Human Complexity Cannot Be Digitized

Intel futurist Brian David Johnson talks with Dr. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Director of Jewish Studies and Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism and Professor of History at Arizona State University. The conversation covers transhumanism and exploring relationships between humans, technology and culture. Dr. Samuelson is especially committed to understanding the complementary relationship between science and religion from a historical perspective.

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• Not only can the human experience be digitized, there is a compelling school of thought that suggests that the universe may be a digital simulation (which would answer a number of questions concerning quantum mechanics) in which case it already has been. This is not to discount the root of the conversation regarding the preservation of the "Human" in the Human Being. That without our human part, we lose our capacity to appreciate and ultimately relate to those of our own species of origin. We literally become something other than human. Our minds are already devices that receive an inconceivable flood of data from nerve endings, then through biology and socialization filter out useful information from that boundless flood of incoming data. It should be possible to preserve a digital universe of rich personal experience as the capacity for our machines to tickle the right nerves grows and expands. In fact seems to me that we will have to teach our children how to perform in this new and compelling virtual space such that the get the opportunity to develop their humanity in a fashion prescribed by our societies and cultures. We are at the nexus of profound reinvention and its time for us to discard that which is inherently broken while celebrating and expanding that which us to the next level of civilization.
  - Anonymous