I was there for the “Extropian” movement of the 90s. While there was a superficial promise of “become nanobot swarms that can do and become anything!” Feverish power fantasies involved, I think over time (much like Reddit New Atheism in general) they started skidding their heels on extrapolations on ideas that were too unfamiliar to themselves and started getting more reactive, crusty, and entrenched in how the fantastical “singularity™” future was supposed to look like.
Ultimately it became “pre-nukes Fallout, but with immortality and more superpowers.”
Yeah, me too, at least the tail end. I remember them kicking the openly fash out (The Prometheans, I think) and immediately falling back into fascist thinking.
One of the things that made me step away was how incredibly shocked and averse they were to anything that implied that a non-western culture could wield these technologies.
I especially remember how Michael Anisimov went from “everyone is a Jupiter Brain” to “Socially Conservative uploading” to “I’m an open nazi”
For me, the end of my interest and association with “futurology” was when the conferences themselves got overtly bought out by tech companies and starting having blatant military presence as well.
There was this occult blood ritual of sorts involving a new kind of “chipping” during the last one I attended, with a lot of ceremony and crowd enthusiasm. Between that and all the boots waiting around to recruit new credulous bazingas, I was done.
After a century of “Dumb Nietzsche” philosophers they fall for the dumbest of them, a guy so stupid that if he wasn’t obfuscating it by name dropping Baudrillard would make Ayn Rand look like an intellectual titan
They already decided that they were the Very Smartists, I mean “Rationalists,” that are “Less Wrong” than the rest of us mortal rabble, so of course whatever their “grey tribe” leaders decide is the “greyest” non-ideological ideology is the one that’s the most Very Smart, Rational, and the Least Wrong.
That just so happens to be the guy into drug-powered cyber-nazi fever dreams.
Oh man, I just saw a post by Big Yud and he literally states that people who heavily disagree with him are either stupid or insane and frankly that’s the sort of thing that gets you a bolt of lightning from the gods for hubris
For some bewildering reason, Ross Scott of Accursed Farms and Freeman’s Mind actually gave Big Yud a platform to talk about his Dark Enlightenment power fantasies and he had the patience of a saint considering how much Big Yud was jerking himself off the entire time.
I was there for the “Extropian” movement of the 90s. While there was a superficial promise of “become nanobot swarms that can do and become anything!” Feverish power fantasies involved, I think over time (much like Reddit New Atheism in general) they started skidding their heels on extrapolations on ideas that were too unfamiliar to themselves and started getting more reactive, crusty, and entrenched in how the fantastical “singularity™” future was supposed to look like.
Ultimately it became “pre-nukes Fallout, but with immortality and more superpowers.”
Yeah, me too, at least the tail end. I remember them kicking the openly fash out (The Prometheans, I think) and immediately falling back into fascist thinking.
One of the things that made me step away was how incredibly shocked and averse they were to anything that implied that a non-western culture could wield these technologies.
I especially remember how Michael Anisimov went from “everyone is a Jupiter Brain” to “Socially Conservative uploading” to “I’m an open nazi”
For me, the end of my interest and association with “futurology” was when the conferences themselves got overtly bought out by tech companies and starting having blatant military presence as well.
There was this occult blood ritual of sorts involving a new kind of “chipping” during the last one I attended, with a lot of ceremony and crowd enthusiasm. Between that and all the boots waiting around to recruit new credulous bazingas, I was done.
I’m still disgusted that so many less-scratched liberals made so many excuses for Nick Land’s drug-powered cyber-nazi fever dreams, too.
After a century of “Dumb Nietzsche” philosophers they fall for the dumbest of them, a guy so stupid that if he wasn’t obfuscating it by name dropping Baudrillard would make Ayn Rand look like an intellectual titan
They already decided that they were the Very Smartists, I mean “Rationalists,” that are “Less Wrong” than the rest of us mortal rabble, so of course whatever their “grey tribe” leaders decide is the “greyest” non-ideological ideology is the one that’s the most Very Smart, Rational, and the Least Wrong.
That just so happens to be the guy into drug-powered cyber-nazi fever dreams.
Oh man, I just saw a post by Big Yud and he literally states that people who heavily disagree with him are either stupid or insane and frankly that’s the sort of thing that gets you a bolt of lightning from the gods for hubris
For some bewildering reason, Ross Scott of Accursed Farms and Freeman’s Mind actually gave Big Yud a platform to talk about his Dark Enlightenment power fantasies and he had the patience of a saint considering how much Big Yud was jerking himself off the entire time.