental?
Kayla: Right? So we mentioned that in the TESCREAL acronym, the C explicitly refers to modern cosmism, not russian cosmism, even though there's some guys that, like, I think Elon Musk likes some of these russian cosmis guys. Like, you know, like, names, conference rooms after them kind of thing. Like, they like these individual sciency guys, sure. But any lingering russian cosmis beliefs that might still be around, which are few and far between, are generally covered by the t. Transhumanism. But doctors Emile Torres and Timnit Gebru have identified this specific evolution of transhumanism as the C in their acronym. So specifically, they're defining modern cosmism as, like, a concept largely developed by a computer scientist named Doctor Ben Goertzel.
Chris: Yeah, that name rings a bell. It might because I talked to Emile about him offline.
Kayla: Oh, interesting. Okay, this. I'm pulling. I'm pulling a lot here from the paper that these two doctors published that you talked about in your interview.
Chris: Right. The key paper, the TESCREAL paper.
Kayla: The TESCREAL bundle. Some of our listeners outside of this show may have also heard of Ben Goertzel. He is a transhumanist who participated in the extropion movement, which you might remember was the Max Moore developed. Like, it was like a utopia movement.
Chris: But like, utopia libertarian sort of way of manifesting transhumanism.
Kayla: He's also a businessman who founded Singularitynet, which is like, essentially distribution for artificial intelligence data via blockchains.
Chris: I've heard of Singularitynet.
Kayla: I don't know what that means, but.
Chris: I don't know either.
Kayla: It has the word blockchain in it, so you know it's got the funding, right?
Chris: It's got the funding.
Kayla: I don't know if it's got the funding.
Chris: It's buzzwords to get funding.
Kayla: He's also the brains behind Opencog, which is a project aiming to build an open source AI framework. He was the chief scientist at Hanson Robotics, which is the company behind Sophia the robot. You know Sophia the robot, right?
Chris: Is that the creepy one?
Kayla: Well, she's that robot. She, like, looks human. She's bald. She was.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Kayla: She was at south by Southwest in 2016. I think she's, like, on social media.
Chris: She's been, like, interviewed or whatever, right?
Kayla: Definitely interviewed. I think she has been granted personhood in some country.
Chris: That's okay. Yeah, yeah.
Kayla: It's claimed that she's a social robot who can mimic love and human behavior. Her internal workings include a chat system, scripting software, and since 2018, Opencog AI. Side note, other, like, AI, quote unquote. Experts have claimed that she's nothing more than a PR stunt. Enhancing robotics claims about her capabilities are misleading, including, like, meta's chief AI scientist, this person called Sofia, quote, complete bullshit. Which makes me very sad, because I like Sophia the robot.
Chris: Well, grain of salt. That's from meta.
Kayla: Yeah, it's grain of salt for all of this. Because what is real? I don't know. Goertzel has given talks about AI at the singularity summit, which is founded by names we all know. Eliezer Yadkowski, Ray Kurzweil, and Peter Thiel.
Chris: The usual suspects. Okay, so this guy sounds like he belongs in that he is test real. Yeah, like, he sounds real. Like, if I say Eliezer Utkowski, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel. I should also say Ben Goertzel.
Kayla: I think so. He was also chairman of the artificial General Intelligence Society, vice chairman at Humanity plus. And as mentioned before, he's really big into AGI. Like, artificial general intelligence. Like, really big, so.
Chris: Oh, and you said at the top of the show that helped popularize the term. Popularize the term AGI. Okay.
Kayla: In 2007, he spoke at Google about his approach to AGI and has since come to postulate that AGI will replace 80% of human jobs and will solve human problems like climate change.
Chris: Oh, sick.
Kayla: He is against AI regulations, which you might be shocked to hear.
Chris: So shocked. Kayla.
Kayla: And so when we say AGI, we're talking about a type of AI that surpasses human abilities across a wide range of tasks. So think of it as like a how from 2001 versus, like, a narrow AI that is designed for a specific task. Like social media algorithms.
Chris: Right. Like the computer, like deep blue that is built specifically to beat Gary Kasparov at chess.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Couldn't also make a recipe out of potatoes.
Kayla: Correct.
Chris: I don't know. Whatever.
Kayla: It's like trying to make a human brain versus trying to make a part of a human brain.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Ben Goertzel has also written and published a variety of articles and books. He's quite prolific, and he's been publishing since 1992. One of his books is titled Artificial General Intelligence, and I think he got that term. He'd been talking about this stuff with people like Eliezer Yudkowski. He wasn't super happy with the terms that were around or the title of the book that he was trying to publish. And he asked one of his contributors, one of his writers, like, what do you think we should be calling this? And they came up with artificial general intelligence to describe this type of AI, and then ended up titling the book that, which might be one of the main reasons AGI is in our current cultural lexicon.
Kayla: He also wrote a book in 2010 called the Cosmist Manifesto, which outlines a techno utopian future among the stars, achievable only by the development of AGI and by embracing transhumanism.
Chris: Okay, so it's. Again, this is. This is why they made the term testrail, because it's like, it's always all of these things, like, kind of all come as a package, right.
Kayla: In that paper on the TESCREAL bundle doctors Gebru and Torres argue that Goetzel claims that, quote, cosmism subsumes the transhumanist goal of radical human enhancement, yet goes beyond this in various respects. And I kind of just want to read the rest of this passage from their paper because it explains exactly why and how modern cosmism is the next iteration of transhumanism. Okay, so, Goetzel's book, they state, affirms that humans will merge with technology, which will inaugurate a new phase of the evolution of our species, and that we will develop sentient AI and mind uploading technology that permits an indefinite lifespan to those who choose to leave biology behind and upload.
Kayla: But cosmism also predicts that we will spread to the stars and roam the universe, create synthetic realities, that is, virtual worlds, and develop spacetime engineering and scientific future magic much beyond our current understanding and imagination.
Chris: Okay, so I don't like the idea of billionaires doing. Of billionaires doing a New Zealand apocalypse where they don't care if everybody dies of climate change.
Kayla: I don't care for that.
Chris: I don't care for that. But some of the stuff you were just saying sounds pretty fun.
Kayla: I think that's part of why it was necessary for these two academics to define TESCREAL, because its component parts don't necessarily individually seem like there's any sort of negative here. It's just kind of when there's this weird combination and amalgamation and, like, shitty ass stakes and motivations at play that it becomes something that's, like, kind of necessary to think about because, yeah, I want to be. I want to be among the stars.
Chris: Yeah, it sounds cool. I want to go to Venus. I want to go into the.
Kayla: You want to go to Jupiter?
Chris: Just like I was promised in elementary school.
Kayla: So, again, their whole argument is that modern cosmism is, like, the next phase, the next extension of transhumanism, in which a transhumanist society, aided by AGI, colonizes space and shapes the wider universe in our transhumanist image. So modern cosmism is different than russian cosmism? Yes, but modern cosmism does not exist without transhumanism, which does not exist without russian cosmism, or at least not in the way that we understand them.
Chris: Now, I will say that, and I don't know how I personally feel about this, but there is definitely a sort of, like, european colonizationist thread.
Kayla: Yeah. Can we colonize the universe if the aliens are already there?
Chris: That's what I mean. Right. And even if the aliens aren't already there, like, if we colonize the universe, there will not ever be new life.
Kayla: Oh no.
Chris: Or aliens. Yeah, right. If there was a cosmist civilization before us, we wouldn't be here talking about this right now. So there's like this expansionist, like, winner take all, like, consume the resources around us, make things in our image that sounds very similar to some of the like, values that we have inherited from our recent ancestors here in the west. And I think that is a, not to speak for them, but I think that's a big part of the critique coming from folks like Doctor Torres and Doctor Gebru.
Kayla: I wonder if this ever comes up in these conversations because we've talked about how, especially the rationalists, and we'll get into some things on future episodes talk about ultimately we have to put everything into AGI right now because that'll help the trillions and trillions of people in the future versus caring about what's going on with the millions of people right now. We need to help the trillions in the future to maximize happiness. I wonder if they ever talk about that in like, oh, could we be hamstringing even greater happiness if we do not colonize the universe? Does that allow the universe to have even like trillions more of other types of sentient beings? Can our colonization hamper that? And if they're not talking about that, I want them to talk about it now.
Chris: Yeah, I think about this sometimes with the whole Fermi paradox thing and like, what's, what people are calling grabby aliens, which is basically, like, it doesn't necessarily need to be aliens. It could be us grabby species, whatever. But the idea that like, you know, you look at a lot of life on Earth and it tries to expand and consume resources, and that's essentially what we're talking about with colonizing space. And if we're bringing that, you know, the sort of like european colonization attitude to it, that might not be good. Like, most of the stuff that we've done so far, I think with space exploration has been very careful to be like, don't contaminate places that might already, like, don't fuck with Europa.
Chris: Because when we go there, we have to be very careful to like, be super, you know, like, whatever instruments we send to Europa are gonna have to be clean as fuck, right?
Kayla: Yeah. So, and if you read 2010 space Odyssey, just don't fuck with.
Chris: Right. That was kind of the whole thing there. Yeah, but, you know, but NASA is very cognizant of that, right. When they're I trying to search for life on other planets because if you just bring your own life, you might not know. Right. Yeah. So it's a thing. But like, will that attitude continue once we've moved past pure exploration mentality and we've moved into colonization and commercialization mentality?
Kayla: I'm scared.
Chris: I know.
Kayla: Oh, man.
Chris: I know. And again, I like space. I like going to space. I like Star Trek. But theres a lot to also be concerned about.
Kayla: Yes, thats a good point. A lot to think about. A lot for the test. Guerrero to think about.
Chris: Yeah, you think about that.
Kayla: Okay, Ben, and just to kind of wrap up this episode, to reiterate how I put it up top, russian cosmism is the precursor to transhumanism, which is the precursor to modern cosmism. Its a clear and steady continuum. Okay, that is it for the sea intestrial. We've hit transhumanism, extropionism, cosmism and rationalism explicitly. There's a few more letters for us to go before we can bring this all to the criteria, which is probably its own episode.
Chris: Yeah, I kind of feel like we're just doing this because we're completionists, but.
Kayla: You gotta hit them all. You gotta catch them all, right?
Chris: You gotta catch them all. Check all the achievements.
Kayla: So join us next time on culture. Just weird as we keep making our way through the TESCREAL bundle or the entire Alphabet, however you want to view it and maybe, I don't know, eventually out into the stars with all our ancestors in tow.
Chris: That would be fun.
Kayla: This is Kayla, this is Chris, and this has been cult or just, you.
Chris: Just want to say weird this time? Cult is just weird. The actual title.