@cstross Yes and a) I cant spell TESCREAL. b) Unless you are following a small set of AI critics, most people don't know what the term means and this is a public forum. So I'm glad you are writing a novel about it. it needs a lot more public attention and ridicule, which in my mind it needs a lot more ridicule. C) I'm a guy who gave up on being a theologian so I like to describe things in theological terms.
@MakeAppPie I'm an SF writer and I'm fascinated by recurring social patterns. So my take is: what if there is no GAI, no singularity, no mind uploading ... but it forms a highly attractive evangelical belief system that's the design pattern for future religions? Then we go colonize space: whackiness ensues (there are a lot of holy wars) ...
@cstross Cool idea! implocations indeed. Of course there are holy wars. It won't take to colonize space before the holy wars ensue -- There was already one around Sam Altman. Okay, a tussle.
@MakeAppPie But take it a LOT further. Christianity provides a basic template and there are forks of it and other religions that did an embrace-and-extend on on it—islam, the mormons, others.
TESCREAL provides a similar template, only with rebased assumptions about how to build an afterlife.
Now try to imagine a galaxy where there are any number of post-TESCREAL crusades running, where Roko's Basilisk has evangelical cults spreading the bad news, and so on ...