belief in the singularity as nrm

 the emergence of a novel religion is an interesting topic, especially when it's undirected and organic

driven by the zeitgeist

like the tech-utopian belief in the singularity

there's a few components that go into it, it's mythic underpinning, it's magical proof, which all religions need, is the big bang

the big bang happened, so it can happen again, with technology

and the proof that it's going to happen is moore's law 

this will be the ultimate salvation

not just saving man from self destruction

but you will live forever as a computer copy of yourself

ai will discover a way to raise the dead

physically

if your body is correctly prepared

all of this is not quite religion... it's getting real close, it looks a lot like it, but it's not quite there

the thing that puts it over the line

and that's real illustrative

is roko's basilisk

which fermented in an internet forum/large internet community, before being pushed into public view by elon musk, who obviously already had a following

and that any amount of people heard it and didn't dismiss it as clownish....

that it even got to musks ears

"Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment proposed in 2010 by the user Roko on the Less Wrong community blog. Roko used ideas in decision theory to argue that a sufficiently powerful AI agent would have an incentive to torture anyone who imagined the agent but didn't work to bring the agent into existence."