Between the Falls (prologue)
(In this brief post I talk about the upcoming, likely already in progress, second great “fall” of man. I don’t want to give too much away, but there will be talk of giant earth movers, pleasure giving apps, Mallomars, and god-like powers of creation. This post is now a prologue for a longer series about the topic.)
You know the story. Two innocent lovers. Frolicking in the garden. Ticking each other with frond tips. Along comes a snake, tempts the temptress, she tempts the guy, they bite into the one thing God told them not to eat, and now all of a sudden they can see. They see morality. And shame. Innocence is lost. Paradise paved over with a shitty layer of asphalt that needs patching every two years.
Everyone talks about what that bite cost us humans, but what did we gain?
The story of the first great fall of man is really the story of us becoming mankind. No apple bite, no self-awareness. No clothes. No planning. No civilization. No good or evil. No Mallomars cookies.
What human beings got from that bite, along with self-awareness, was the ability to abstract and reframe reality. That’s been an insanely powerful tool for us, and not just because science. It allows us to push out our time preferences, as we deliberately re-map inherently unpleasant experiences like lifting weights or studying calculus, into life-enhancing activities that we tolerate, or even enjoy, right now. That first bite brought us closer to god, and we’ve used those powers to remake every aspect of our environment. There are dozens of good arguments against global warming alarmism, but saying we aren’t powerful enough to drastically alter our environment is just silly. Beavers drastically alter their environments, and they don’t even have Takraf Baggers.
The next great fall
Humans are now poised on the brink of our second great fall. In this next one, we’ll gain god-like powers over the human body and its perception of the world, and over creation itself. Look at the bundle of tools we’re perfecting right now and consider the common through-lines. Consider artificial intelligence, gene editing, Neuralink-style brain connections, life extension technology, and realistic VR simulations.
What we gain from this next big bite of the apple are god-like powers to directly create new (or revived) forms of life, the ability to indefinitely extend our own lives, artificial intelligence we can harness to exponentially expand our intellectual and creative talents, and the ability to assume god-like control over our fellow humans. (We are just years away from the first parent who implants a chip in his child’s head that can deliver pleasure or pain with the click of a remote, or most likely a swipe left or right within a mobile app. Ten years after that, parents will wonder how anyone trained their kids before the era of implants.)
In this next great fall, we close the gap between us and whatever force created our universe. In fall one we gained His filter of self-awareness. After fall two, we are Him. Once this next fall plays out, we will no longer be humans in any way we might recognize today.
Are you ready for that? I’m certainly not. But also, short of a catastrophic collapse of civilization, or an all-pervasive religious awakening, what choice do we have? As with the coming financial reckoning, I’m fairly certain we’re already over the cliff, we just haven’t decided to look down yet.
Well that’s depressing.