TL;DR:
I rant a bunch about how the silly eschatology of Yudkowsky and his cult have been hijacked by monopolistic corporate goons to push generative AI. Figured y’all might be interested.
TL;DR:
I rant a bunch about how the silly eschatology of Yudkowsky and his cult have been hijacked by monopolistic corporate goons to push generative AI. Figured y’all might be interested.
I finally got to reading this through after work and there’s so much good stuff in there! one thread I wanted to pick at in particular:
it’s really reassuring to see a science fiction and fantasy industry perspective on TESCREAL ideas alongside a deep dive into the history of how the rationalists took ideas they got from sci-fi and twisted them into a cult. to be honest, ever since rationalist ideas started capturing large portions of my industry (programming), I’ve felt kind of foolish reading the sci-fi I used to be a big fan of. I feel like reading the perspective in your post actually went a ways towards repairing my relationship with that fiction.
it’s good to know that e.g. our good friend Charlie has the correct perspective on these bozos
Another one who has written critically about the Singularity is Ken MacLeod, in his Fall Revolution series. Basically, the 1%-eters upload, eff off to Jupiter, and EMP-bomb the rest of the solar system in when their simulations run amuck.
Sigh added to the list. (I already enjoyed his corp wars stories, the addition of reactionaries including the minority reactionary felt so topical)
The Fall Revolutions books are quite old. I didn’t really get into the Corp War trilogy.
Newton’s Wake is also a nice commentary on a hard takeoff singularity where the dominant faction is a Glaswegian crime gang.
Now there is a concept, the Glaswegian crime gang singularity.
@Soyweiser @gerikson
Are ice cream vans involved?
Yeah, I thought about bringing his ideas up more as examples (definitely seen him pop in Sneerclub a few times), but I’ve got no idea if he would want to be even more prominent in this conversation than he already is. And the post was already more than long enough.
Charlie always comes to mind when I say I want to read better sci-fi — he’s very high on my reading list once I get through the stack of material I’ve gathered for the next draft of A Brief Primer on Technofascism
I mean, a lot of that fiction is just really good! Frankly, the rationalists tend to miss the point so hard, hyperfocusing on the cool gadgets and missing the commentaries on civilization, society, history, human nature, etc. Don’t let their awful beige California ideology ruin your fondness of some genuinely entertaining, thought-provoking literature.