Most transhumanist discourse emerges from Western, secular contexts. This creates a blind spot. A 2025 study by Yi Mou and colleagues provides the first large-scale empirical data on attitudes toward digital immortality among Chinese young people, revealing patterns that challenge several assumptions.

The Demographics of Acceptance

The study identified distinct clusters among respondents based on their attitudes toward mind uploading and digital preservation technologies.

The “Geek” Cluster: High income, high technology literacy, predominantly male. These respondents showed the strongest acceptance of mind uploading technologies. This finding aligns with Western patterns, where early adopters tend to be technically sophisticated and economically secure.

The Unexpected Variable: More surprising was the role of religion. Contrary to the assumption that religious belief opposes “playing God” with technology, the study found that highly religious participants, specifically Buddhists and Daoists, were more accepting of digital immortality than secular respondents.

The Eastern Compatibility

The researchers suggest that Eastern philosophical frameworks may be inherently more compatible with the concept of substrate independence than Abrahamic traditions.

Buddhist and Daoist cosmologies view existence as cyclical and fluid. The self is understood as a process rather than a fixed entity. Consciousness flows through different forms across time. From this perspective, transferring consciousness to a digital substrate is not a violation of natural order. It is simply another transition in an endless series of transformations.

This contrasts with the Abrahamic dualism that separates body and soul as distinct substances, with the soul’s journey tied to specific metaphysical destinations.

Openness Over Fear

Perhaps the most significant finding concerns motivation. The primary driver of acceptance was not death anxiety, the fear of dying. It was “openness to experience,” a personality trait characterized by curiosity, creativity, and willingness to engage with novel ideas.

This suggests that digital immortality is not primarily appealing as an escape from death. It appeals as an enhancement of life, an expansion of what experience can include. The respondents most interested in uploading were not those most afraid of death. They were those most excited about new possibilities.

Implications for Global Development

These findings have practical implications for how digital immortality technologies might be developed and deployed globally.

The Chinese market represents a massive potential user base with distinct cultural receptivity patterns. Development strategies that assume Western secular frameworks will miss significant opportunities and may fail to address concerns specific to Eastern contexts.

More broadly, this research suggests that the transhumanist movement could benefit from deeper engagement with non-Western philosophical traditions. The compatibility between Buddhist concepts of impermanence and computational theories of mind deserves serious exploration.

Our Perspective

The assumption that transhumanism is fundamentally opposed to spirituality deserves reconsideration. This study demonstrates that for millions of people, digital continuation of consciousness fits naturally within their existing worldview.

Western cultural narratives, from Transcendence (2014) to Black Mirror episodes, often frame consciousness uploading as hubristic or threatening, reflecting Judeo-Christian concerns about “playing God.” Eastern philosophical frameworks may offer more nuanced perspectives that see substrate transfer as natural transformation rather than existential violation.

Perhaps the question is not whether religion can accommodate mind uploading. Perhaps it is whether certain religious frameworks have been pointing toward these possibilities all along.

The Buddhist teaching that attachment to a fixed self causes suffering resonates with the computational view that identity is pattern, not substance. The Daoist acceptance of transformation aligns with the transhumanist embrace of change.

As mind uploading technology matures, we should expect diverse philosophical and spiritual frameworks to engage with it. Not all will resist. Some may find unexpected resonance.

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Source: Mou, Y., et al. (2025). Emerging Media Use and Acceptance of Digital Immortality: A Cluster Analysis among Chinese Young Generations. arXiv:2505.01355. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01355