Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

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.

https://pod.link/1544487624/episode/22f52bae6270a26d1ca342ef672355ea

Good pod from “What’s Left of Philosophy” about how Effective Altruism is complete horseshit

silicon valley straight-up fascism

https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto

https://imgur.com/a/YOxOG2c

https://i.imgur.com/jQ3Vh7Q.jpeg

...apparently techvangelists don't understand how sharks work....

“Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die.”

That’s why every shark you see is either the size of the Empire State Building or dead

David Friedman points out that people only do things for other people for three reasons – love, money, or force

what an unsurprisingly reductivist view of things

Love doesn’t scale

???

ctrl+f 'climate' - not found (markets will solve it, of course)

Who gets more value from a new technology, the single company that makes it, or the millions or billions of people who use it to improve their lives? QED.

Should have gone with "Checkmate, losers" at the end there IMO

Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism
In lieu of detailed endnotes and citations, read the work of these people, and you too will become a Techno-Optimist.

...

John Galt

that he mentions Nick Land is enough to put this piece firmly in the “fash” camp

i don't think you needed to make it all the way down there to draw that conclusion

lot of claims made about their essentialness to society by people who spent the last five years pushing computer money

its pretty funny that most of these things are just corporate pr bs that not only pose no risk to tech companies but were in fact invented by them in order to give cover for whatever nasty stuff they were up to

“Our enemies are not bad people—but rather bad ideas,” he wrote in a post published on a16z’s website. “Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades—against technology and against life—under varying names like ‘existential risk’, ‘sustainability’, ‘ESG’, ‘Sustainable Development Goals’, ‘social responsibility’, ‘stakeholder capitalism’, ‘Precautionary Principle’, ‘trust and safety’, ‘tech ethics’, ‘risk management”, ‘de-growth’, ‘the limits of growth’.”

"morals" "scruples" "democracy"

We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqjhHVUzl8o

whoda thunk a billionaire would have a life philosophy that puts him at the center of the universe? anyway, tax these people to oblivion and send them to the salt mines.

Read between the lines: https://bengrosser.com/files/Techno-Optimist-Manifesto-Andreessen-redacted-by-Grosser.pdf [PDF link]

seeing more people with e/acc in bios on the few times I click on xitter and I know most of what that is based on prior knowledge but don’t want to know more

there has to be some way to clown these people in a targeted way that they specifically hate, right?

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

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, October 11, 2023 8:57 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'd just like to note that i have been otm in this thread

yes please let me know how to destroy them without having to read about them. can I just send $20 to a guy? I am very tired

I never read much into that because the link reads like it’s a manifesto for the cause and not negative?

effective accelerationism thats good stuff, rises above the typical hack dystpoia we usually get these days, almost pynchonian