The philosophy of mind is important for popular transhumanist topics. Many desire to accelerate the development of some sort of 'higher consciousness', sometimes in virtual reality. Although this issue may be approached with the most serious input of specific fields, for example cutting edge neuroscience, it is nevertheless often handled in a philosophically naïve way.

Generalized evolution involves further evolution in emerging higher strata. Cyber space is such a new stratum, with science and technology becoming mere tools ensuring our ultimate enslavement. Whatever will be left of us may become no more autonomous than the cells of a mass murderer's skin and gut that willingly die for the greater good, a system that science itself in turn helps make us believe to be the only alternative and heaven on earth. We are not there yet, but we are well on our way.

What a silly idea: An advanced structure having any interest whatsoever in recreating some violent, self-important beings from way back in the old days. What a sadistic god 2.0 who re-creates all this suffering. But such is not my main concern. There are enough geeks out there who love to play god. We should not confuse 'advanced' with 'better'. Evolution is not a ladder upwards to some telos in the sky.

And this is only half or even less of my criticism. We are near a breakthrough in the understanding of how the phenomenal mind seems to supervene on the physical via the physical being quantum physics rather than naively existing patterns really out there. The full argument is not something I can describe here, but the relevant result is that there are only two ways in which you can try to simulate:

1) In a classical physics simulation like the Game of Life, no phenomenal consciousness supervenes and all you have is a bunch of zombies.

2) Inside a quantum simulation, in which case you do not need to bother, as all that you can simulate is already simulated by the universe and your choice of initial conditions hardly constrains anything happening inside the quantum superposition of the simulation.

Sure, this is really a physics description of the philosophically known non-existence of traditional creator deities. It is the fact that any such god is totally decoupled from its own creation, which exists relative to itself already anyway. It does not fully argue against god 2.0 developing on our own level.

I introduced here maybe two and a half novel criticisms that should cool the high hopes of transhumanists, and I have not even addressed the main point, namely that truly advanced intellects will likely soon seek nirvana anyway. My conclusion is that those hopes for higher consciousness and heaven on earth or in the computer are fashionably sciency but also plain old religion.