The State Department? That unimpeachable organ of American governance?! Why, I don’t even know whether to trust them not to collude with shadowy corporations or not to be duped!
YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM
joined 1 year ago
It’s really gotta be emphasised that these guys didn’t come out of internet atheism and frankly I would really like to know where that idea came from. It’s a completely different thing which, arguably, predates internet atheism (if we read “internet atheism” as beginning in the early 2000s - but we could obviously push back that date much earlier). These guys are more or less out of Silicon Valley, Emile P Torres has coined the term “TESCREALS” (modified to “TREACLES”) for - and I had to google this even though I know all the names independently - “Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism”.
It’s a confluence of futurism cults which primarily emerged online (even on the early internet), but also in airport books by e.g. Ray Kurzweil in the 90s, and has gradually made its away into the wider culture, with EA and longtermism the now most successful outgrowths of its spores in the academy.
Whereas internet atheism kind of bottoms out in 1990s polemics against religion - nominally Christianity, but ultimately fuelled by the end of the Cold War and the West’s hunger for a new enemy (hey look over there, it’s some brown people with a weird religion) - the TREACLES “cluster of ideologies” (I prefer “genealogy”, because this is ultimately about a political genealogy) has deep roots in the weirdest end of libertarian economics/philosophy and rabid anti-communism. And therefore the Cold War (and even pre-Cold War) need for a capitalist political religion. OK the last part is my opinion, but (a) I think it stands up, and (b) it explains the clearly deeply felt need for a techno-religion which justifies the most insane shit as long as there’s money in it.
Ah, a minutes of wikipedia meetings
Undisputable Champion of “Well ackshually”
It appears that many of you have been hiding full blown hardout sneers from SneerClub, and I am baffled as to why
Come on, you’re talking about America, when did mainstream popular appeal ever limit anyone with money?
I have good news for you: the ChatGPT racists got there because the idea isn’t even original to either of them
I don’t get it, can’t they just build more customers? Or is that the plan?
I had a long reply which i think made some errors of interpretation as to what you’re saying. I find this “cancels” language confusing, but I don’t have the energy to do any more in-depth clarification on this thing!
Ooooh I get it for Yudkowsky now, I thought you were targeting something else in his comment, on Davis I remain a bit confused, because previously you seemed to be saying that his epistemic luck was in having come up with the term - but this cannot be an example of epistemic luck because there is nothing (relevantly) epistemic in coming up with a term
Not everything is about your toy train world geopolitical supremacy and there are people far too rich and powerful to give a shit about it who benefit from your believing that it is
Believe me, I’m not even American: it’s just you, me, and everyone getting the shaft on all five other continents as well