Lincoln Cannon

Lincoln is a technologist and philosopher, and leading voice of Mormon Transhumanism. He writes and presents about technological evolution and postsecular religion. Read about Lincoln →

Recent Articles

Predicting Future Church Presidents

Jeffrey R. Holland, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died early in the morning on Saturday 27 December 2025. Those who follow my occasional thoughts on general conference may recognize that he was among my favorite Church leaders. I’m ... Read the article →
Embody Christmas

When Christmas returns, I feel drawn to its Earthy images: a child swaddled and cradled in a manger; a stable crafted of stout wood; the lowing of animals; warmth pushing back against the depth of winter. These are more than speculative historical details. They are symbols that affirm the realization ... Read the article →
Bayesian Generalized Simulation Argument and Calculator

I’ve composed a Bayesian formulation of the generalized Simulation Argument. To help guide you through it, I construct the formulation step by step, beginning with Nick Bostrom’s popular formulation of the standard Simulation Argument, and proceeding through Brian Eggleston’s and my own refinements to the argument. Finally, I generalize a ... Read the article →
Financial Nihilism Strengthens Crypto

Every few months, cryptocurrency cycles through yet another bout of financial nihilism. Tokens surge and collapse. New forms of leverage spawn like digital fungi. Degens perform their rituals of glorious self-immolation. Critics claim the entire ecosystem is a casino built on delusion and fraud. Insiders shrug and continue experimenting, as ... Read the article →
Sankofa Futurism

When we think about the origin of Transhumanism, we often think about Europe and America: from Enlightenment humanism, through the industrial revolution, and onward to Silicon Valley. That conception is true enough, if we’re thinking about Transhumanism in name. But if we’re thinking about Transhumanism in function, there’s much more ... Read the article →
From Liberty Jail to Priesthood Sealing Power

Joseph Smith taught that enduring power emerges naturally, not from force, but from the influence of relationships that we develop together through knowledge, consent, compassion, and persuasion. Such virtues form the underlying relational physics that make social power, and its technical applications, enduring. They describe not only how Joseph envisioned ... Read the article →
Theophanies of the Future

What would it be like for a superintelligence to meet, for the first time, that which is compared to itself a superintelligence? What would it be like for that which we might (perhaps obstructively, damningly) revere as God to meet that which they might revere as God? This is, of ... Read the article →
Origin of Eternal Power

If there’s a text that was written by a prophet of a God who is worthy of worship, Doctrine and Covenants section 121 is that text. Writing from Liberty Jail in March 1839, Joseph Smith had been imprisoned for several months, cramped and freezing. In October 1838, Missouri Governor Boggs ... Read the article →
God, Humanity, and Artificial Intelligence

“Faith, Ethics, and Human Dignity in an Age of Artificial Intelligence” may be, to date, the most important speech from a leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the topic of artificial intelligence. Elder Gerrit W. Gong, an apostle of the Church, delivered the speech to ... Read the article →
Prompting God

This is a transcript of my presentation today at the 2025 conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. I delivered it in a form approximating that of a traditional Mormon prayer, although somewhat more lengthy and inclusive of silent periods that aren’t typical. The motivation for my topic and delivery was, ... Read the article →
Archive: Volume One

Today, twenty years to the day since I published the first post on my website, I’m releasing Archive: Volume One 2005–2008, available now on Amazon in both paperback and hardcover editions. This first volume gathers more than five hundred pages of posts, articles, and essays from the years when my ... Read the article →
59 Thoughts on October 2025 General Conference

Last weekend, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints met for our worldwide general conference. The conference occurred just a week after Church president Russell M. Nelson died, and Thomas Jacob Sanford killed several Church members. Emotions and words at the conference reflected those events. When I ... Read the article →