Things Mormon Transhumanist Nerds Should Keep in Mind...

Speaker 1

Our next speaker is going to be Dan Wetherspoon. He will be speaking on things Mormon transhumanist nerds should keep in mind when interacting with potential non-transhumanist allies. Especially ones of their own tradition. In Dan’s defense, I helped him come up with that title. So don’t be too hard on him.

Speaker 1

Dan Wetherspoon is the is the host of the Mormon Matters podcast, and I’ll add that recently Dan interviewed Chris and me for that podcast. And if you haven’t listened to it, I encourage you to do it. It turned out well, I think.

Speaker 1

He’s also the former editor of Sunstone Magazine He has a PhD in religion from Claremont Graduate University, where he wrote a dissertation on deep Mormon sensibilities about the intrinsic worth and interconnectedness of all existence. and how these values might contribute to a sustainable and peaceful world.

Speaker 1

He’s married to Laurie Wetherspoon, and they are about to be empty nesters this fall when their daughter heads off for college. And they live in Tuela, Utah. Please welcome Dan Wetherspoon.

Dan Wotherspoon

Let’s put that so I can actually see Chris. There’ll be a lot of crossover between Chris’s and my talks, but if you listen to him, you can see his was general conference prose beauty. Mine might be more at the level of the fight trainer or the person sending you out into the streets to do the real work.

Dan Wotherspoon

I’m going to talk today, of course, from the perspective of my Past and current incarnations as an editor as well as a media host. An editor or a host picks something to publish or to promote through their forums. that they like, that they see something of value in, that they say in combination with the person that I’m hosting or the author that I’m working with, let’s see if we can make it have the most robust and understandable, most impactful impact, I guess I wasn’t I wrote something clearer than what I was just saying there.

Dan Wotherspoon

But at the same time, we’re aware that our readers and listeners will have varying degrees of interest in the subject, no matter how interestingly we present it. We therefore must keep in mind that most of all, we at least want to convey a positive impression of the ideas or the author. Perhaps this reader or person who is being present that is being presented to will never be able to articulate more than just a couple of sentences about the subject. Or even, oh, yeah, I read something about that. It seemed kind of cool. Maybe I’ll check it out later. That might be as far as you’ll ever get, but that’s still a success from the perspective of the editor or the host.

Dan Wotherspoon

The MTA and transhumanism in general has won me over in this first sense. I am impressed. I believe that you have important things to say. I’ve enjoyed publishing the MTA. I’ve enjoyed in speaking at some of your gatherings and even just attending them. Helping to facilitate your platforms at Sun Zone Symposiums and, more recently, on my podcast.

Dan Wotherspoon

Even more, I feel like in some important ways that I’ve found soulmates of sorts among many of you here in the MTA. who have soaring views of Mormon theology and the sensibilities that Joseph Smith put forth about the heavens and the universe and what humans are within those things.

Dan Wotherspoon

Yet, and it’s a big yet I am also in important ways a Luddite. I have tried for years to be otherwise. I don’t know if it’s temperament or whatever, but I don’t enjoy being at my computer. It’s necessary for the kind of work I do, for the brand and the outreach I hope to build up for my podcast and other projects.

Dan Wotherspoon

I’ve never surfed the web. I don’t play games other than Scrabble, but that’s just exactly like the board game that I always played with my brothers and sisters, and it’s just a way for me to connect with my sister every day. For a few turns, I unplug on Sundays whenever possible. Sometimes I get my life out of whack and I have to do it, but I try to take digital Sabbaths. I don’t have a smartphone. I won’t have any Internet connection today.

Dan Wotherspoon

I also have a strong affinity for the economic critique of paying more and more in terms of the time that we need to spend at work and away from our families and our close local connections in order to earn enough money to pay for all the time saving, labor saving devices that make our life so much better.

Dan Wotherspoon

And especially, I’m just mad that I will ever I will be pretty soon before I’ll not be able to buy a car that won’t have a GPS. I won’t be able to buy a car that I can’t say that two thousand dollars or whatever extra it’s going to be to the tag. I want to opt out more easily without fully opting out.

Dan Wotherspoon

I’m also very hesitant to think that technology can never truly enhance or make easier the spiritual disciplines that are needed for truly transformed souls. can certainly improve the environment, improve the circumstances by which somebody can go into these spaces of hard work. But I don’t believe that there are shortcuts.

Dan Wotherspoon

So in short, the MTA and transhumanism have my interest, you have my respect. I love that good hearted, deep thinking folks are spending a great deal of energy thinking about the future and how best to influence it towards positive life enhancing in moral directions. I love the corrective that you play you with religious ideas and stories and symbols play as a corrective for those who aren’t seeing their value.

Dan Wotherspoon

But I’m not a techie. I will likely never deal in what might be the equivalent of primary texts. I won’t write code. I kind of know a couple of the HTML. angle bracket things, but that’s it.

Dan Wotherspoon

I’ll never understand math at the level where it conjures images. Oh, look at that, how beautiful. I’ll never do that.

Dan Wotherspoon

But I can be an important conversation partner. even as I won’t be a primary driver of the discussion. And that’s perhaps the main message I bring today.

Dan Wotherspoon

Not everyone will be an MTA member. Not everyone will choose into dive into singularity debates, the simulation hypothesis, or the new God argument. But you don’t need them to. Friends and acquaintances are perhaps just as important for the success of any movement. Very few will ever be fully in or become prime movers, so we should never force that.

Dan Wotherspoon

My original daydreaming about how I might frame this today, I’d come up with doing it in terms of MTA and transhumanness messaging. as you were trying to make a love connection. I toyed with first date and second date topics, on through revealing your full weirdness only after love has truly blossomed. I played with first, second and third base analogies. When exactly is the right time to swap that spit? Or perhaps show off some of those bodily enhancements or modifications? It was juvenile for sure, but it was fun. It also played a little bit on the increasingly, I believe, untrue stereotype that nerds typically are not good at romantic involvements. Anyway, I’m glad I moved on from there. That would have been a much funnier talk, even if also weirdly uncomfortable because of the adolescent vibe.

Dan Wotherspoon

Where I landed instead, how am I doing on time? I just need at least I think I’ve taken okay, yeah, I screwed up here. I should have just totally been reading the whole time. Instead of that, I’ve chosen to go a little bit into branding and marketing. Have you ever heard of the elevator message? Yes. That’s where I kind of landed.

Dan Wotherspoon

There’s that chance that you have that thirty seconds or that two minutes to make your pitch. don’t screw it up. So I’ve got some really flowery things, but why don’t I just go ahead and give you what I would sense would be Do’s and don’ts of the elevator speech. And then I kind of talked about maybe the five when they give you the five minutes or then maybe when they give you the twelve to twenty minute kind of thing.

Dan Wotherspoon

Elevator speech, do, like Chris says, you are LDS. You love LDS values and expansive ideas. It’s optimistic outlook. The plan of salvation includes visions of highly moral persons in a peaceful, wonderful society to come. You have faith in all this, but through your interest in the ongoing discussion of future life and the direction it seems to be going, you are interested in exercising active faith in bringing about the best possible future that will include key values. That’s what the MTA is about. They will express, of course, to you how awesome this is.

Dan Wotherspoon

Don’t blow this goodwill by talking about body-only enhancement through integrating technologies. That will very likely That we are very likely living in the equivalent of an amazing computer simulation, or anything about our possible role in resurrecting people.

Dan Wotherspoon

For the five minute speech, go ahead and talk a little bit more about the futurist discussions that are happening, hint at the exponential growth of technology, talk about the future of human flourishing including the values of freedom, equality, intrinsic value of all things and interconnectedness, my dissertation, yea. Compassion. All these things need to remain there. Again, we as more mature and humans have wonderful vision stuff. And here I think you can start to begin to talk about the LDS idea of eternal progression and the idea of godhood.

Dan Wotherspoon

Lincoln, it will be interesting to see once your talk hits things if the word posthuman that you’re using Can do it. Anyway, twelve the twelve minute version I won’t give it, but it’s again, every time, do not talk in these first meetings, no matter how long they give you, of those three big things.

Dan Wotherspoon

I’ll just close with I want the MTA to succeed, I want transhumanist discussions to flourish. Someday, maybe, I will call myself a transhumanist, but until then, I will be honored to be called your friend. I’ll be a good friend. I’ll encourage you. I’ll be a connector for you. I’ll share stories and insights from my particularities. And I’ll tell you when your nerves are coming off a bit too strong or weird in public.

Dan Wotherspoon

You need the public. You need, if not understanding, at least good will. May you be honest, true, benevolent, virtuous, lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy, and strategic.

Dan Wotherspoon

Thank you. Happy to hear any thoughts. Questions whenever? Thanks.