Yeah, right, but we could also create a long list of how much better everything is now than everything was as a whole, back along. None of us would really want to go back to living in the 30's or 50's or even 60's. (unless you are guaranteed to fall on your feet as one of a much smaller class of the economically cushioned- and even then.....
The real question is where are we going with all that we have created? Until we decide that, we cannot determine its current value.
She's probably a zoomer who thinks the smart phone is a necessary constituent of a well lived life, snicker. Yes I am laughing at her. I remember the 1970s as being way more mellow and people not being at each others throats over trivialities, it was wonderful.
Nah, that list would be delusional. People were smarter in the past and happier. If you doubt the latter then refer to objective QOL studies designed to measure happiness within a good margin of error, which prove along with many other metrics that those among technological societies today are the unhappiest and most worthless, aimless people in history; people in primitive societies are usually much happier. What we have now is a Nietzschean resentment culture brimming with sickness and unhappiness, what he describes in Genealogy of Morals.
This relates also to what Kacynzski dubbed the power process which is essentially the ability to feel one has power over their own life and meaningfully directs it. No one in modern society can really do this because complex systems control us and society as a whole, that we have no say over. Surrogates activities replace meaningful work.
Your last question isn't much of one, in my opinion, since the answer is obvious in countries under the American Empire's sphere of influence: bankruptcy. That is where we are going. The current system will not go much farther in our countries. What will determine the future is what the more industrialised and not deindustrialised countries choose to do, which are not poisoned with technoreligious dogma and do not face the same neo-Luddite challenge we do.
In addition, smart phones, televisions, personal computing, as well as VR/AR, have all accelerated the neurodegeneracy of the Western countries. Evidence suggests intelligence is actively selected against in our technological, educated societies; the cognitive abilities that gave us all this technology will terminate and will not continue to accelerate. We live in a new technological Dark Age, not prior to a new Golden Age but before a long period of darkness and devolution, like the Middle Ages that emerged from the death of the Roman Empire and barbarity of the administrators that became the new nobility.
Those "Middle Ages" were NOT a "technological Dark Age". They WERE fragmented politically relative to the previous Roman Empire (on one of its good days). Yet technology, engineering and artisanal capabilities continued to develop, along with cross fertilization of different cultures particular bits of technological abilities via longer distance trade and the mobility of written information.
Don't let the wailing and gnashing of teeth among oh so self important royalty over their inability to be Caesar drown out the fact that hands on technologists such as clock makers, blacksmiths and cathedral builders were making huge strides, along with those that realized the utility of Arabic numerals & a number of people whose inquiries into the nature of physical world laid down the foundations for modern physics chemistry and engineering.
To which I point out, well actually, the Dark Ages really were pretty dark, at least as compared to what came before them. See extensive rebuttal here: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15567
"but we could also create a long list of how much better everything is now than everything was as a whole, back along." Really Julliane ? I am going to say, at least in the U.S. quality of life for the vast majority of Americans was better in the 50's and 60's. I am having trouble visualizing a "long list" of better?
Growing up in the '60s I can tell you it was great. When we got a telephone, it was a party line.
Some of my friends rode horses to school, we had a goat and chickens in the backyard. I started hunting with my cat at about age four, and rabbit is still a favourite meat.
Hiking, hunting, surfing were major pastimes. We were broke but never hungry, always safe wherever we wandered. Basically, people in general cared about other people and the music was fantastic!
Mostly life was really good up until the disco was created. Everything has gone downhill from then.
I am a Boomer and no, we were not all privileged. My family had a long-drop until I was 8, and I was 15 when we got a rental T.V. so Dad could watch the F.A. Cup. My Mother worked extra home jobs to do that for Dad as a present.
WHAT have YOU ever really lacked for in your life? Do you have any appreciation at all for the sacrifices of your forbearers?
At one time the US had the highest standard of living in the world: Post WWII. Now we are fifteenth the last time I looked. The height was the later forties, we've been slipping ever since and it accelerated when Tricky Dicky took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971.
A better marker for the beginning of decline is the end of USA being a net energy (hydrocarbon) exporter and the beginning of the need to import energy. Tricky Dick & his antics tried to slap a short term growth bandaid over that wound, and here we are today, hemorrhaging away and ideologically incapable of looking at that hole...
That is certainly one of the big reasons our standard of living is in decline but not the main one as our oil shortages are a matter of political control not actual lack of petroleum. The large deposits offshore of California and other places are strictly controlled if not off-limits for development.
I firmly believe that the dollar's decline is the principal culprit for the US's falling standard of living. All the countries tied to our world reserve fiat-dollar are experiencing similar declines with small exceptions such as Norway. When taken off the gold standard this allowed our living gods in Washington to spend, spend, spend as though the dollar was just a leaf off a tree. The debt is a debit on our government's bookkeeping ledger but so are all the digital and printed dollars that have been created. This does not include unfunded liabilities such as pensions and medical care. Servicing the debt's interest alone now exceeds the military budget. Soon it will exceed social security and then Medicare. The interest on the debt will devour the federal budget and require, yes REQUIRE, huge tax increases from somewhere and somebody.
Over-supply of money leads to inflation as the dollar's worth continues to sink due to unsupported spending by the federal and state governments. It's simple economics, supply versus demand. The CPI is a symptom of inflation not inflation itself. That oversupply amounting to more than twice our GDP doesn't even include the petrodollars sloshing around the world in banks and printed ones sitting in vaults, who knows where.
BRICS is attacking the petrodollar and their GDP already exceeds that of the G-7. When the green tsunami comes crashing back onto our shores it will be an event that even the media and our lying government agencies cannot hide. How many jobs were created each month in the last year? Wasn't there an 'adjustment' amounting to almost a million jobs just recently? Are our masters in Washington truthful and trustworthy? What is the actual CPI anyway? The federal reserve must accept the governmental figures and make its adjustments in compliance with those figures.
Best have some gold, silver and copper coinage in hand because it will matter. Copper is the money of the people not silver and gold. That's for our masters because we are their peons. Would you pay a silver ounce for a live chicken?
How would you support the dollar's worth on the COMEX versus gold? You'd sell from Ft. Knox without publicizing the event is my suspicion. There is no proof but where is the gold coming from that the central banks around the world are buying in large quantities in the 'free world'? New mining and recycling doesn't cover it. I believe we are facing Weimar Republic time. Ultra inflation is a distinct possibility. All so that the nation's largest employer, the federal government, can hire even more hard working bureaucrats who produce nothing of economic value and the parties can collect campaign donations on a monthly basis and of course other 'reasons'.
Our bozos in the beltway are presently listening to the Pied Piperess of socialist economics, Stephanie Kelton. The piper must be paid and the payment will be the dollar's crash. On purpose or as an accident? Are our masters maleficent morons or simply cosmic cretins unaware of what they are doing? Only God knows what is in their hearts, I am totally perplexed as the dollar's downfall will be theirs as well. Perhaps there is a career politician central bank busy buying gold also? Perhaps they know what is happening and are busy buying assets that will appreciate in a crisis?
It all started with the climate hoax. the climate hoax was necessary for the alternative money making schemes that were beginning their decline at about the same time. Great society policies simply accelerated the downfall.
"The real question is where are we going with all that we have created? Until we decide that, we cannot determine its current value."
99% of the problem is that 'we' aren't deciding anything, 'we' are sitting around waiting to see what 'they' will decide to do. Which likely won't be good for the 'we.'
I'd be happy to return to the 50's and 60's providing the population levels were the same. My family of that early era of "tech workers" did well without exploiting everyone else for grotesque profit.
You are really, really wrong, I would have loved to have been a master craftsmen in a craft guild in the 1300s, after the Magna Carta granted citizens some individual legal rights, but before the Renaissance.
A note on God and religion: In many of the ancient religions, Greek for example, Mankind aspire to join the pantheon of the Gods. Hercules is the best example, whose epic reward was to join the Gods in the Heavens. Many other Green and other religions follow this- Heroic man joins the Gods in the heavens as a constellation, a ‘star’ as it were. In Christianity, there is an ‘upside down’ twist. It is Jesus as God that descends and becomes fully human. The aspiration is humility, servant hood, self-sacrifice, healing, and political reform. Today as our culture rapidly shifts towards the secular religions of apocalyptic environmentalism (climate change) and technological worship (the singularity) we are again confronted with this archetype- the heroic CEO warrior-king, Musk and Bezos, seeking to ascend to the heavens (Blu origin, Mars colonization) as man seeks immortality in the stars. But the other pathway remains open- rejecting the quest for Godly status, descend into the mire of humanity, and become ‘fully human’ and accept even an inglorious death in the service to humanity. These are the spiritual and yes, practical choices before us. I for one will choose reality, humanity, and the pathway to becoming fully human myself.
Being aware of the environment around you for a start. Being a hunter is a good way to begin to get in touch with the world we live in and become a part of the planet and the universe we wander in.
Fun question as for the Hindus we live in a world of illusion, Maya, that we are individual ego entities competing against each other while we are actually One, the Self in each of us. Our goal is to realize we are the Eternal Self. The goal of the human being is to live in Oneness and perform service to God by helping others. Jesus' Greatest Commandment is to "love God" (Who is He though?), "The second is the same as the first: Love your neighbor as your SELF." This is an old timeless reality, the "Perennials Philosophy," that our Western religions have lost.
Interesting you brought up the desire of the techno bros to become God.
Reminds me of a certain angel that thought he can do that. Didn’t end well although from our limited perspective doesn’t always seem so.
Christianity also has the concept of theosis or deification. It is an early church father and canonical orthodox concept . Athanasius said: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."
It’s a misunderstood and sometimes exaggerated concept but in Christianity this is the way.
You're a compelling writer, I'll give you that. But reading this makes me feel like I'm watching a guy cackling in the corner of an opium den. He's having fun, but goddamn it's a pitiable state for an adult to get themselves into.
Honestly, I don't think I'll ever be understand just why people of Western European descent all think that they're all gods. Truly, it boggles my mind. Faster than light weapons? Please. And Neuralink? You do realize that China already has hundreds of people using something similar, and it doesn't even require brain surgery to work, right?
Also, about 90% of people who are blind have other serious issues like severe retardation or birth defects, so fixing their sight isn't really going to do much. Of course, anyone who's been to a center for the blind would know that, but why would Musk ever dirty his precious god brain by doing something like that?
Go play in your synth world, Westerners. Everyone else is doing just fine. I mean, have you seen the economy of Indonesia lately? Or India? Or the subway in Moscow? Have you seen the flying drones that can deliver a coffee to you at the park in China? Because all that and more already exists.
Honestly, from my point of view, all these Musks (whose own child hates his guts) and Thiels (childless homo) and everyone else (right down to Kamala Harris' entire fanbase) are just little rat kings fighting over a shrinking pile of shit. The real Americans moving the needle are people like Oliver Anthony, who just spent an entire year on tour without ever ONCE relying on corporate sponsorship, corporate ticket sales, or paid promotions on social media.
The America you think you see on your shiny screen is an illusion. The real folks are in the hills and the forests and growing food on the land, and unlike the synth shitstains, are having (unmutilated) babies and going to church and getting sunshine on their faces every day. Just be patient, good folks. This temporary aberration of e-morons will fade away soon enough, especially if they keep "boosting" themselves like their leaders tell them to :)
Meanwhile, let's just hope those superannuated Missileman nukes don't explode inside their own rusted out silos. You know the weapons I mean, the 100% not even close to being faster than light kind :)) Oh, and watch out for the F-35s falling out of the sky :P
Agreed. Almost all the future possibilities presented are to my understanding rooted in dogma and the new primitive religions that have emerged in the absence of the old ones, to the lack of awareness of their new disciples. Not based in reality, science, or the world of the real and fact. FTL may not even be possible for that matter; speed of space travel may well be limited to C and thus bound to the effects of relativity.
The culture and intelligence of humanity might survive in rural communities akin to Dark Age monasteries bringing the ancient histories and religious texts forward in secret, in isolated self-sufficient communities. Not to mention the urban "e-morons" may well all die of starvation and diarrhea if or when the systems that sustain such concrete jungles of totalitarian rule collapse; their neglect of physical systems and reality is their Achilles heel.
There used to be several OTHER species of the Genus hominidae coexistent with us H. sapiens, more or less parallel branches of the family tree rather than being our ancestors. We did these related species in, be it by intentional murder or more effective competition for their niches. Apparently we were capable of fertile hybridization with at least one of 'em, a few % of those other species DNA are still carried by a few of us.
I expect we are about to undergo a period of divergence/branching in our species and specialization to some new niches... Hope the kids play nicer together this time than last.
I so agree and can add only that those people who pursue this crap of technology are showing their utter stupidity.
With passing time in your life you usually start to grasp that the more you know and have experienced, the more you realize that you know so little or almost nothing, that there is so much more out there in the real world, worth to discover and to experience.
Thank god I read your reply, it's not just me who sees through this bullshit so. All this AI Musk DNC shit is just sound and vision. Aliens coming to destroy us, for fucks sake, give us a break.
"Have you seen the flying drones that can deliver a coffee to you at the park in China? Because all that and more already exists."
I follow Inside China Business (link) and his frequent posts document how the Americans are falling behind the Chinese, in all endeavors that matter. That's why President Ice Cream Cone and the Orange Troll want to go to war with them. Ask the average guy on the American street what "STEM" is and you'll get blank stares. Sam, I always enjoy your brilliant insights-thanks!
Ah.... A true global outlook! Yeah mate. I am far away from the most populated Northern places, but I still know what is going on because of the Interweb and a world-wide network of friends.
Yanks are so far behind in just about everything, and it is not just China. The KOY - Kike Owned Yankland is waging war on the Russian Federation while infrastructure disintegrates and I.Q. drops within its population.
Russia has food purity laws with EXTREMELY harsh punishments for infringements, while Yanks eat literal shit.
Contrary to the crap posted in Western media, Russia is not communist, and it has a very well-educated population of mostly very smart people.
I've seen the video's of the Chinese military hunter drone swarms with facial recognition being tested chasing targets through thick bush. Amazing to say the least!
The KOY is finished. I am just waiting for BRICS+ to finally pull the plug on the Yankee dollar which it can do whenever it wants. https://usdebtclock.org/
Just had a look at that ''Inside China; Business'' channel. Very good and confirms just about everything I see and experience in my dealings with many different peoples and the view I have formed about the state of the world today.
Unfortunately because I was booted off jootoob for posting historic documentaries I cannot subscribe to the channel.
My rather more intelligent friend (as in visualization, spatial skills & social capabilities, I'm better verbally) is legally blind, between the effects of detached retinas, cataracts and metabolic issue related damage to eyes. SHE and a fair number of previously sighted people in our aging population would benefit from neutral linked optical hardware & wetware/software packages.
Thank you sir. The lack of competency correlates to the lack of human morals which are undeniably under attack. With a lack of God there can be no competency as there is no purpose. I too complained about this very topic on substack april 12th, knowing the global comeuppance would begin the next day. A portion of the planet is backstepping, and their allegiance to a future hostile towards humanity is undeniable, you've helped make thie clear to many sir. There comes a point at which blatant truth is invisible as those left are simply blind, yet unwilling to be healed. It's not your outstretched hand's fault they're tumbling past you, keep up the solid effort. I pray for you.
You don't have to shit over him with your attitude. Christians refer to God with a capital G as the father of Jesus and the star of the Old Testament (and it is the same entity the other 2 desert cults worship), and AFAICT he's praising the author.
A fictitious god and not a White one. Any White who worships a fictitious anti-White deity is a race traitor for a start and mentally unstable as well.
Try reading some history. ALL Christens are 100% anti-White, a fact that I as a White Man take great umbrage to.
I'm well aware of the history and have a scathing contempt for all 3 monotheistic desert cults that have only brought chaos to the rest of the world. This isn't the place to go down that rabbit hole though.
Two questions that the answers to might clarify things.
1) Does the soul, defined as the true immaterial repository of humans, separate from the body including the brain, exist?
2) Is our technology an accurate representation of a true science that is in itself a complete accurate understanding and representation of reality?
Why are these important?
The first is important because if the soul exists then immortality of consciousness is already there and whatever upload technology allows is a copy that at best shares form but not essence. The soul as the true repository of consciousness will continue to exist and with it the true essence of that human being.
The second is important because the technology developed is contingent on the science which is far from perfect, as the many failures of modern technology has shown such as Covid mRNA vaccines.
My answers are Yes and No. Techno overlords answer No and Yes .. so they forge on down a misleading path.
Is Peter Thiel aware that Peter Thiel himself is a lot like the kinds of thing people like Peter Thiel warn us about?
Not to worry. You'll never upload a person's being into a machine. You could do a thin client at best, some data points and information, but it won't be alive. It'll just be a machine with a thin set of data points.
The Techno guys are going to make spiritual beliefs look great and will help usher in a comeback, is what I think.
Peter Thiel aspires to be the Dark Lord Sauron, which is why he has a company called palantir and lays waste to our middle-earth. The blood eagles always feast in times like ours, now as then and in medieval Anglo-Saxon or Welsh poetry.
"A wise hero must realize / how terrible it will be, / when all the wealth of this world / lies waste, / as now in various places / throughout this middle-earth / walls stand, blown by the wind, / covered with frost, / storm-swept the buildings. / The halls decay, / their lords lie / deprived of joy, / the whole troop has fallen, / the proud ones, by the wall."
I think you are right that consciousness can't be computed. People's being will not ever be in a machine. There is some good research examining the question and reaching such a conclusion that I read years ago, although I have struggled to find the exact paper I read ever since.
"Think of a hypothetical mega-nuke which is impossible to defend against because—traveling faster than light—it can arrive at the strategic center of a given civilization and instantly wipe it out with no recourse." ... Sorry to be the harbinger of bad news, but such a weapon has existed for many decades. Known as the 'suitcase' nuke, it can be easily smuggled into any country and detonated and there would be nothing that anyone can do about it, when it happens. The first one might be in an uninhabited desert and set off as a final warning. Any challenges would likely be met with further detonations with higher casualty counts.
"We care about your privacy" LOL as you sleepwalk people on to your website. Those aren't cookies, those are cakes.
Simplicius was of the view that to make a nuclear attack indefensible one needs to break the speed of light barrier. I suppose if one puts instant coffee in a microwave, that might have the desired effect. I'm just saying, the answer to American and perhaps other's military bravado is a suitcase nuke. I wish he'd do an article on the concept and he can include Oppenheimer's testimony before Congress that the only tool that could stop them is a screw driver and by that he explained was to dismantle everything that could conceal one at the borders and ports.
I'd love to hear from anyone as to how such a demonstration would do anything other than render every soldier and weapon completely useless from stealth aircraft , subs, ships ... EVERYTHING. If the Pentagon was a video game, it would start flashing GAME OVER !!
Sleepwalking people onto MY website? I don't presently HAVE a personal site? The one with comic apparently now has a bunch of pop up crap, didn't while it was being updated. If https, Duk duk go or other cutouts aren't doing it? I'd be nterested to know.
And Simplicius was talking about ALIENS re: either angels, devils or extinct once FTL is available, not us monkeys with fancy shoes on this world.
OK.. sorry but yes it did result in a lot of popups and cookie stuff. My point was that one does not need any futuristic scifi weapon. They have had it since the 50's... and it is unstoppable as it rather happens in the past and is too late to do anything about. The fact that it is unstoppable makes it everything Simplicius suggested in a super luminal weapon. Just do a nuke in the desert and let Washington run around in panic and realise that those trillions in weapons they own and millions of soldiers are useless now and who would they attack anyhow ?
Go back and re read the bit re: What the ramifications of FTL technology must be to any (theoretical) galactic intelligences. Has nothing to do with sneaking a backpack nuke into USA. Or planet Earth and our present fuckaround.
I know what he said, but what i was saying is why reach for Asimov and aliens when contemplating formidable , unstoppable weapons ? They are already here since the 50's. It's been confirmed , not the least by Oppenheimer. And nobody could be sure who dunnit so who do they retaliate against and if they do , maybe they will trigger a far worse detonation... If they can b;low up Death Valley, they can blow up Manhatten.
Good one Simplicius. "The question will become: what trump card can humankind devise to preempt the elite techno-pharisees, and make them think twice before extirpating us when the time comes and they’ve achieved their utopian self sufficiency?" Given the road we're on, that is the question, isn't it? And even without the dark AI dark envisioned, how does humanity survive a fraught, psycho-technically manipulative, future? The question then becomes who are these all powerful elites, how are they selected--earmarked for elitedom--and what values guide them? In the West the answer is dismal. Our elites are the billionaires--those who got to the top by being predators. They rose to the top by abandoning all morality, all notions of the common good and all elementary human decency and compassion. The good, the kind, the compassionate, the decent are weeded out. That's how Western society--Western capitalism-- is structured. It's built into the culture. It rewards wealth and profit-seeking above all things. Wealth is the desiderata. If you are a multi-billionaire you are worshipped like a god, admired and envied. You can buy elections, politicians, dictate policy, bankrupt any person, yea, any city, with lawsuits with a battalion of hired lawyers. You can buy media and news organizations to control what the population sees, hears and thinks. That's where the West stands. And frankly left to it's own devices that where it--and the world ends up: in the maw of the worst of mankind. But there's another team on the field. That team doesn't champion personal wealth above all things. It doesn't champion individual freedom (as if any freedom could exist outside of a social context). It doesn't celebrate limited government, that is, limiting the only social entity capable of controlling predatory elites. The other team champions "a modest Common Prosperity." It champions the idea that good governance is about structuring society and pursuing policies that provide the basis for the healthy development of the entire population. Not a vision of equal outcomes, but one of making the fundamentals of life accessible to all so all can develop and excel to their full capacity. But how does such a government maintain its good intentions in this fallen world? How does such a government with such power avoid being captured by evil elites? That's a toughie. When I follow and read Xi I see that this is his struggle. He's trying to do it with philosophy, education and party discipline. He's trying valiantly to inculcate the Chinese Communist Boy Scout code (with a healthy dose of Confucianism). And he just might be able to lock it in for a few more generations. That's the battle for now. It's between East and West. After that? I ain't gonna guess.
The 'West' in it's gradually decline comes into unavoidable contradictions with itself - it's a philosophical law, unescapable because there is no day without night and there are no winners without losers.
Simply driving all to extinction will not work because it will extinct those who are in power as well.
With neural jacks stimulating your pleasure senses for obedience and suppressing them for disobedience, the slaves will love their enslavement and actually love slaving for the rich.
The Achilles heel of the Western mindset is it's reductionist view. The true complexity of life could never be understood through external observation or using some technology. I guess if the mega wealthy want to waste their fortunes on the quest for eternal life then good luck to them. It beats the hell out of bankrolling war or clearing tropical rainforests to keep the Macca's burgers cheap.
On a recent flight, I was the only one in landing that I could see who did not take out their phone the moment they were able to connect again. It was clear to me then that people would not ever control technology, and instead, it would always control them.
I greatly enjoy and respect your writing, but in this article I think there's a lot more reading you need to do. Some general critique off the top of my head, quickly scribbled out:
I think the future realities you hypothesise are impossible. The society that decides to give way to a world of technological fantasy is one that self-destructs. Kacynzski made a convincing argument that technological societies and "self-prop systems" that prioritise short term benefit over long term will all inevitably destroy themselves. This is an alternative solution to the Fermi paradox and I think more likely than the Dark Forest hypothesis, et al.
Kacynzski thought out what you said about extirpating us in his original manifesto very well, if you're curious I refer to paragraphs 173-175 of it. Kurzweil works at Google AI and famously quoted this analysis of Kacynzski's in a book of his.
ASI might be impossible too. It is a Silicon Valley religion replacing God with Machine, and based on philosophy of science and the work of Bostrom, etc, and not anything in computer science or the reality that we observe and understand. Bostrom's simulation hypothesis, which is based on a logical argument of probability and not possibility in nature, requires that it is possible to replace all of our known laws with a set of algorithms that produces identical results, which is problematic regardless of the laws of the 'higher' universe. So this is likely impossible too, and technoreligious nonsense. Sabine Hossenfelder gave a good refutation of this in her book Existential Physics.
As well, in order for simulation hypothesis to be possible, it also depends on quantum computing to be possible, and some dissenting physicists think quantum supremacy is unachievable according to our laws of physics. Such naysayers are usually disregarded since the technofascists march forward and believe in "progress" as inevitable. I don't know if I agree as topographical quantum computing sounds possible to me and to get around it, but who knows.
Fermi's paradox meanwhile is Fermi's blunder and all the theories attempting to use it to argue a hostile universe are wrong, because the Malthusian growth model is an 18th century math error by Malthus that does not reflect the growth of population species in nature that usually level out after some time and are not exponential. I refer you to the Lotka–Volterra equations for a better set of math at predicting the conditions of the universe. However, even if one accepts Fermi's paradox, listed hypotheses I'm familiar with are impossible in our universe if FTL is possible. FTL nukes are an absurdity of a primitive civilisation's failure of imagination; you could neutralise them in all kinds of ways like femtomaterial, to name one possibility.
Berserker hypothesis is easily refuted because it obviously does not match the reality we observe; Dark Forest obviously too, which I would add is a plot device of a trilogy of novels and the author himself [Liu Cixin] came up with based on his experiences working as an engineer at a factory that people would even give bribes in order to work at; work ended, it shut down, and everyone was at each other's throats thereafter in a world they could not have previously imagined. In the novels, the dark forest state of the universe was imposed by advanced civilisations that came from other universes after exhausting all matter in their own universe, and it cannot exist in a universe with faster-than-light technology. So this is a self-refuting hypothesis if FTL exists.
The primary cause of a dark forest state is not the ability to travel instantaneously (i.e time travel) granted by FTL tech; it is the kingdom-level difference in species and the inability to ever establish effective communication, limited by C, that causes it. Limitations of C cause chains of suspicion—"If you think I’m benevolent, that’s not a reason to feel safe, because according to the first axiom [survival is the primary need of civilisations], a benevolent civilization can’t predict that any other civilization is benevolent. You don’t know whether I think you’re benevolent or malicious. Next, even if you know that I think you’re benevolent, and I also know that you think I’m benevolent, I don’t know what you think about what I think about what you’re thinking about me. It’s convoluted, isn’t it? This is just the third level, but the logic goes on indefinitely."
Exceeding C makes dark forest state impossible because species are able to communicate instantaneously, and game theory principles will not apply as communications ambiguity is resolved. There are no "forests and fields, but a flourishing capital" in such a universe. It's not possible.
Why do we not see life in the universe? A more likely alternative to all of these is in my view that supercivilisations hide from the hostile civilisations among more primitive ones that are not deemed threats, i.e what physicist Beatriz Gato-Rivera calls the sub-anthropic principle and undetectability conjecture. I think this matches better the reality we observe.
Fascinating progression. But first I wonder if perhaps the events being minutely tracked in Simplicius's Substack might nip this Dark Futura projection in the bud? Secondly, the Feminine in all her aspects (meaning that other half of the human duality, shared by both genders, that makes us truly Human) seems completely absent in this vision and I wonder where she has gone, along with all the simple earthy qualities such as love and the 7 or 12 etc. eternal Virtues, and those Three Fates forever spinning, weaving and cutting the threads of our lives beyond our understanding...? As long as there is life on Earth these creative energies will not cease. Or could what you describe be tuning into the inevitable vision/fantasy woven by the mechanistic, untethered masculine, over emphasized in the last hundreds of years, having lost all humility and increasingly lost in the ethers, having lost touch with Mother Earth (vs the true, beautiful, potent, life protecting masculine we so need)? What you describe is cause for the grief we can all feel.
Thank you, Simplicius, for the opportunity to muse upon all we have been losing that we are witnessing all around us, what's still possible, and what hopefully will never come to be.
It's fun to play with the transhuman science fiction fantasies that motivate these people. I remember first learning about all this back in the 1990s on Usenet.
As for it being a serious or likely future, well, this article answers that question in the opening paragraphs. These elites can't keep the forward momentum of industrial civilization. It's hard to run a techno utopia waging war against the gods when electric lights are a luxury.
A healthy skepticism towards their ability to exercise metaphysical godhood over us plebes is warranted in these speculations..
Technology first appears as a novelty, next as a convenience which soon becomes a necessity, then eventually an obstacle.
What were once conveniences
Have become necessities.
Told you once how it would be
But now I'm begging, please please....
Once upon no time to play a part.
Who'd have thought, how funny now, to be right back at the ....
Start . End .
End . Start...
Mary Blue
Yeah, right, but we could also create a long list of how much better everything is now than everything was as a whole, back along. None of us would really want to go back to living in the 30's or 50's or even 60's. (unless you are guaranteed to fall on your feet as one of a much smaller class of the economically cushioned- and even then.....
The real question is where are we going with all that we have created? Until we decide that, we cannot determine its current value.
The 50s and 60s werent that bad really. I guess ot depends where you were lucky enough to be born
She's probably a zoomer who thinks the smart phone is a necessary constituent of a well lived life, snicker. Yes I am laughing at her. I remember the 1970s as being way more mellow and people not being at each others throats over trivialities, it was wonderful.
Nah, that list would be delusional. People were smarter in the past and happier. If you doubt the latter then refer to objective QOL studies designed to measure happiness within a good margin of error, which prove along with many other metrics that those among technological societies today are the unhappiest and most worthless, aimless people in history; people in primitive societies are usually much happier. What we have now is a Nietzschean resentment culture brimming with sickness and unhappiness, what he describes in Genealogy of Morals.
This relates also to what Kacynzski dubbed the power process which is essentially the ability to feel one has power over their own life and meaningfully directs it. No one in modern society can really do this because complex systems control us and society as a whole, that we have no say over. Surrogates activities replace meaningful work.
Your last question isn't much of one, in my opinion, since the answer is obvious in countries under the American Empire's sphere of influence: bankruptcy. That is where we are going. The current system will not go much farther in our countries. What will determine the future is what the more industrialised and not deindustrialised countries choose to do, which are not poisoned with technoreligious dogma and do not face the same neo-Luddite challenge we do.
In addition, smart phones, televisions, personal computing, as well as VR/AR, have all accelerated the neurodegeneracy of the Western countries. Evidence suggests intelligence is actively selected against in our technological, educated societies; the cognitive abilities that gave us all this technology will terminate and will not continue to accelerate. We live in a new technological Dark Age, not prior to a new Golden Age but before a long period of darkness and devolution, like the Middle Ages that emerged from the death of the Roman Empire and barbarity of the administrators that became the new nobility.
Thank you, I replied without checking other comments and believe you are correct.
@Emma M.
Those "Middle Ages" were NOT a "technological Dark Age". They WERE fragmented politically relative to the previous Roman Empire (on one of its good days). Yet technology, engineering and artisanal capabilities continued to develop, along with cross fertilization of different cultures particular bits of technological abilities via longer distance trade and the mobility of written information.
Don't let the wailing and gnashing of teeth among oh so self important royalty over their inability to be Caesar drown out the fact that hands on technologists such as clock makers, blacksmiths and cathedral builders were making huge strides, along with those that realized the utility of Arabic numerals & a number of people whose inquiries into the nature of physical world laid down the foundations for modern physics chemistry and engineering.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001449831930049X
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001449831930049X
To which I point out, well actually, the Dark Ages really were pretty dark, at least as compared to what came before them. See extensive rebuttal here: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15567
Dark ages, middle ages, Renaissance. Not all the same thing. I was responding to a comment which specifically mentioned “the middle ages”.
Also, I do believe the comment I was responding to has now been edited?!
You get it! Check out my essay here, I think you will like it:
https://substack.com/@whispertrees/p-144571152
"but we could also create a long list of how much better everything is now than everything was as a whole, back along." Really Julliane ? I am going to say, at least in the U.S. quality of life for the vast majority of Americans was better in the 50's and 60's. I am having trouble visualizing a "long list" of better?
Growing up in the '60s I can tell you it was great. When we got a telephone, it was a party line.
Some of my friends rode horses to school, we had a goat and chickens in the backyard. I started hunting with my cat at about age four, and rabbit is still a favourite meat.
Hiking, hunting, surfing were major pastimes. We were broke but never hungry, always safe wherever we wandered. Basically, people in general cared about other people and the music was fantastic!
Mostly life was really good up until the disco was created. Everything has gone downhill from then.
I am a Boomer and no, we were not all privileged. My family had a long-drop until I was 8, and I was 15 when we got a rental T.V. so Dad could watch the F.A. Cup. My Mother worked extra home jobs to do that for Dad as a present.
WHAT have YOU ever really lacked for in your life? Do you have any appreciation at all for the sacrifices of your forbearers?
At one time the US had the highest standard of living in the world: Post WWII. Now we are fifteenth the last time I looked. The height was the later forties, we've been slipping ever since and it accelerated when Tricky Dicky took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971.
@Tom Worley
A better marker for the beginning of decline is the end of USA being a net energy (hydrocarbon) exporter and the beginning of the need to import energy. Tricky Dick & his antics tried to slap a short term growth bandaid over that wound, and here we are today, hemorrhaging away and ideologically incapable of looking at that hole...
That is certainly one of the big reasons our standard of living is in decline but not the main one as our oil shortages are a matter of political control not actual lack of petroleum. The large deposits offshore of California and other places are strictly controlled if not off-limits for development.
I firmly believe that the dollar's decline is the principal culprit for the US's falling standard of living. All the countries tied to our world reserve fiat-dollar are experiencing similar declines with small exceptions such as Norway. When taken off the gold standard this allowed our living gods in Washington to spend, spend, spend as though the dollar was just a leaf off a tree. The debt is a debit on our government's bookkeeping ledger but so are all the digital and printed dollars that have been created. This does not include unfunded liabilities such as pensions and medical care. Servicing the debt's interest alone now exceeds the military budget. Soon it will exceed social security and then Medicare. The interest on the debt will devour the federal budget and require, yes REQUIRE, huge tax increases from somewhere and somebody.
Over-supply of money leads to inflation as the dollar's worth continues to sink due to unsupported spending by the federal and state governments. It's simple economics, supply versus demand. The CPI is a symptom of inflation not inflation itself. That oversupply amounting to more than twice our GDP doesn't even include the petrodollars sloshing around the world in banks and printed ones sitting in vaults, who knows where.
BRICS is attacking the petrodollar and their GDP already exceeds that of the G-7. When the green tsunami comes crashing back onto our shores it will be an event that even the media and our lying government agencies cannot hide. How many jobs were created each month in the last year? Wasn't there an 'adjustment' amounting to almost a million jobs just recently? Are our masters in Washington truthful and trustworthy? What is the actual CPI anyway? The federal reserve must accept the governmental figures and make its adjustments in compliance with those figures.
Best have some gold, silver and copper coinage in hand because it will matter. Copper is the money of the people not silver and gold. That's for our masters because we are their peons. Would you pay a silver ounce for a live chicken?
How would you support the dollar's worth on the COMEX versus gold? You'd sell from Ft. Knox without publicizing the event is my suspicion. There is no proof but where is the gold coming from that the central banks around the world are buying in large quantities in the 'free world'? New mining and recycling doesn't cover it. I believe we are facing Weimar Republic time. Ultra inflation is a distinct possibility. All so that the nation's largest employer, the federal government, can hire even more hard working bureaucrats who produce nothing of economic value and the parties can collect campaign donations on a monthly basis and of course other 'reasons'.
Our bozos in the beltway are presently listening to the Pied Piperess of socialist economics, Stephanie Kelton. The piper must be paid and the payment will be the dollar's crash. On purpose or as an accident? Are our masters maleficent morons or simply cosmic cretins unaware of what they are doing? Only God knows what is in their hearts, I am totally perplexed as the dollar's downfall will be theirs as well. Perhaps there is a career politician central bank busy buying gold also? Perhaps they know what is happening and are busy buying assets that will appreciate in a crisis?
https://www.usdebtclock.org/ https://chapwoodindex.com/ https://www.lisep.org/
God Bless Us All
Carter drilled some test wells in Alaska and capped them off. Results remain secret. "Not for us."
"Burn theirs first."
Can you imagine how OPEC+ takes that viewpoint?
Yes, realistically.
Russia found a LOT of oil in Antarctica. It is in the UK's zone of protection.
Nothing more has been said since that announcement a couple of months ago.
This looks like a potential "peace dividend", but there are no signs of acknowledgement.
It all started with the climate hoax. the climate hoax was necessary for the alternative money making schemes that were beginning their decline at about the same time. Great society policies simply accelerated the downfall.
"The real question is where are we going with all that we have created? Until we decide that, we cannot determine its current value."
99% of the problem is that 'we' aren't deciding anything, 'we' are sitting around waiting to see what 'they' will decide to do. Which likely won't be good for the 'we.'
I'd be happy to return to the 50's and 60's providing the population levels were the same. My family of that early era of "tech workers" did well without exploiting everyone else for grotesque profit.
You are really, really wrong, I would have loved to have been a master craftsmen in a craft guild in the 1300s, after the Magna Carta granted citizens some individual legal rights, but before the Renaissance.
A note on God and religion: In many of the ancient religions, Greek for example, Mankind aspire to join the pantheon of the Gods. Hercules is the best example, whose epic reward was to join the Gods in the Heavens. Many other Green and other religions follow this- Heroic man joins the Gods in the heavens as a constellation, a ‘star’ as it were. In Christianity, there is an ‘upside down’ twist. It is Jesus as God that descends and becomes fully human. The aspiration is humility, servant hood, self-sacrifice, healing, and political reform. Today as our culture rapidly shifts towards the secular religions of apocalyptic environmentalism (climate change) and technological worship (the singularity) we are again confronted with this archetype- the heroic CEO warrior-king, Musk and Bezos, seeking to ascend to the heavens (Blu origin, Mars colonization) as man seeks immortality in the stars. But the other pathway remains open- rejecting the quest for Godly status, descend into the mire of humanity, and become ‘fully human’ and accept even an inglorious death in the service to humanity. These are the spiritual and yes, practical choices before us. I for one will choose reality, humanity, and the pathway to becoming fully human myself.
What is 'reality'? What is being 'fully human'?
Being aware of the environment around you for a start. Being a hunter is a good way to begin to get in touch with the world we live in and become a part of the planet and the universe we wander in.
Fun question as for the Hindus we live in a world of illusion, Maya, that we are individual ego entities competing against each other while we are actually One, the Self in each of us. Our goal is to realize we are the Eternal Self. The goal of the human being is to live in Oneness and perform service to God by helping others. Jesus' Greatest Commandment is to "love God" (Who is He though?), "The second is the same as the first: Love your neighbor as your SELF." This is an old timeless reality, the "Perennials Philosophy," that our Western religions have lost.
Interesting you brought up the desire of the techno bros to become God.
Reminds me of a certain angel that thought he can do that. Didn’t end well although from our limited perspective doesn’t always seem so.
Christianity also has the concept of theosis or deification. It is an early church father and canonical orthodox concept . Athanasius said: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."
It’s a misunderstood and sometimes exaggerated concept but in Christianity this is the way.
The challenge boils down to Solzhenitsyn's anchoring dictum: "Live not by lies."
And engineered pseudo-reality is a lie.
Nice (thrilling?) to see Sohlzenitzen’s name and essay mentioned. One of the truly greats of the 20th Century—often mentioned, much more rarely read.
The elites could just give the masses AI-generated, individualized porn feeds, and then they'd be free to do as they wish.
Now you're talking, mate. The coming dystopia doesn't look so bad after all 🤣
Weird. I tried to Like your comment, but it didn't let me.
@Antiwar7
Can I have a side of Heroin with my VR porn-O-verse connection, please?
No, fentanyl. Because it's cheaper.
@Antiwar7
You cheap bastards! I bet you'd cut our basic income program cocaine allowances with meth too!!!
You're a compelling writer, I'll give you that. But reading this makes me feel like I'm watching a guy cackling in the corner of an opium den. He's having fun, but goddamn it's a pitiable state for an adult to get themselves into.
Honestly, I don't think I'll ever be understand just why people of Western European descent all think that they're all gods. Truly, it boggles my mind. Faster than light weapons? Please. And Neuralink? You do realize that China already has hundreds of people using something similar, and it doesn't even require brain surgery to work, right?
Also, about 90% of people who are blind have other serious issues like severe retardation or birth defects, so fixing their sight isn't really going to do much. Of course, anyone who's been to a center for the blind would know that, but why would Musk ever dirty his precious god brain by doing something like that?
Go play in your synth world, Westerners. Everyone else is doing just fine. I mean, have you seen the economy of Indonesia lately? Or India? Or the subway in Moscow? Have you seen the flying drones that can deliver a coffee to you at the park in China? Because all that and more already exists.
Honestly, from my point of view, all these Musks (whose own child hates his guts) and Thiels (childless homo) and everyone else (right down to Kamala Harris' entire fanbase) are just little rat kings fighting over a shrinking pile of shit. The real Americans moving the needle are people like Oliver Anthony, who just spent an entire year on tour without ever ONCE relying on corporate sponsorship, corporate ticket sales, or paid promotions on social media.
The America you think you see on your shiny screen is an illusion. The real folks are in the hills and the forests and growing food on the land, and unlike the synth shitstains, are having (unmutilated) babies and going to church and getting sunshine on their faces every day. Just be patient, good folks. This temporary aberration of e-morons will fade away soon enough, especially if they keep "boosting" themselves like their leaders tell them to :)
Meanwhile, let's just hope those superannuated Missileman nukes don't explode inside their own rusted out silos. You know the weapons I mean, the 100% not even close to being faster than light kind :)) Oh, and watch out for the F-35s falling out of the sky :P
Well, at least you made me Google 'Oliver Anthony'.
https://youtu.be/sqSA-SY5Hro?si=8wovYaPncjisrecE
I remember sending this song to Lefty acquaintances and they got so mad, people on the left aren't wired like healthy Americans
Please Alan, who are these "people on the left" that you speak of? Serious question.
The last "leftist" I spoke with (1973) was a former SDS member who taught history where I went to college.
Yeah. They don't get it. There hasn't been an American left since the '80s. Big Money killed the real left here during the '80s and '90s.
Nice song.
@JimG
Beats Lee Greenwood, anyhow.
@Alan, aka DudeInMinnetonka
And I send THIS one out, with similar results- Equally effective vs. a Righty... They all wanted to murder me within about 2 minutes.
https://youtu.be/TLP9f4jsq0M?si=dzE7NOf4iHN-_YEL
Haha that's gold!
Agreed. Almost all the future possibilities presented are to my understanding rooted in dogma and the new primitive religions that have emerged in the absence of the old ones, to the lack of awareness of their new disciples. Not based in reality, science, or the world of the real and fact. FTL may not even be possible for that matter; speed of space travel may well be limited to C and thus bound to the effects of relativity.
The culture and intelligence of humanity might survive in rural communities akin to Dark Age monasteries bringing the ancient histories and religious texts forward in secret, in isolated self-sufficient communities. Not to mention the urban "e-morons" may well all die of starvation and diarrhea if or when the systems that sustain such concrete jungles of totalitarian rule collapse; their neglect of physical systems and reality is their Achilles heel.
The days of the rat kings are numbered.
@Emma M.
There used to be several OTHER species of the Genus hominidae coexistent with us H. sapiens, more or less parallel branches of the family tree rather than being our ancestors. We did these related species in, be it by intentional murder or more effective competition for their niches. Apparently we were capable of fertile hybridization with at least one of 'em, a few % of those other species DNA are still carried by a few of us.
I expect we are about to undergo a period of divergence/branching in our species and specialization to some new niches... Hope the kids play nicer together this time than last.
I so agree and can add only that those people who pursue this crap of technology are showing their utter stupidity.
With passing time in your life you usually start to grasp that the more you know and have experienced, the more you realize that you know so little or almost nothing, that there is so much more out there in the real world, worth to discover and to experience.
So I keep going by I know that I don't know.
The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know, and so on it goes until the end of our day.
@
Frank Sailor
Go read Kurt Vonnegut "Galapagos". Nothing is new under the sun...
Thank god I read your reply, it's not just me who sees through this bullshit so. All this AI Musk DNC shit is just sound and vision. Aliens coming to destroy us, for fucks sake, give us a break.
"Have you seen the flying drones that can deliver a coffee to you at the park in China? Because all that and more already exists."
I follow Inside China Business (link) and his frequent posts document how the Americans are falling behind the Chinese, in all endeavors that matter. That's why President Ice Cream Cone and the Orange Troll want to go to war with them. Ask the average guy on the American street what "STEM" is and you'll get blank stares. Sam, I always enjoy your brilliant insights-thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7m5Z6FuPbk
Ah.... A true global outlook! Yeah mate. I am far away from the most populated Northern places, but I still know what is going on because of the Interweb and a world-wide network of friends.
Yanks are so far behind in just about everything, and it is not just China. The KOY - Kike Owned Yankland is waging war on the Russian Federation while infrastructure disintegrates and I.Q. drops within its population.
Russia has food purity laws with EXTREMELY harsh punishments for infringements, while Yanks eat literal shit.
Contrary to the crap posted in Western media, Russia is not communist, and it has a very well-educated population of mostly very smart people.
I've seen the video's of the Chinese military hunter drone swarms with facial recognition being tested chasing targets through thick bush. Amazing to say the least!
The KOY is finished. I am just waiting for BRICS+ to finally pull the plug on the Yankee dollar which it can do whenever it wants. https://usdebtclock.org/
.
Just had a look at that ''Inside China; Business'' channel. Very good and confirms just about everything I see and experience in my dealings with many different peoples and the view I have formed about the state of the world today.
Unfortunately because I was booted off jootoob for posting historic documentaries I cannot subscribe to the channel.
A fave of mine...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWPE3cmIFgg
@Sam Ursu
My rather more intelligent friend (as in visualization, spatial skills & social capabilities, I'm better verbally) is legally blind, between the effects of detached retinas, cataracts and metabolic issue related damage to eyes. SHE and a fair number of previously sighted people in our aging population would benefit from neutral linked optical hardware & wetware/software packages.
re: the first paragraph, that's the appeal of Dark Futura: it aesthetically feels like insane ramblings, yet it all makes sense.
Thank you sir. The lack of competency correlates to the lack of human morals which are undeniably under attack. With a lack of God there can be no competency as there is no purpose. I too complained about this very topic on substack april 12th, knowing the global comeuppance would begin the next day. A portion of the planet is backstepping, and their allegiance to a future hostile towards humanity is undeniable, you've helped make thie clear to many sir. There comes a point at which blatant truth is invisible as those left are simply blind, yet unwilling to be healed. It's not your outstretched hand's fault they're tumbling past you, keep up the solid effort. I pray for you.
Which ''God''. Are you so damn arrogant that you believe YOUR belief system takes precedence over all others?
You come across as an anti-White sandland cult worshipper!
You don't have to shit over him with your attitude. Christians refer to God with a capital G as the father of Jesus and the star of the Old Testament (and it is the same entity the other 2 desert cults worship), and AFAICT he's praising the author.
A fictitious god and not a White one. Any White who worships a fictitious anti-White deity is a race traitor for a start and mentally unstable as well.
Try reading some history. ALL Christens are 100% anti-White, a fact that I as a White Man take great umbrage to.
I'm well aware of the history and have a scathing contempt for all 3 monotheistic desert cults that have only brought chaos to the rest of the world. This isn't the place to go down that rabbit hole though.
Two questions that the answers to might clarify things.
1) Does the soul, defined as the true immaterial repository of humans, separate from the body including the brain, exist?
2) Is our technology an accurate representation of a true science that is in itself a complete accurate understanding and representation of reality?
Why are these important?
The first is important because if the soul exists then immortality of consciousness is already there and whatever upload technology allows is a copy that at best shares form but not essence. The soul as the true repository of consciousness will continue to exist and with it the true essence of that human being.
The second is important because the technology developed is contingent on the science which is far from perfect, as the many failures of modern technology has shown such as Covid mRNA vaccines.
My answers are Yes and No. Techno overlords answer No and Yes .. so they forge on down a misleading path.
What are yours?
Is Peter Thiel aware that Peter Thiel himself is a lot like the kinds of thing people like Peter Thiel warn us about?
Not to worry. You'll never upload a person's being into a machine. You could do a thin client at best, some data points and information, but it won't be alive. It'll just be a machine with a thin set of data points.
The Techno guys are going to make spiritual beliefs look great and will help usher in a comeback, is what I think.
Peter Thiel aspires to be the Dark Lord Sauron, which is why he has a company called palantir and lays waste to our middle-earth. The blood eagles always feast in times like ours, now as then and in medieval Anglo-Saxon or Welsh poetry.
"A wise hero must realize / how terrible it will be, / when all the wealth of this world / lies waste, / as now in various places / throughout this middle-earth / walls stand, blown by the wind, / covered with frost, / storm-swept the buildings. / The halls decay, / their lords lie / deprived of joy, / the whole troop has fallen, / the proud ones, by the wall."
https://web.archive.org/web/20240205110504/http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&id=Wdr&type=text
I think you are right that consciousness can't be computed. People's being will not ever be in a machine. There is some good research examining the question and reaching such a conclusion that I read years ago, although I have struggled to find the exact paper I read ever since.
"Think of a hypothetical mega-nuke which is impossible to defend against because—traveling faster than light—it can arrive at the strategic center of a given civilization and instantly wipe it out with no recourse." ... Sorry to be the harbinger of bad news, but such a weapon has existed for many decades. Known as the 'suitcase' nuke, it can be easily smuggled into any country and detonated and there would be nothing that anyone can do about it, when it happens. The first one might be in an uninhabited desert and set off as a final warning. Any challenges would likely be met with further detonations with higher casualty counts.
@Charlie M
Suitcase nuke is totally parochial, FTL shipping is not included. What we are on about here are wormhole weapons:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a REALLY BIG gun"
(Here it is in easily digestible cartoon format...)
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-02-17
"We care about your privacy" LOL as you sleepwalk people on to your website. Those aren't cookies, those are cakes.
Simplicius was of the view that to make a nuclear attack indefensible one needs to break the speed of light barrier. I suppose if one puts instant coffee in a microwave, that might have the desired effect. I'm just saying, the answer to American and perhaps other's military bravado is a suitcase nuke. I wish he'd do an article on the concept and he can include Oppenheimer's testimony before Congress that the only tool that could stop them is a screw driver and by that he explained was to dismantle everything that could conceal one at the borders and ports.
I'd love to hear from anyone as to how such a demonstration would do anything other than render every soldier and weapon completely useless from stealth aircraft , subs, ships ... EVERYTHING. If the Pentagon was a video game, it would start flashing GAME OVER !!
@Charlie M
Sleepwalking people onto MY website? I don't presently HAVE a personal site? The one with comic apparently now has a bunch of pop up crap, didn't while it was being updated. If https, Duk duk go or other cutouts aren't doing it? I'd be nterested to know.
And Simplicius was talking about ALIENS re: either angels, devils or extinct once FTL is available, not us monkeys with fancy shoes on this world.
https://youtu.be/TTCaZVIUNp0?si=Wg6sY0diOZIhDXik
OK.. sorry but yes it did result in a lot of popups and cookie stuff. My point was that one does not need any futuristic scifi weapon. They have had it since the 50's... and it is unstoppable as it rather happens in the past and is too late to do anything about. The fact that it is unstoppable makes it everything Simplicius suggested in a super luminal weapon. Just do a nuke in the desert and let Washington run around in panic and realise that those trillions in weapons they own and millions of soldiers are useless now and who would they attack anyhow ?
@Charlie M
Go back and re read the bit re: What the ramifications of FTL technology must be to any (theoretical) galactic intelligences. Has nothing to do with sneaking a backpack nuke into USA. Or planet Earth and our present fuckaround.
Peace. Out. READ.
I know what he said, but what i was saying is why reach for Asimov and aliens when contemplating formidable , unstoppable weapons ? They are already here since the 50's. It's been confirmed , not the least by Oppenheimer. And nobody could be sure who dunnit so who do they retaliate against and if they do , maybe they will trigger a far worse detonation... If they can b;low up Death Valley, they can blow up Manhatten.
Good one Simplicius. "The question will become: what trump card can humankind devise to preempt the elite techno-pharisees, and make them think twice before extirpating us when the time comes and they’ve achieved their utopian self sufficiency?" Given the road we're on, that is the question, isn't it? And even without the dark AI dark envisioned, how does humanity survive a fraught, psycho-technically manipulative, future? The question then becomes who are these all powerful elites, how are they selected--earmarked for elitedom--and what values guide them? In the West the answer is dismal. Our elites are the billionaires--those who got to the top by being predators. They rose to the top by abandoning all morality, all notions of the common good and all elementary human decency and compassion. The good, the kind, the compassionate, the decent are weeded out. That's how Western society--Western capitalism-- is structured. It's built into the culture. It rewards wealth and profit-seeking above all things. Wealth is the desiderata. If you are a multi-billionaire you are worshipped like a god, admired and envied. You can buy elections, politicians, dictate policy, bankrupt any person, yea, any city, with lawsuits with a battalion of hired lawyers. You can buy media and news organizations to control what the population sees, hears and thinks. That's where the West stands. And frankly left to it's own devices that where it--and the world ends up: in the maw of the worst of mankind. But there's another team on the field. That team doesn't champion personal wealth above all things. It doesn't champion individual freedom (as if any freedom could exist outside of a social context). It doesn't celebrate limited government, that is, limiting the only social entity capable of controlling predatory elites. The other team champions "a modest Common Prosperity." It champions the idea that good governance is about structuring society and pursuing policies that provide the basis for the healthy development of the entire population. Not a vision of equal outcomes, but one of making the fundamentals of life accessible to all so all can develop and excel to their full capacity. But how does such a government maintain its good intentions in this fallen world? How does such a government with such power avoid being captured by evil elites? That's a toughie. When I follow and read Xi I see that this is his struggle. He's trying to do it with philosophy, education and party discipline. He's trying valiantly to inculcate the Chinese Communist Boy Scout code (with a healthy dose of Confucianism). And he just might be able to lock it in for a few more generations. That's the battle for now. It's between East and West. After that? I ain't gonna guess.
Great summary of current reality!
The 'West' in it's gradually decline comes into unavoidable contradictions with itself - it's a philosophical law, unescapable because there is no day without night and there are no winners without losers.
Simply driving all to extinction will not work because it will extinct those who are in power as well.
Nice (well, better than nice, but we use the term to praise without sounding gushy) short essay. Thank you.
Very well put. Thanks 😊
With neural jacks stimulating your pleasure senses for obedience and suppressing them for disobedience, the slaves will love their enslavement and actually love slaving for the rich.
🤣
The Achilles heel of the Western mindset is it's reductionist view. The true complexity of life could never be understood through external observation or using some technology. I guess if the mega wealthy want to waste their fortunes on the quest for eternal life then good luck to them. It beats the hell out of bankrolling war or clearing tropical rainforests to keep the Macca's burgers cheap.
On a recent flight, I was the only one in landing that I could see who did not take out their phone the moment they were able to connect again. It was clear to me then that people would not ever control technology, and instead, it would always control them.
I greatly enjoy and respect your writing, but in this article I think there's a lot more reading you need to do. Some general critique off the top of my head, quickly scribbled out:
I think the future realities you hypothesise are impossible. The society that decides to give way to a world of technological fantasy is one that self-destructs. Kacynzski made a convincing argument that technological societies and "self-prop systems" that prioritise short term benefit over long term will all inevitably destroy themselves. This is an alternative solution to the Fermi paradox and I think more likely than the Dark Forest hypothesis, et al.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the-technological-system-will-destroy-itself
Kacynzski thought out what you said about extirpating us in his original manifesto very well, if you're curious I refer to paragraphs 173-175 of it. Kurzweil works at Google AI and famously quoted this analysis of Kacynzski's in a book of his.
https://archive.is/sgWZM
ASI might be impossible too. It is a Silicon Valley religion replacing God with Machine, and based on philosophy of science and the work of Bostrom, etc, and not anything in computer science or the reality that we observe and understand. Bostrom's simulation hypothesis, which is based on a logical argument of probability and not possibility in nature, requires that it is possible to replace all of our known laws with a set of algorithms that produces identical results, which is problematic regardless of the laws of the 'higher' universe. So this is likely impossible too, and technoreligious nonsense. Sabine Hossenfelder gave a good refutation of this in her book Existential Physics.
As well, in order for simulation hypothesis to be possible, it also depends on quantum computing to be possible, and some dissenting physicists think quantum supremacy is unachievable according to our laws of physics. Such naysayers are usually disregarded since the technofascists march forward and believe in "progress" as inevitable. I don't know if I agree as topographical quantum computing sounds possible to me and to get around it, but who knows.
Fermi's paradox meanwhile is Fermi's blunder and all the theories attempting to use it to argue a hostile universe are wrong, because the Malthusian growth model is an 18th century math error by Malthus that does not reflect the growth of population species in nature that usually level out after some time and are not exponential. I refer you to the Lotka–Volterra equations for a better set of math at predicting the conditions of the universe. However, even if one accepts Fermi's paradox, listed hypotheses I'm familiar with are impossible in our universe if FTL is possible. FTL nukes are an absurdity of a primitive civilisation's failure of imagination; you could neutralise them in all kinds of ways like femtomaterial, to name one possibility.
Berserker hypothesis is easily refuted because it obviously does not match the reality we observe; Dark Forest obviously too, which I would add is a plot device of a trilogy of novels and the author himself [Liu Cixin] came up with based on his experiences working as an engineer at a factory that people would even give bribes in order to work at; work ended, it shut down, and everyone was at each other's throats thereafter in a world they could not have previously imagined. In the novels, the dark forest state of the universe was imposed by advanced civilisations that came from other universes after exhausting all matter in their own universe, and it cannot exist in a universe with faster-than-light technology. So this is a self-refuting hypothesis if FTL exists.
The primary cause of a dark forest state is not the ability to travel instantaneously (i.e time travel) granted by FTL tech; it is the kingdom-level difference in species and the inability to ever establish effective communication, limited by C, that causes it. Limitations of C cause chains of suspicion—"If you think I’m benevolent, that’s not a reason to feel safe, because according to the first axiom [survival is the primary need of civilisations], a benevolent civilization can’t predict that any other civilization is benevolent. You don’t know whether I think you’re benevolent or malicious. Next, even if you know that I think you’re benevolent, and I also know that you think I’m benevolent, I don’t know what you think about what I think about what you’re thinking about me. It’s convoluted, isn’t it? This is just the third level, but the logic goes on indefinitely."
Exceeding C makes dark forest state impossible because species are able to communicate instantaneously, and game theory principles will not apply as communications ambiguity is resolved. There are no "forests and fields, but a flourishing capital" in such a universe. It's not possible.
Why do we not see life in the universe? A more likely alternative to all of these is in my view that supercivilisations hide from the hostile civilisations among more primitive ones that are not deemed threats, i.e what physicist Beatriz Gato-Rivera calls the sub-anthropic principle and undetectability conjecture. I think this matches better the reality we observe.
Remarkable comment; thank you.
Fascinating progression. But first I wonder if perhaps the events being minutely tracked in Simplicius's Substack might nip this Dark Futura projection in the bud? Secondly, the Feminine in all her aspects (meaning that other half of the human duality, shared by both genders, that makes us truly Human) seems completely absent in this vision and I wonder where she has gone, along with all the simple earthy qualities such as love and the 7 or 12 etc. eternal Virtues, and those Three Fates forever spinning, weaving and cutting the threads of our lives beyond our understanding...? As long as there is life on Earth these creative energies will not cease. Or could what you describe be tuning into the inevitable vision/fantasy woven by the mechanistic, untethered masculine, over emphasized in the last hundreds of years, having lost all humility and increasingly lost in the ethers, having lost touch with Mother Earth (vs the true, beautiful, potent, life protecting masculine we so need)? What you describe is cause for the grief we can all feel.
Thank you, Simplicius, for the opportunity to muse upon all we have been losing that we are witnessing all around us, what's still possible, and what hopefully will never come to be.
It's fun to play with the transhuman science fiction fantasies that motivate these people. I remember first learning about all this back in the 1990s on Usenet.
As for it being a serious or likely future, well, this article answers that question in the opening paragraphs. These elites can't keep the forward momentum of industrial civilization. It's hard to run a techno utopia waging war against the gods when electric lights are a luxury.
A healthy skepticism towards their ability to exercise metaphysical godhood over us plebes is warranted in these speculations..