Open Thread 170
Open Thread for July: Prestigious London, Groypers, and Why Jail Remains Programmed
Belated Open Thread for July as I return to the news roundups that I used to do at the Open Threads at my old blog. However, they will now be monthly, not weekly, affairs, since they’re time consuming to compile, and I’d rather write something more original. If you want access to my “stream of consciousness” then X and Substack Notes is the place to go to for that.
Project Updates
(1) I am expanding The Biosingularity is Near into a book which will be called Nooceleration1.
(2) Progress has been slow on Sophia DAO. It is what it is.
(3) I have started another Substack blog called Sublime Oblivion (S/O) devoted to my sci-fi/fantasy interests and the Frozen Embers trilogy that I hope to finish before AGI makes it redundant. It will have short stories from the FE world, reviews of SSF books/films that I find interesting, and comments on aspects of the creative writing process. You can subscribe to it separately if that interests you.
Blogging
In blogging, I made the case for bio/acc and for pairing MAiD with cryonics:
At the new S/O blog, I finally released The Great Bifurcation post which I was promising for years, if not quite in the way many expected.
An activity/project that used to make me money but made significant demands on my time has recently become moot. So I will finally be able to devote more time to blogging, and in between that and a parallel commitment to spend less time on X, the goal being to return to the pace I had in 2015-2021.
These are all from quite a bit farther back, but if you’re into podcasts, do feel free to check out my conversations with
on Futurism and the Bio-Right, about The Big GAE, and on a whole bunch of topical issues including the Ukraine War, crypto, and the relationship between AI and the future of the noosphere. I also recently did a town hall with , and a podcast with , which has yet to be released. Amongst other things, we discussed why not just India but Bangladesh have flipped Pakistan on economic and social development metrics.Some Tweets on why I now identify as a libertarian and queer.
News & Travel
I am temporarily in London, and will be going to ISIR in Zurich at the end of July, and will also spend a week in Budapest in August.
Feel free to drop me a note if you wish to meet up. Paying subscribers are guaranteed a meetup contingent on scheduling.
Things I watched/read:
Read and reviewed Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns (spoilers), which follows a teenaged maniac, rapist, and sadist called Jorg on a revenge quest. 3/5
I also read Michael Livingston’s Origins of the Wheel of Time, a behind the scenes look at Robert Jordan’s creative process which resulted in one of my three favorite fantasy series2.
I was variably modestly amused and bored by Triangle of Sadness (2022), a mediocre film about terrible people. 3/5
I loved Silo (2003). Faithful, gripping adaptation of Howey’s post-apocalyptic dystopia and one of the major influences on my own Frozen Embers universe. Briefly reviewed here. 5/5
I liked Fallout (2024), the TV adaptation of this quintessential American cultural product. Review. 4/5
Ticked off a number of major lacunae in film sci-fi classics:
Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) has catapulted into my Top 10 films of all time. “We have no need of other worlds. We need only mirrors.” It is about aliens, but it applies to ASI just as much. 5/5
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022) was as unremittingly bad as the critics said (2/5). Only highlight was the Sauron reveal. In fairness, it’s still leagues above Rafe’s Wheel of Time abomination. The dreck that was The Witcher S3 (2/5) has finally provoked me into starting on Sapkowski’s books, so at least it managed to do something useful.
On Anders Sandberg’s rec, I am currently watching Pantheon (2022-23) and it’s shaping up into a solid 5/5.
Maria Pevchikh’s Traitors (2024) series about Yeltsin’s corruption and the origins of Putin’s rise to power. Reviewed here.
Belatedly playing through the Mass Effect games and quite sad to have not been into that a decade ago. 5/5
Things I attended, and were fun: Longevity Rave in London (might become a fixture) and London DeSci 2 year anniversary.
Things I wish I could have attended: Manifest 2024 in Berkeley. Write-ups from
and . As I say the SF Bay Area is an incredible magnet 🧲for Elite Human Capital 💯.On this note of things to attend, if you’re reading me, then chances are you would enjoy Vitalia, the pop-up city devoted to “making death optional”. You should go! Main organizer
has just released the programming for the next eight months. What I love about it is that it isn’t just a transhumanist talking shop on a beach - people there actually build stuff! The aim isn’t just immortality, but to become filthy rich on the way there.World Happenings
Happy (belated) Pride Month! 🏳️🌈 Note that gays are smarter than straights. If you’re not gay, maybe you’re just not smart enough?
(1) US politics. My prediction from October 2021 is that it would be Biden vs. Trump, with Biden winning. That looked good until the recent debate debacle. With all respect to Nate Silver, I think Biden is oversold here TBH, even though stepping aside is clearly the superior play.
(2) UK politics. As expected Tories got trounced, though not quite as hard as widely predicted. There’s no real libertarian option in the UK; so far as I’m concerned, Labour is too socialist, and Reform are too fash, so I voted for Lib Dems as the party of EHC.
(3) Lebanon War: I think it’s far likelier than not but I’m not tracking MENA closely.
(4) Ukraine War: I think this is it for Russia’s war and its last dash for empire. I’m not going to dwell on this here because I’d rather write a separate post on it. But the long and short of it is that:
Russian KIA are going through the roof. Its loss ratios are 2:1 optimistically no longer sustainable for winning even a war of attrition.
Russia can’t capture small cities 2 km from its borders. There has been scant “learning” in the past 2 years, the security kakistocracy is incapable of it in principle, and the question is progressively being made moot by the depletion of its dwindling Soviet hardware stocks.
This isn’t to say Ukraine is or will be in a position to do a successful counter-offensive. Not when it’s press ganging people off the streets into its army. But runaway drone dynamics - a sphere in which Ukraine retains a large lead - are depreciating the role of manpower at a very rapid clip.
Initially, the replacement of Shoigu with Belousov suggested that Putin had grown wise to the idea that kleptocracy was no way to win a war. It’s since become clear that Belousov has no mandate to make any significant changes, his team at the MoD are not his own but are beholden to other, more influential power brokers and there’s no signs of any pushback against the ingrained culture of lying.
China is uninterested in bailing its “strategic partner” out in any real sense and main kremlins’ strategy reduces to waiting for good friend Trump to come to power and save their bacon. (Amusingly, we learn that good friend Vucic has been selling Ukraine ammo.)
On another note, jail remains very much programmed for all Z people:
Ivan Popov, one of Russia’s few competent generals.
Vitaly Afrika, libertarian Donbass volunteer and war novelist turned Putin oppositionist, has turned up in a Brazilian horror prison facing politicized Russian extradition demands. (PS. If anyone has an in to
, please consider contacting him about this and helping avert both a victory for Putin and a travesty of justice).Strelkov has been transferred to an unknown colony.
Roman Yushkov, a campaigner against mosque construction in Perm, was charged with anti-LGBT hate (sic). Well, it’s not an uncommon observation that Putin’s Russia is the consummate postmodernist state.
(5) I am happy that Julian Assange has been freed. Notably, under Biden, not Trump.
Economics
(6) For a brief moment in time NVDA attained the world’s highest company market cap at $3.3T. Reasonable exposure play if you’re bullish on AGI timelines, though the question at this point is how much more upside there can possibly be as well as downside risks in the event this blows over3. On the topic of US dynamism vs. European sclerosis, worth noting Nvidia’s market cap is equivalent to the entire market cap of the London Scott exchange, 50% higher than Deutsche Borse, and 4x the Moscow Exchange.
(7) On a related note, California’s GDP is getting close to flipping Japan’s. Quite the change from a generation ago when Tokyo Imperial Palace was allegedly worth as much as California.
(8) Russia’s GDP (PPP) has allegedly flipped Japan’s. Press X for doubt.
(9) I note that TFR in Tunisia has gone to 1.4 and is around 1.0 in metropolitan Tunis. My demographic calls are being vindicated.
(10)
sadly observes that young Japanese EHC 💯 want more immigrants. I don’t believe in opposing mutually consensual and democratic arrangements.(11) AGW. This 2024 will almost certainly set a new global temperature record and I’m seeing a renewal of wet-bulb theory discourse, the idea that past a set level of warming “zones of uninhabitability” will start to sprout up around the world where peak wet-bulk temperatures exceed the body’s capacity to dissipate heat. (I wrote about it in 2010). I don’t view it as a huge issue because AI risk is currently so much more urgent, while AGW has some benefits and is technically solvable with geoengineering if things get sufficiently bad. But it’s something to keep an eye out on.
Rightoid Watch
(12) Florida bans lab-grown meat. This is as good an illustration as any as to why I have come to so thoroughly despise the rightoid ideology. The Republicans are flouting their own supposed free market principles in order to actively subsidize animal torture just to own the libs, and off to jail with you if you’re a vendor who disagrees. It is a creed of petty villainy, and smugly proud of it.
(13) In other rightoid news:
Nick J. Fuentes says
, the inventor of HBD, is not “based” on HBD.Fuentes also let’s me know groypers “love every human being” and oppose eugenics.
Lucas Gage, prominent right-wing intellectual, has an IQ of 95. Yet another Jewish trick!
How to make it as a rightoid influencer these days: Shout “nigga”. (It’s an “a”, asshole! You’re the real racist!). Jail has literally never been more programmed.
Not to be outdone by Candace Owens, who has ascended from “Hitler wasn’t so bad” to Dino Denial, moon landings conspiracy, and Flat Earthism.
Reminder that many rightoids are unironic Talibanophiles. I think this more anything else convinced me that between them and Wokes, they were still by some distance the greater evil.
They also want to abolish thong bikinis.
Woke to Woke
(14)
chronicles rogue Wiki admin David Gerard’s campaign against LessWrong and the rationality sphere. (My comment). Hilariously, uncovers that Gerard used to have eugenicist beliefs as late as 2010. (Which is based, but makes his subsequent behavior all the more deranged). However, the wider point of the article is not Gerard per se nor his strange obsessions4, but that highly persistent and ideological people such as Gerard play an inordinate and disproportional role in determining “Reliable Sources” and the truths that flow downstream from them along the information highway where Wikipedia is the most common rest stop.(15) There’s a campaign from the usual suspects to cancel/mass retract late IQ researcher Richard Lynn’s papers. Again, “P is for priorities”.
(16) The Guardian published a hit piece against Manifest 2024 on the basis of insinuations about illicit FTX financing and the supposedly racist and controversial views of some of its guests. In particular, it cites
’s support for “[increasing] the prevalence of traits that promote individual and social welfare” as something damning. In reality, it just reveals anti-eugenicism, be it of the Blank Slate left or the religious Right, as the evil and misanthropic ideology of resentment that it is.(17) There’s good evidence that Noah Smith (Noahpinion) is a crypto-HBDist. Common story, LOL.
Network States
(18) Minicircle. I am very bullish on bio/acc, Vitalia, network states, and all the rest of that jazz and pizzazz. I consider the governance models in development at Prospera and other network state projects to be superior to centralized and conservative regulatory organs such as the FDA. However, in light of these lofty pretensions, this should come with a heightened sense of duty and obligation to identify and self-police frauds and scams. There’s compelling evidence - written up by Vitalia attendee Max Berry - that the follistatin gene therapy promoted by Minicircle is nothing more than $25,000 snake oil (some more posts: David Ishee, Sarah Constantin, Ruxandra). I would avoid all Minicircle products until and unless they credibly address these claims5.
(19) Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University has been closed down after years of conflict with the normie Philosophy Department. Fortunately, “transhumanism” has gone semi-mainstream in the past two years, so the main people there such as Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Toby Ord, should have few problems with adjusting.
(20) Paul Kohlhaas has a great write-up on #DeSci. It’s comparable to DeFi’s early 2017/18 phase.
Misc
(21) Cat reaction times are amazing. Can’t wait to bioengineer catgirl gamers.
(22) Things I want to see Substack implement: (1) Productivity metrics such as number of posts written and word account, as well as as question submission feature with optional privileges for subscribers, along the lines of Ask.FM and CuriousCat.
Notable Poasts
has a seminal AI report Situational Awareness which predicts AGI within years and a Manhattan Project-like race between the US and China. Necessary reading. I will have a separate post on it. has a very comprehensive and exhaustive post on changes in measured IQ across most of the world’s countries. My observations. Also, mutational load is probably a nothingburger. against AI histrionics (qualified disagree) and why progress in biology is slower than on AI (very perceptive!). on the correlation between Nazi criminals’ IQ and avoiding the noose at Nuremberg. Relevant reading for many! Another article deals with the high IQ of nonbinary and trans individuals. Ciscels NGMI.Heiner Rindermann comments on the “surprisingly low” cognitive testing results from the Third World. Are they credible?
on why Asia stopped having kids (conformism). on whether Rome could have had an industrial revolution. (I doubt it). opens up on her experiences in a Florida rehabilitation center as a teenager. on the Platonic Biosingularity. on the demographic roots of American power and how to read history.Nooceleration was also the initial name for this blog. In case you were wondering, the reason I rebranded it to EHC Zone was because people kept asking me, “Noo wat?” whenever I was telling them about it. That, and I like the meme. I previously wrote a serious explanation of what “Elite Human Capital” was about here.
My tastes are conventional. The other two are Lord of the Rings and ASoIaF.
My take ever since the AI narrative became prominent is that Ethereum is the most R:R play it being the most rigorous framework for property rights in the digital realm.
One would think that Trump 2.0, Musk’s WN flirtations, Project 2025, etc. would be more logical priorities for genuine left-liberals to campaign against, but apparently not.
It would also be good to get Bryan Johnson’s take.
I’m not a fan of the FL lab-grown meat ban, but here’s a counterpoint, just to play devil’s advocate: much of the FL economy is agricultural and pastoral. I think the ban is more of a protectionist move than an anti-progress move. Regardless, I dislike the decision.
will you review stalker 2 when it comes out?