Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

It seems unlikely any of us could withstand being measured by our complicity in national atrocities. This is not to deny them, but to point out that denying any sympathy at all for those enmeshed in a complex moral situation is to condemn ourselves in equal measure. Instead I see plenty of unearned righteousness in this discussion.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 27 July 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Sounds like you struggle with basic stuff.

Some people just would not want to build a destructive weapon under any circumstances whatsoever.

I guess, for me, it depends on how you define "sympathy"? Like there is a certain "pathos" to it, but at the same time I agree with Daniel's lines:

once you've thrown your lot in with something as evil as the third reich these can only ever be explanations, not justifications. The question them becomes, is the launching of two atomic bombs also an evil where you should draw such a line? And I think yes, it is.

it's kinda like watching "The Fog of War" and seeing the elderly Robert McNamara come to terms with the fucked up shit he did/was complicit in. I watched it once with my parents, and my mom explained her & my dad's response to the movie as, "Imagine watching Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney be humble and apologetic years after the fact."

kind of easy for McNamara, since he would never face justice in the Hague or anything. Still, it's something.

Is Edward Teller in the movie? re: SV utopianism, his son is named Astro and is head of Google's moonshot division. He also wrote a really cringey AI chat SF novella a long time ago. I mean Astro did.

ok I thought I missed something having seen Astro Teller speak at some college nerd thing in the early 2000s, but no

I only partially missed it, he’s the grandson of Edward Teller. I think I have a signed copy of his first book because, hey, it was a college nerd conference and I wanted something to grab other than the conference program. His entire career after that has been between nebulous and cringe

I looked him up recently and he co-wrote some book with his wife about marriage and divorce and I assume it’s some un-thinking junk about being swingers

it’s really funny when tech people think they’re ~subverting norms~ by proclaiming what they’re up to in their personal lives and it’s just like, no, it’s obnoxious and you can pretty much live however you like in most places and if you feel guilty about not wanting a picket fence house and 2.5 children and living on the straight and narrow, just don’t do that

I guess it’s affirming for people stuck in dead-end marriages or other conventional social problems but the SV people always make it seem like they’re the first to discover everything!

Whoops! I guess I skipped a generation. I wonder if Oppenheimer has a grandson named Frontside-360-Ollie Oppenheimer who is head of GoPro.

re: swinging tech nerds, does the movie show Feynman organizing key swap parties when they're supposed to be physics-ing?

Such genius (his bail was indeed revoked)

https://www.reuters.com/legal/ftxs-bankman-fried-seeking-avoid-jail-due-back-court-2023-08-11/

I need help confirming or denying a story:

Someone told me that in the old Uber offices Travis Kalanick set up what was effectively a "pacing" route, and he would constantly walk through this giant circle or figure eight, walking miles per day in these giant loops.

Accurate?

— Austen Allred (@Austen) August 11, 2023

“i need help confirming a story that this guy walked around the office”

the responses are even worse

Yes, 100% accurate. Used to sit near one of his turns and just marvel.

— Jordan Dickerson (creed/acc) (@Jordevant) August 11, 2023

this is sadly a concept the d1lbert guy made fun of years ago, Management By Walking Around or MBWA

"Tell me what you're working on! ... Good, good"

Slightly troubling article about a group of mysterious SV tech lords buying up a shitload of pretty worthless farm land near Travis Air Force base in Northern California

I think they plan to build a utopian city, and this is basically how we get from where we are to THX 1138

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/michael-moritz-solano-county-property-18331473.php

the trueanon podcast just did an episode on “charter cities” and I have no idea how they’d work inside the US but I do not doubt they would try

that said, walkable city with orchards and whatever sounds very nice but I also suspect, given some of the people involved, it’s a new take on a factory town

work where you live! live where you work! shop at the coop, where you're the owner

Yeah, you're probably right

https://www.thedailybeast.com/big-tech-billionaires-utopian-dreams-are-actually-dystopian-nightmares

“Big Tech Billionaires’ Utopian Dreams Are Actually Dystopian Nightmares”

dang, who would have thought

and congrats to the doofus who wrote the piece for being so obtuse that i'm still annoyed days later

As a conservative, I have long worried about the power of big government. But big tech’s domination in this scenario would be even more pervasive, and likely less responsive.

In some ways, these tech billionaires are already starting to supplant our government, partly because our government has retreated from big projects like space.

jfc

ATLAS CRUSHED

I think they plan to build a utopian city, and this is basically how we get from where we are to THX 1138

https://i.imgur.com/h3ROuWm.png

https://californiaforever.com

because californiauberalles.com was already taken?

Reminds me of this amazing podcast - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/890392491/california-city

xp the writing on that site is killing me. how many times can you write “good paying local jobs” — what a clunky phrase — and conspicuously refer to Travis Air Force Base?

xp that podcast is wild, thx.

that website looks pretty hastily assembled, I guess they finally needed to go public with all the worry and speculation about that shell company

They tried something similar with nearby Mountain House, back in the 90's... and it's pretty much a bedroom/commuter community now, with people getting up at 5am to drive to the Bay. There really are no jobs there. Now the tech companies are demanding people come back to the office, so this new Fruitopia will likely just end up as another dull commuter suburb

the ruined sticks of the main street thoroughfare will make an excellent paintball terrain one day

warning, malarky alert:

Effective altruism put Bankman-Fried, who lived in a luxury compound in the Bahamas, “on a pedestal, as this Corolla-driving, beanbag-sleeping, earning-to-give monk, which was clearly false”, Kemp said.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/20/sam-bankman-fried-longtermism-effective-altruism-future-fund

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/

According to Reuters, the agency’s major concerns involved the device’s lithium battery, as well the possibility that the implant’s wires might migrate to other parts of the brain. This May, the FDA gave the company approval for human trials.

at least they're not concerned about brain damage, extreme pain, and infection surounding implantation leads and tearing at leads.

I encourage all Musk sycophants to step up for those trials.

I think Musk should go first, to prove his confidence in the tech

he should go first with the monkeys administering the implants

(to the tune of 'minimum wage' by they might be giants)

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7ba6a875-308d-42ad-91a7-dfa57f6618ac_1076x1160.png

have we discussed "e/acc" yet? it's like EA + fascism. you're going to love it.

https://effectiveaccelerationism.substack.com/p/repost-effective-accelerationism

xp no one tell SBF when Bayes was born

The same blog post where he criticizes Jane Austen for not letting her female characters have careers

ever get the feeling that these guys didn't really balance their intellectual pursuits

its funny how mad they are at having been made to read a book in some class once

ms fernandez, you want me to decode the text of julius caesar? when i could *be* coding the next app to make a billy i could blow at caesar's? ~fuck u i wont dow hat u tell me~

kind of funny to be criticizing influential works and not understanding past settings when your entire altruistic venture is supposedly about doing good things in the future, not today

what could that future landscape look like? beats me, maybe look at how people portrayed the world in writing in the past and compare it to what today is like

why do that when you can just print flawless first principles analysis

Original post: http://measuringshadowsblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-fetishization-of-old.html?m=1

The problem is much more systemic than plays and violins and laws. Citizen Kane was finally unseated as the best film of all time and bumped to number two--still quite an achievement for an almost unwatchably empty film.

Now I'm curious to hear SBF's take on Jeanne Dielman

what could that future landscape look like?

In the future, everyone will only have one sexbot but it will be configurable with infinite genders

*removes Armie Hammer mask, sits back, waits for avalanche of VC money*

you have two sexbots, and they just mess around with each other

nobody's going to have enough energy to actually engage with their sexbots after all those hours posting

kind of funny to be criticizing influential works and not understanding past settings when your entire altruistic venture is supposedly about doing good things in the future, not today

It's axiomatic that this is the most important century, because they're alive in it reasons.