“New humanity” with Elon Musk’s chip: what awaits Christians
Elon Musk presented a chip in the brain which enables telepathy, memories exchange, AI-symbiosis and the combined will of the people. What future awaits us, Christians?
At the end of August, Elon Musk presented to humanity his new project – an electronic chip in the brain.
Elon Musk: “It’s a more complicated thing, but to simplify this, in lots of ways it’s a kind of fit track in your skull with tiny wires. It goes in your skull, replaces a piece of skull and the wires. It’s flush with your skull, it’s invisible. All you can see after that is a tiny scar and if it’s under your hair, you can’t see it at all. In fact, I could have a neurolink right now and you would not know. So actually, opening a piece of skull, you remove a coin-size piece of skull and close it up with super glue.”
This event came off relatively unnoticed, but meanwhile, it will certainly go down in history and may usher in a completely new era of mankind.
The possibilities Musk is talking about are impressive.
The chip in the long run can help the paralyzed to walk, the blind to see, and the deaf to hear. It will also significantly expand the hearing and vision capabilities of healthy people through electronic cameras and microphones.
Den, Neurolink emplyee: “Perhaps, you can use the same technology in people who haven’t lost vision to produce some kind of heads-up display, something like Terminator cinema.”
Elon Musk: “In fact, we think that over time we can actually give somebody superhuman vision like you could have ultraviolet or infrared… You can basically name your frequency and you can just dynamically adjust the sensor.”
It will be possible to directly control gadgets and a computer with the power of thought, bypassing all modern interfaces, and play computer games. With the power of thought, it will be possible to call a car, listen to music without having to hear. But these fantastic opportunities are not all. Musk and his team speak about the possibility of electronic telepathy – the exchange of thoughts directly, without words. Moreover, it is about saving and replaying memories, other people having access to them, and even downloading them into a new body.
If you have a whole neural interface, you could upload, you could basically store your memories as a backup and restore the memories. You could potentially download them into a new body or robot body.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk: "We can have far better communication ‘cause we can convey the actual concepts, the actual thoughts uncompressed to somebody else. So I think in the future you’ll be able to save and replay memories. Essentially, if you have a whole neural interface, you could upload, you could basically store your memories as a backup and restore the memories. Ultimately, you could potentially download them into a new body or robot body. The future is going to be weird.”
Finally, Elon Musk declares that thanks to his chip, the combined will of humanity will control the world. His ultimate goal is to create a third layer – a symbiosis of the brain with artificial intelligence – in the wake of the limbic system of the brain and the cerebral cortex
Elon Musk: “Achieving some kind of AI-symbiosis where you have an AI-extension of yourself like a tertiary layer above the limbic system and cortex. Having that symbiosis will be good for the future the world to be controlled by the combined will of the people.”
Of course, if someone else had said something of that kind, such statements could have been taken with skepticism, if not good fun.
However, the name Muskis is associated in the world with stunning advances in technology. Elon Musk's projects are really impressive.
This is Tesla's magnificent electric car with autopilot and artificial intelligence, the underground high-speed transport system LVCC Loop, the "solar city" system, where a roof made of solar panels is installed on the house, which provides almost free energy, Hyperloop capsules that enable to travel twice as fast as an airplane. Finally, it’s a successful SpaceX space exploration project, aimed ultimately at Mars colonization.
And now – brain chipping.
Elon Musk's project called Neuralink appeared in 2017. Its main task was immediately identified as "merging man and computer". The first presentation took place in 2019. And now, in 2020 there is already a tangible result – Musk showed pigs with a chip already inserted into their brain. The presentation also showed a robot implanting a chip. The operation will be fully automated to take less than an hour. Musk is confident that chipping will become inexpensive, and therefore massive with millions of people recoursing to it.
Absolutely all of Elon Musk's projects are daunting and fantastic, but they are all successful. That is why there is every reason to believe that brain chipping won’t be an exception.
But while the opportunity for the paralyzed to walk and for the blind to see can only be appreciated, then the symbiosis of the brain and the computer, storage and dissemination of memories on the Web, telepathy and fusion of human consciousness into a kind of the combined will go far beyond purely technical issues. This is now a question of freedom of our inner "self", the innermost area and even the sphere of existence of the human soul.
Consciousness or soul?
Until now, no one knows exactly what our soul is, where it is and how it exists. How do we feel grief or love, why do we experience the same emotions in our memories as before? Finally, what happens to us when we pray?
For science, there is no such term as soul, only consciousness, personality. This consciousness acts only when the body, or rather the brain, functions. For scientists view thoughts, memories and even emotions just as a series of electrical signals in the brain. This is the concept Elon Musk and Neuralink engineers adhere to.
Elon Musk: “Everything that you perceive, feel, hear, think – it’s all action potentials, it’s all just neural spikes.”
Consequently, for Elon Musk, our entire consciousness, our entire personality is nothing more than a special bundle of electrical impulses. So if the brain is damaged, consciousness is also damaged.
Elon Musk: “If you damage your brain in some way physically, you damage your consciousness, which implies that consciousness is a physical phenomenon.”
There are plenty of facts, however, that state that everything is much more complicated.
Saint Luke Voyno-Yasenetsky was an excellent surgeon and often performed operations on the human brain. He dealt with the cases when a part of the brain was simply missing, but this did not affect the work of consciousness in any way: “I opened a huge abscess in a young wounded man, which destroyed the entire left frontal lobe, and I did not see any mental defects after this operation. Another patient had a huge cyst of the meninges. With a wide opening of the skull, I was surprised to see that almost the entire right half of it was empty; the whole hemisphere was compressed almost to the point of impossibility to distinguish it."
In France, in 2007, a 44-year-old civil servant went to the hospital. When he had an MRI scan of his skull, it turned out that there was practically no brain there, the cranium was empty. In infancy, he had hydrocephaly; fluid accumulated in his head and pressed on the brain, preventing it from growing. The liquid was pumped out, but the brain never grew. Nevertheless, this did not affect his thinking in any way.
In 1980, neurologist John Lorber wrote about a similar case. A mathematician with an IQ of 127 had a brain 75% smaller than usual. In fact, Lorber had more than 600 similar patients.
Where do such people store their memories, how do they think? Where should they insert the chip?
Anyway, the following arguments finally break the theory that electrical processes in the brain shape our consciousness, our "self".
If we are able to think after death, what does the brain do?
Over the past 60-70 years, thousands of cases have been documented when people left the physical body at the time of clinical death. These testimonies may differ in details, but in one thing everyone is unanimous – everybody could see their dead body from the side and at the same time retain full, clear consciousness, including all memories.
It is in the spirit that all the wealth of memory is kept inviolable.
Saint Luke
Monk Cyprian (Burkov): "I can see myself, the doctors, the surgery room, because I’m moving away to the ceiling, going up, watching everything from above ... And now I’m turning to the body again, taking a look at it and couldn’t care less about this body."
Oleg Gazmanov, singer: “I really saw myself from a height of 20-30 meters. I saw myself lying, I saw the blood flowing from the back of my head ...”
Anthony Cicoria, scientist: “I am standing and looking at this body that’s 10 feet away. At that point I am calling out to them. I can hear what they are saying, I can see them, but they cannot hear or see me. Suddenly I have this realization, ‘Oh my God, I am thinking! I’m thinking and having thoughts just like I normally would’."
Hence, when a person dies and when his brain is dead, and he himself leaves his physical body, he continues to think and retains full consciousness, all memories. Moreover, some other creatures also have access to these memories.
People who have experienced so-called ordeals at the time of clinical death, i.e. when meeting with demons, claim that they had complete information about their whole life, including even long-forgotten facts.
Elon Musk himself intuitively admits that consciousness can exist in another dimension, but he does not fully believe in this idea.
Elon Musk: “It feels like consciousness is in a different dimension. But this could be just an illusion."
Saint Luke believes that the brain is only responsible for interacting with the surrounding world, and "all our thoughts, feelings, everything that is going on in our consciousness is the domain of the spirit." And it is “in the spirit that all the wealth of memory is kept completely inviolable.”
Suddenly I have this realization: “Oh my God, I am thinking and having thoughts just like I normally would."
A. Cicoria, a scientist who survived clinical death
We do not know where this domain of spirit is, nor do we know how it interacts with our brain. But, if a person even after physical death realizes and remembers everything, then it is unlikely that our memory boils down only to electrical impulses of the brain.
What will the chipped people get?
Surely they will have all of the amenities that modern smartphones have – video, music, games, social networks, and so on, but at a new level – without a display and headphones – right into the brain.
Elon Musk: “It’s like your phone is in your brain or something. The application would be on your phone, and it will be communicating via such a bluetooth low energy to a device in your head.”
A chipped person will be able to drive a car with artificial intelligence, connect to bank terminals, make purchases on the Web, and more. Sounds convenient? Very much. But what is the price one has to pay for it? After all, the device not only reads signals from the brain, but also acts on it.
The famous neuroscientist Mikhail Lebedev, who was Elon Musk’s teacher, says: “You can implant electrodes in the areas that are responsible for human motivation, for pleasure – and ultimately get a controllable guinea pig. A soldier who receives the command ‘forward’ and obediently runs forward."
Elon Musk expects that there will be access to the chip from the outside only with the consent of the owner, but he is not completely sure of this.
Elon Musk: “Tim (Neuralink employee – Ed.) thought I said 'consensual telepathy', but I said conceptual telepathy. We presume it will be consensual. Because you definitely don’t want people setting stuff in your brain without your consent."
Isn’t it the chip cautioned by John the Theologian?
When talking about the chip, one cannot avoid mentioning the words from the revelation of St. John the Theologian: “Also it (Antichrist) causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666” (Revelation 13:16).
In Sweden, a chip has been implanted into the hand for several years now. It enables to store information about the owner, work as an electronic key, replace a ticket on the train, and conduct banking transactions. Many say that the chip will soon supplant the circulation of cash and replace everything. This is convenient for those who accept it, and very inconvenient for those who, for some reason, do not want to do this. For example, believers.
It is easy to guess that Elon Musk's chip, if widely used, will replace all modern means of communication and connection with the world for the owner.
A great deal of scientists notes the dependence of modern man on electronic gadgets, or rather, on the virtual world, which is guided by computers, tablets and smartphones. More and more people spend their free time there. We are here, in our body, but our consciousness and even our heart are attached to the Net, and it is stupid to deny the obvious. And the words of the Savior already sound in a new way: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be” (Matt. 6: 19-21).
Now, no matter how difficult it may be to tear ourselves away from the gadget, we are still free and able to do it. At any time, the phone can be put aside, turned off. We can be left alone with our thoughts at any moment, and no one can invade there. But what will happen if our consciousness becomes a part of a huge virtual world?
What will happen to our soul if we are constantly on the Web without the right to disconnect, to grasp our thoughts, actions, sins? Will a person with a chip be able to isolate himself from this world and delve into prayer?
Christ says: “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12: 4-5).
Until now, we did not understand how valuable it is to have peace and silence within ourselves, did not understand that only in silence can we hear God's voice inside us. The Lord said to the prophet Elijah: “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper [and there was the Lord]” (1 Kings 19: 11-12).
The main goal of every person's life is striving and finding the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. And Christ clearly told us where to look for it: "Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst’." (Luke 17: 20-21).
So, the Kingdom of God is within us, and one can find it only in silence. It’s getting increasingly harder to secure this silence. Will people of the future be able to hear it?
