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ric Sadin and the Challenges of Artificial Intelligence – Exploring your Mind

Posted: May 22, 2023 at 12:28 pm

ric Sadin is a philosopher who warns about the risks of the world that's opening up due to the recent advances in artificial intelligence. In particular, he points out the danger of human beings being controlled by powers other than their own consciences.

Last update: 21 May, 2023

ric Sadin is a French philosopher whos aroused a great deal of interest for his profound reflections on a phenomenon that concerns us all: artificial intelligence. For this thinker, its not a question of a simple technological advance, but a fracture of civilization as we know it. In fact, he doesnt hesitate in claiming that artificial intelligence is the most important philosophical challenge of the 21st century.

Sadin states that the evolution of technology has been exponential in recent years. In the beginning, it was linked with the treatment of information in a functional way, especially, when the volume was extremely large. However, today, according to this expert, technology is capable of creating truths and controlling human actions.

Moreover, the philosopher claims that artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly intelligent. Yet, the subjects it affects not only dont reject this but welcome it with fascination. Indeed, its gadgets and functionalities captivate us all.

Artificial intelligence stands from now on as a kind of superego, endowed with the intuition of truth and called upon to guide our lives in all circumstances towards the greatest efficiency and comfort imaginable.

-ric Sadin-

We must make it clear that Sadin isnt an anti-tech thinker. In fact, he analyzes the impact of new technologies in the framework of civilization and identifies the challenges they pose. One of his concerns is the fact that many of the devices no longer have the task of helping us as human beings, but rather replacing us.

Obviously, this current technological frenzy is likely to change. But, its highly unlikely to be stopped due to the competitive advantages it brings. Sadin believes that were close to entering the realms of transhumanism. Therefore, the main challenge will be the fusion between the human brain and the computer, giving rise to a superior reality: superintelligence.

Within the framework of transhumanism, our lives are expected to be much longer. Well maintain good physical and mental health for many years. Moreover, our cognitive abilities will be extraordinarily vitaminized. So far, so good. But the problem is that this will be directed and controlled from outside individual consciousness. This means that the perfect world will be managed by consciences and interests external to the individual.

ric Sadin claims that are three dimensions involved in what he calls the digitization of consciousness or algorithmic life. One is ontological and related to being; the other is epistemic and associated with the production of truths. Finally, theres the ethical-political dimension. This is linked to ethical human conduct and power.

One of the great risks that Sadin warns of is the fact that artificial intelligence has become a producer of truths. Algorithms are able to analyze situations, draw conclusions and propose routes. The simplest example is given by social media. Based on questions or ratings by the individual, the algorithms decide what information should and shouldnt be shown to them.

This occurs in all fields, including science. Sadin believes a new regime has been inaugurated, that of algorithmic truth. Its universal. Its the first time in history that anything like this has happened. It corresponds to the epistemic dimension and has many implications.

Sadin also argues that this new version of the world leads to a disappearance of reality For him, reality generates uncertainty and sets boundaries. But, in this new perfect world built through technologies, it pursues the end of eliminating uncertainty. In other words, eliminating reality.

Another danger lies in the fact that all these advances are presented to the general public as being neutral. Its as if this structure has no other intention than to facilitate and improve human life. However, this isnt the case. Indeed, we already know that algorithms make us good customers but tame voters.

Finally, ric Sadin warns us about an indisputable fact. Were changing civilization. As always, this brings benefits, but also risks. Those that are implicit in the world of artificial intelligence are extremely important. Therefore, we shouldnt lose sight of them.

All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.

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ric Sadin and the Challenges of Artificial Intelligence - Exploring your Mind

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Crazy Town: Episode 73. How Longtermism Became the Most … – Resilience

Posted: May 18, 2023 at 1:13 am

Jason BradfordI'm Jason Bradford.Asher MillerIm Asher Miller.Rob DietzAnd I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town, where we can't wait to meet our 80 trillion descendants on the other side of the cosmic wormhole.Melody AllisonHi, This is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in season five, were exploring Phalse Prophets and the dangerous messages theyre so intent on spreading. If you like what youre hearing, please let some friends know about this episode, or the podcast in general. Now on to the show.Asher Miller Hey Jason, I gotta ask before we start today, when I was pulling up in front of your house, I noticed, you have all these excavators out in the field?Jason Bradford Yes, I do. Asher Miller Like a dozen of them.Jason Bradford Yep. Big deal.Asher Miller What's going on, man?Jason Bradford Well, you know, there's a lot of stuff going wrong in the world, or potentially wrong. What we call existential risks, you know. The gray goo AI kind of stuff, pandemic, nuclear war, all kinds of things. And if we're going to basically fulfill our potential as beings in the universe, we've got to make sure that if civilization goes under, they can come back. Rob DietzThat's good thinking.Asher MillerThis is insurance?Jason Bradford Yeah. A lot of people think that either you're gonna go hide out in a bunker and be able to come out and re-boot civilization. But no way. Unless you're a hunter gatherer or a subsistence farmer, us moderns don't have the skills. So what I'm doing is I'm creating basically bunkers for groups of subsistence farmers and hunter gatherers that I'm going to import from various parts of the world. I'm not going to just get a single group of hunter gatherers or a single group of peasants. I'm mixing them together. We want that diversity. And they're going to live here.Asher Miller So not a monoculture of hunter gatherers. Jason Bradford No I'm not. I'm bringing in - Actually, I've got some New Guineans lined up. Some recently contacted tribes from the Amazon. I'm working on getting some Sentinelese from the Bay of Bengal. That's really tough. They try to kill you when you land. And I've got Andean peasants. I've got some Romanians. We're getting some Amish in here. So really, really solid crews, and they're going to be on 12 hour shifts. Asher Miller I was just thinking that you're doing rotational farming, basically?Jason Bradford Well, if things go wrong, you know, if the asteroid strikes, whatever, we need half of them at least in the bunkers at any one time, right? But they also have to come out to maintain their skills, get the vitamin D, etc. So I feel like I'm fulfilling my potential by doing for, you know, humanity, and the future generations. Rob Dietz Okay, I'm getting close to getting sick here. I'm near the vomit point. So I gotta call a little timeout on this - What do we even call it? A sales pitch? Jason Bradford Yep, this is legendary. This is going to be huge. Rob Dietz Well, let's just say for now that this is not Jason's cockamamie idea. He's making fun of a cockamamie idea that we're going to get to in a little bit. But in order to get there, we got to tell you about a guy named William MacAskill. Okay? He's our phalse prophet for today. And let me just start running through a little bit of his life to say, get a sense of him. And then we'll move on to the cockamamie ideas. Jason Bradford I was kind of getting excited about it, actually. Rob Dietz Yeah, I know. I know. Sorry. Okay, so McCaskill is probably the youngest of our phalse prophets so far. Jason Bradford Congratulations. Asher Miller What is he, 12?Rob Dietz Yeah, yeah. 11. No, he was born in 1987 in Scotland. His actual name when he was born was William Crouch, but - I don't know why that's funny.Asher Miller I just imagined he was crouching. Jason Bradford He was stooping a little. Asher Miller William, crouch!Rob Dietz Oh, it's a sentence. I gotcha.Asher Miller You gotta do it with a Scottish accent. William, crouch!Rob Dietz I thought we decided no more accents. After the Bill Clinton episode we had to put that away.Asher Miller You say this now. You're the one who gets to do all of the accents. Jason Bradford Yeah, I know. Only you can do accents.Rob Dietz Oh, no. This show is off to a bad start. Okay, back to William Crouch/MacAskill. He actually was kind of a progressive guy. So he and his partner both changed their last names when they got married. So that's how he ended up being William MacAskill.Asher Miller I gotta say I appreciate going with a new name versus the hyphenation thing. That gets long.Rob Dietz Yeah, it can get tedious. Yeah. Well, and so I think he had a pretty kind heart. When he was 15, he learned about the scope of people who are dying from the HIV epidemic and he kind of made this resolution, when I get older, I'm gonna make a ton of money so that I can give it away and become a philanthropist. So he went to Cambridge. So I guess he's got the academic chops. He studied philosophy. And he got impacted by this guy, Peter Singer, who wrote a pretty famous, influential essay called "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." And we're gonna get more into that later. And then he goes on to get his PhD in philosophy. Yes, that's a Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy. And now he's an associate professor at Oxford, and he's the chair of the advisory board of the Global Priorities Institute. Pretty highfalutin.Jason Bradford We've been making fun of a lot of the Ivy League schools in the U.S. I'm so happy we get to - Asher Miller Yeah, we get to make fun of the Brits. Jason Bradford I know the Brits. Like Cambridge, Oxford. This is great.Rob Dietz The true Ivy right? Jason Bradford Oh yeah. This is old school Ivy. This is great.Rob Dietz I mean, the the buildings were probably actually made of ivy at this point.Jason Bradford They were cloaked in ivy. Okay, so he's founded a few organizations, including the Centre for Effective Altruism. If you look it up it's spelled "t-r-e." Just be ready. Asher Miller Yeah, all about British - Jason Bradford Oh yeah, yeah. It's confusing. It argues for bringing database rational decision making to philanthropy. Rob Dietz Well, it sounds alright. Jason Bradford Yeah, a group called, Giving What We Can. And this is sort of like tithing your earnings to effective charities. Rob Dietz Sounds alright too.Jason Bradford Yeah. 80,000 hours, which is sort of the ideas that represents how many hours you're likely to work in a professional capacity. And so it is advising people on how to think through career choices that have the greatest social impact. Rob Dietz That sounds alright too.Jason Bradford I know, this guy's a star. He's a vocal supporter of animal welfare. This led him into vegetarianism. Nice. Live by your principles. He's best known, however, for being the leading voice of what is known as Longtermism. And he laid out what this means, his philosophy, in a very recent a apparently best selling book called, "What we Owe the Future: A Million Year View. And I remember getting ads like this like crazy through New York Times and stuff. I mean, this was really, really pushed. And it's this longtermism that we are sort of bringing up, and he's representing that as our phalse prophet.Rob Dietz If we were to just stop here, you'd have to say, "You know what? Maybe this guy is an actual prophet instead of a phalse prophet."Jason Bradford What's not to love, right? Yeah. Yeah. But we hinted at that with my fantasy about the bunker.Rob Dietz So it was a fantasy then? We're clear on this now.Asher Miller Some strange fantasies. So our Crazy Town devotees who listen to every one of our episodes may recall that I did an interview with Douglas Rushkoff, and we talked a little bit about the longtermism stuff. But we're going to really unpack that here today, and talk about why it's such a dangerous philosophy. So we're going to focus on longtermism, but, and this is - Part of what's really tricky about it is I think we have to place it in the context of a lot of other concepts. And that's partly because it helps people sort of like understand we're dealing with. And also because some of these other terms are also commonly used, or they're sometimes used interchangeably. They're used in different contexts. But what's important about them is that they're all connected sort of in an overarching philosophy, right? So the key thing is, if you hear any of these terms - It's not only understanding, like we want to present some of these concepts so you understand where longtermism comes from, but for your ears to be tuned to these terms that you might hear. Because then you'll know, "Oh, this represents this certain type of thinking."Rob Dietz Alright, if we're gonna start throwing around terms, can I just make the request that we don't use the word ontology or ontological at any time during this?Jason Bradford I was not planning on it, but you just did that. Asher Miller You actually did do that. Jason Bradford Okay? Okay, so someone who's really helped us understand how these are all connected, how these terms are conneceted, is Emile Torres, one of the most vocal critics of Effective Altruism and longtermism. And Emile is a reformed longtermist who actually had been a research fellow for our previous phalse prophet, Ray Kurzweil.Rob Dietz Wow. So Emile has escaped from the cults.Jason Bradford Yes. And Emile goes by they, and they have an actual acronym for this mishmash of all these related philosophies and concepts.Jason Bradford It's B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T. Easy to remember.Jason Bradford Okay, that's the easiest to remember. Unfortunately, this one's not as easy but - It's what's called TESCREAL. Okay? It sounds like something you'd push out.Jason Bradford It sounds like a hormone.Rob Dietz Some sort of disease, maybe. I went down to the public bathhouse and came away with TESCREAL. Jason Bradford And now you're on antibiotics. Okay, well it stands for - I might have some trouble with these words so I need you to step in if I flounder.Rob Dietz Okay, yeah. You almost said an anachronism for acronym.Asher Miller Well because there's so many "isms" in this acronym.Jason Bradford Oh my god. This is ridiculous. Are you ready for all the isming? Rob Dietz Yeah, okay. Jason Bradford Okay, we got transhumanism. Jason Bradford Weve got extropianism. We've got, oh this one is going to be rough, singularitarianism. We've got cosmism. We've got rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism. So that's what TESCREAL all stands for.Asher Miller Okay. Rob Dietz Right. I'm gonna say that's a lot. So, I don't think we've got to cover what every single one of those means.Asher Miller We're just gonna do an episode on each one. Rob Dietz We want to get to longtermism, but like you said earlier, Asher, we've got to set some context here.Jason Bradford And a few of them, they are so related that it kind of covers the bases.Rob Dietz So, why don't we hit unilater - I've got Jason disease. No. Utilitarianism, Transhumanism, Effective Altruism, existential risk, and then we'll be safely arriving at our destination of longtermism.Jason Bradford Okay, and some of these are not exactly in TESCREAL, but they're related important ideas in lots of these, so. . . Asher Miller Alright. Well, let's start with utilitarianism. And I think, let's go in a certain order, because I think the order is almost like these are building blocks of concepts. So utilitarianism is probably the oldest of these. And it's a philosophy that dates back to Jeremy Bentham snd John Stuart Mill, you know, the late 18th century, early 19th century. And basically, all you need to know about utilitarianism is that it argues that the most ethical choice you can make is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Okay? Pretty basic. Jason Bradford Pretty basic.Rob Dietz Pretty easy to agree with. I mean, just generally.Rob Dietz For the most part. Rob Dietz In general. Jason Bradford You know, devils in the details, maybe of like, who decides and how do you decide and -Asher Miller Ah, that's what we're gonna be getting into later.Jason Bradford Okay. Alright, then we're gonna go to my favorite, transhumanism. According to Emile Torres, transhumanism is, and I quote, "Ideology that sees humanity as a work in progress. It is something that we can and should actively reengineer using advanced technologies like brain implants, which could connect our brains to the internet, and genetic engineering, which can enable us to create super smart designer babies." So we cover this a lot with Ray Kurzweil.Rob Dietz I've also seen a lot of sci-fi, and it usually doesn't end well.Jason Bradford Yeah, usually not really.Asher Miller It's interesting, the first part of that, humanity is a work in progress, something that we should actively, you know, re-engineer. Like, okay. Took a little turn there.Jason Bradford Some red flags start waving in the wind here.Asher Miller Alright, let's talk about Effective Altruism, because I think Effective Altruism is really probably the most commonly used term to sort of define this space of philosophy and initiatives that people are working on. It's something that is really intrinsic, I think, to our phalse prophet MacAskill. So, according to the Center for Effective Altruism, which is something again, that Jason, you talked about MacAskill co-founded. Effective Altruism is quote, "About using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis. Jason Bradford Yeah, sounds good. Asher Miller So you can see how it builds off of utilitarianism. Jason Bradford Love it. Rob Dietz Agree. Asher Miller It promotes using data and dispassionate reason to identify what giving would have the greatest impact, right. So you see, and this is actually pretty common in philanthropy, where people like to use metrics and you know, different ways -Where you're not just being tugged by heartstrings, or whatever. You're trying to think about the greatest impact you can make. Okay/ And it comes from the Australian moral philosopher, Peter Singer. You know, you talked, I think you mentioned him, Rob, when you were talking about the influences on William MacAskill. He's commonly viewed as the founder of EA when he published that paper in 1972, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." And basically, he wrote it in response to this humanitarian crisis that was happening in East Bengal where there were many people that are suffering from famine, huge humanitarian crisis that was happening there. And he was arguing that there was insufficient aid coming from wealthy nations looking at this situation. So in the paper, he argued, quote, "If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought morally to do it." So basically, like, if it's not going to create an equally bad outcome consequence, it's our moral responsibility to help, right. And he also argued that quote, "If we accept any principle of impartiality, universal ability, equality or whatever, we cannot discriminate against someone merely because he is far away from us, or we are far away from him." Right? So he's saying, let's say the life of a child in East Bengal is worth the equivalent of the life of someone in your neighborhood. Rob Dietz Well, let the distortions begin now, shall we. If he's the kind of originator of this philosophy, it's started to take a turn for the worse. And this is one of the core ideas behind modern day Effective Altruism philosophy is that you got to earn to give. So it kind of goes back to MacAskill's youth of I want to grow up to be kind of philanthropist, right?Jason Bradford I know. It's amazing.Rob Dietz And you have this sort of rationale that whatever your job is, just go out and do it and get as much money as you can so that you can then become an effective altruist.Jason Bradford I think they also do say like, they asked a question, I saw this in some of Nick Bostrom writings, we'll talk about him a little bit. That, of course, you don't necessarily want to be engaged in like gun running or something like that.Jason Bradford There are limits. Jason Bradford There are limits. Right. Rob Dietz But there's kind of an irony here, because what you just said, Asher, of the life of a child in one part of the world is equivalent to the life of a child in your neighborhood. This kind of rationale is sort of doing this weird time thing where it's saying, the suffering of people today is not worth thinking about when you're talking about the potential well-being of all these future people.Asher Miller That will get us straight into longtermism, which we'll get to in a second. One thing I wanted to say about this earn to give philosophy, I've encountered this quite a bit in my own life. Asher Miller Yeah. So after college, I went and I worked at the Shoah Foundation, where we were documenting stories of Holocaust survivors. I didn't necessarily think I was going to be somebody who dedicated my career to doing nonprofit work. At the time, I wanted to be a writer, right. And I was going to write this book about a family of Holocaust survivors I was really close to. And in the process of preparing for that, I was writing a book for another Holocaust survivor. I was burned out. And I was living in Europe with my future wife, and then came back to the United States. I was like, what am I going to do now? And I was lucky enough to get interviews with folks, some really interesting people that that my dad was connected to in the Bay Area. And I remember meeting with this one guy, and you know, he was just kind of like asking me, he did a favor to my dad talking to me in my mid 20s about what I wanted to do. And I was like, you know, the .com boom was in effect at the time. Jason Bradford Really? Jason Bradford Oh, yeah. Asher Miller And I was like, I really want to do well. But I really want to do something meaningful and worthwhile. And basically, this guy, I'll never forget him. He like a VC guy, venture capitalist guy. He's like, "That's fucking stupid." He's like, "That's ridiculous. Make your money now and then you can give it away later. That's a way more effective way of helping the world." You know, he like just literally told me I was a fucking idiot. Jason Bradford For even imagining. Just go make piles of money.Asher Miller Go make your money.Rob Dietz I love it too, because he's also putting that message out with just sell your soul. You know, go do some work that you don't give a shit about as long as the piles of money are rolling in.Asher Miller And he was completely convinced that that was the right thing to do.Jason Bradford Okay, okay. Well, alright. So the other important thing to look at with this is what's called existential risks. And I remember when I first actually started learning about this whole philosophy, TESCREAL whatever, through the lens of existential risks. I remember being just struck by the fact that these folks in Oxford were like publishing about existential risk. Like wow, that's cool. You know?Asher Miller Because a lot of our work is about risks too, right?Jason Bradford I know, I'm like, Oh my God. We've got well funded Oxfordians is out there doing stuff. This is fantastic. So Nick Bostrom, also at Oxford, MacAskill's colleague. You know, he's also considered to be one of these fathers of longtermism. Introduced the concept of existential risk in 2002. And, I mean, of course, people have been worried about these kinds of things for a long time.Asher Miller Sure. We've been aware about nuclear, you know, nuclear holocaust for a long time.Jason Bradford Exactly. But he kind of brought it forward and started defining it and bringing in all the potential lists of things that could go wrong. And so he defines it as an adverse outcome that would either "Annihilate Earth originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. An existential risk is one where humankind as a whole is imperiled. Existential disasters have major adverse consequences for the course of human civilization for all time to come." And that's a key thing, for all time to come. And so he lists top existential threats. And you know, I agree with a lot of these. Nuclear holocaust or runaway climate change. Then it gets a little esoteric and a little bit more hard to kind of relate to you. For example, misguided world government, or another static social equilibrium that stops technological progress. So this is interesting. This is a hint. This is telling. Anything that ends up stopping technical progress, or some -Asher Miller Is an existential risk? Jason Bradford Yes. Or a world government that doesn't allow medical progress to happen.Rob Dietz Doesn't even consider the potential existential threat from overdoing it on the technology.Jason Bradford Well, this is the irony we'll get into, okay. And also, what he calls technological arrests. And this is that if for some reason we can't overcome the technical needs we have to transition to a post human world. Alright? So they pretty much make explicit that they're dealing now with what you would call like this - What was it? The singulatarianism? Asher Miller Right. Okay, so let's jut look at these building blocks, right? Utilitarianism, transhumanism, Effective Altruism, existential risks. You know, that brings us to longtermism. And we're gonna unpack this more in a minute. But basically, the essential thing to know is that longtermism is used for valuing all potential human lives in the future. Asher Miller Yeah. So any potential life, right? And look, we know it's a confusing bit of word salad, TESCREAL. We'll see if that takes off. But again, I think the key thing here is that these are all terms of philosophical beliefs that that are used interchangeably. And they're part of this sort of collective worldview that is becoming increasingly influential. Jason Bradford Yeah.Asher Miller So basically, you're advocating whenever any one of those isms is mentioned the little alarm bell starts to go off. Asher Miller Your antennae should go off. Asher Miller "This is TESCREAL. This is TESCREAL."Asher Miller Yeah. So what is longtermism really? I guess I would summarize it like this. It takes utilitarianism right, which is the moral argument for prioritizing the greatest sum of well being. Do the thing that does the most good. And it combines that with Singer's, Effective Altruism, which is like, we can't prioritize our own interests, or just those that people were familiar with over complete strangers. And it basically puts it into like, the space time continuum, right? With a little dash of the singularity thrown in.Jason Bradford Yes, that's a great summary of this stuff.Rob Dietz Yeah. Can I ask you, Jason, resident biologist? Is that even a thing where you could value some other life out there more than say, yourself or your kin?Jason Bradford It's hard to do. Asher Miller Well, it's not more. It's equal, right?Jason Bradford Well, that's the thing. If you think about everything that we think of normal from an evolutionary point of view suggests that this is kind of impossible from a root level of, I mean, you can probably, in your head conceptualize this, but I think it's very hard to do in practice. And we were talking about, you know, if there's a burning building, and your kid is in it, you're willing to run into that building, right? But if it's not your kid, what are the odds you're just gonna run into that building? Rob Dietz Some of us will. Jason Bradford But it's very hard. And so -Asher Miller I will just say, though, I mean, I think Singer wrote about that, in his article that he wrote in 1971, and he was basically saying, we live in a global world now. We actually have agency to do something. And he was basically saying, look, if we have surplus, we should use it to help other people. So you could sort of see the logic of it, rational logic. As long as we're, and this is the key thing, as long as we act rationally, which brings us in a sense back to Pinker, right? Like hey, if we can all be rational and we've got you know, the spirit capacity, then we can do all these things.Rob Dietz And not to confuse everybody with too many names, but our beef is not with Singer, right. I mean, it's more the distortions that have occurred since he wrote that article. And you know, with longtermism, it argues for starters, don't discount the fate of people on the other side of the planet. Well, that's right in line with Singer so that's fine. Right? But then it goes deeper and says we shouldn't discount future lives, which also is pretty okay until you take it to some absurd level.Jason Bradford I think we gotta call back to - we had a whole in season, what was it, Season 3: Hidden Drivers? Rob Dietz Yeah.Jason Bradford We had a whole episode about discounting the future in episode 37 of Crazy Town. So anyway, I think in many ways, we're like, yeah, okay. We agree.Rob Dietz Yeah, even hitting the technical side, the discount rate and how basically, our money system discounts the future. And we're saying no, you can't discount the future. Asher Miller It's interesting with some of these philosophies and these terms. When you first heard about existential risks, you're like, oh, they're probably talking about the same thing I am worried about, you know, And we hear longtermism and we're like, yeah, we agree. We shouldn't discount the future. We should be concerned about future generations.Rob Dietz Don't just take it as quarterly returns, you know. Don't just focus on the thing that's right in front of you.Jason Bradford Okay. So here's where they remember, we kind of hinted that the devils in the details with a lot of this stuff. Okay. So MacAskill And he's got this recent book we mentioned. And in that he goes through some math. He says, "If we assume that our population continues at its current size - " Okay, so 8 billion or whatever - "And we last as long as typical mammals that would mean there would be 80 trillion people yet to come. Future people would outnumber us 10,000 to one." So that's where you start to go, okay, right. I can see that conceptually. But now you're like, we're going to value those 10,000 futures as much as the present.Rob Dietz And that's where he starts saying that every action we take right now in the present should be for the sole purpose of ensuring the existence and the wellbeing of that 80 trillion, or however many it is in the future. And even if that means sacrificing wellbeing and the lives of people today, such as the 1.3 billion people that are living in poverty and suffering today. It's just the math, right? You just look at the numbers. Who cares? Usually you would say, let the one sacrifice for the many. I guess this would be, let the 1.3 billion sacrifice for the 80 trillion.Asher Miller I'm sure that goes over well.Rob Dietz Yeah, as long as you're not in the 1.3 - If you're at Oxford, you're safe. Okay?Asher Miller Now, and this is where it brings it back to existential risks, right? So if we have to say, look, the simple math says there's gonna be 10,000 people in the future for every one of us alive today. Then we have to do everything in our power to prevent the risks to their existence happening. And so we've got to have all kinds of investments and focus on trying to prevent some of these risks. But of course, you know, sometimes we need to have a backup plan, which is, Jason, you were talking about, you're invested in some of these backup plans with what you're doing here on the property. I think you got that idea from one of MacAskill's colleagues, Robin Hanson. Jason Bradford Yes, very good guy. Asher Miller He wrote, and I'm quoting here, "That it might make sense to stock a refuge or a bunker with real hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers together with the tools they find useful. Jason Bradford Buying those. Asher Miller Of course, such people would need to be disciplined enough to wait peacefully in the refuge until the time to emerge was right. So perhaps such people could be rotated periodically from a well protected region where they practice simple lifestyles so they could keep their skills fresh. Now, you're bringing them here and rotating them on the farm. Well,Jason Bradford Well, that's my upgrade from this. I took his idea and - Asher Miller Well, the carbon emissions of flying them back and forth from Amazon or the Bay of Bengal . . . Jason Bradford Exactly. Exactly. Rob Dietz Yeah, I'm sorry. Like what kind of convoluted thinking to get - I'm pulling a one you two guys. I'm about to have an aneurysm here. Like what hunter gatherer or farmer signs up for this shit? Like, yeah, I'm gonna sit in your bunker waiting for your Holocaust to happen so that when it does, I can come out and teach you how to live again.Jason Bradford Okay, if there any longtermist billionaire effective altruists out there, just don't listen to Rob. Please DM me about funding this project. Alright? You'll find me no problem.Rob Dietz I'm so sad.Jason Bradford Alright. So there is tons of money being thrown at Effective Altruism And longterism. MacAskill's over 80,000 hours claimed in 2021 that 46 billion was committed to further the field.Rob Dietz That's that's roughly, what? Two times the annual budget of Post Carbon Institute.Jason Bradford And I only need a few 100 million for my project. Okay? I'm just letting you know, okay. Elon Musk has given 10's of millions to support Bostrom's work and others. And most infamously, you got this guy, you know, Sam Bankman-Fried. He actually worked at the Center for Effective Altruism and was very closely tied to MacAskill. And maybe you can explain what happened?Asher Miller Well, he's thrown a lot of money at Effective Altruism in different ways. He also robbed people blind. And then his company FTX went belly up.Rob Dietz All the money he threw was cryptocurrency which probably is now nothing, right? Asher Miller Well, but people had invested real wealth in this.Jason Bradford There's a lot of overhead in all that. Rob Dietz Well, now you wonder how much the Effective Altruists - Maybe this is good for our story if we're trying to battle this philosophy. Maybe they don't have quite as much money.Jason Bradford Maybe now they're down to 20 billion.Rob Dietz Imagine they could only have a 10th as much and they're still bazillions of dollars beyond where we are.Jason Bradford I'll just cut the number of hunter gatherers I'm going to bring in half. Okay?Asher Miller Alright. But I would say actually the sort of effective altruists community, if you want to call it that, has been following a little bit of the Powell memo playbook. We talked about this before in our last season. You know, talking about the Powell memo, for folks haven't listened to it, that basically laid out a strategy for neoliberalist advocates to basically change things on all sorts of levels of society that was affecting higher education, the media politics - Rob Dietz - The coordination of think tanks. Just basically getting the message out any way they could.Asher Miller And you actually could see that happening. I mean, I don't know, maybe there'll be expos days later about this being sort of coordinated, you know, on some level. But there's certainly been that kind of a spread of long term missed ideas. And Effective Altruism is you know, you talked about money that Musk has thrown to Bostrom. Millions of dollars going to Oxford University and these other institutions. You're saying Bankman-Fried was throwing a ton of money into the recent congressional elections and local elections. And he was specifically funding, I mean, he was funding people that are gonna basically change the rules or protect cryptocurrency from being regulated. But he was also funding actual sort of Effective Altruist longtermist candidates. There was actually one that ran here in Oregon. He was the first sort of Effective Altruism congressional candidate. He got like, you know, I think he had $11 million. I don't know how many of that came from Sam Bankman-Fried. And that guy worked briefly at Future of Humanity Institute, which is Bostrom's shop. But you have the head of the RAND Corporation, which is one of the most influential kind of think tanks, big think tanks in the country. He's a longtermlist. You've got longtermists writing reports for the United Nations. So there's a report in September 2021, called Our Common Agenda and it explicitly uses longtermist language and concepts in it. You have people in the media who have been really promoting longtermism. Good example of that is Sam Harris, who's a very famous well-known author and podcaster. He wrote the foreword to MacAskill's book, which you talked about. Jason Bradford He interviewed MacAskill quite a bit on his podcast, yeah. Asher Miller And he, you know, said to MacAskill, he said, quote, "No living philosopher has had a greater impact on his own thinking and his ethics." We could talk about the ethics of some of these guys, later, maybe, but - Rob Dietz Unbelievable money and influence and reach.Melody Allison How would you like to hang out with Asher, Rob, and Jason? Well, your chance is coming up at the 4th annual Crazy Town Hall. The town hall is our most fun event of the year, where you can ask questions, play games, get insider information on the podcast and share plenty of laughs. It's a special online event for the most dedicated Crazy Townies out there. And it's coming up on June 6, 2023 from 10:00 to 11:15am US Pacific Time. To get an invite, make a donation of any size, go to postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown. When you make a donation, we'll email you an exclusive link to join the Crazy Town hall. If we get enough donations, maybe we can finally hire some decent hosts. Join us at the Crazy Town hall on June 6, 2023. Again, to get your invitation go to post carbon.org/supportcrazytown.Jason Bradford Alright. I am really happy to talk about this species. This is one of my favorite species, Homo machinohomo. Also known as the Cyborgian.Rob Dietz Ah, this was our second one. Jason Bradford Yeah. Very different than the type specimen, Ray Kurzweil. But, you know, they both sort of believe in this transhumanism singularity type thing or the future of these high tech, you know, fusing with technology cyborgs. MacAskill is, he's not the techie guy, he's a philosophy guy. So you see how even within a species there can be great variance in form. Like imagine if you're an alien spacecraft and you're hovering over say, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rob Dietz I used to live there. Jason Bradford Yeah. And you suck up a chihuahua and you suck up a great dane. Rob Dietz Used to see that all the time on the streets.Jason Bradford Exactly. At first you might have you might not have any clue that the same species are so different. Right? But within that detailed taxonomic work you can tease these things more.Asher Miller Which one is Kurzweil? The chihuahua or the great dane?Jason Bradford But I just want to explain a little bit about the evolution in the discussion section of my paper. I go into some detail -Rob Dietz This is where we realize that you're sad that you didn't really go the professorial route and you became a farmer. This is your chance.Jason Bradford This is my time. If any University is out there, maybe Oxford or Cambridge.Jason Bradford There's Singularity University.Rob Dietz What about the Jack Welch Institute of Management? Asher Miller So many options to choose from.Jason Bradford So many options. Anyway, you know, we have this species that we covered a lot called the double downer, right? Now what you're seeing is there's a lot of double downism in all these other species like the Cyborgians. They also kind of have double downing in them, but I consider them an offshoot of the double downer.Asher Miller Yeah, isn't double downers like an ancestor?Jason Bradford Yes. It is a paraphyletic species, probably the -Asher Miller Do they have a common ancestor?Jason Bradford - The mother species spinning off daughter species. Such as, Rocket Man, which we'll get to later in the season. The Industrial Breatharians, the Cyborgians, and Complexifixers. So these species -Rob Dietz What are we talking about here? Jason Bradford Oh, well, okay. Okay. I think you know, what you have is this sort of technology fetish that they all possess. But then these other species have particular niches. You can think if there's a species that's widespread in the lowlands, and then there's daughter species that kind of move up into the mountains and occupy different mountain tops. That's what I think is going on. But we're gonna need a lot more population genetics.Asher Miller What a beautiful world this is. What I actually think is - you remember that game PokemonGo? Jason Bradford Yeah. Asher Miller We need a PokemonGo to spot these phalse prophets. Jason Bradford I think that would be great. Asher Miller You could just like hold up your camera and be like, "Oh, what species is this dude?Rob Dietz Personally, I'd rather just go back to chihuahuas and great danes.Jason Bradford Okay, it's quite obvious by now that longtermism and all of the related TESCRAL beliefs are built on pretty insane assumptions about technological process, exponential growth, no limits to - But we've covered that before. And so we're not going to go into any detailed critique of that.Rob Dietz Yeah, but what I do want to go into a critique of is this rich versus poor, sort of this classist thing that's gotten built into the philosophy. And the easiest place to pick that apart is from one of MacAskill's colleagues, a guy named Nick Beckstead. And here's a quote I'm just gonna read you guys: "Saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries. It now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal. Richer countries have substantially more innovation and their workers are much more economically productive." That guy, Singer, talk about a perversion of what he was saying. It's like the opposite.Rob Dietz This is why longtermism really fucks with people's heads because it takes the Effective Altruism and says well, we have to consider trillions of people in the future. In which case, let's invest in the people now that have the most capacity to ensure that those, whatever, we can go colonize space.Rob Dietz Well that's how you get some jackass thinking let me import some of the poor people to live in Jason's bunker.Jason Bradford Exactly. We can't get rid of all the primitives or totally dismiss them because they are optionality in case - Asher Miller They are our backup. Jason Bradford They're our backup.Asher Miller They're our reboot, right? Jason Bradford They'e a reboot of civ. Asher Miller There's a generator in the garage.Jason Bradford There we go. Okay. Let's not forget about the bunkers we need with these people.Rob Dietz I'm sad again. Very sad again. But before we jump into that, can I just pat myself on the back for not making a joke after you said dark shit?Asher Miller Sure. You just had to point it out.Rob Dietz Sorry. My bad. My bad. I cant help it. It's a disease.Asher Miller We could go down a seriously dark rabbit hole like getting into some of the philosophy. Like what you just talked about Rob, like that quote that you read from Beckstead. Pretty fucking reprehensible. There's some shit here on the transhumanism front that is really to me quite disturbing. And I'll just give sort of one example of this. In a 2014 paper Bostrom - So Nick Bostrom, just to recall is another Oxford guy. I think highly influential on our guide MacAskill. He and a co-author of his name Karl Schulman proposed a process of engineering humans to achieve an IQ gain of up to 130 points by screening 10 embryos for desirable traits, selecting the best out of the 10 while destroying the other nine, of course, and then repeating the selection process 10 times over. This human would be so much more intelligent than we are that they would be an entirely new species. They would be a post-human, right?Asher Miller Yeah. And then of course, we become Cyborgians eventually right? You know, so that's just the first step.Rob Dietz Well, and that first one that they create in the lab would be like Lex Luthor. Asher Miller Right. It's just like, yeah, I mean, that is definitely like straight up eugenics stuff.Rob Dietz Continuing on this front, the whole idea of longtermism is to promote taking high risks in the now because the upside is so great in the future. And it so much outweighs the downside of taking those risks. And that's exactly how you get a Sam Bank-Fried. He's gonna go off and make as much money as he can. He sees this crypto thing going and he's like, "Yeah, I can take advantage of this and I can take some risks. And off and running. And he's like a poster child for this.Asher Miller But they use this philosophy to justify. To say that actually, this is for the greatest good.Jason Bradford Yes, 80,000 hours. Asher Miller Because we're going to make as much fucking money as we can right now and we're going to use that all for the purposes of ensuring these 80 trillion people, you know, in the future can have the best lives they can. You know, there's another infamous character, someone that that worked very closely with Sam Bankman-Fried. I think they even had a relationship of some kind named Caroline Ellison. She actually was the chief executive of Alameda research, which was like that sister company that was connected to FTX. She once wrote, this has since been deleted, but I think this is really interesting in terms of the logic here. She wrote, "Is it infinitely good to do double or nothing coin flips forever? Well, sort of, because your upside is unbounded and your downside is bounded at your entire net worth. But most people don't do this" she wrote. So basically she's saying, yeah, you know, keep doubling it. Flip the coin, try to double it. Take the risk.Rob Dietz It's like going to Vegas And playing blackjack. And when you lose, you just put twice the bet of what you lost, right? Jason Bradford Roulette. Roulette is better.Rob Dietz Or any of them, whatever. You lose, you just double it. And you keep doing it.Asher Miller But I mean, her saying okay, so the downside is you lost your initial quarter, or whatever it was, right? But the potential upside is so big. Jason Bradford But it's ridiculous. Asher Miller But she's like, people don't want to do this. And then she said, they don't really want to lose all their money. And then she wrote in parentheses, "Of course, those people are lame and not EAs,"Asher Miller Effective Altruists.Asher Miller Effective Altruists.Asher Miller "This blog endorses double or nothing coin flips and high leverage," right? So if you think about the cavalier nature of that, like, these people are lame, you know. Well, they fucking profited off of these lame people who invested in FTX. They invested all their money, and they lost it, right? Rob Dietz It's so arrogant, too. It's like, I'm enlightened and you are not.Asher Miller And you gotta wonder, is she as Cavalier these days now? I mean, all that coin flipping that they were doing with FTX and Alameda like, might put her in jail, right? Jason Bradford I mean, the probability is you're gonna lose everything if you're just coin flipping. That's what is so crazy. I mean, the odds that you actually keep doubling forever are ridiculous.Rob Dietz Matt Damon told me that crypto was the space for the bold. If you're a red blooded American . . . Asher Miller But it is interesting. You pair that mindset of like, double down, doubled down, take risks, do all this stuff. Oh, but we also have these existential risks we gotta worry about.Jason Bradford We've got our bunkers.Rob Dietz Well, you are leading into the double down doctrine. Okay? Now bear with me here. There's some circular logic here. There's some teenager style rationalization going on. I apologize to our four teenage listeners out there. No offense meant. I was a teenager once. Asher Miller Still are in some ways. Rob Dietz I didn't get through the poop jokes. I know. We're still there. But this double down doctrine, you see it among the longtermlists, the Effective Altruist, the TESCREALists. I wish I could just name all those things in a row. It rolls off the tongue. But it's really weird. They're sort of saying if we want to fix the problems that are caused by human's exploitation of the world, then we've got to exploit even more. And that way we can address all the externalities caused by our exploitation.Jason Bradford You got through it. Rob Dietz Right. I mean, that's the earn to give thing, right? It's like, make as much money as you possibly can now and then use that later.Rob Dietz Yeah. Well, and a really good example of it, there's a really good Guardian article where the author is interviewing William MacAskill. And he says that McCaskill is kind of saying, look, rather than cut back on consumption - And I should say, MacAskill, he said, we're over consuming, economic growth can't go on forever. He understands the -Jason Bradford Climate change is a problem. Blah, blah, blah. Rob Dietz Yeah, he understands the exponential math. He's like, yeah, of course if we keep growing the economy at 3% a year, eventually we - Asher Miller You say he understands it, but then he also thinks that we're going to have 80 trillion humans.Asher Miller Just keep digging. Rob Dietz Yeah. So he says all that and then this is wat he says about consumption. He says, "Rather than cut back on consumption, it's much more effective to donate to causes that are dealing with the problems created by consumption." So you know, like a doctor instead of dealing with the cause, just keep putting band-aids on top.Jason Bradford This reminds me of Woody Tasch, the Slow Money founder.Rob Dietz Yeah, those two are exactly the same. Woody Tasch and William MacAskillJason Bradford Well, he got so frustrated because he was working for the Ford Foundation, and they kept investing money in their endowment that was trashing the planet. And then they had to work on granting to fix it.Asher Miller Right. 95% gets invested in shit that makes everything worse And 5% you spend to try to fix the problem.Jason Bradford It's just not fair that 95% is winning all the time. Asher Miller That's the philanthropic model. Apparently it's the Effective Altruist's model too.Jason Bradford So this Oxford philosopher is not impressing me whatsoever. The other thing that keeps driving me crazy is this constant going into AI. They have a lot where like one of the most important jobs you can have is to invest in the safety of AI. The governance of AI. The prevention of AI from killing us all. Like, they're investing in how to protect ourselves from the AI that they need, so that we can create all these technologies, so that we can go post-human?Jason Bradford Well, they're saying, like, I'm really worried. I mean, you've got Musk saying this. All these people saying, basically, I'm really worried about AI. So we need to invest in AI. Rob Dietz Well, that's the that's the teenager part to me. It's like, I want to do this thing. I know it's dangerous. Let me find a reason why I should be able to do this thing. And it's this weird circular logic.Asher Miller I sometimes think that there's like, speaking of teenager hood, there's this desire to pursue whatever fucking instincts and impulse you have. But you also still kind of want a parent. Jason Bradford They want governance.Asher Miller They don't, but they do. Rob Dietz I wish instead of doing crypto adventures and all this crazy stuff, they were just throwing water balloons at people on the street like a regular teenager.Asher Miller That's not going to help us get to space and merge with technology in the singularity, Rob.Asher Miller Yeah, it is interesting to think about that the process of a good intention is being perverted on some level, right?Jason Bradford So I think this is a really interesting story how you start off with these well intentioned philosophies of like, Peter Singer, you know, is famous for animal liberation and being altruistic and giving and thinking about future generations. And it ends up becoming this sort of self serving, really juvenile rationalizations justifying your own work, your own sort of sense of power, and then basically relying on other wackadooley - Wackadoodlery? Like Kurzwelian wackadoodlery? To give you this reason to be doing all this just nutty stuff. And so it becomes also ironic that you have Singer who's this animal rights people and caring for other generations, and it becomes all centered around humans and our potential, and all the trillions of human lives ,and consciousness, and experience. Ah, God.Jason Bradford Yeah. I've been following the work of Sarah Pessin, who's a philosopher.Jason Bradford Another philosopher?Rob Dietz Does she have a Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy?Jason Bradford I think so.Asher Miller I'm sorry, I have to digress for a second. Do you recall watching Monty Python's Meaning of Life? Jason Bradford Oh my gosh. Oh I love that movie.Asher Miller There's a scene where this older couple is at this dinner in heaven, and they don't know what to talk about. And so the waiter gives them a topic to talk about which is philosophers. One of them was talking about like Schopenhauer and the other one, I can't remember, and the wife said, "Do all philosophers have S's in their name?" Like they are not capable of having a philosophical conversation.Rob Dietz It's reminiscent of us.Jason Bradford Well, look up Sarah. You can go to SarahPessin.com. And she has this really interesting section called Meaning Maps and Political Spiral Logics. And she talks about how in our society right now, there's all these good ideas that end up getting kind of corrupted. And she talks about this thing called the slipstream vector. So you imagine people with good intentions, and these philosophies sort of open up opportunities for someone to come in who just creates some extreme version that ends up being completely perverted. And this is happening a lot in our politics, actually. So the slipstream vector, I think. I see this happening in this movement.Rob Dietz Yeah, you just totally open the visual in my mind of pace lines in biking up. So you know like, when you're drafting behind somebody, you use like 30% less energy. Which is why in like the Tour de France, you see these huge mobs of cyclists right on each other's wheels. And yeah, so it's like, you know, there's Singer out in front, and then suddenly MacAskill and Bostrom get right on his wheel.Asher Miller So that is an interesting metaphor. I think we bring it back to William McCaskill, you could say, I don't know. I don't know the guy, but it seems like maybe that's his journey here. Which is like, it starts from a fairly innocent and maybe quite innocent or immature place, but well-intentioned. And then these things get their hooks in it. Do you know what I mean? So It's like, once you take Effective Altruism, and then you you add on this idea of not just like thinking about the long term and future generations, but you add this idea of human exceptionalism and the singularity.Jason Bradford Yes. Asher Miller And you start thinking about and you believe in this technological potential. It becomes this totally perverted thing. And then worse than that, you're talking about like, Singer in front And MacAskill and Bostrom, but then you got the guys like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk coming in. You're basically using this fucking thing, you know what I mean, to justify what they're doing. Back to that quote of like, it's better to invest in people in wealthy nations right now to do more long term good.Jason Bradford And they're completely willing to maybe push technology to the point where it kills us all off, and their backup plan is a bunker of hunter gatherers and peasants.Rob Dietz On plus side if we're sticking to the Tour de France metaphor here, Sam Bankman-Fried just got run by one of the support cars so we got that at least.Jason Bradford Okay, the insufferability index. Listeners, what is your score? We're gonna go through it here, but it's zero to 10. We've got intentions, personality, ideas, and then you get a bias. Does anyone want to go first?Asher Miller And high score of zero to three in each of those categories. Highest is is matched insufferable. Jason Bradford Yes, most insufferable. So how insufferable?Rob Dietz I'm happy to start. I think intentions for William MacAskill, I think he's getting a zero. I think he has really good intentions. From what I've read he's done some amazing projects trying to spread nets around places where mosquitoes are a problem to prevent malaria. I mean, really good altruistic instincts. Personality, I think he seems okay from what I've read. So he's getting a low score there too, as well. Ideas is where it gets a little bit iffy. For me, I think, again, earlier in our discussion I kept saying, "Well, that sounds okay." So some of the ideas are alright, it's just the way they've been perverted. So I think he's getting about a three for me. Jason Bradford Okay, pretty good.Asher Miller I'm gonna raise it by one. I'm gonna give him a one for personality. I'm not gonna go with zero because, you know, I don't really like people.Rob Dietz Yeah, there's no one.Asher Miller No one gets a zero. Rob Dietz Jason and I are twos in your book. Asher Miller My wife gets zero. If she heard this she'd be like, what are you talking about? Rob Dietz Yeah, I'm a 10, not a zero.Asher Miller The ideas, I'm gonna give him a two because it definitely goes into some wacky shit. But you know, there's some things like, you know, thinking about future generations that I agree with. But I'm gonna use my my scorers bias. I'm gonna add an extra point in there because there's some, he's kind of promoted some designer baby shit, too. You know, there's some stuff in there that's kind of dark. Yeah. I'm gonna go with a four.Jason Bradford Okay, okay. I think its really weird. I'm really disappointed in a so called Oxford philosopher. I'm no philosopher, I wouldn't consider myself a philosopher.Rob Dietz You are a Doctor of Philosophy.Jason Bradford In biology. Rob Dietz Yeah, those don't fit right.Jason Bradford Right. But I feel like he's got some such huge holes in this. Like the circularity of stuff. Like it pisses me off, right?Rob Dietz Well, you need to go to Oxford to understand this stuff.Jason Bradford Okay, anyway, I'm gonna go split the difference and add it up to a 3.5.Asher Miller Pretty low score. Jason Bradford Yeah, he got a pretty low score. Asher Miller Good job, William.Rob Dietz Let's call him up for beers.Jason Bradford He's young. He's got time to catch up. Asher Miller He's got time.George Costanza Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.Jason Bradford Alright, I really struggled with the do the opposite. Because I think these people so overthink it, And they just come up with stuff that just that no normal human would ever consider. I'm just like, the opposite might just be a normal frickin' human being.Asher Miller Well look, they have to come up with some ideas. They're the professors of philosophy.Jason Bradford They're living in their head and thinking of 80 trillion and like, billions of years in the future. And it just gets absolutely absurd. So just be normal. Just be a normal human being. And, also, okay, this is kind of weird, but you gotta be more present. Live more in the present. Like a goldfish. Okay? Not completely. You know, short-termism might be okay, sometimes.Asher Miller I'm gonna say we should, doing the opposite is maybe splitting the difference, right? Jason Bradford Right, right. Help balance it out. Asher Miller So it's not discounting the future. But It's also not discounting the present which is what longtermism has done. Rob Dietz Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Because if you go back to that episode we did in the hidden driver season about discounting the future, we kind of said, "Hey, stop doing that." And think about projects and things that you could do in this world that have a legacy. But kind of like with some limits on the horizon, right? We're not going to the sci-fi billions of years in the future on the other side of the wormhole.Jason Bradford And make sure that when you're doing those things, they also bring you joy in the here and now. I mean, you have to align those so you're never going to follow through.Asher Miller Yeah, so you know, maybe the whole seventh generation thing. Maybe that's a pretty good. . .Rob Dietz Yeah, in fact, there was an article on resilience.org by Christopher McDonald that was comparing the seven generations idea from the Iroquois Confederacy to this longtermism - Jason Bradford And he was excited about, oh longtermism is like seven generations.Rob Dietz Yeah, and he was like us sort of saying, "Oh, I agree. Oh, wait. Wait a second. What am I reading?" Look, I also think if okay, longtermism is a philosophy, or any of these other TESCREALs you want to pull - Never pull someone's TESCREAL, okay.Jason Bradford It might bite you.Rob Dietz But if you want to talk about philosophy, try to find a philosophy, some philosophical ideas, that can help you be present and help you be a good steward of the places you inhabit. You know, I like going old school with things like stoicism, you know, like letting go the things you can't control. I like Taoism. You know, there's a lot of go with the flow kind of ideas in there. Asher Miller Can I go with the Big Lebowskisms?Rob Dietz Perfect. Exactly. The dude abides. We can all abide. I also, on a more serious note, I think that Robin Wall Kimmerer, I think that we brought up her book, "Braiding Sweetgrass" before, and I know some of our listeners are fans of that book. What she does, it's amazing as she combines ecology, ecological science, with Indigenous philosophy. And it's a really wonderful mix, in a way, to think about the world. And as I think your goldfish example, kind of be present, where you are.Jason Bradford To be part of this world. This world and you are the same. We're one. That kind of stuff, And yeah, no, that's a beautiful book.Asher Miller And you know, honestly, I mean, we didn't get into this too much, but the human centeredness of longtermism and Effective Altruism and all the stuff - Doing the opposite of that is actually recognizing the more than human. And if we're not discounting the future lives of seven generations, let's say, of humans in front of us, what about all the other species that we share this planet with? And we've talked about this before, too, but another do the opposite is the precautionary principle rather than the double down doctrine that were these guys are pushing and were pushing on so many fronts right now. Everything seems to be fucking double down.Jason Bradford I know. I remember when I was reading West Jackson and Bob Jensen's book, they were explaining a conversation they had with each other over the phone. And Wes was like, "Bob, why isn't all this just enough? Just what we have. Why can't it just be enough?" And you wrote a book called, "Enough is Enough."Rob Dietz Yeah. My book was called, "Enough is Enough." Their book is called, "An Inconvenient Apocalypse." I bet they're selling a lot better than I am.Jason Bradford But I think that's true. I mean, can you just have a normal decent life and just consider the beauty of the world enough for you? I hope so.Rob Dietz I don't think so. I think that's a stupid idea. We instead have started a new organization.Jason Bradford Oh, we have?Rob Dietz Yeah, it's gonna counteract the Centre for Effective Altruism.Jason BradfordHow are you gonna spell it?Rob Dietz I don't know. I think we gotta go "-er" since we're here in America. We're not gonna go "-re"Asher Miller Yeah, we're American. You gotta spell it the right way, man. Rob Dietz And yeah, this center is going to be the opposite of the Centre for Effective Altruism, right? It's gonna be called the Center for Incompetent Hoarding. So, you know, listeners find it online, donate as much money as you can. It doesn't matter what you do to get that money.Asher Miller Just don't do crypto. We can't take crypto.Asher Miller Well, thanks for listening. If you made it this far, then maybe you actually liked the show.Rob Dietz Yeah, and maybe you even consider yourself a real inhabitant of Crazy Town. someone like us who we affectionately call a Crazy Townie.Jason Bradford If that's the case, then there's one very simple thing you can do to help us out. Share the podcast, or even just this episode.Asher Miller Yeah, text three people you know who you think will get a kick out of hearing from us bozos.Rob Dietz Or if you want to go away old school, then tell them about the podcast face to face.Jason Bradford Please for the love of God. If enough people listen to this podcast, maybe one day we can all escape from Crazy Town. We're just asking for three people, a little bit of sharing, we can do this.Jason Bradford If you are the effectively altruistic parent of a young human, one of your greatest potential impacts is making sure your offspring make as much money as possible. At temps for future trillions, we will place your child with one of our special clients, all of whom are in constant need of discreet services and are willing to pay unbelievable sums. With just one or two summer jobs with our agency placed with either a drug lord, human trafficker, or weapons dealer. Your kid will have a substantial endowment available for whatever lucrative business they can think of after they drop out of college. They can then leverage their wealth in the service of securing the wondrous eternal life of infinitely happy post-human sentient beings. Temps for Future Trillions, effectively justifying sociopathy today for a universe of transhuman colonization tomorrow.

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Crazy Town: Episode 73. How Longtermism Became the Most ... - Resilience

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Why Warhammer 40K fans keep arguing about the Emperors terrible sons – Polygon

Posted: at 1:13 am

Primarchs, Space Marines, and a boatload of daddy issues

Warhammer 40,000 stands apart largely because of its vast scale. Billions of people are stacked in hive cities, trillions of people sign up for the Imperial Guard (and die horribly in the process), and quadrillions of humans are spread across the galaxy. Thats without mentioning the various alien races, known as xenos terrifying space bugs, ferocious orks, awe-inspiring space elves, and immortal robot skeletons.

But thats not what fan conversation tends to center on. If you check out Warhammer 40K fan spaces and content channels, youll find that much of the conversation surrounds twenty terrible boys and all the bad decisions they make. Whats up with that?

The God-Emperor of Mankind is the guy who set up the Imperium of Man, powers the lighthouse that all Imperium ships use to travel, and stops an endless horde of demons from breaking into Terra and exploding the planet. The God-Emperor sustained an ouchie 10,000 years ago that means hes confined to the chair, a carrion lord who consumes a thousand souls a day. And its all because of his terrible sons the Primarchs and their nonsense.

Image: Games Workshop

The Primarchs and their exploits started as vague myths and legends, half-remembered from a lost age. These characters existed far back in history, and had no realistic bearing on contemporary gameplay and their stories werent explicitly told. That was before Black Library, the prolific book publishing arm of Games Workshop, started putting out books about these boys. There are now dozens of books in the Horus Heresy series, detailing each Primarchs exploits.

The various authors of the Black Library pull this off by writing the Horus Heresy series like a particularly nasty WWE-style feud, or a soap opera with constant gunfights and walking tanks. Many of the Primarchs seem either ridiculous, or they just blend together into a smear of big men and space battles. Each Primarch also has their own supporting cast from their legion of Space Marines, transhuman biosoldiers built from the gene-seed of their Primarchs. Space Marines are the poster boys of the setting, and one of the most iconic parts of 40K, and each legion has their own role and function.

If youre not deep on the lore of Space Marines and Primarchs, though, this nuance can easily be lost on the reader. The Imperial Fists, Iron Hands, and Iron Warriors, for instance, each have their own niche but if youre interested in reading about the Aeldari or Necron, they all just look like Space Marine palette swaps. (Although if you are interested in the nitty-gritty, there are good resources to help break that down.)

Two of the God-Emperors sons got deleted from the record we dont know what happened to them, and well never learn, thanks to a series of memory wipes and document burning leaving eighteen boys behind to start the Great Crusade, the Emperors attempt to reunite humanity and take over the whole galaxy. Each boy has a legion of Space Marine sons, which causes a recursive spiral of bad dad/son relationships. The Emperor went into the basement to work on his projects for a couple of decades, only showing up once in a while (and making things worse in the process).

But the Primarchs can also feel over-represented in the setting. The problem is that there becomes a vicious cycle where people love Primarchs, so more Primarch books are written, which helps build a fanbase for Primarchs. If youre pursuing stories about other factions and youre not a Space Marine fan, it can be frustrating to feel like every other vast corner of the universe is drowned out by the nonsense of these big sons.

Personally, I used to fall into this camp. Im still not that into Space Marines as theyre depicted in 40K. But I have found myself being charmed, first by the memes and tidbits of knowledge I picked up about these guys did you know Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperors Children, is a giant snake demon who had his soul stuck in a painting for a while? Or that big Bobby G of the Ultramarines once fought in space with no helmet for twelve hours, fueled by rage at brotherly betrayal? and then by delving into the actual stories depicted in print.

Image: Games Workshop

In the modern day of 40K, only two loyalist Primarchs have returned Lion ElJonson and Roboute Guilliman. Guillimans return in 2017 was a massive deal that flipped the entire setting upside down, but as time went on, he became less of a protagonist and more of a garnish on top of the nightmare pasta that is the Imperium of Man. The traitorous Primarchs make fantastic bosses and have cool tabletop models, but theyve already lost. They lost 10,000 years ago, and it means that characters like Angron are more like environmental effects than actual characters.

These characters are at risk of overwhelming the setting due to their sheer popularity, but they work best as background figures who just make things worse (or at the very least, more complicated) for everyone around them. Theyre also a reminder not to take the setting too seriously. When characters like Corvus Corax of the Raven Guard are running around, its a charming relic from the older days of 40K where everything wasnt so carefully and meticulously sanded-down to be cool. I love my garbage boys just the way they are, heresy and all.

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Are We Co-Creators with God? – Answers In Genesis

Posted: April 23, 2023 at 6:29 pm

What do theistic evolution,1 transhumanism,2 Neo-Marxism,3 New Ageism,4 and the prosperity gospel have in commonand what do these common factors have to do with the idea that humans are co-creators with God? The answers run deeper than we might expect. For starters, all these beliefs involve elements that contradict biblical doctrines.5 So they all bear a telltale hallmark of false teachings: the lie, first suggested by the serpent in Genesis 3:1, that Gods Word is not completely true. To different extents, some of these beliefs also share another trademark of many false teachingsa version of the serpents lie that you will be like God (Genesis 3:5).

One way these lies may surface is through the claim that humans are co-creators with God. What does this teaching entail? As we investigate the answer, well encounter multiple names of professing believers. The point is not to critique these individuals personally, but to evaluate their teachings in light of Scripture, as New Testament writers did when naming specific teachers.6 With this caveat in mind, lets look closer at what the co-creator concept means, where it originates, and what kinds of fruit it bears in connection with popular false teachings.7

At its core, the created co-creator concept claims that, as creative beings fashioned in our Creators image, humans are meant to join God in further creating reality. A recent article promoting this concept notes, Scholars have interpreted this [created co-creator] model in different ways, based on the nature of human creative action. This action is seen as either subordinate to divine creation action or the human creative action is truly cooperative with divine creative action8 (emphasis added).

The latter view that humans are co-creators and not just sub-creators9 appears throughout writings by Philip Hefner, a professing Lutheran theologian and seminary professor who introduced the created co-creator concept in his 1993 book, The Human Factor.10 In this book, Hefner taught that God used evolution to create humans as beings who have freedom to further co-create reality in line with Gods purposes. 11 In Hefners words, liberating the process of evolution towards Gods ends becomes the God-given destiny of human beings.12 So, humans job as created co-creators is, in Hefners view, to direct evolution to reach new levels.

How popular has the created co-creator concept become? A quick internet search reveals the ideas significance, with references to humans as co-creators appearing on major Christian websites, in teachings by influential church leaders,13 and in online sermon resources. The term created co-creator also generates hundreds of search results across scholarly articles,14 showing that Hefners phrase circulates in academic as well as popular spheres. Hefner himself has exerted significant academic influence, working 19 years as editor-in-chief of the Zygon Journal of Religion and Sciences,15 serving as the first Director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago,16 and continuing to be cited by theologians who support using technology to advance human evolution.17

Nor are messages echoing Hefners ideas limited to Protestant circles. Not only has Pope Francis referred to parents as people who participate in the creative power of God himself18 by reproducing offspring,19 but he elsewhere wrote,

Previously, Pope John Paul II also declared,

Clearly, the created co-creator concept is too influential to ignore. Christians must apply biblical critical thinking to this idea, as to any new message. And that begins with checking the message against Gods Word.

Importantly, Scripture nowhere suggests that humans are Gods co-creators. Advocates for the co-creator concept generally cite the Genesis 1:2627 doctrines that (1) God made humans in his image, (2) God gave humans dominion over the earth, and (3) God mandated humans to be fruitful and multiply. But a closer look reveals that none of these doctrines truly support the created co-creator concept.

Acknowledging these points does not mean denying that humans are creative as image-bearers, evident in how we use creations resources to make thingsfrom music and murals to skyscrapers and spacecraftsin ways that animals certainly do not. But, as some advocates for the created co-creator concept readily note, we cannot create the way God does.26 We can only manipulate materials God has already created. (In response, some may suggest that humans who invent new names, words, or sentences are creating ex nihilo.27 However, using our preexisting, God-given faculties for thinking, language, and communication to invent new patterns of symbolic, immaterial information drastically differs from speaking new material realities into existence.)

The Bible consistently reflects this truth that humans play no truly cooperative role as creators with God. For instance, one scholar observed that the Hebrew word for create (, br') appears almost 50 times in Scriptures references to God, but only 4 timesnone of which involve literal creative actsin reference to humans.28 Psalm 100:3 (NKJV) further emphasizes that humans are not creators in Gods sense, declaring, It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves. The verb tense of has made reiterates that God completed creation,29 as the language in Genesis 2:13 repeatedly underscores.

Importantly, completing creation in no way implies that God withdrew from creation.30 God does sustain and direct ongoing processes within his finished creation (like those involved in Gods fashioning specific sunrises or individual babies).31 God does presumably create new materials when performing certain miracles.32 And God will one day create a new heaven and new earth.33 But the Bible remains clear that the worlds creation is not ongoing in the evolutionary sense that co-creation advocates suggest. Ultimately, the view that humans are created co-creators does not come from Gods Word.

So, where does the concept originate? Before answering, a quick caveat is in order: to say a message is false simply because of its origins would be a logical mistake called a genetic fallacy. However, weve already seen the co-creator concept is false because it does not align with Gods Word.34 Investigating the concepts origins will not change its (lack of) truthfulness, but it will reveal how gravely misleading the concept becomes and how it interweaves with other false teachings. With that in mind, lets look closer at the book which popularized the created co-creator concept.35

In The Human Factor, Hefner began with a commitment, not to Gods Word, but to human interpretations of science. He wrote, The program represented in this book accepts that theology as explanation is dead unless it learns to integrate within itself elements of scientific understandings that undergird explanation for our time in history.36

Because observational science does not conflict with Scripture, the scientific understandings which Hefner wants theology to conform with are not scientific facts, but human interpretations of facts based on evolutionary and long-age assumptions. Correspondingly, evolution is Hefners starting point, not only for interpreting major topics such as humanity,37 morality,38 technology,39 and religion,40 but also for reinterpreting biblical doctrines including Gods image,41 original sin,42 the nature of Jesus,43 the cross, atonement, salvation, redemption, justification,44 and grace.45

Before briefly surveying some of these revisions, we need to remember what Gods Word teaches. Scripture plainly reveals that God created humans in his image as distinct from animals46 and called his completed creation very good (Genesis 1:31). Adam, the first human, committed the original sin by rebelling against Gods commands, bringing physical death into creation and spiritual death to all humanity. Only Jesus, as God in human flesh, could graciously atone for sin by dying a physical death on behalf of all humans who place their faith in him. Jesus death and resurrection opened the way for creations original perfection to be restored in the new heaven and earth God will make, where death and suffering will be abolished (Revelation 21:14).

In contrast, The Human Factor teaches that death and suffering were necessary parts of an evolutionary process God used to produce humans.47 Because evolutionary origins would make humans continuous with nature, Hefner argues that Gods image applies not only to humans, but also to the entire natural world.48 Having rejected belief in a literal Adam,49 Hefner also rejects belief in literal original sin. Instead, he deems original sin a sensation of guiltiness that humans experience when the evolutionary instincts hardwired into our genes conflict with the demands of life in civilized culture.50

Humans, according to this view, do not need grace for having sinned against God. Instead, Hefner reinterprets grace as Gods acceptance of human initiatives to advance evolution, even when those initiatives seem to fail.51 These evolutionary reinterpretations mean that Jesus did not have to literally come as God in human fleshan idea Hefner calls egregious52to die for humanitys sin debt.53 Instead, Hefner essentially teaches that Jesus died to show how humans can use altruism to advance evolution.54 Hefner summarized,

Clearly, these statements are completely different from, contradictory to, and incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ explicated in Gods Word. Therefore, they qualify as heresya term not to be used lightly. Why would a prominent seminary professor teach such a view, especially in a book released by the official publishing house of a major American Protestant denomination? The sentences which immediately follow the above quote suggest the answer: to be consonant with evolutionary modes of thought.56

These evolution-based heresies are not just a sidebar to the created co-creator concept. Hefner opened his chapter section on Revising Christological Doctrines by stating, This section is the heart of the actual content of the program for the created co-creator. The paradigm set by Jesus, as mythically, ritually, socially, and psychologically sketched here, is proposed as the Christian vision for the created co-creator, the human purpose.57

In other words, Hefners ideas about the goals that humans are meant to accomplish through co-creating rest in the reinterpretations of Jesus quoted above. And these reinterpretations, if accepted, undercut peoples ability to comprehend a saving relationship with Jesus. Hefner acknowledged this consequence, asking, What is the precise relationship between individuals and Jesus? How does one appropriate unto oneself the Jesus paradigm? These are among the many unanswered questions we leave.58

Already, the created co-creator concept stands out as a case study of how attempts to blend Christianity with evolutionary origins stories lead to beliefs that are inconsistent with Scriptureeven to the point of being explicitly heretical. Further illustrating this pattern, Calvin Smith has documented similar evolution-inspired heresies in the theistic evolutionist organization BioLogos.59

Incidentally, BioLogos website includes an article with an author bio advertising that the writer (who elsewhere advocates for Hefners created co-creator concept60) has coauthored a book with Hefner,61 although this does not guarantee BioLogos endorses Hefners ideas. Further overlap, however, is evident in that BioLogos current program manager was deeply involved in the Zygon Center for Religion and Science while attending the seminary where Hefner remains listed as professor emeritus.62

While these connections may be merely circumstantial, a more direct link between BioLogos and co-creator teachings involves Ted Peters, an ardent popularizer of Hefners created co-creator concept and a proponent (as well see below) of certain New Age elements. Peters rallied the created co-creator concept in his book Playing God63 to argue that human germline editing could be considered part of Gods creating the world through human technology.64 Strikingly, the foreword for Playing God was written by Francis Collins, former director of the National Institute of Health and founder of BioLogos. A lengthy BioLogos article also celebrates Peters directly.65

While such connections do not mean BioLogos supports everything Peters or Hefner have written, these areas of overlap reflect the reality that the created co-creator concept rests in a theistic evolutionary view and engenders similarly unorthodox revisions of Scripture.

The created co-creator concept illustrates connections not only between evolution and gospel revisions, but also between evolution and Marxisma link which other resources have documented in depth.

As a reminder of what Marxism entails, Karl Marx viewed history as a story of conflict between oppressed and oppressing classes, represented by exploited workers and wealthy business owners.66 Marx believed such oppression alienated (cut off) humanity from reaching its full potential.67 According to Marx, workers could liberate society by revolting against their oppressorsredeeming humanity from its brokenness and enabling a communist heaven on earth, absent oppression.68

This process would supposedly make humans free to further create themselves by working toward their visions for what the world should become. Echoing these ideas, Marx commented that the entire history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labor,69 and believed that communism would achieve the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) beinga return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development.70

The Marxian aspiration of humans creating themselves (via sociohistorical conditions) by working toward an ultimate vision of utopia significantly overlaps with the view that humans must co-create themselves by working toward an ultimate vision of eschatology. One of the main differences is that the former view is founded on atheistic evolution, and the latter on theistic evolution. In both cases, humans are called to embrace an active role of becoming. As Peters wrote in Playing God, The concept of the human being with which we are working here is not a static one. The definition is not fixed. Rather, we are on the way: we are becoming human.71

Peters asserted that, while the process of becoming human will only be completed at the final resurrection,72 humans meanwhile play a co-creative role in modeling the current world after that future vision. In Peters words, Living today out of a vision of Gods future creates a sense of maladjustment to the present. This maladjustment leads to a proleptic form of ethicsthat is, taking creative and transformative action in the present stimulated by our vision of the future.73

Peters supports such views of human becoming by citing Karl Rahner,74 who helped influence the liberation theology movement.75 Liberation theology relies on Neo-Marxian critical theories, which revise Marxs beliefs about oppression between economic groups to interpret society as being structured around oppression between cultural groups.76 Recently, Peters has also applied such critical theories in an argument that reinterprets Jesus death, claiming (contrary to core biblical doctrines77) that sacrifice does not literally atone for sin.78

Positive citations of other theologians informed by these theories pepper both Playing God79 and The Human Factor.80 In fact, Hefner explicitly states that his views in The Human Factor were influenced by what he called critical thinking,81 which he defined a page earlier in terms of critical theories.82 Hefner linked critical theories directly to the co-creator concept, stating,

Basically, this quote is getting at the idea that, like liberation theologians say Christians must put Marxian-informed conflict theory into practice by working toward liberating oppressed classes, Christians must put the co-creator concept into practice by working toward liberating the process of evolution towards Gods ends.84 Such parallels between the co-creator concept and Marxism do not mean the co-creator concept is Marxism or that all its advocates are Marxists. But the concept is largely consistent with certain Marxist themes and was directly influenced by Neo-Marxian thinking.

Both the co-creator concept and Marxism share further significant overlap with another evolution-based belief system: transhumanism.85 As a movement which claims that humans should apply technology to achieve higher levels of human evolution, transhumanism strongly resembles a secular version of the created co-creator concept. Transhumanism, like Marxism, promises redemption through human efforts, insisting that working toward a utopian vision of the future can free humanity from its core grievances.86

Thinkers who seek to blend transhumanism with Christianity often cite Hefners created co-creator concept, claiming that God intends for us to play a creative role in evolving humanity to reach its full potential.87 Such claims fit well with teachings in The Human Factor, which stated, Through the action of its culture, therefore, the human being represents a proposal for the further evolution of the created world. Humans have the potential to actualize a radically new phase of evolution.88

Ultimately, while not every advocate for the co-creator concept supports full-fledged transhumanism,89 the co-creator concept is remarkably consistent with transhumanism and supplies a foundational argument for pro-transhuman theologians.

Strikingly, one of the earliest thinkers recognized for pioneering transhumanist ideas was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (18811955),90 a Jesuit priest, paleontologist, and influential forerunner of the New Age movement.91 As a committed evolutionist, Teilhard de Chardin taught that evolution would, through a process he called planetization,92 propel humanity to an Omega Point of achieving Godlike consciousness.93,94 Hefner not only speaks of having been influenced by Teilhard de Chardin,95 but also reports that he based his biblical interpretive framework on the beliefs of a dedicated Chardinian, N. Max Wilders.96

Peters too has promoted a Chardin-influenced view of an Omega Point,97 and has contributed an article to the website of the Chardinian organization, the Center for Christogenesis.98 Given Peters interest in Teilhard de Chardin, and Teilhard de Chardins influence on the New Age, it may be no shock that Peters has written a book whichdespite advocating for Christian discernmentconcludes, modest dabbling in new age spirituality is probably harmless; it may even be helpful99 (emphasis in original). Adding that the new age vision is a noble and edifying one, Peters praises the movements future-oriented goals as providing the driving power to seek growth, evolution and transformation.100

We see these themes of New Ageism and co-creation united again in the writings of Matthew Fox, a former Dominican priest who became an Episcopal minister after being expelled by the Vatican.101 Fox described humans as co-creators in an ever-unfolding creation in his 1991 book, Creation Spirituality.102 Neo-Marxist undercurrents flow throughout this book as well, as Fox calls his teachings a liberation theology for First World peoples,103 and asserts that creation spirituality empowers marginalized groups to be co-creators of a new historical vision.104 Echoing the serpents lie in Genesis 3:5, Fox also promotes the explicitly New Age teaching that humans can be like God. He wrote, The divinity in us breaks through not only as creators and co-creators but especially as prophets who interfere with injustice while proclaiming freedom for the downtrodden.105

Further confirming the New Age nature of co-creation ideas, former New Age teacher Doreen Virtue wrote that a turning point in her conversion to Christianity was realizing that Scripture teaches we are not co-creators with God. She wrote in her autobiography, For four chapters [in the book of Job], God outlines everything He can do that we cant do. In the most beautifully therapeutic way, reading these chapters burst my illusion that I was a co-creator with God, a common phrase in the New Age106 (emphasis added).

In the same book, Virtue references the overlap between New Age-type movements and forms of prosperity gospel teachings.107 According to these teachings, humans are godlike beings who can call desired statesnamely, healthiness and wealthinessinto existence on our own initiative because God made humans in his image and dwells within believers.108 As Justin Peters has documented, The origins of the prosperity gospel can be traced back directly to the metaphysical cults, like Christian Science, New Age, New Thought, [and] Gnosticism.109 Notably, a post on an official social media account of the well-known prosperity gospel teacher Kenneth Copeland reads, You are a co-creator with God when you speak words of life!110

Given the connections between New Ageism and the co-creator concept, we should not be surprised to find such co-creator language in prosperity teachings rooted in New Ageism.

In the end, we find that theistic evolution, Neo-Marxism, transhumanism, New Ageism, and the prosperity gospel share strikingly deep connections, illustrated in the thinking of theologians who teach that humans are co-creators with God. The created co-creator concept starts with the evolutionary belief that God did not finish creating the world in six days, but left creation open-ended for humans to further advance its evolution. This idea of humans directing evolution to achieve a final vision of liberation fits well within both (Neo-)Marxist and transhumanist worldviews, which themselves are founded on evolutionary thinking. Once spiritualized, this kind of utopic, evolutionary outlook flows naturally into New Age thinking, which often views humans as co-creators. The language of co-creation, in turn, arises in certain prosperity gospel teachings which overlap with New Ageism.

These similarities reflect how diverse unbiblical teachings often share a common root in lies as old as Eden, which whisper that Gods Word is not completely true and that humans can make themselves like God. By rejecting these lies in the perfect light of Scripture, we can rest in our Creators sovereignty, assured that It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves (Psalm 100:3 NKJV).

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Why Is Everything ‘Punk’ Now? – TheGamer

Posted: at 6:29 pm

Everything is punk now. Nothing is punk now. As you probably read in my subheading, and have almost definitely noticed as a trend in games, books, and further afield, the -punk suffix can be attached to basically any word now, with complete disregard for the original intention. Frostpunk is just cold? Biopunk replaces cybernetic enhancements of cyberpunk for those of a more biological nature, but rarely discusses the transhuman ideas as its progenitor does. Hermitpunk? I couldnt even tell you. Its some kind of cottagecore alternative for those too proud to admit their affectation for those vibes.

The problem has been spreading to games for a while now, but its been rampant since the lead-up to and release of Cyberpunk 2077. You may have heard of Cloudpunk, a cute game released from 2020. Its a nice game, I enjoyed it, but it appropriates cyberpunk aesthetics and gives them a new name, the name of its in-universe delivery service. It even mentions the word cyberpunk in its marketing, but decided to make up a new term as well. Is it punk? Not really.

Related: The Rings of Power Is Being Sued By A Fanfic Writer

The same goes for Frostpunk, a survival city management game which sees you rule over the last city on Earth. Ive always said theres nothing more punk than ruling over your minions as some kind of monarch or dictator. Herein lies the problem. Words have meaning. You cant just ignore that meaning. Dying Light had a Dieselpunk DLC, which seemingly just added chainsaws. Chainsaws use fuel, sure, but are they punk?

This is where my irk stems from. Words have meanings. I didnt stumble into this article saying that the -punk suffix is elitist or humorous or non-monogamous, because those are different words with different meanings. I think the suffix is misunderstood, meaningless, and sometimes hypocritical, so those are the words I use. Its why, when editing articles on this website, I make sure that writers know that simplistic and simple arent synonyms that you can use interchangeably in order to sound more clever. With -punk naming conventions, it all started innocently enough with cyberpunk.

To know how this term was bastardised, we have to return to its roots. Cyberpunk as a genre was pioneered in the 60s and 70s as a part of New Wave science fiction. Roger Zelazny, Samuel R. Delany, and J. G. Ballard were some of the foremost pioneers, laying the foundations for the likes of William Gibson to follow. The term itself first appeared as the title of a 1983 Bruce Bethke short story published in Amazing Stories, after the author had been experimenting with compound words. The story goes that Bethke made two lists, one of words for technology and one for troublemakers, and assembled combinations from the two. Maybe we could have ended up with a story called technonuisance, and wed now have games called frostnuisance and people ascribing to hermitnuisance ways of life?

The term was popularised by Gardner Dozois, editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, who described many of the above authors as cyberpunks in a Washington Post article. The popularity of William Gibsons 1984 novel Neuromancer massively aided the genre taking off and the term stuck, despite Bethkes assertions that Gibsons work should be categorised as Neuromantic, a play on the novels title and the New Romantic movement in punk music at the time.

All of these novels had a semblance of punk to them. The characters were young upstarts, and the stories detailed anti-establishment movements as dystopian societies had all-but crushed the protagonists. And then steampunk came along. Steampunk was named purely based on the convention of cyberpunk. K. W. Jeter came up with it to describe that pseudo-Victorian style of fantasy fiction. It didnt rise in popularity until a little later, and has since been used to describe novels as far back as Frankenstein and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. For the most part the label is all aesthetic and no substance, all steam and no punk.

There is a debate raging about steampunk in online communities, as steampunks attempt to reconcile their aesthetic with the punk of the name. While some modern novels in the genre befit that punk spirit by challenging mass production, steampunk communities rebel against the same with handmade goods and crafts, and people often challenge the eras colonialist, sexist, and xenophobic values, the genre is defined by cogs and goggles more than it is its punk roots, especially to a general audience not entrenched in the community. Some writers in the genre eschew the label altogether, opting instead for gaslamp fantasy despite having all the trappings of steampunk. There may be some punk in some steampunk, but it seems retrofitted. People have realised the issues with the genre and are challenging it, rather than defining it. Still, thats more than can be said for other spin-off genres.

While there is great debate about half of steampunks etymological meaning, countless copycats have no debate, and even less punk. At best, the -punk suffix now just denotes some kind of alternate history, but the texts dont have to be anti-establishment or anti-capitalist in their execution. Theres no shouting about the state of the world, the characters just exist in it. The same even extends to some modern cyberpunk the video game Cyberpunk 2077 has you fighting side by side with cops, and has an ending where you stand with a megacorporation.

Ive heard arguments that hermitpunk is rebelling against the hyper-socialisation of the modern world, but I dont buy it. Escape to the wilderness all you want, but thats not a rebellion. At least forestpunk has an air of insurgency about it, as forestpunks protest global warming and deforestation as much as they get away from the grid. Words have meaning, and you should think about that before telling the universe that your new game is a riverpunk sailing adventure. No punk, no party.

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Let 3 from Croatia: "We want to heal the world from hate and stupidity" – Eurovisionworld

Posted: at 6:29 pm

!

That would be the only appropriate way to initiate this interview with Croatia's Eurovision 2023 representatives, the band Let 3.

Zoran Prodanovi (Prlja), the band's frontman, explains:

"" is like our mantra, it doesn't mean anything specifically. You can simply wake up in the morning and say "", go to bed and say "", eat and say "", you can walk your dog and call it ""...

It features a catharsis energy, it has healing powers to it, adds Damir Martinovi (Mrle), the bass guitarist of Let 3.

We want to use this energy to heal the world from trauma, from hate and from stupidity. The whole idea is to protect the power of love.

It becomes quite obvious that what truly moves Let 3 isn't competition but real causes and quite early in our conversation, Zoran assumes the antiwar nature of the song, an aspect that some censor about "Mama ", their Eurovision entry:

I think artists are always responsible for addressing things that happen around us. We are, in ways, speakers of the world and I don't understand why wouldn't someone address such factor in an event like Eurovision. Why not? I think we have to.

We have to do it in our way and in Let 3's way there's no place for racism, for sexual discriminations or for wars. We're pro transhumanism, against the war and against stupidity and we do send this message through our song and performance.

It wouldn't be faithful to the band's history if it was done in any other way. The band started back in 1987 and even then, they were advocating for women's rights, LGBT+ rights and so much more.

Some things never change. In 1987, our country was the Republic of Yugoslavia that got torn apart and, of course, it wasn't a peaceful separation. There was war. We're not too far from that.

And why is it still important to continue to open mentalities? It's been over 30 years...

We always have something else to say to the world and to bring to people. We do our best in order to make the world a better place and that's our main motive: to fight against stupidity, to fight against hunger, to fight against the stereotype of who is who. We're not against anyone and we're up for everyone, says Zoran.

We need more tolerance, adds Damir.

Nowadays, it may even be more important if we think about the Earth and how we get closer to some kind of a catastrophe. We want to send a message to the world that there will be generations after us and that we should keep our planet clean in order to save lives and not to destroy them.

It was back to the busiest Saturday of this Eurovision season, 11 February, that Croatia decided that Let 3 should represent the nation with their antiwar song, "Mama ". The choice was unanimous between the professional jury and the televote which culminated in a landslide with more than 100 points separating the two first places in Dora 2023.

Related storyMama ! Let 3 win Dora 2023 in Croatia

After their victory, Croatia rose in the bookmakers rankings and saw a surge in its chances of winning Eurovision 2023. The nation, which hasn't qualified for the final since 2017, is now likely to make it from semi-final 1 and the Eurovision spirit is more alive than ever:

On one hand, we're very proud of having achieved that but, on the other hand, there's pressure... We don't care if we flop, comments Zoran.

There are big expectations this year in Croatia but for years, there wasn't, Damir adds.

Zoran continues:

Suddenly everybody knows everything about Eurovision and reads everything about it and even listens to all the songs... It's like football.

We're meeting with the two members of Let 3 the day before their performance at Madrid's PrePartyES. It's almost lunch time and the band arrived to the Spanish capital at 23:00 of the previous night. How can they keep up with such a crazy agenda?

It's too much airplane time, says Damir.

Yes and waiting in the airport isn't great but it's part of the game, you have to be ready... Well, it's faster than walking, jokes Zoran.

When speaking of the experience so far, the band seem to be surprised by the reception they've been getting from the community:

We didn't expect it, honestly. It was our first time in Warsaw (for the Polish Eurovision pre-party) and when we got on stage, it was a mess... In a good way, we couldn't believe it. Everybody was singing, dancing, clapping... It was great!

Few predicted Let 3 would win Dora 2023 and the victory came as a surprise for the band members:

We had no intentions to compete in Dora or to win it. We eventually did it because Dora is a good opportunity in Croatia to have the focus of the audience on yourself and to pass your message across to a good amount of people.

Why didn't you expect to win?

That doesn't mean we didn't believe in ourselves. We just didn't really care if we won or not but we had a great performance and now we have a chance to send our message to a even bigger audience which is beautiful.

That brings up another question related to ageism. In current times, many international stars are faced with ageism and with prejudice given their age. But not Let 3. The band claims that after Dora they were introduced to new generations that seem to enjoy their music:

In Croatia, all that's happening with "Mama " and Eurovision made a lot of younger people come to our shows and a lot of people send us supporting messages which is nice. I think it means we're still fresh with our style.

For many viewers, 9 May will be the first time they'll hear of Let 3. How does the band describe their sound?

Psychedelic Trash is the best way to do it, says Damir.

We're a powerful band and simplifying, I'd say we're a rock band but we always make experiments with our sounds. We are open to every influence around us, styles, new technologies and so on. Sometimes we mix folk music with electronic music, metal, house music or even farts, Zoran jokes.

We like to change and we never repeat ourselves.

Back in the day, Let 3 actually "shot" themselves live on stage and released an album titled "Neuveno" that didn't have any recordings on it.

We have very good performances and we're a mix of music, words, costumes, choreographies, videos and much more. Every part is important and if you pull a piece out, it will no longer work.

Shortly after their visit to Poland and Israel for both pre-parties, the band presented their electric golden tractor suggesting that they intend to travel to Liverpool by road and teleportation, all thanks to their creation but also to transhumanism, a movement that advocates the use of current technologies to improve human capabilities.

When I ask about the preprarations for Eurovision 2023, that's part of their answer:

The main part of the preparations has been the creation of the golden tractor which will be our mean of transportation to Liverpool, says Damir.

The tractor is a symbol of transhumanism. It doesn't rely on fossil fuels and uses renewable sources of energy that don't pollute the environment. Technology and humans came to a point where we can use all of this to rule out hunger, evil and stupidity.

The tractor will be in Liverpool but how about the remaining part of the staging?

There won't be massive changes from our national selection. We will just have to adapt to the bigger stage, clarifies Zoran.

Facebook: @let3music Instagram: @let_3 YouTube: @let3oac Spotify: Let 3Twitter: @Let3Mrle TikTok: @let3.mrle

Those who don't speak Croatian, and even if the band is certain the message of the song is clear, shouldn't have to worry about not understanding the meaning behind the entry.

Its antiwar connection becomes even more evident with the performance as in the middle of it, the band members fall on the floor representing the drop of a bomb and clearer becomes with the arrival of sky rockets in the end that feature a nice extra thing: fireworks. All of this is expected to be brought to Liverpool.

All eyes are on Let 3 and the expectations are high especially in their home country but regardless of what happens, the band is proud of their journey so far and that's their main focus:

We're not going to Eurovision focused on winning. We'll do the best we can and we will put on the best show we can put on. If we do it right, we'll get a good result but that's not the most important part for us. We're already very happy with all that's happening.

Let 3 will take the Liverpool Arena stage to perform "Mama " in semi-final 1 on 9 May.

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Prominent Dutch Philosopher and Convert Charts Her Path to the Catholic Church – National Catholic Register

Posted: at 6:29 pm

AMSTERDAM Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a popular Dutch legal philosopher and political commentator who has become well-known in recent years for her criticism of increasingly prominent social ideologies in contemporary Western society, will be received into the Catholic Church along with her father on Sunday.

Born to a Catholic mother and Protestant father, Vlaardingerbroek, 26, was brought up a Christian, but it was the COVID-19 pandemic that fully awakened her to the reality of the spiritual battle the world is facing, and a realization that the Catholic faith is the most powerful weapon against the moral relativism of today.

In this April 19 email interview with the Register, Vlaardingerbroek shares more about her journey to the faith, how in her experience evil supernatural forces ramp up their opposition when one speaks about ones love for Christ, but how this also shows the need to be uncompromising and courageous in opposing the grave evils of our time, whether they be gender ideology, radical feminism or transhumanism.

Vlaardingerbroek said, If we dont take our enemies seriously enough, and we dont even dare speak up for Christ, after all he has done for us, how do we expect to win?

Eva, could you tell us a little about your upbringing? Were your parents and family religious and did they influence you either for or against becoming a Catholic?

I was born in Amsterdam in 1996 and my younger brother and I were raised in a smaller city not too far from there. Both my mother and father are Christians and work in the classical music industry. My mother is a Catholic; my father, up until today (he and I will both be received on April 23) was a Protestant so I was introduced to both faiths. Although I never experienced a clash of faith between my mother and my father growing up, I did notice the differences when I saw my extended family at birthday parties. The reason for that is probably that my grandfather (my fathers father) is an incredibly devout (now retired) reformed pastor and Old Testament theologian.

Although I would definitely say I was raised Christian and had the privilege of growing up listening to the most wonderful Catholic music on a daily basis, I never felt that my parents pressured me to go to church or pray. Nothing was ever imposed on me. If anything looking back I wish my parents had maybe pushed me a bit more when it came to practicing my faith. Because although I had periods in my life where I wasnt very occupied with the church, I have always believed in God, for as long as I can remember.

I was baptized in the Protestant church and attended the Protestant church for years as a child, till my father decided to join my mother at Mass about 15 years ago. He decided to join her, because he was fed up with how politicized (leftist) our Protestant church had become. I joined them but, like every teenager, I felt like I didnt belong (in a general sense), so I also felt like I didnt belong at Mass, since I wasnt officially a Catholic and started going to church less frequently.

Again, although I never questioned my belief in Christ, as a student my attitude didnt change much. If anything, I often cherry picked when it came to both faiths and never really made a conscious effort to decide whether I wanted to be a Protestant or a Catholic. My faith sadly didnt play a very central role in my life.

What personally drew you to the Catholic faith, and when did you realize that the Catholic Church is the one true faith founded by Christ?

During the final days of my studies and at the start of my career in politics, I experienced a lot of backlash for my conservative political views. I quickly became rather used to the feeling of being canceled for speaking uncomfortable truths, but something I think for many of us fundamentally changed during the pandemic. Going against the establishments narrative didnt just get you canceled socially, it got you canceled legally this time around.

During that time, I wholeheartedly realized that we arent just fighting a political fight (right vs. left), but that we are dealing with a spiritual fight (good vs. evil). The speed at which people were ready to condemn those of us who didnt follow the science and the speed at which our governments abolished our constitutional rights, was a true wake-up call to me. Evil wasnt something that only existed during certain times (of war) in history. It opened my eyes to the fact that evil is very much alive and that sadly a lot of people can be seduced by it very, very quickly.

I started noticing that when I argued against vaccine mandates, for example, a solely utilitarian argument didnt suffice to me. I didnt want to argue about whether the vaccine was stopping transmissions and whether it was justified for the government to force it on us for medical reasons. I wanted to take a moral stance. And the only moral stance that seemed right to me was that I was created in the image of God, that my body is a temple and that my (bodily) rights were endowed upon me by my Creator and therefore are inalienable. My rights were not given to me by the government, who could and would, clearly take them away from me anytime, but they were given to me by my Creator, by God.

So thats exactly what I started saying in the public debate. I openly started involving my faith in my political commentary and I decided immediately that I would never compromise on that again. I experienced what happens when you come out and speak about your love for Christ: The evil forces in the world become louder, because there is nothing they hate more than testimony, but the good forces in my life are also a hundred times stronger and I became stronger. It made me think about my faith. I quickly realized the time of cherry picking should be over, but I didnt know which church I should join, so I decided to take my time. Spending some time in America, I went to a lot of non-denominational churches where I met the most wonderful, devout Christians Id ever met. But in those big convention center churches, something was missing. And then I found professor Peter Kreefts speeches on YouTube. I watched his content for hours on end till I stumbled on his video called Seven Reasons Why Everyone Should Become a Catholic. I watched it, and I simply couldnt argue with what he said. Everything made sense. From the fact that Christ himself founded the Church, to the importance of the saints, to the real miracle of the Eucharist. I knew I had to make a choice.

And during last years Christmas Mass, thats exactly what I did. I felt in my heart that I wanted to be a Catholic. When I came home from Mass I received a Merry Christmas message from my dear friend and fellow fighter Father Benedict Kiely, whom I had met at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels a year earlier. He wished me a Merry Christmas and asked me when I was going to become a Catholic. There is no such thing as coincidence and the rest is history.

What elements of Catholicism particularly attracted you?

Transubstantiation was key to me. As a Protestant I rejected the concept, I never felt like I could rationalize that, so I went with the its symbolic argument. But when you look at Scripture, at what Jesus Himself said, hes crystal clear. Its not symbolic at all. And even though I cant rationalize it, I believe it; because if Christ said it is so, it is so. So then there is no other choice but to become a Catholic.

The Netherlands like all Benelux countries has a rich Catholic heritage but seems almost all lost to secularism, which has dominated politics and society. How did you navigate your way through such prevailing modernism and liberalism to find the Catholic faith?

The most powerful weapon against the leftist relativism is the Catholic faith. What is better at a time where people say, anything goes than to say No? There is such a thing as beauty, there is such a thing as Good, and there is such a thing as the Truth. He is the Truth, the Way and the Life. And that will never change. Catholic doctrine remains the same, no matter who is the Pope or what turmoil the Church goes through as an institution. The doctrine has and always will withstand the test of time, because he himself founded the Church.

How does the Gospel, and Catholic teaching in particular, give you hope and meaning in life and in your work as a political commentator?

I try to make sure all of my views align with my faith. I might get it wrong in the eyes of some, but to me its the essence. Its the driving force behind my activism, because as a Catholic I dont want to sit still, faith is also about good deeds after all.

Of course, there is always room for improvement, but I make it my mission to stand up for conservative values, freedom and peoples rights. I make it my mission to stand up for ordinary people who are deemed invisible by the establishment. It pains me to see how people struggle in our society and are branded as deplorables by our global elites. Thats not what Christ teaches us.

Politically and socially speaking, I think we live in incredibly dark times. An upside down world, where people call men women, women men; a world where people call evil good and good evil, as described in Isaiah 5:20. But I trust in God, and I know that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Nothing gives me more hope than that. Good will win because Christ has already conquered death and set us free. Therefore, I fear God more than I fear man.

We are saved through him, no matter what happens here on earth. I try to remember that what people think of me on this earth is of no importance, compared to what God thinks of me. He and the Truth is what leads me in my political endeavors.

Youve frequently spoken out against globalism and its detrimental effect on the Netherlands, most visibly seen in the Dutch farmers protests but also in other areas such as the authoritarian COVID-19 response and the Great Reset. How can Catholics alert others to the dangers of these trends in an effective way that also gives people hope for the future?

In my speech Reject Globalism: Embrace God at the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels in 2022, which can be seen on YouTube, I spoke about what I think Christians should do in the fight against globalism and transhumanism extensively.

I said: We are fighting such a large evil, that we can only win with him on our side. And we have him on our side. But if we spend our energy on hiding him, why would He be there for us?

And I mean that. The main message is: You have to speak out. We will have to recognize that we are dealing with an evil ideology that is fundamentally opposed to everything we, as Catholics stand for, if we want to stand a fighting chance.

The problem is that many Christians fall for the pretty words the globalists use to sell us their plans. Whether its climate change, COVID or transhumanism, they present their solutions under the guise of equality and noble pretexts, but in fact, if you look at what theyre really proposing, it always comes down to the fact that these people want to play God. And the solutions they offer vaccine passports, transhumanism, saving the planet always feed off of peoples fear of death. Which, sadly, if you believe this life on earth is all there is, is not a strange thing to be afraid of.

So what I believe needs to be done is that Christians, especially Catholics, openly reject any type of cultural or religious relativism. The narrative of you can have your truth and I have mine, is I think exactly what the devil wants people to say.

Of course, you can have your opinion and I can have mine, but there is such a thing as the Truth: Christ is the Truth, the Way and the Life. If we truly believe that we should say it. Out loud. Morality based on secular values is like a house without a foundation. The house can look nice from the outside, it can be built by nice, well-meaning people, but it wont last.

If we dont take our enemies seriously enough and we dont even dare speak up for Christ, after all he has done for us, how do we expect to win?

.

Youve often also criticized feminism. How damaging is it to society in your view, and do you see this and other contemporary social ills (gender ideology, same-sex marriage etc.) as part of the spiritual battle you describe, one most effectively fought as a practicing Catholic?

The gender ideology and feminism are probably the most damaging ideologies that there are for women (and man for that matter) because it stops people from getting married, starting families and becoming truly happy and fulfilling their (moral) duty.

My generation has been told we shouldnt get married or have kids, because its all just an oppressive social construct created by the patriarchy to keep you down. And on top of that, having children is bad for the climate too, so just dont bother. And on top of that, were told that we can sleep around as much as we want and if you do get pregnant, you can have an abortion, because its your body, your choice.

It honestly and truly is the work of the devil. No less. And hes sadly been gaining ground. I find it hard nowadays to meet people my age who havent been completely indoctrinated with the woke ideology. Most of my contemporaries truly believe that your feelings or how you identify is the indicator of your gender.

And again, the only solution I see to this problem is to be ruthlessly uncompromising. God created Adam and Eve, not 73 different genders. Thats Man trying to be his own little god, which has never worked and will never work. And we know it. My generation is absolutely miserable. So the best thing we can do as Catholics is tell people there is an alternative that you can follow. Because there is and he has a name: Jesus Christ.

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Is There a Best Way to Think About the Future of Earth? – Inverse

Posted: at 6:29 pm

mile Torres spends a lot of their time thinking about the end of the world as we know it and how to avoid it. To some, this kind of theorizing and strategizing might seem like a grand exercise in anxiety spiraling or perhaps even hubris. But for Torres, studying the last of things, in their case, the last of humanity, is their lifes work. It is essential, they argue, to consider how we might end.

Existential ethics, they explain, is my term for questions about whether our extinction would be right or wrong to bring about if it happened.

This might not seem like the best way to think about the future of human life on Earth. In fact, it is pretty fatalistic on the surface. But take a beat and Torres philosophy of the future is less nihilistic than it might seem. Instead, it might offer a blueprint for a better way to think about the future that doesnt neatly fall into the big competing thought camps of climate doom, human or machine-led annihilation, or more optimistic longtermism.

My approach is to take the future seriously, they explain to Inverse. But what that means is a little counterintuitive. When we think about the future, we tend to either think in the very short term (whats for lunch?) or the very long term (the year 30,000 C.E.). Put in these terms, to secure a better future for humans, the long-term mindset is appealing: Prioritizing future generations means putting challenging issues, like climate change, artificial intelligence, and global inequality ahead of immediate needs, like hunger or shelter. Maximizing human potential, as envisaged by prominent longtermists like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, is the driving force behind the push to put more humans in space and break technological boundaries. But Torres is more concerned with the indiscernible middle-to-long term.

And, they argue, spending more time thinking about the future in this way could help us live better here and now and avoid catastrophe.

Trying to anticipate the future is like driving on a winding road at night. You can see whats in front of you, and things in the distance ultimately come into view as you move forward. But beyond that, you cant know, they say.

They worry this kind of thinking overlooks present-day problems and could even be used to justify harmful actions if they might benefit future generations.

To understand the best way to think about what comes next, Inverse contributor and tech journalist Becca Caddy spoke to philosopher and eschatologist mile Torres about the future and the inspiration for their upcoming book, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation, which is due out in July.

INVERSE: First up, what is eschatology? What do you spend your time thinking about?

Over the past 15 years, my work has focused on global catastrophic and existential risks. I try to understand them and devise strategies for minimizing them.

But Im an eschatologist more than anything else, and eschatology literally translates as the study of last things, so I think a lot about human extinction.

mile Torres is a philosopher and scientist who studies human extinction.

Lets talk about long-term thinking. Youve written about your concerns with longtermism in the past. How do you feel about it now?

Im very opposed to it. I think its a deeply problematic view and the philosophical foundations are pretty tenuous. I worry that if people take it seriously and believe in longtermism, it could be used to justify extreme actions, including violence, while giving wealthy people in the Global North yet another reason to ignore the plight of people in the Global South.

What do you believe are the core problems with long-term thinking?

The key idea behind longtermism is that there could be enormous amounts of value in the future and that whatever that value is, we ought to maximize it. So lets say theres one unit and two units of happiness which I know is a weird way to talk about things, but thats how the longtermists sometimes frame it two units of happiness is twice as good, right?

So to maximize the total amount of value in the universe, you shouldnt focus on making the people who currently exist better off. Instead, if you increase the human population, you could also increase and further maximize the total amount of value.

Longtermisms supporters include figures like Elon Musk.

So theyre very keen on us all making babies? Or does it go beyond that?

Its all about creating the largest population possible. So we must go into space and build planet-sized computers to create virtual reality worlds. You can cram more people, digital people, into these virtual-reality worlds than you could on exoplanets. In the longtermist view, we must do something like this.

It makes me think of the way many of the wealthiest people in the world seem desperate to recreate the futures imagined in problematic sci-fi novels. But beyond that, whats the problem?

With this thinking, if something presents a blockade, or a risk to the creation of this future, you suddenly have a pretty good argument for why violence might be justified.

Many historical cases of utopian ideologies had the same structure of reasoning. The idea that utopia is just beyond the horizon, but youre standing in my way. I believe the features of past utopian ideologies that made them so dangerous are right there at the core of longtermism.

This means Im genuinely worried that there will be a true believer in longtermism who finds themselves in an apocalyptic moment, facing a hypothetical existential catastrophe that they believe is about to happen. An existential catastrophe or existential risk is basically what longtermists call any event that would prevent us from realizing this future value, this maximizing potential.

You could imagine somebody in a situation where a catastrophe is about to happen. In their eyes, they need to avoid that at all costs. Maybe that means violence. Maybe that even means genocide. I dont think this is hyperbolic. History provides examples of exactly this sort of reasoning.

The terms potential and value often come up in longtermist thinking. But who decides what those words mean?

Many longtermists are hesitant to provide details about what fulfilling our long-term potential means. Obviously a big focus is on reducing existential risk. They see that as a priority for us as a species. Some people then suggest we enter a stage of reflection, where we sit around and consider what we want our fundamental values to be.

One of the big plans is to think about the big plans?

Yes. Its a bizarre and implausible nonstarter. Some longtermists make it sound like well just figure out these fundamental values.

Although some fundamental values are undecided, there are next steps longtermists do agree on, right? Many seem keen to colonize space.

Ultimately, space expansionism and transhumanism are at the core, and many longtermists are explicit about that. Its ridiculous they dont consider other conceptions of what our potential might be or involve.

Does happiness not factor in at all?

Its all based on this capitalistic notion of going out, plundering, subjugating nature, extracting resources and maximizing, maximizing, maximizing.

The SpaceX Starship rocket is designed to ferry humans to Mars to set up long-term habitats there.

Do you think imagining the distant future is a pointless exercise?

I think what the future could be is just inscrutable to us. We have no idea what the world will look like in 1,000 years. Trying to anticipate the future is like driving on a winding road at night. You can see whats in front of you, and things in the distance ultimately come into view as you move forward. But beyond that, you cant know.

My approach is to take the future seriously. To understand that our ability to anticipate what the future will look like is highly limited. And that the track record for predicting the future could be better. There have been many comical and completely ridiculous mistakes.

We generally dont seem all that great at predicting the future. Is there a best way to think about the future?

There needs to be more serious thought about the future. Some of thats built into our institutions, like quarterly reports and election cycles. These things make it difficult for us to look further ahead. So I do think we need to pivot more toward the future. But making bold claims about the world in a trillion years is ridiculous.

These are timescales our brains werent designed to comprehend.

I think longtermism has recently become a popular talking point because it gives people a framework to think about whats coming next and their place and purpose in the future. I wonder if thats appealing because the future seems frightening to so many right now. How should people think about their futures instead?

You dont need to think about the future by casting your eyes on the very distant temporal horizon. You should care about the future and the long-term future of humanity and Earth, but dont be a longtermist.

The long-term view I would advocate for is focused on a century or a millennial from now. A timescale thats relevant for the planet, climate change, nuclear waste, and all sorts of issues that environmentalists have been discussing.

We should also question the fundamental commitments of longtermism, like maximizing value. There are all kinds of other potential responses to value that arent this kind of perfunctory maximization. Maybe things that are valuable should be cherished, preserved, loved, and cared for, rather than just maximized.

A participant in an April 2023 demonstration by the climate protection group Extinction Rebellion.

As someone who literally thinks about the end of the world, are you worried about the future?

Im frightened about climate change and very concerned about AI especially the possibility of deep fakes and large language models. Theres enormous potential to propagate disinformation and misinformation.

But although I think theres momentum pushing us toward futures that should inspire a degree of fear, theyre not inevitable.

Thats comforting. In what ways do you think things arent inevitably screwed up?

Part of the reason AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is a goal of DeepMind, OpenAI, and other companies is because they think AGI might be the vehicle to utopia. Thats why the goal has been to develop AGI as soon as possible. But now the rate of progress has accelerated, theyre backing off and thinking, Holy shit, I dont know if were ready to develop these really advanced, powerful technologies.

Theyre now putting pressure on OpenAI to slow things down. Although I doubt it will work, its not a completely hopeless situation. I feel like theres a moral duty to do whatever you can even if the situation looks bleak. Im trying to do my part by raising awareness of some of these concerns, especially around AI, encouraging people to protest however they can.

What makes you feel hopeful about the future? And what would you say to people who dont feel hopeful about tomorrow?

Im heartened by the fact many smart, amazing young people are leading global movements to raise awareness about climate change. To pressure the government and political leaders to actually implement meaningful climate mitigation policies, and could imagine something similar with respect to AI.

The fact these kids are so motivated and effective at organizing, it gives me hope. If I could say one thing to young people, it would be, Thanks for your brilliant, inspiring activism.

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‘Infinity Pool’ Review: Skarsgrd and Goth Star in Disgusting and Hypnotic Horror – The Indiependent

Posted: March 24, 2023 at 1:09 pm

'Infinity Pool' Review: Skarsgrd and Goth Star in Disgusting and Hypnotic Horror  The Indiependent

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What is transhumanism? | GotQuestions.org

Posted: February 18, 2023 at 5:29 am

Question

Answer

Transhumanism is a philosophical and cultural position that encourages human advancement through technology. More specifically, transhumanism encourages the use of artificial enhancements to push mankind towards something more than human. Fundamentally, it is a form of Utopianism, the belief that human beings can change themselves and create a heaven on earth. The basic idea of improving the human condition is perfectly compatible with the Bible. In fact, its one of the purposes of a Christian lifestyle (John 10:10). But transhumanism contradicts the Bible when it assumes that humanity is completely sovereign and capable of self-directed change without the need for God (Jeremiah 17:9).

Like any other cultural movement, there are subsets and sub-genres of thought under the transhumanist tent. There are some admirable motivations behind transhumanism. For some, the intent is to reduce suffering or improve quality of life (Luke 12:33). Taken to an extreme, though, it can become a pursuit of immortality, an escape from moral boundaries, or a form of religion in and of itself. The ultimate redemption of mankind is something that will be accomplished by God alone (Revelation 21:1), not by technology.

Since God gave mankind dominion over the earth, there are spiritually acceptable means of improving the human condition through technology. That doesnt mean that humans are fully capable, or even fully free, to change ourselves in any way we choose. Ultimately, God is sovereign over us; we are not sovereign over ourselves. Once a person takes the view that they can re-create themselves, they place themselves in an unrealistic spiritual position and usurp the prerogatives of God. Our knowledge, power and ability simply cannot compare to that of the Creator (Job 38:2-5).

Modern man has technology unimaginable to generations of a thousand years ago, but were still human, still flawed, and still in need of a Savior (1 John 1:8). Experience has taught us that human beings tend to be just as immoral with technology as without it. Aldous Huxley noted that what science has actually done is to introduce us to improved means in order to obtain hitherto unimproved or rather deteriorated ends. In other words, science doesnt make humanity less sinful, or more moral; it just makes our sin more sophisticated. Human experience demonstrates that the utopian side of transhumanism is just as fictional as its spiritual side.

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What is transhumanism?

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