It’s big ideas from a rich guy, endorsed by other rich guys, probably with a fat marketing budget.

These books can sell very well without necessarily being read closely. 🤷‍♂️

allother call, so health and wealth to the nature of death and self. ously an insight that causes one to rethink everything, from the nature of To me, being a Singularitarian means many things, of which the following is proposal for a new doctrine. a small sampling, These reflections articulate my personal philosophy, not a • We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever Existin processes so we can still be in vital health when the more radical life-extending therapies from biotechnology and nanotechnology become available. But most baby boomers won't make it because they are unaware of the accelerating aging processes in their bodies and the opportunity to intervene. • In this spirit I am aggressively reprogramming my biochemistry which is now altogether different than it would otherwise be. Taking supplements and medications is not a last resort to be reserved only for when something goes wrong. There is already something wrong. Our bodies are governed by obsolete genetic programs that evolved in a bygone era, so we need to overcome our genetic heritage. We already have the knowledge to begin to accomplish this, something I am committed to doing. • My body is temporary. Its particles turn over almost completely every month. Only the pattern of my body and brain have continuity. • We should strive to improve these patterns by optimizing the health of our bodies and extending the reach of our minds. Ultimately, we will be able to • We need a body, but once we incorporate MNT fabrication into ourseles vastly expand our mental faculties by merging with our technology we will h challenges wit

Kurzweil’s Singularitarianism is basically a precursor to Bryan Johnson.

Except Kurzweil is more optimistic and less creepy. Not because the philosophy is in any way different, but just because Bryan Johnson is a huge creep and Ray Kurzweil just seems a little overwhelming.

The bit that stands out to me (screenshot above) is that he finds his faith in the singularity in the attempt to “time [his] inventions and to make optimal tactical decisions in launching technology enterprises.”

He’s a successful inventor! And it’s because he discovered technoGod! And you can too!

A Singularitarian is someone who understands the Singularity and has reflected on its meaning for his or her own life. I have been engaged in such reflection for several decades. Needless to say, it's not a process that one can ever complete. I started pondering the relationship of our thinking to our computational technology as a teenager in the 1960s. In the 1970s I began to study the acceleration of technology, and I wrote my first book on the subject in the late 1980s. So I've had time to contemplate the impact on society-and on myself—of the overlapping transfor- mations now under way. George Gilder has described my scientific and philosophical views as a substitute vision for those who have lost faith in the traditional object of religious belief."' Gilder's statement is understandable, as there are at least apparent similarities between anticipation of the Singularity and anticipation of the transformations articulated by traditional religions. But I did not come to my perspective as a result of searching for an alternative to customary faith. The origin of my quest to understand technology trends was practical: an attempt to time my inventions and to make optimal tactical decisions in launching technology enterprises. Over time this modeling of technology took on a life of its own and led me to formulate a theory of technology evolution. It was not a huge leap from there to retlect on the impact of these crucial changes on social and cultural institutions and on my own life. So, white being a Singularitarian is not a matter of faith but one of understanding, pondering the scientific trends I've discussed in this book inescapably engenders new perspectives on the issues that traditional religions have attempted te intelligence in the universe. address: the nature of mortality and immortality, the purpose of our lives, an Being a Singulon

Chapter 7 (“ich bin ein Singularitarian”) is where he goes full religious evangelist.

I guess that makes sense. If the reader has stuck with him through 370 pages so far, they’re either a sicko (👋) or a potential convert.

By the 2020s, full-immersion virtual reality will be a vast playground of compelling environments and experiences. Initially VR will have certain benefits in terms of enabling communications with others in engaging ways over long distances and featuring a great variety of environments from which to chose. Although the environments will not be completely convincing at first, by the late 2020s they will be indistinguishable from real reality and will involve all of the senses, as well as neurological correlations of our emotions. As we

Here we have Kurzweil predicting (basically) the metaverse taking off in the 2020s and completely consuming society.

Ray, I have some bad news…

He is indeed good people!

Book Review: "More Everything Forever" A book that takes Silicon Valley's unserious ideas seriously, and then delightfully tears them apart.

Yep! Read it, reviewed it, sing its praises every chance I get.

(Adam has also become a friend.)

davekarpf.substack.com/p/book-revie...

Loved that book, yes.

lol, I was gonna mention OMW. Great series! Much more entertaining read than Kurzweil.

RaY: Exactly, the telephone is auditory virtual reality. So full-immersion VR is, basically, a full-body telephone. You can get together with anyone anytime but do more than just talk. GEORGE 2048: It's certainly been a boon for sex workers; they never have to leave their homes. It became so impossible to draw any meaningful lines that the authorities had no choice but to legalize virtual prostitution in 2033. MOLLY 2004: Very interesting but actually not very appealing. GEORGE 2048: Okay, but consider that you can be with your favorite entertain- ment star. MOLLY 2004: I can do that in my imagination any time I want. RAY: Imagination is nice, but the real thing—or, rather, the virtual thing is so much more, well, real. MOLLY 2004: Yeah, but what if my "favorite" celebrity is busy? RAY: That's another benefit of virtual reality circa 2029; you have your choice of millions of artificial people. MOLLY 2104: I understand that you're back in 2004, but we kind of got rid of that terminology back when the Nonbiological Persons Act was passed in 2052.L mean, we're a lot more real than... umm, let me rephrase that. MOLLY 2004: Yes, maybe you showd. MOLLY 2104: Let's just say that you don't have to have explicit biological struc tures to be GEORGE 2048: —passionate? MOLLY 2104: 1 guess you should know. TIMOTHY LEARY: What if you have a bad trip? RAY: You mean, something goes awry with a virtual-reality experience?

And then there are the spots where the book turns weirdly horny.

Ray, please just stop.

I’ve reached chapter 6 “the Impact…” and it’s just an unfathomable amount of pretend.

Programmable blood! Nanobots everywhere!

It’s like scifi but without characters or plot.

InfoWars Let me tell you a story. When I was a child, I suffered from night terrors. It was always the same dream: I could hear my family and neighbors wailing…

Some timeline stuff:
— We expect to get InfoWars.com after the judge clears it in a couple of weeks.
— We'll build a world of characters on the site and across social media. Tim Heidecker is in charge, and we have grand designs.
— Visit theonion.info, buy a subscription, help us dominate the world.

How Email Open Tracking Quietly Took Over the Web You give up more privacy than you might think each time you open an email.

In honor of Tim Cook's stepping down, here is the story of how I emailed him, not once but twice, with open email tracking enabled, only to discover that, not once but twice, my emails to the CEO of Apple were opened on a computer running Windows.

Yeah, last month. It sucks. (I didn’t think you were trying to rub it in)

Okay chapter 5 is extremely weirdsauce and also depends entirely on Eric Drexler’s nanotechnology fantasies working out as-imagined.

This makes me intensely curious about all the “Kurzweil has basically been right” takes. That’s just demonstrably not at all true!

:(

Not anymore.

I think it is exclusive, yeah.

Zaslov didn’t have to build and sustain an aura of futurity. These guys absolutely do. That’s like half the business model.

(A line from my forthcoming book): the most important thing to understand about tech futurism is when Musk, Altman and their peers are wrong about the future of technology, they don’t have to give the money back.

I think it’s because their companies (and in Andreessen’s case, investments) are functionally meme stocks.

Palantir is valued at a 230 P/E ratio. OpenAI is a cash furnace. They only maintain their valuations through flash, sparkle, and futurism.

Hence, the manifestos.

What the fuck, Adam?

Why would you share this today of all days? Must you harsh Bluesky’s collective buzz?

Working on my writeup of the Alex Karp/Palantir manifesto right now, and I have backed into the following compliment:

When I read the book last year, I thought "this book should've been a tweet." It now seems Palantir agrees.

The Palentir statement on its desired “Technological Republic” is one of the scariest things I have seen in a while. It is a call for a world dominated by an authoritarian U.S., generated by AI (both the statement and the world), run by tech-surveillance companies. Technofascism pure!

Gil Duran tweet: TLDR: Fascism in response to Palantir's long fascists screed on X.

"Your Account is Suspended" Message on X

The CEO of Palantir posted a fascist manifesto on X.

I pointed out that it was fascist—which resulted in a permanent suspension from X (my second time!).

So, when you hear the tweeters complaining that BlueSky is intolerant, remember why many of us came here in the first place.

Turning the frogs gay was just Phase 1.

Hell yeah!

With the help of the Sandy Hook families, The Onion has reached a long-awaited deal to take over InfoWars.

We've enlisted the help of @timheidecker.bsky.social, who will be InfoWars' Creative Director.

Please stand by for more.

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