Archive 2025

Celebrity biohacker Bryan Johnson recently sent a provocative email to his followers. “I am the healthiest person on the planet,” he claims. True or not, he probably has your attention. I don’t have concerns with the sensationalism, at least not in itself. Hopefully Bryan is every bit as healthy as ... Read the article →

The Mormon Transhumanist Association in Africa recently invited me to speak. Because of their strong motivation and inspiring work, their membership has been growing rapidly. My understanding is that, since inception about a year ago, the African area of the association has grown to around 200 members. Below is a ... Read the article →

Occasionally, I receive questions about the relationship between Mormon Transhumanism and priesthood. Generally, the questions come from members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which we esteem priesthood as the authority of God. Implicit in the questions, or sometimes explicit, is concern that our esteem for ... Read the article →

Philosopher Marek Wójtowicz recently published a paper in Roczniki Filozoficzne titled “Lincoln Cannon’s Transhumanist Argument for Faith in God,” offering a formal critique of the New God Argument. While the paper identifies some valuable opportunities for elaboration, it also affirms key strengths of the argument and mischaracterizes others. This article ... Read the article →

Meridian Magazine positions itself as a publication for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest Mormon denomination. I don’t know much about Meridian or the people behind it. But today I learned that they’re willing to publish a fear-mongering distortion of Transhumanism, “Human 2.0 Is ... Read the article →

Nick Bostrom’s formulation of the Simulation Argument is a rigorous reworking of what is, at its heart, an ancient question. Are we living in a created world? He distills the answer into three stark possibilities, a trilemma: Doom: Almost all civilizations destroy themselves or otherwise fail before developing the capacity ... Read the article →

Most of us first encounter the Simulation Hypothesis through science fiction, often experienced as something of a metaphysical thrill-ride. But as computational theory and cosmology advance, serious thinkers – philosophers like Nick Bostrom, physicists, computer scientists, and even theologians – have begun analyzing the feasibility of computed worlds. Recently, Franco ... Read the article →

In an interview with the New York Times, Peter Thiel discussed his perspective that Western society has exhibited decades of technological and cultural stagnation, with only digital technologies like blockchain and AI providing any substantial progress. Thiel attributed this stagnation to cultural anxiety about growth, leading to increased risk aversion ... Read the article →

My youngest son, Alexander, married this week with his best friend, Megan. All of the events, the temple sealing and ring ceremony and reception, were beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed participating and watching them happily ritualize their relationship – with each other and our community. Megan and Alexander asked me to ... Read the article →

In what was for many a jaw-dropping revelation, the world’s attention recently turned to a candid moment between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. As they walked together, a hot mic picked up their conversation about a particularly controversial issue in contemporary ethical debates: the extension of ... Read the article →

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 →

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 →

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 →

“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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →