Davidzmorris
@davidzmorris
This weekend at Dark Markets, supporters got a sneak peek at the core argument of my forthcoming book on #SBF: "Techno-Rationalism and the Denial of Death." https://tinyurl.com/54mrkj2n The Utopian #tescreal axis is deeply motivated, in ways that most adherents can't recognize, by an anxious desire to resurrect tribalist mysticism, the afterlife, and a transcendental eschatology. But they lack the imagination and strength to face the infinity of God. So they remake God as merely a robot - an artificial intelligence, the product of man's own imputed Godhood, achieved through rationality and technology. This began with Ray Kurzweil, who was more self-aware about his motives than most who came after: He wanted to resurrect his father. 1/3
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Davidzmorris
@davidzmorris
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Davidzmorris
@davidzmorris
When I say techno-rationalists don't recognize their own motives, it's because they implicitly deny the existence of depth psychology, or the unconcsious. This is most clear in the connection to Barbara Fried's determinist utilitarianism, which posits humans as already little more than automatons: https://tinyurl.com/mrx28nbt This denial is necessary to support a view of the world as predictable. Predictability (which includes risk calculation, or "expected value") is key to the claims of Effective Altruism, Longtermism, and other elements of the #tescreal bundle. For more, see my review of Toby Ord's book: https://tinyurl.com/3ttb6sms 2/3
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