On the Nature of Things | Forum

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/11/surviva ... ehind.html

The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.

That’s when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.

excellent article. good companion article to the one typhoon posted here.

https://quillette.com/2018/07/14/i-was- ... me-for-me/

how to get humans to be humane and loyal to you in the future? huh, has anyone ever asked that question before?

ever hear of the golden rule? practice it now.

interesting that (some of) the super rich are viewing tech as force multipliers of human nature...... yet, hopefully to make it better.

they are talking of course about Galt's Gulch, Wakanda, and SimpleMindedStan. they just don't know it.

escape humanity thru going to mars, putting yourself inside a computer, or becoming The Man from Earth...?

9mOIxyRTY5I

These guys are reading way too much news and spending too much time on social media. they left (their) humanity a long time ago.... I wonder if they miss it.

the cool bit about starting a colony on mars (for instance) is that you get all the satisfaction of the catastrophe event that destroys all the other bastards (tm) leaving you and your like mindeds in the fantasy world of the fresh start, without the messy apocalypse stuff.

one would think the wealthy would have more accurate and optimistic projections/hallucinations.

you can understand the down and out person living in a polluted, crime ridden, debt ridden, depressed, dirty, smelly, over-populated city for being down on America/World/humanity (pick one) but the fact that these guys are so pessimistic, IMSMO, reveals more about their thought processes than reality.

you make billions predicting doom and gloom and selling solutions, and then you start believing your own press releases..... that never ends well.

"I'm unhappy!"
"but your'e a billionaire?"
"yeah, but have you seen the state of the world? all those smelly poor people...."

Somehow human misery and stupidity just lacks a certain perversity and 'bite' if you will, without the sauce of wealth and status:

Paranoia in the bourgeoise. FFT is right; a bunch of French Dips.

FFT is always on the money for realtime frequency analysis.

thank you, thank you, im here all week.

Simple Minded wrote:one would think the wealthy would have more accurate and optimistic projections/hallucinations.

you can understand the down and out person living in a polluted, crime ridden, debt ridden, depressed, dirty, smelly, over-populated city for being down on America/World/humanity (pick one) but the fact that these guys are so pessimistic, IMSMO, reveals more about their thought processes than reality.

you make billions predicting doom and gloom and selling solutions, and then you start believing your own press releases..... that never ends well.

"I'm unhappy!"
"but your'e a billionaire?"
"yeah, but have you seen the state of the world? all those smelly poor people...."

poor ole elon is having a full meltdown on the twitters at the moment apparently.

calling the divers who rescued the kids in thailand pedophiles because , eermm, thailand and they were rude about his submarine.

seems you cant be rich enough to escape yourself, barring the hookers and cocaine option i spose.

noddy wrote:
poor ole elon is having a full meltdown on the twitters at the moment apparently.

calling the divers who rescued the kids in thailand pedophiles because , eermm, thailand and they were rude about his submarine.

seems you cant be rich enough to escape yourself, barring the hookers and cocaine option i spose.

yep. as the old saying goes "Wherever you go..... there you are!"

Simple Minded wrote:

noddy wrote:
poor ole elon is having a full meltdown on the twitters at the moment apparently.

calling the divers who rescued the kids in thailand pedophiles because , eermm, thailand and they were rude about his submarine.

seems you cant be rich enough to escape yourself, barring the hookers and cocaine option i spose.

yep. as the old saying goes "Wherever you go..... there you are!"

driven folks arent usually comfortable with themselves, if they were they would be happy being whatever they already were and largely unmotivated for any grand plans

It's some combination of "oh, look at this neat thing, neat-o" advent of computers/robotics and a continuing strain of 20th century progessivism.

Would Ray Kurzweil, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel be all that out of place if compared with H.G. Wells? Granted, they have a lot more toys than Wells but nothing he couldn't imagine, and the driving spirit is shared.

yah, the philosophical point being that the future isnt for us, its for "them".

they arent building a future for a better humanity, they are building a better world for them and their chosen ones, so dont go dreaming of the idle future of robot slaves just yet.

Consciously or unconsciously they are all disciplines of Turgot and his very influential notion of progress.

As Lord Acton notes in his "Lectures on the French Revolution", "[H]e taught mankind to expect that the future would be unlike the past, that it would be better, and that the experience of ages may instruct and warn, but cannot guide or control. He is eminently a benefactor to historical study; but he forged a weapon charged with power to abolish the product of history and the existing order. By the hypothesis of progress, the new is always gaining on the old; history is the embodiment of imperfection, and escape from history became the watchword of the coming day. Condorcet, the master’s pupil, thought that the world might be emancipated by burning its records."

Just as we need to be emancipated by the burning of our records, the people mentioned above merely take the idea to its next level; that progress will only occur when we are able to destroy our humanity.

its not like the iron age gave much of a thought for all the traders left ruined by the collapse in the bronze market.

jury is still out if this crop of self styled lords are going to be involved in this mythical future, i suspect they will be early footnotes in a rather long and clumsy ride.

the singularity is going to be next year for quite a few years yet.