Is the transsentientist critical path a silver

bullet for the problems of the future of work

and learning? And are we on that path?
By Peter Sølling Jørgensen
10.000 words

Abstract

In this article, a new term 'transsentientism' is coined along with a metric called “Sentions”. Together, they enable
a mapping of a “transsentientist critical path” (TCP). This more utopian approach compliments the current more
dystopian focus in media, entertainment, and in the scientific field of effective altruism (EA). Further, TCP
dashboards could prove to be a silver bullet for both opening new blue ocean markets that would create the future
of work and enabling gamified learning as an alternative to the less efficient time-based learning. Such shift would
both encourage and accommodate for learning 21st century skills rather than the 20th century skills that are still
taught many places. These dashboards invite for a non-utilitarian (read voluntary) gamification of EA, that can
make it both fun and remunerated to solve the world’s biggest problems through large scale collaboration and
competition.

Keywords: Effective altruism, sentience, transsentientism, future of work, mission learning, 21st century skills,
dashboards, gamification, moon-shots.

1. Introduction perplexed about what do to make the world a better place

The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence the past
couple of decades raises an important philosophical
question about the future: If the rate of innovation
continues or accelerates with the plethora of societal
changes that such change would bring with it, then - as
philosophical influencers such as Bostrom (2014) asks -
what would be our political standpoint?
Regardless of the probability of such runaway scenario
with a telescoping of the future, considering our
hypothetical standpoint may tell us something about our
current priorities and even help us out in our current
global challenges. Sagan & Druyan (1997) calls for a
worthy goal for humanity when observing the world from
afar with its wars and inequalities. Similarly,
entrepreneur Elon Musk is outspoken about the
importance of a compelling vision for the future to have
something to get up to in the morning.
We are also currently living in a society where political
popularism, yellow journalism and dystopian
entertainment productions are paving the way for
xenophobic conspiracy theory movements such as the
QAnon and the Flat Earth society though conveying the
image of a dystopian future. Furthermore, the research
focus in popular future think tanks such as Effective
Altruism, the Future of Humanity Institute, and the
Future of Life Institute, scientific research topics are also
more heavily focused on dystopian futures than on
utopian futures. This discomforting feeling building up
through the stream of news across both scientific and
popular media leaves the consumer irresolute and
for the coming generations.
There are today broadly speaking five big visions for
compelling futures (from now on called “the five
conventional futures”):
• Humanism (e.g. fighting poverty),
• Transhumanism (evolving humanity),
• Cosmism (celebrating a sentient AI takeover),
• Sentientism (giving animals rights according to
their sentience), and
• Environmentalism (living in harmony with
nature).
Sagan & Druyan (1997) argue that believing that the
Earth is at the centre of the Universe (geocentrism)
comes from a provincial mindset. Moreover, they argue
that just like with geocentrism, believing that humanity
is at the centre of the biological kingdom
(anthropocentrism) also comes from a provincial
mindset. In this line of thought, the five conventional
futures also come from a somewhat provincial mindset.
This paper coins a less provincial future scenario called
transsentientism and presents a methodology for finding
a path to such a future. The transsentientist path is,
compared to the paths suggested in the five conventional
futures can be more compelling, ambitious, and
inclusive.

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Could the TCP improve the future of work and
learning?
With the advancement of artificial intelligence, the 21st
century skills (see annex 1) for the future of work seem
to be different from the 20th century skills. The need for
an education reform is eminent (Subhash & Cudney,
2018), and the future of work could very well be much
different from what we are used to. According to
McAfee & Brynjolfsson (2012) we are going to see more
and more things that look like science fiction and fewer
and fewer things that look like jobs. While this
prediction has been wronged the past 200 years starting
with the luddite movement, this time it seems that our
vey last stand on the job market – our intellect - is being
disrupted. MacAfee & Brynjolfsson predicts the
introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) that will
free recipients from “drudgery and toil” and enable
them to pursue more exciting adventures. Ten
additional outspoken UBI advocates from both the
political, scientific, and corporate communities are:
Steven Hawking, Andrew Ng, Elon Musk, Andrew Yang,
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Besos, Bill Gates, Larry Page,
Ray Kurzweil, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
By providing both tangible roadmaps for exciting futures
and a gamified dashboard interface, TCP could give a
framework of moon-shots to expand both learning and
work much beyond the term “jobs” and more into the
world of games, self-realisation, and altruism. And when
there is a clarity of goals and action-awareness, the flow
state can be reached faster (Jackson & Eklund, 2002).
Could the TCP improve altruism?
In consequentialism, the only thing one can take with
oneself to the afterlife is perhaps that which s/he has
given away.
Currently, there are many large threats to life and there
are many barriers to the expansion of sentience into
cosmos. These threats and barriers grant us a plethora of
ways to improve the world before we leave. For the ones
interested in giving away, what is the best help they could
receive to find out what to give and to whom so that it
would matter the most?
Throughout history, this question has given birth to
philosophies like utilitarianism, rule-utilitarianism, and,
most recent, effective altruism (EA). Currently, the most
popular is perhaps EA, since the two former philosophies
have been under considerable criticism for being too
reductionistic and even dangerous because they too
strongly seek to dictate potentially ill-fated behaviour.
Even though EA is science-aligned and has gathered a
rather large global community of active members, the
majority of investment of time, money, and political
engagement from individuals, organizations and public
authorities who are interested in giving away worldwide,
still happens without applying the EA framework.
The main reasons for this shortcoming can be argued to
be because current EA is:
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1. Unknown: The EA framework is not known to
enough people
2. Confusing: EA intentionally refrains from
prioritizing between actions
3. Unclear: The EA framework does not offer any
clear metric for improvement that can gamify
altruistic actions and encourage collaboration.
4. Discouraging: EA is focussed too much on
avoiding dystopian scenarios and not enough
on collaborating towards utopian scenarios.
If these reasons are true, then could TCP dashboards
become a new tool to the EA toolbox that could mitigate
or eliminate some or all the four factors above? This
could take place in the following four ways:
1. EA could become more attractive to investors
by providing an interface with dashboards for
EA that would simplify and gamify growth and
collaboration.
2. EA could become more accessible to investors
by more illustratively showcasing desirable
futures with their respective “blue oceans” that
would leapfrog the technology which in turn
would lead to a more sustainable growth path of
sentience on Earth.
3. EA could become the go to place to reduce angst
for technological dystopias, which is arguably
needed in a world where both extremist flat-
earth-societies, Black Mirror-luddites, and
QAnon-movements as well as more rationalist
but disillusioned public authorities, private
organisations, and NGOs fail to see desirable
and achievable paths for technological
development that would leapfrog sentience into
much more sustainable growth paths than our
current path.
4. If adopted by the broader scientific community,
this tool could spur new and bold hypotheses in
global research.
The three hypotheses of this article is thus that TCP
gamification could provide:
1. A strong foundation for the future of work
(FoW),
2. a strong foundation for the future of learning
(FoL),
3. a strong foundation for the future of Altruism
(FoA).
2. Theory
The applicability of the EA framework for
transsentientist critical path
EA was first defined in the mid-2000s by the
philosophers, William MacAskill and Toby Ord
(MacAskill, 2017). In the EA framework, a person or a
group prioritizes their investments of time, money, and
political engagement according to the very big picture of
everything, combining high-quality evidence with
careful reasoning to find the most effective altruistic
actions. Both utilitarianism and EA support
consequentialism in which a well-meaning but ill-fated
action is not counted as altruistic. EA is however more
focused on the larger picture of everything, whereas rule
utilitarianism is traditionally more focussed on narrower
scenarios. One example of an effective altruistic action is
the research conducted by American agronomist
Norman Borlaug in the 1950'ies into disease-resistant
wheat crops. The results of this research helped bring
about the ‘Green Revolution’ in e.g. India and saved
hundreds of millions of lives by finding a strong fit of the
tree pillars of effective altruism: A large, solvable, and
neglected problem. These three parameters define the
scientific method behind EA and makes EA stand out
from the narrower rule utilitarianism. If an action is
rated as high on all three of these factors, it can be
considered an effective altruistic action compared to
lower rated actions.
EA is naturally limited by the availability of high-quality
evidence and careful reasoning when weighing two
seemingly effective altruistic actions against each other
to find the most effective one of them to pursue.
Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction compared
to lesser researched charity types where emotional and
subjective factors are given more weight in the decision
processes (non-rule utilitarian) and where the scenarios
are not thought through on a large scale (EA).
According to MacAskill (2019), effective altruism is:
• Non-normative. Effective altruism consists of
two projects, rather than a set of normative
claims.
• Maximising. The point of these projects is to
do as much good as possible with the
resources that are dedicated towards it.
• Science-aligned. The best means to figuring
out how to do the most good is the scientific
method, broadly construed to include reliance
on careful rigorous argument and theoretical
models as well as data.
• Tentatively impartial and welfarist. As a
tentative hypothesis or a first approximation,
doing good is about promoting wellbeing,
with everyone’s wellbeing counting equally."
EA differs from utilitarianism in several ways, two of
them being that 1) EA in contrast to utilitarianism does
not claim whether it's obligatory or merely
supererogatory to spend one's resources helping others;
and 2) EA does not claim that there are no other things
besides welfare that are of value; utilitarianism does
claim this (MacAskill 2019). In EA, effort is placed on the
philosophical comparative analysis of the greater good
for the far future.
The emergence of the scientific field of EA comes at an
opportune time in history. With the advancement of
technological research comes the opportunity to improve
our society in a plethora of ways. Technologies and
inventions are branches and fruits on the global
technology tree. The canopy of our technology tree is
widening fast, and with it the complexity and
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interrelations of visions for the use of technologies. With
this widening comes a necessity to unite and connect
visions in order to build a strong foundation for altruism
in the society and remind ourselves of the purpose of
collaborating and building a better future together. This
is arguably the fastest route to combating illnesses, pain,
instability, and paralysis. In this way, a simplification of
the science input, processing, and output of EA is needed
to unite and gamify.
Sentience is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as the
quality of being able to experience feelings. To the extent
that quality and meaning can be considered to be based
on experiences, a world without sentience can be
considered a world without quality or meaning. Through
this reasoning, sentience is the only thing that gives
meaning to anything. I.e. a world with no experiences is
a world without meaning.
This gives importance to preserving and growing
sentience – both quantitatively and qualitatively – and
places such actions within the realm of altruism; perhaps
even exclusively.
In weighing two altruistic actions against each other to
find the most altruistic one of them, one must move
away from mental biases and discriminations, and at the
same time move towards the most effective options. One
must therefore 1) not exclude, (eliminate all
discrimination), and 2) include, (find the most effective
meaningful and genuinely good and kind action). These
two rules are the foundation of the TCP methodology,
and are unfolded respectively below.
Why use a transsentientist critical path
methodology?
The TCP dashboard is following the basic principles in
EA, namely estimates of both the magnitude, solvability,
and neglectedness of problems through empirical data.
Two dimensions of effectively altruistic actions are the
movement of as large a field as possible at the fastest
movement possible. While transsentientism represents
a desire to source altruism from the largest possible
field, TCP dashboard is a tool to estimate the fastest
possible movement. The TCP methodology therefore
makes for a powerful match in the search for the most
effective altruism.
Transsentientism and deprovinsialisation
The five great demotions, first presented in Sagan &
Druyan (1997) illustrates five ways for the humanity to
deprovinsialize their thinking. The five demotions are:
1. The Earth is not the center of the univese:
When Homo Sapiens were hunters and
gatherers 100.000 years ago, we lived in a
seemingly flat earth where the stars and the sun
all rose in the east and set in the west. We used
the stars to entertain, narrate, navigate and
 mythologize. The flat ground beneath us
seemed to stand still. This seemed an observed
fact and anyone who didn't agree with that must
have seemed crazy. It therefore must have felt
natural to assume that the Earth was the centre
of the universe. This is popularly called the
geocentric conceit. The centre of the universe
surely must be important place.
2. Homo Sapiens are neither the only ones capable
of reasoning, self-consciousness, toolmaking,
ethics, altruism, religion, language, nor nobility
of character.
What other animal made use of the planets and
the stars? It was only us humans. Therefore, it
seemed obvious that the stars must have been
put there for our benefit. And the sun and the
moon were practical objects. The centrality of
our position was stunning. This is popularly
called the anthropocentric deceit. To the alien
observer, this prevalence of the geocentric
conceit could classify Earth as the ‘Planet of the
idiots'. But according to Sagan (1994), this
judgement is too harsh. He explains:
“There is a resonance here between what is
verifiably observed and our emotional hopes
and needs. The idea that the universe has been
made for us - not because of any particular
merit, but just because we are here, or just
because we are human, is a weakness of ours
that resonates with the same psychic
wellsprings responsible for the view that our
nation, gender, ethnic group etc. is special and
the centre of the Universe. We have a weakness
and scientists are creatures of the culture in
which they swim, in which they have grown
up, and so we also are vulnerable to this siren
song which we can call chauvinism, or
geocentrism, or anthropo-centrism… …We
went on - every human culture - every great
philosopher - every scientist - every religious
leader – thinking that we were at the centre of
the Universe. We put it in various guises in our
scriptures, declared the scriptures to be
infallible - thereby making it not just a secular,
but a religious crime to even think about the
issue” - Sagan (1994).
3. Our planet is not the only one with conditions
for life
Currently, thousands of other planets have been
observed by the Kepler telescope.
4. Our position in time is not special. The Earth is
a stunning 4.6 billion years old, and the
Universe 13.8 billion.
5. The velocity of Earth do not provide a
“privileged frame of reference” as Newton and
other classical physicists proclaimed. The laws
of physics are the same everywhere in the
Universe.
The geocentric and the and anthropocentric deceit was
challenged various times in various locations prior to the
middle ages and during the enlightenment. One of the
more noteworthy of those times was in 1543 when Polish
astronomer Nicolas Copernicus on his deathbed
published his earlier written book “On the revolutions of
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the celestial spheres” in which he challenged the belief
that Earth (and thus humans) were at the centre of the
Universe. The book had a preface by a well-meaning
friend of his - Alexander – which attempted to buffer the
reader’s inevitable digression into his or her cultural
preconception that it was a crime to question the Earth’s
centrality.
The daunting and disquieting discovery of the five great
demotions remains a futile truth in many minds today.
The seeming futility of this truth is a profound driver of
the provincialisation of altruism and one that the here
proposed term, transsentientism, attempts to overcome.
With the industrialisation new discourses were
suggested which yet again gave support for anthopo-
centrism; both the mechanistic model of the Universe
founded by Descartes, and the underlying current of
speciesism, first used by Ryder (1970). The mechanistic
and phenomenal consciousness model states that a
significant amount of cerebral activity and organisation
is needed in order to create consciousness. If correct, a
more anthropocentric world model is justified, but if not,
it is yet another provincialized anthropocentric deceit
which fuses our hopes and needs of exclusive importance
and justifies discrimination and chauvinism.
On the far other side of the spectrum is pan-psychism
which supports the electrical universe model in which it
is argued that stars, galaxies and the greater cosmos itself
is sentient through electromagnetic and luminal
communication – creating a cosmic mind.
The jury is still out on which model is the truer of the two.
However, this paper argues for the term
transsentientism because of the moral obligation to act
in accordance with the precautionary principle and thus
assume that the less provincial model is the truest (the
term provincial is elaborated in Figure 10.
The growing sentience economy
Sentience is arguably quantitative and qualitative. In the
first 0.4 billion years after the big bang, the Universe
contained only gasses, and was perhaps without any life.
It was a giant cosmic stage with no audience. Then,
around 100 million years later, the first stars started to
form; and later 1-3 billion years later, planets. Perhaps,
life had still not begun. Stars being born and dying for
aeons. All that marvellous light for nothing. All the
sunsets over sandy shores. All the night skies and
towering snow-covered mountain ranges. All the deep
oceans, lush waterfalls, spectacular moons, colourful
rainbows, and shooting stars. Or to borrow Sagan's often
used phrase, all the lonely specks of planets in the great
enveloping cosmic dock. All for nothing. If there was no
life, there was no love to be found anywhere. No hope.
No gratitude. No marvel or awe. No fun. No humour. No
peace. No purpose. No freedom. No suffering, struggle,
or melancholy. No learning. There was nothing to give
anything any value or meaning.
Then, the Universe found a way to observe itself. First,
through organisms with little sense of the world around
them, and later through organisms with various senses.
While some sensed heat, others sensed tactile touch,
immature sight, or magnetism. If the sentience of the
Universe before life was like a black closed uniform ball
with the mass (or a real estate if you will) of 1.5×1053, it
was now a black ball with microscopic holes of dim light
shining through the otherwise infinitely dark cosmic ball
of sentience. These dimly shining holes were the first
glimpse of sentience and thus a first meaning with
everything and anything. They were the first (known) life
to assign value to something. With time, as the senses
and experiences got a bit deeper in the small organisms
by developing taste and smell, the universe got better and
better at observing itself. The microscopic dim light
shining through these new holes in the black cosmic ball
got a bit bigger and brighter.
Sentience is, as illustrated with this analogy of a cosmic
black ball of sentience real estate, not a binary
terminology but rather a quantitative and qualitative
variable that increases in size when the communication
between sensory cells in an organism increases. To ease
the terminologies 'quantitative' and 'qualitative', this
paper proposes that any sentience can brighten if
feelings or sensations are interpreted by the experiencer
as being more pleasant and happiness-inducing and can,
similarly, darken if they are interpreted by the
experiencer as more unpleasant or happiness-reducing.
Similarly, sentience can expand and/or deepen if
communication is added and shrink/or become
shallower if communication is reduced. These terms will
be unfolded below:
Sentience brightness
Figure 1 illustrates a feeling wheel in which prevalent
human feelings are listed. For the sake of simplicity, this
article assumes that the spectrum of feelings be split in
two equally large parts where the one side is brighter and
the other is darker.
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Figure 1: Adding a scale of sentience brightness to the
classical feeling wheel by Gloria Wilcox.
Figure 2 introduces a depth to this feeling wheel defined
by the amount of sensory communication of a mind.
Here, sentience is a substance with a volume equal to
the volume of any given cylinder, containing brighter
and darker parts of the substance.
Figure 2 Sentience depth. Source: Own production.
Sentience growth
If all sentience is confined to being matter and energy
and not dark matter or dark energy, then the sentience
on Earth can be reduced to reside within in the 5.972 ×
10^24 kg matter that makes up the mass of the Earth.
This potential real estate of sentience can for the sake of
simplicity be illustrated as a disc instead of the sentience
ball described above. This disc would then have the total
surface area equal to this mass. Such a disc would then
have a radius of around 3000 Mt.
Figure 3 illustrates such a disc before life began on it.
Figure 3: Logarithmic disc of the topography of Earth
sentience at its birth. Here, the value of sentions/Mt is 0
throughout the whole disc since there was no life on the
planet at its birth. The vertical axis is measured in
sentions per megaton biomass (S/Mt) which is here set
to be the measure of the depth of sentience. The depth of
sentience is the intensity of perception and feeling that a
given being experiences. Source: Own production.
In a hypothetical scenario where this disc surface was to
be completely covered by cylinders, then that would
mean that every single molecule on Earth would have
become sentient to some degree. If the entire disc were
covered by a deep cylinder, that would mean that the
whole Earth had become extremely sentient.
Sentience resilience
In Figure 4, the current topography of sentience on Earth
is illustrated. Here, only a tiny fraction (about a tenth of
a billionth of the surface is covered by cylinders (note the
logarithmic dimensions). It has a radius of 7 Mt, which
corresponds to the current biomass on Earth. Five
cylinders (or spheres of being) are depicted representing
non-brain sentience, reptiles, mammals, humans, and
AIs. There is a shadow side on all five cylinders which
represent a darker sentience than the "sunnier" sides of
the cylinders which represent a brighter sentience.
Neither total black nor total white is depicted here
because it is assumed that neither total happiness nor
total unhappiness are a part of the current sentience
experience on Earth currently. The vertical axis is
logarithmic, meaning that the depth of any cylinder is
proportionally much larger than any shallower cylinder.
The substance of the five cylinders have various levels of
transparency. This serves to illustrate the current
scientific understanding of the probability of sentience.
In this way, following the transparency levels, non-brain
sentience, reptiles, and AI have a relatively low level of
probability of sentience compared to mammals and
humans. Mammals and humans have similarly a lower
level of probability of sentience compared to your own
5
current sentience since you can be more sure about the
fact that you yourself are sentient compared to your
neighbour who you do not feel the sentience of directly.
Sentience deepening
Sentience deepening is the expansion of the information
stream that makes up an experience of sentience. As an
example, the experience of a human being is deeper than
the experience of a chimpanzee because the neocortex is
bigger, giving room for the emergence of rhythm,
humour, abstract thinking, etc. Conversely, while the
sentience overall sentience depth of a human being is
larger than e.g. a dog, the sensorial spike of smell gives
the dog a locally higher sentience than humans. In this
way, sentience depth is an accumulated size of
information stream across senses and cognition.
Figure 4: Logarithmic sentience topography of Earth 2020. Please, note that the much-defined cylinders in the illustration in reality are much more smoothed out
(making it look a bit more like a mountain). Due to the lack of graphic design skills of the author, the figure is more edgy. Source: Own production.

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Figure 5: Illustration of the difference between humanism, transhumanism, and transsentientism. Source: Own production.

7
As explained earlier, sentience can be seen as the only
thing that gives value to anything and everything.
Following this discourse, altruism must address one or
more of the following four actions. Altruism must make
sentience either:
1. grow - widening a cylinder
2. strengthen/resilify - preventing a cylinder from
collapsing
3. brighten - brightening any part of a cylinder, or
4. deepen - increasing the depth of a cylinder.
This plasticity is thus what gives merit to action in
general within altruism. Consequently, altruism is here
scoped to encompass only actions that cause the overall
sentience (including one's own) to grow, strengthen,
brighten, and/or deepen. While this logic bears
similarities with utilitarianism, TCP dashboards
distinguish themselves from utilitarianism in line with
the EA framework where actions are not considered
obligatory in any means. No actions are assigned, and
the logic is a framework for scientific understanding not
an exclusive call for any specific actions. EA and TCP
are only suggestions – or key performance indicators if
you will.
Following this line of thought, and for the sake of
understanding, a hypothetical future scenario could be
imagined in which the intensity of the sentient mass on
Earth is extremely high, creating a very deep sentience.
Figure 6 is an example of such extreme scenario and is
illustrated with a worldwide tree of very deep sentience.
Such a scenario could be realised if brains are connected
directly with future technologically mature computers.
Figure 6: A future Earth tree of sentience. By providing
enough technological building blocks for sentience
deepening, Earth could end up with a tree of sentience
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in which broad scale, bright, safe, and deep sentience
thrive.
Transsentientism, resilience, and meaning
Genes seem to be the very fabric of life as we know it, and
they evolve through a "survival of the fittest" model
according the Darwin (1859). This can in other words
arguably be referred to as "resilience". According to our
empirical foundation about life (confined to planet
Earth), one could argue that the past 65 million years,
what has been the fittest has been the most intelligent
species. After the extinction of the large dinosaurs with
reptile brains, rodents with a limbic system and an
emerging neocortex were able to use their higher brain
capabilities to adapt to a new world with new rules (Cox
& Hautier, 2015). Since then, intelligence has largely
controlled a species place in the food chain.
Note: An opposing argument could be here that e.g.
microbial life is more resilient than a species like homo
sapiens who is dangerously able to self-destruct with
nuclear bombs, designer viruses and the like. However,
this paper argues that intelligent life has a greater
potential to reach a very high resilience level than less
intelligent life since it can find ways to deflect natural
disasters and consistently make "backups" of its species
on other planets. However resilient the realm of bacteria
is, there is so far no evidence in astrovirology that they
can consistently proliferate across planets let alone solar
systems. So, while humanity is currently less resilient
than e.g. bacteria, homo sapiens at the same time has a
higher resilience potential than bacteria.
It can seem almost peculiar that the very thing that the
past 65 million years could have made species most
potentially resilient (intelligence) could al the same time
also seem to be the very thing that creates the largest
amount of overall sentience deepening; i.e. the thing that
makes living creatures enjoy ever higher levels of beauty
around them such as e.g. music, art, and humour. So, as
a side effect to being potentially resilient, we also happen
to become ever better at being an audience to ourselves -
the universe - thus, expanding and brightening the holes
in the cosmic black ball. In this way, sentience and
intelligence seems the past 65 million years to have
found a way to increase its likelihood of continuous
potential growth and resilience. Thus, sentience and
intelligence, exemplified by apes, humans, post-humans,
and future sentient AI agents, seems to be both the
purpose and the roadmap of evolution and meaning
which – perhaps we could even speculate – aliens could
be navigating by as well.
With this context, possible future ways of being can now
be introduced. A part of sentience is being able to sense
the world around us. Bostrom (2005) created the
illustration in Figure 7 that has been slightly modified in
this illustration. It shows the importance of removing
discrimination of altruism. If the green field represents
the spectrum of feelings and sensations that could be
accessible to humans, a bigger field of feelings and senses
is probably accessible to trans-humans. An even larger
field represents senses accessible to post-humans. This
space is lastly also not necessarily equal to the space of
all possible modes of sentience. The same can be drawn
for any other species – organic or artificial. In this
Figure 7 Extremely valuable ways of living, relating, and being sentient. Building upon the Bostrom (2005) by adding
the AI-modes.
Looking at sentience isolated, it seems to have a
trajectory, see Figure 8.
Figure 8 The history of sentience. BMI stands for
brain-machine interfaces. Source: Own production.
DNAs evolved from sentience as "thinking" from a
reptilian brain to sentience as "thinking" as a reptilian
brain with an outer layer of a limbic system. Then - as a
layer on top of that one - a neocortex. Since intelligence
can now be considered to be the "fittest" or having the
largest potential for long-term resilience, it seems that
this levelling-up of sentience is the very spearhead of
evolution itself. As the neural network of the brain
seems to have a hierarchical structure with no apparent
theoretical ceiling, there is no reason to think that the
evolution of intelligence should stop at the current
human level. Even if there is a physical limit as to how
much brain matter can fit in the confinements of a
human skull (Bostrom, 2014). As an evolutionary
9
modification, the artificial and post-human has been
separated into two distinctive categories to illustrate the
complexity of current potential sentience in AIs with the
much faster thinking speeds.
attempt, the brain surface has effectively already curled
up to accommodate for a larger surface area inside the
skull. From an evolutionary point of view for sentience,
a natural next step would thus be to expand the brain
with an additional layer of hierarchy by growing further
in size. Since the skull needs to pass through the birth
canals of women, the evolution has so far reached a
barrier of growth which might take thousands of years
of evolution to overcome. This could logically e.g. be by
evolving larger birth canals of women or by evolving a
more compact brain structure. During those thousands
of years, a natural extinction event could prevent this
evolution to continue and thus "reset" sentience to a
lower and less resilient level - which again seems to be
the opposite of what DNA wants with its somewhat
deducible desire to be resilient.
The outer space seems very hostile to life. Taking aside
radiation, cold, vacuum, and toxicity, the phenomenon
of entropy in the second law of thermodynamics dictates
that everything is becoming more and more uniform,
thus consistently destroying heterogeneity in the
Universe. But there are small upstream eddies of biology
that create order in this rapid torrent of entropy. Natural
disasters put a timer on our current evolution. It could
be next Tuesday, or it could be a million years from now.

Figure 9: The beauty of a small and insignificant eddy
floating vibrantly for an instant only to dissolve into the
nothingness whence it came. This is the rapid torrent of
entropy into which we have been born. Such is the
precarity of biological life in cosmos. Image source:
Unsplash.
So, with the precarity of life, what should be sought
preserved above all else? What should we strive for in
the current seemingly explosive pace of innovation with
designer babies, deep neural networks, and brain-
machine interfaces? And what should we strive for in
future scenarios of political instability involving
animals, humans, post-humans, AI agents, and/or
aliens? What really matters above all else? This is an
unavoidable question in EA, and one that
transsentientism in this paper offers a suggestion for an
answer to.
Transsentientism is in this paper defined as the active,
non-discriminatory, and deprovincialized contribution
to growth, strengthening, brightening and deepening of
sentience. It builds upon the terms, transhumanism and
sentientism with regards to altruism. In the 13th century
in Italy, humanism was born (Brittanica, 2021). It
attached prime importance to humans rather than divine
or supernatural matters. It did not suggest or give
importance to any post-human path of evolution and
focused instead on making the humane as good as
possible. Transhumanism was born in the 1960ies as the
belief or theory that humanity can evolve beyond its
current physical and mental limitations, especially by
means of science and technology. Sentientism is an
ethical philosophy born in the 1980’ies that uses
evidence and reason, and grants degrees of moral
consideration to all sentient beings. Sentientism extends
humanism by showing compassion for non-human
animals as well as potential artificial and even alien
intelligences. In common with humanism, sentientism
rejects supernatural beliefs in favour of critical,
evidence-based thinking.
While humanism refers to the devotion to the
contribution of well-being of humans, sentientism refers
to the devotion to contribution to well-being of all
sentient beings with the argument that their sentience
justifies the validity of contributing to their well-being.
Sentientism, however, does not give particular
importance to the further evolution of sentient being into
potentially fitter and more preferable in one way or other
modes of being like the ones illustrated in Figure 7.
Transhumanism builds upon humanism by asking: Why
stop at "well-being"? If Homo Sapiens is only one step of
a continuous evolution, then why not contribute to the
advancement of humanity beyond what is currently
10
possible to enjoy. Transsentientism can equally be
presented with the question “Why transcend well-being
for only humans?”.
Coining the term transsentientism here gives humanists,
transhumanists, and sentientists an opportunity to
deprovincialize their discourse and look beyond. Such
ability to look beyond can evoke a sense of tranquillity in
our current rapid technological development because it
places a linear metric system across all sentience in the
past and into the far future. This new discourse of
transsentientism suggests to the reader that the real
importance of making the world better in any way is to
grow sentience. It also offers an antidote to the five great
demotions presented by Sagan and Druyan (1997) by
reminding us that we are the same as all past and future
sentiences. It is only a matter of quantity and quality.
Transsentientism thus offers a solution to any
discrimination between species or races, and between
organic and artificial lifeforms.
This transsentientist conviction that the value of any
action is its ability to expand and/or brighten sentience
is derived from the overall conviction that a universe that
can observe itself is more interesting that a universe that
cannot. In this line of thought, similar to utilitarianism,
if a waterfall on a planet in another solar system is never
going to be observed by any sentient being, then the
value of that waterfall throughout all time is set to 0.
Similarly, the value of any invention is its ability to
expand and/or brighten sentience. Discrimination
between species or regions is from this perspective
obsolete. I.e. a human, a wolf, and an AI are valued
equally if they have the same amount and brightness of
sentience.
This conviction encourages and celebrates a
“deprovinsialisation” of altruism. The term
deprovinsialisation is adopted from Sagan (1994). While
humanism (e.g. poverty alleviation) is altruistic, it is a
more provincial form of altruism than the larger
transhumanism which aims to not only alleviate poverty
but also increase sentience beyond humanism.
Transhumanism is again more provincial than trans-
sentience which not only aims to alleviate poverty and
transcend humanity, but also aims to transcend all
sentient beings by not being discriminative towards any
two sentient beings (see Figure 10 below).

Figure 10: The deprovinsialisation of altruism.
Source: Own production.
Sentience and the technology tree
Technological advances have so far been some of the
most effective altruistic drivers. Fire, the wheel, the
printing press, and antibiotics are examples of
technologies that have advanced the wellbeing of
civilization and thus expanded sentience. Figure 11
illustrates the technology and its continuum of
maturation. The illustration shows the rapid growth of
eight sectors in the global economy: Additive
manufacturing (or 3D-printing), nanotechnology &
robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering,
space exploration, energy generation and storage, and
11
augmented, virtual, and mixed reality. These sectors are
expected by many to grow rapidly the coming decades
and centuries, but since future telling is impossible,
Figure 11 includes no timeline. Moreover, this number
of exponential sectors will vary with time. Maturity is
illustrated as the continuum, which in theory can move
both up and down with the passing of time. With the
maturation comes not only higher technological
capabilities paving the way for inventions but also
technological cross-capabilities in which two given
sectors benefit from each other. This convergence creates
strong synergetic outcomes. As examples of convergence
are 1) the convergence of genetic engineering, additive
manufacturing and the internet leads to the invention of
lab-grown organs and meats, or 2) the convergence of
nanotechnology & robotics, genetic engineering and the
internet leads to the invention of the CRISPR-Cas9
technology.
In this dilation of maturity, the total green surface at any
given point in technological maturity is the real estate of
fertile soil for breakthrough inventions.
Here, any future technological invention, similar to the
invention of the wheel, can help advance civilization
further and with it, sentience; e.g. the invention of a cure
for cancer leading to longer lives and thus more
sentience, or the invention of rockets with 3D-printing
capabilities to print a colony base on Mars, leading to a
larger surface area upon which to grow many species
which would expand the total amount of sentience in the
solar system.
Figure 11 Logarithmic illustration of the technology tree of exponential technologies. The green area occupying
a part of the real estate of total fertile ground for breakthrough inventions in any given level of technological maturity
represents the chance of inventions being create. Source: Own production.

Each one of these technologies are in exponential growth

and thus the ring dilates and the total surface (length and
width) of the outer ring expands. With it, each
conversion between any two branches is also in
exponential growth. So, also the acceleration of green
surface area of the technology real estate is accelerating.
Hence, the logarithmic scales on the illustration.

This rapid expansion of the fertile soil of convergence

between technologies allow for a consistent acceleration
of innovation and thus a consistent acceleration in the
ability to perform altruism. Remembering the sentience
tree in Figure 6, in order for the tree to grow, it needs
water from the ground. The water of the sentience tree is
in this analogy technology. With the maturation and
dilation of technological capabilities come a faster
growth of sentience.

12

Figure 12: The fertilization of the soil to grow the global
sentience tree. Source: Own production.
The sentience equation
This paper suggests an equation (see Equation 1) for how
to focus our development so as to optimally create bright
sentience by expanding, strengthening, brightening, and
deepening the precarious “eddie of life” (as described in
Figure 9) as fast as possible. Similar to utilitarianism, if
we assign this equation to our lives, then that means that
we assign validity scores and thus preservation validity
to each one and each thing around us.
The sentience equation has no discrimination between
species, geography, or time, including hypothetical
ethical future complications with any emergence of AI-
agents or even aliens in that it does not favour one
sentient being over another with the same total validity
of preservation score and in that it incorporated
probability and resilience as factors for validity of
preservation.
1 "Sention" is here defined as the bright sentience of the
equivalent of a human being. For the sake of simplicity,
this part is set to be half of all sentience of a person.
Phrased more specifically, 1 Sention is half the amount
of the phenomenon of perception or feeling at the
magnitude of the equivalent of an average human being
in present time with its internal perceptions and
feelings that partly build upon the external both
technical and non-technical stimuli. Hence, we can
13
collect that for a current human population of around 8
billion, the current human bright sentience is the
equivalent of 4 billion Sentions. While oversimplified,
this metric system is useful in transsentientism and EA
because it offers a system of reference.
Our moral obligation to preserve
If humanity goes extinct, we have no certainty that
another equally or more intelligent species could take
over - let alone exist in the Universe. Not even that
another species out there that is less intelligent in time
could take over after an extinction event of humanity.
Therefore, through the precautionary principle,
humanity has an intrinsic responsibility to preserve,
evolve, and ideally proliferate their level of sentience that
for all we know we could be the highest level of sentience
ever created and that will ever be created in this
Multiverse. If beings more sentient than humans emerge
with a higher overall preservation value (incorporating
the projected level of future sentience), then according to
the sentience equation, striving to ensure the prosperity
of such beings is more utilitarian or effectively altruistic
than striving to ensure the prosperity of humans. Maybe,
there is a plethora of intelligent life out there that has a
much higher sentience than ours, a much higher
potential sentience, and a much higher resilience than
us. But since we don't know that for certain, the
precautionary principle in transsentientism suggests
that if we cherish sentience, then we have a responsibility
to proliferate Earth's bright sentience until we become
certain that there is a better way of preserving sentience.
The sentience equation:
Current sentience preservation value (PVc) + future
preservation value (PVf) = total preservation value
(PVt)
PVc + PVf = PVt
can arguably be reduced to:
(Probability of the amount of bright sentience (Pc) ×
amount of current bright sentience (Sc) × level of
current resilience (Rc) + Probability of the amount
of potential future bright sentience (Pf) × amount of
potential future bright sentience (Sf) × level of
potential future resilience (Rf) = total validity of
preservation,
or:
Pc × Sc × Rc + Pf × Sf × Rf = VPt
Equation 1: The sentience equation. Source: Own
production.
Future evolution are estimated to have ever lived. If correct, then for every
living person today, there are roughly 14 dead people. If
Intelligence itself might soon have found a way to speed humanity were to live for another 1000 years, there could
for every living person today be hundreds or millions of
up its own development by adding a non-biological
people not yet born. Therefore, an extinction event is
tertiary layer to the skull which can wirelessly pass the
cosmically larger than a global catastrophic event. So, if
skull-barrier and allow for rapid growth. This is more
it will take only another hundred years before a tertiary
popularly referred to as brain-machine interfaces, or
layer is installed in a considerable number of individuals,
BMIs. The rapid speeding up is partly because such
e.g. human or Abe individuals, then that means a
tertiary layer is not confined to any skull, warehouse, or
region, and can therefore offer very high computing hundred years of a quite high risk of extinction.
power for the brain. The intelligence could grow
unprecedentedly and create more sustainable life while Bostrom (2005) illustrates the potential risks in a three-
at the same time create greater sentience with ever dimensional grid of 1) technological maturity, 2)
increasing senses and perceptions. A better audience for coordination, and 3) insight as shown below:
the Universe by the Universe, and thus a brighter cosmic
ball of sentience and, in turn, more meaning and value.
While evolution could expand the skull through
thousands of years, this new invention could do the same
thing in perhaps hundreds of years or - if things really
speed up - in decades. Such non-biological layer is being
made possible by rapid self-enforcing innovation
generated by the convergence of nanotechnology,
robotics, mixed reality, IoT, additive manufacturing,
biotechnology, and processing power.

There is a risk though. Humanity seem to be at a

developmental stage now with a relatively and
temporarily low resilience and thus high risk of
extinction, mainly by self-destruction (Bostrom, 2005).
Our current intelligence level seems to be a hurricane of
dangers since we can invent tools powerful enough to do
large scale harm. There was a lower technological
maturity level before this point where humanity was in a
lower risk than now of self-destructing because we
simply were not technologically capable of doing it.
Similarly, there is perhaps a lower risk of self-destruction
once we reach a higher technological maturity level than
now because 1) "backup" tools are in a not too much
higher technological maturity level such as expanding to
Mars, and 2) a higher emotional intelligence come with a
higher technological maturity level, which reduces
ignorance.
Here, it is important to appreciate the difference between
a global catastrophic risk and an existential risk
according to Bostrom 2012, and MacAskill (2018). There
is a very big and important difference. Whereas global
catastrophic risks affect all living creatures on the planet,
an existential risk affects the same plus all future
generations that potentially were to live out their lives. In
a scenario where humanity was to colonize the whole
Milky way galaxy and thus increase the total amount of
bright sentience a billionfold, then the difference
between a current global and existential risk is per
definition at a cosmic scale. Currently there are 7.5
billion people on the planet. In total, 107 billion people
Figure 13 Future risk grid. Source: Bostrom (2005).
Here, we can imagine that there are potentially
existential risks at higher technological levels. Going
beyond Bostrom (2005), we could further imagine that
some areas within this three-dimensional space could
boost us even farther outwards towards our goal of
becoming more sustainable and brightly sentient, e.g. by
installing BMIs. Building upon Bostrom’s concept of
existential risk, the axes could also be modified in the
following way:
Insights, technological advancements, and coordination
are all essentially communication within and between
sentient agents. Communication could be described as
the number of senders, receivers, pathways, and
information travel speed. In the case of a brain or a
network of brains, communication is the number of
neurons, the number of synapses (internal and external)
per neuron, and signal speed. Thus, Figure 13 can be
translated into Figure 14. Here, white arrows have also
been added to represent any hypothetical local rapid
advancement lanes such as e.g. the invention of a sort of
mixed reality (or BMIs) that boosts emotional and
abstract intelligence.

14
Figure 14: Sentience evolution. The Earth is the rocket. Source: Own production.
The extend of sentience on Earth is uncertain. Some
relatively high probability can be assigned to your
neighbour being sentient. A lower probability can be
assigned to your mammal pet dog, and yet lower to the
reptilian gecko on your porch. Further, the sentience of
fungi, insects, bacteria, the Earth, or Cosmos can be
assigned a perhaps somewhat lower probability than the
gecko. There is always, however, the probability that
your experience of sentience derives from a simulation in
which you might be the only sentient being (Bostrom,
2003). In this way, sentience probability is all around us.
15
Moreover, the resilience of a given individual or species
also affects the likelihood of future sentience. A species
with greater resilience has through natural selection a
greater probability of proliferation and thus has a greater
number of future individuals.
A 3-dimensional space can then be imagined with the
preservability as the volume under a given position, see
Figure 15. If an individual or a group of individuals are
at position A and are moving to position B, then the
preservability of those individuals is the volume of the
shell A + the volume of shell B.
 Similarly, Equation 2 illustrates the applicability of "AI-
ity".

Ironically, with the same tool that made this life form
more resilient and brightly sentient - and therefore
making it score the highest in the sentience equation, a
hole other life form could be created. Not only carbon but
many other materials such as silicon can be used to
create intelligence and perhaps sentience due to
“substrate independence” (Tegmark, 2017). Artificial
intelligence was created less than 100 years ago and has
already outperformed human intelligence in many fields
(Bostrom, 2014). While humans still have a larger
general intelligence than AI agents, there is no evidence
that AI will slow down its evolution once it reaches
human level intelligence. AI agents could be something
very different from humans. They could be like aliens
landing on Earth. With the difference that we as humans
now have a window of opportunity to control how it will
be created. However, once created, it could very well be
beyond human control.

According to Müller and Bostrom (2016), the median

Figure 15 The volume of sentience. Source: Own estimate of AI experts about when AI research will
production produce an artificial general intelligence (AGI) was for a
one in two chance that high-level machine intelligence
Sentience parameters will be developed around 2040–2050, rising to a nine in
ten chance by 2075. In a smaller but more recent survey
Two examples of the applicability of Equation 1 is by Ford (2018), the average estimate from 23 top AI
illustrated below. Equation 3 illustrates the total researchers was 2099. Given this relatively short
deadline, the transsentientist would be interested in
Equation 3 The preservability of humanity applying the sentience equation to sentient AI. By doing
so, we then get Equation 2.
We assign values to humanity to be for example the
following: Equation 2 Preservation value of artificial intelligence agent
populations
Pc: 50-100 %
Sc: 4 B Sentions
Rc: 2 We assign values to sentient AIs to be for example
Pf: 5-50 % the following:
Sf: 100 B Sentions
Rf: 6 Pc: 0-1 %
Sc: 0 Sentions
Where resilience values range from 1-10. From a Rc: 1
precautionary principle we should insert the lowest Pf: 1-50 %
value in each spectrum. Sf: 100 T (trillion) Sentions
Rf: 5
The sentience equation suggests:
Thus, we get:
Pc × Sc × Rc + Pf × Sf × Rf = VPt
0 × 0 × 1 + 0.01 × 100 T × 5 =>
Thus, we get:
0 B + 30 B = 5 T Sentions worth of preservation
With the indicative and imaginary numerical values of
0.5 × 4 B × 2 + 0.05 × 100 B × 6 => the two above calculations of "humanity" and "AI-ity",
AI-ity populations get an overall higher preservation
4 B + 30 B = 32 B Sentions worth of preservation value than humanity.

preservation value of "humanity" calculated with the

sentience equation. The assigned values are indicative 3. Methodology
and imaginary.

16
Results
Critical Path parameters
Table 2 makes up the critical path matrix. Here, there
are several paths to grow, strengthen, brighten, and
deepen sentience. This table holds a list of 15 such
paths.
The future Sention increase can materialise through a
variety of ways. Each way can be drawn as a path which
explains what exponential technology sectors (ETSs)
need to be researched, developed, and scaled up in
order to fertilize the soil for sentience growth enough
for the expansion to be able to happen. They each
contribute to a certain amount of bright sentience which
is estimated in the column called “Effect”. This column
is measured in percentage extra Sentions produced
compared to current level. This “effect” can be thought
of as a volume increase in Figure 4.
The potential Sention gain varies between these paths.
Some paths have a greater altruistic impact if reached
than others. E.g. the complete colonisation of all planets
and moons in our solar system could arguably give a
greater Sention increase than any medicinal brightening
could potentially offer. Therefore, an altruistic effect
could be assigned to each of the 15 paths should any of
them significantly be advanced.
The TCP Dashboard
The outcome will be a weighted distribution of the eight
ETSs, corresponding to the crowdsourced estimate on
how effective the altruistic effort is of contributing to
maturing a given ETS. There are globally research
teams working on maturing all the ETSs, both in
universities and in R&D-departments of private
organisations. If the effort of progress could be
quantified in a global dashboard, then an award system
could be set up that could celebrate and remunerate the
most contributing team to bright sentience. With
universities, the beginning of one such quantification
could be argued to exist in the Shanghai Ranking
system. Here, universities worldwide are ranked based
on the papers they publish amongst other factors.
Some current strives towards compelling
futures in the FoW, FoL, and FoA
One attempt of accommodating for the three Fs comes
from incentive prizes. Examples of such prizes are the
X-prizes in the USA and the horizon prizes in the EU.
Inspired by the Orteig incentive prize that in 1927
opened the blue ocean of airflight with its incentive
prize, these institutions encourage mission learning to
solve large problems that can open blue oceans for
businesses. This mission learning leans tightly against
the learning of 21st century skills. Incentive prizes also
lean closely with the future of altruism because of its
focus on moon-shots that can evoke hope and
excitement.
17
One downside with incentive prizes is, however, that it
is built on the concept of competition. To the extent that
humans are driven solely by competition, incentive
prizes can be seen as good candidates for the three Fs,
but it fails to the extent that humans are driven by other
forces such as collaboration. In incentive prizes,
knowledge sharing is inherently limited by the spirit of
competition because teams are incentivised to keep the
best information for themselves in order to come up
with the better solution to a problem.
A solution to this downside could be to make a
collaborative rather than a competitive platform. Such
incentive prize could be built with TCP dashboards as a
foundation. In such a TCP founded online game,
incentive prices are split out into micro-prizes in the
form of tokens that players gain when completing
quests. In this way, the game ensures that the four Fs
are constantly improving contrary to the more
competitive incentive prizes where all the four Fs have a
lower improvement in that it is less inclusive and thus a
smaller group of people will benefit from it. By using the
Massive-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing-Game-
platform (mmorpg), such a game on the other hand can
engage a wide group of players.
If such platforms should be designed specifically for the
achievement of compelling futures such as the five
conventional futures or the here proposed sixth
compelling future of transsentientism, then the series of
prizes should be designed to mirror the technology tree
necessary to advance towards such future. Therefore,
apart from the kind of FoW-, FoL-, and FoA- platform
there also needs to be a coherence of the moon-shots
that are incorporated into one cohesive mission for the
future of life. The competitive incentive prizes, listed in
Annex III, are scattered and sporadic.
In contrast, the visions presented in the online game
“Evolve” do offer a somewhat cohesive long-term vision
towards transsentientism (see annex IV).
4. Comparing TCP to the five conventional futures
The five conventional compelling futures, humanism,
transhumanism, cosmism, sentientism, and
environmentalism, offer different levels of clarity of
their paths to their respective futures. In Figure 16, they
compared across two dimensions; how deprovincialized
they are, and how ethical they are – meaning how
highly they value the importance of ethics in their
philosophy.

Figure 16 How deprovincialized and how ethical are the
mentioned compelling futures?
The illustration shows that while cosmism is just as
deprovincialized as transsentientism – which might
give rise to confusion as to what new transsentientism
brings to the table, transsentientism distinguishes itself
by being highly ethical. In this way, it offers a stable
framework through which to give value to actions even
in the case of a rapid telescoping of the future.
A much-debated topic is the proactionary principle,
invented by transhumanist Max More as a reaction
against the more famous precautionary principle. The
proactionary principle suggests that innovation should
be encouraged because it historically has provided
much development of civilization. While this is true,
Bostrom’s Urn of Invention (Bostrom, 2014) provides a
solid counterargument to this proactionary principle
because we can never know when we will invent
something so dangerous that it poses an extinction risk
to all living life – including machine sentience.
Therefore, compelling-future-ideologies that build
exclusively on this proactionary principle are arguably
less ethical than the once that build on the
precautionary principle, as is the case with
transsentientism as stated further up in this article.
18
Table 1 How clear a roadmap does the six compelling futures
provide and thus how ready are they for gamification?
Source: Own production.
In Table 1, the six compelling futures are rated with a
traffic light rating system on how clear of a roadmap
they provide. Such roadmap would give a foundation for
gamification of a compelling future for the benefit of
both FoL, FoW, and FoA. The table shows that while
none of the futures are rated as red and thus not ready
for gamification, only sentientism is green because it
can largely be accommodated for through relatively
clear defined technological progress. The remaining five
futures are rated yellow because a large mix of
technologies are needed to reach the desired future. The
fact that none of the six are red is the most interesting
thing about this table. It gives hope for bot the FoL,
FoW, and FoA to establish amble foundation for
gamification which to some extent could telescope these
futures.
Are we on the right path towards
transsentientism?
Table 2 shows fifteen essential first steps towards a
transsentientist future. Each step has here been rated
from 1-3 on how significant, solvable, and neglected
they are. This is the methodology used in the scientific
field of effective altruism. The score is summed up and
compared to a general rating of the existing scientific
literature on the topic. The discrepancies are
highlighted in Figure 17. From this figure, it can be
deducted that there is a substantial overall discrepancy
and that especially in “AI creation” and in all three steps
of sentience deepening, the discrepancy is very high.
In this way, even if the rating is somewhat off, it can be
concluded that we are not currently ion the path toward
a transsentientist future.
Table 2 Ways to improve sentience with a rough estimate of importance according to the effective altruism method as well as a rough quantitative
analysis of the amount of scientific literature currently written about the sentience improvements. The sum of the EA-number is compared with the
amount of scientific literature currently written so find rough a discrepancy value. EA number Source: Own production.

19
Figure 17: A graphic illustration of the difference between the rough estimates of EA importance and amount of scientific literature
available. Source: Own production.
How gamifyable is transsentientism?
In scheme that can form a basis for gamification for the
benefit of both FoL, FoW, and FoA.
Table 3, a framework for gamification of the
transsentientist vision is drawn. Here, for each step
seven exponential sectors contribute to realize each step
to varying degrees. These degrees can be estimated
along with an eighth category about the contribution of
scaling up any given technology. Next, the overall effect
of a given step on the world in terms of sentions
produced is estimated and plotted in the “Effect”-
20
The overall methodology for gamifying transsentientism
is illustrated in Figure 18.
column. Then, the relation between the effect and the
eight categories are calculated and plotted in the last
eight columns. Now, this result can be an input for a key
performance indicator scheme that can form a basis for
gamification for the benefit of both FoL, FoW, and FoA.
The overall methodology for gamifying transsentientism
is illustrated in Figure 18.
Table 3 How much does each exponential sector feed into a given path? And how much sentience does that path provide? The
answers can be found by using the sentience equation and plotting the answers into this table. Source: Own production.

Transsentientist critical path

Technologi sector share of Technology share of relative
Type of sentience contribution Effect
relative contribution in % contribution × effect)

In % improvement compared to
Nanotechnology and robotics

Nanotechnology and robotics

Additive manufactoring

Additive manufactoring
Generic engineering

Generic engineering
Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence
Energy and storage

Energy and storage

Sentience type

Mixed reality

Mixed reality
Exponential sector

Scaling up

Scaling up
Internet

Internet
now
Path

Natural sentience creation

Growth

Solar system colonisation

Artificial sentience creation
Material abundance
Brightening

Psycho-psychiatric abundance
Institutional abundance
Natural disaster prevention
Artificial disaster prevention
Resilience

Climate and environmental stability

Longevity
Political stability
Neural intra-connectivity
Deepening

Neural inter-connectivity
Neural extra-connectivity
Sensoral augmentation
Total

21
Figure 18 The TCP methdology. Source: Own production.

The TCP methodology 2. This tool indicates, advocates, and celebrates

By mapping out the desirable futures, quantifying their the fastest paths towards the growth of bright
contribution with the sentience equation, and relating it sentience.
to the exponential sector landscape, a critical path 3. Transsentientism seem to be more
emerges that can lead to a transsentientist deprovincialized than the five conventional
transformation. Thus, a methodology of finding the TCP compelling futures while at the same time
can be as follows: having a strong ethical foundation. This makes
transsentientism a strong candidate for future
1. Map research in compelling futures for the benefit of
2. Quantify the future of learning, work, and altruism.
3. Relate 4. Transsentientism could with great advantage
4. Draw be incorporated into the scientific research of
5. Gamify effective altruism to advance the technological
advantage towards a compelling future.
By following these steps, scientific discoveries can be
5. We do not currently seem to be advancing
put into a constellation of pieces that make up a path
towards the compelling future of a
towards a less provincial compelling future than what is
transsentientist utopia. There are significant
offered in the five conventional futures.
discrepancies from this path. Mostly due to the
lack of research in sentience deepening and in
5. Conclusion
artificial sentience creation.
Based on the theoretical analysis of this article, it can be
6. Transsentientism is in this article found to have
concluded that:
a “somewhat” fitness for gamification, which
could indicate that it could be a silver bullet for
FoL, FoW, and FoA. However, more research
1. The transsentientist critical path can prove to needs to be developed in order to determine
be a powerful tool in the pursuit of more conclusively to what extend it can be a
sustainability. Its ability to compare across both silver bullet.
sectors and time could make this tool stand out
as the most inclusive and even accurate tool as
of date.

22
List of references
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255.
Bostrom (2005): Transhumanist values. in Ethical
Issues for the 21st Century, ed. Frederick Adams
(Philosophical Documentation Center Press, 2003);
reprinted in Review of Contemporary Philosophy, Vol.
4, May (2005)]
Bostrom, N. (2012): Existential Risk Prevention as a
Global Priority. Global Policy, Vol 4 , Issue 1 (2013): 15-
31.
Bostrom (2014): Superintelligence. Oxford University
Press. Keith Mansfield.
Britannica (2021): Humanism. Retrieved from:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/humanism.
Brudzynski, S.M. (2014): The ascending Mesolimbic
Cholinergic System. Journal of Molecular Neuroscience
53, 436-445.
Cox, P. & Hautier, L. (2015): Evolution of the rodent.
Cambridge University Press.
Chu, T. (2014): Human purpose and transhuman
potential: A cosmic vision for our future evolution. Orgin
Press.
Darwin, C. (1853): The Origin of Species.
Ford, M. (2018): Architects of Intelligence: The Truth
About AI from the People Building It. Packt Publishing
Glossary of Education Reform (2016): 21st century skills.
From: https://www.edglossary.org/21st-century-skills/
Jackson, S. A. (2000). Joy, fun, and flow state in
sport. In Y. L. Hanin (Ed.), Emotions in sport (p. 135–
155). Human Kinetics.
Jackson, S. A. and Eklund, R.C. (2002): Assessing Flow
in Physical Activity: The Flow State Scale–2 and
Dispositional Flow Scale–2
23
in Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. Volume
24. Issue 2. (p. 133-150).
Kurzweil, R. (2012): How to create a mind. Viking
Penguin Publishing.
MacAfee, A. & Brynjolfsson E. (2012): Race against the
machine. How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating
Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly
Transforming Employment and the Economy.
MacAskill, W. (2017): Effective Altruism: Introduction.
Essays in Philosophy. Volume 18, Issue 1
MacAskill, W. (2019): The definition of Effective
Altruism. From: hTCPs://forum.effectivealtruism.org/
2020.
More, M. & Vita-More (2013): The Transhumanist
Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the
Science. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Müller V. C. & Bostrom, N. (2016): Future Progress in
Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Expert Opinion.
Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence pp 555-
572
Optimal Altruism (2021): Evolve. From:
www.optimalaltruism.com
Publons (2018): Global state of peer review. From
publons.com.
Sagan, C. (1994): The lost lecture. Cornell chronicle.
From: hTCPs://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/11/lost-
lecture-carl-sagan-released-honor-his-birthday
Subhash, S. & Cudney, E.A. (2018): Gamified learning
in higher education: A systematic review of the
literature.Computers in human behavior Volume 87, p.
192-206.
Tegmark, M. (2017): Life 3.0. Being human in the age
of artificial intelligence. Deckle Edg
6. Appendices
Annex I
21st century skills – The Glossary of Education Reform (2016)

• Critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, synthesizing information

• Research skills and practices, interrogative questioning
• Creativity, artistry, curiosity, imagination, innovation, personal expression
• Perseverance, self-direction, planning, self-discipline, adaptability, initiative
• Oral and written communication, public speaking and presenting, listening
• Leadership, teamwork, collaboration, cooperation, facility in using virtual workspaces
• Information and communication technology (ICT) literacy, media and internet literacy,
data interpretation and analysis, computer programming
• Civic, ethical, and social-justice literacy
• Economic and financial literacy, entrepreneurialism
• Global awareness, multicultural literacy, humanitarianism
• Scientific literacy and reasoning, the scientific method
• Environmental and conservation literacy, ecosystems understanding
• Health and wellness literacy, including nutrition, diet, exercise, and public health and safety

24
Annex II

Figure 19: Calculations creating the combined weighted distribution of the TCP methodology.

Questions to be crowdsourced by experts in order to fill out the preservation value of five types of sentience (excluding
alien sentience as a sixth category) for the sake of simplicity.

Pc Sc Rc Pf Sf Rf Preservation value
Sentience type
% Sentions Factor % Sentions Factor Sentions

Non-brain sentience ? ? ? ? ? ?

Reptilian sentience ? ? ? ? ? ?

Mammal sentience ? ? ? ? ? ?

Human sentience ? ? ? ? ? ?

AI sentience ? ? ? ? ? ?

25
 Paths to transsentience
Type of sentience Technologi sector share of total contribution in % (= Technologi sector share of total contribution in % (=
Technologi sector share of relative contribution in % Effect
contribution Technology share of relative contribution × effect) Technology share of relative contribution × effect)

Additive manufactoring

Additive manufactoring

Additive manufactoring
Nanotechnology and

Nanotechnology and

Nanotechnology and
Generic engineering

Generic engineering

Generic engineering
Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence
Energy and storage

Energy and storage

Energy and storage

In % improvement
compared to now
Exponential sector ->

Mixed reality

Mixed reality

Mixed reality
Scaling up

Scaling up

Scaling up
robotics

robotics

robotics
Internet

Internet

Internet

Weight
Path

ꜜ
Trancranial neural
10 5 28 2 5 2 28 20 400 40 20 112 8 20 8 112 80 80 40 112 8 20 8 224 80 492
connectivity
External neural connectivity 30 10 5 5 15 3 2 30 400 120 40 20 20 60 12 8 120 240 80 20 20 60 12 16 120 448

Artificial sentience creation 20 70 4 0 3 1 0 2 400 80 280 16 0 12 4 0 8 160 560 16 0 12 4 0 8 752

Solar system colonisation 25 10 7 7 3 7 11 30 200 50 20 14 14 6 14 22 60 100 40 14 14 6 14 44 60 232

Natural sentience creation 15 7 10 12 4 2 10 40 50 7,5 3,5 5 6 2 1 5 20 15 7 5 6 2 1 10 20 46

Artificial disaster prevention 20 15 30 2 5 3 15 10 50 10 7,5 15 1 2,5 1,5 7,5 5 20 15 15 1 2,5 1,5 15 5 70

Material abundance 3 15 12 13 2 10 15 30 40 1,2 6 4,8 5,2 0,8 4 6 12 2,4 12 4,8 5,2 0,8 4 12 12 41,2

Internal neural connectivity 5 5 5 5 5 5 60 10 30 1,5 1,5 1,5 1,5 1,5 1,5 18 3 3 3 1,5 1,5 1,5 1,5 36 3 48
Psycho-psychiatric
10 30 10 10 10 0 10 20 30 3 9 3 3 3 0 3 6 6 18 3 3 3 0 6 6 39
abundance
Institutional abundance
30 20 5 5 13 5 2 20 30 9 6 1,5 1,5 3,9 1,5 0,6 6 18 12 1,5 1,5 3,9 1,5 1,2 6 39,6
and stability
Sensoral augmentation 10 20 20 10 10 0 10 20 30 3 6 6 3 3 0 3 6 6 12 6 3 3 0 6 6 36
Climate and environmental
5 5 5 7 3 15 20 40 20 1 1 1 1,4 0,6 3 4 8 2 2 1 1,4 0,6 3 8 8 18
stability
Longevity 2 18 15 10 3 2 30 20 20 0,4 3,6 3 2 0,6 0,4 6 4 0,8 7,2 3 2 0,6 0,4 12 4 26

Natural disaster prevention 2 25 10 10 3 10 10 30 20 0,4 5 2 2 0,6 2 2 6 0,8 10 2 2 0,6 2 4 6 21,4

Political stability 15 10 13 15 5 10 2 30 20 3 2 2,6 3 1 2 0,4 6 6 4 2,6 3 1 2 0,8 6 19,4

26
Legend 202 265 179 113 89 75 225 352 1740 3515 4611 3115 1966 1549 1305 3915 6125 7030 9222 3115 1966 1549 1305 7830 6125 2329
Annex III

List of competitive incentive prizes A map of collaborative incentive prizes

X-prize Foundation
Suborbital Spaceflight
Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE
Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE
Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander XCHALLENGE
The Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE
The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE
Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE
Google Lunar XPRIZE
Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPRIZE
Water Abundance XPRIZE
The Global Learning XPRIZE
Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE
Adult Literacy XPRIZE
Next-Gen Mask Challenge
Pandemic Response XPRIZE
IBM Watson A.I. XPRIZE
NRG Cosia Carbon XPRIZE
ANA Avatar XPRIZE
Rainforest XPRIZE
Rapid Covid Testing
Gigaton Scale Carbon Removal
EU Horizon prizes
Innovative Batteries for eVehicles'
Fule from the Sun: Artificial Photosynthesis'
Early Warning for Epidemics'
Blockchain for Social Good'
Low-Cost Space Launch'

27
Potential scientific journals to publish this article:

Nick Bostrom’s publication journals Journal of evolution and technology (https://jetpress.org/)

Global Policy (https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/) Bioethis

Rethinking moral status Review of contemporary philosophy

Technology review The philosophical uarterly

Ethics Mind

New waves in philosophy of technology Journal of value inquiry

Utilitas Journal of consciousness studies

Oxford University Press New waves in applied ethics

Death and antideath Human enhancement

Social epistemology Cognitive, Emotive and Ethical Aspects of Decision Making in Humans and in
Artificial Intelligence
Routledge
Minds and machines (https://www.springer.com/journal/11023)
The Journal of philosophy
Studies in ethics, Law and technology
Ethics of artificial intelligence
(https://www.springer.com/journal/43681) Science and engineering ethics

Harvard review of philosophy

28