New and emerging technologies for collective thinking and action prompt us to ask if there’s yet another paradigm shift looming in the near future, in the realm of technologically supported collectivity.
2023
In a broad sense, nearly all communication between humans could be seen as rudimentary or proto-telepathy. Spoken and written language already enable the transmission of thoughts, ideas, emotions, and subjective experiences from mind to mind. Thanks to modern telecommunications, this interfacing now occurs with minimal signal delay between far-flung parties. However, it still suffers from a loss of detail and viscerality, since internal mental constructs have to be translated into coarse linguistic approximations.
Looking forward, emerging brain-computer interfaces hint at more advanced “synthetic” telepathy in the future, with neural links enabling deeper empathy, understanding, emotional resonance, and intellectual exchange. Experimental systems allowing paralyzed people to control computers with thought highlight early steps towards this goal. The bandwidth is low and translation of brain patterns remains clumsy, but one can now imagine a time when consensual mind linking allows effortless sharing of rich inner experiences and collective problem-solving. Implications for individual consciousness and the larger social organism would be transformative.
Human Civilization and AI
Musk and Rogan discuss the existential risk of uncontrolled artificial intelligence. They explore possibilities for regulation and oversight, the potential for human-AI symbiosis through brain-computer interfaces, and the philosophical implications of advanced AI surpassing human intelligence.
In Defence of the Hivemind Society
The idea that humans should abandon their individuality and use technology to bind themselves together into hivemind societies seems both farfetched and frightening—something that is redolent of the worst dystopias from science fiction. In this article, we argue that these common reactions to the ideal of a hivemind society are mistaken. The idea that humans could form hiveminds is sufficiently plausible for its axiological consequences to be taken seriously. Furthermore, far from being a dystopian nightmare, the hivemind society could be desirable and could enable a form of sentient flourishing. Consequently, we should not be so quick to deny it. We provide two arguments in support of this claim—the axiological openness argument and the desirability argument—and then defend it against three major objections.
Merging Minds
The Conceptual and Ethical Impacts of Emerging Technologies for Collective Minds
A growing number of technologies are currently being developed to improve and distribute thinking and decision-making. Rapid progress in brain-to-brain interfacing and swarming technologies promises to transform how we think about collective and collaborative cognitive tasks across domains, ranging from research to entertainment, and from therapeutics to military applications. As these tools continue to improve, we are prompted to monitor how they may affect our society on a broader level, but also how they may reshape our fundamental understanding of agency, responsibility, and other key concepts of our moral landscape.
Neuralink and the Brain's Magical Future
The Evolutionary Importance of Technology
McKenna discusses how rapidly advancing technologies like nanotech, biotech, and the internet are converging and taking on a life of their own, bootstrapping information to higher levels of connectivity. He sees this leading to a virtual world where we can share inner visions and dissolve differences.
