Vitalik Buterin pfp
Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
Left: Aella, 2023. Right: noemamag, 2025.
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Thomas pfp
Thomas
@aviationdoctor.eth
Reminds me of this linked quote below from Bob Ettinger. https://warpcast.com/aviationdoctor.eth/0xb0ba6b1a https://warpcast.com/aviationdoctor.eth/0xd9215248 It was daring enough in the early transhumanist days to confront the religious dogma by suggesting that humans take control of their own destiny and plan their species' development (aging reversal, eugenics, gene therapy, etc.) instead of letting random mutations brutally select the fittest specimen. Seeing it applied to Mother Nature is even wilder. Not that we don't have de facto stewardship of other species on this planet, whether we want it or not. But if there's anything that economic history has taught us in the 20th century, it's that it's incredibly audacious to believe that we can substitute nature's laissez-faire, free-market approach to evolution with centralized planning, and expect superior results at a planetary scale. The downsides of a failed experiment in that regard are asymmetrically large (e.g., food chain / ecosystem collapses)
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links 🏴 pfp
links 🏴
@links
This is a top signal for the rational worldview. Everyone start romanticising again!
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✳️ dcposch on daimo pfp
✳️ dcposch on daimo
@dcposch.eth
“humanity’s stain” is such bad framing. I see this everywhere in conservation land: the implicit idea that earth was perfect before we got here, so anything we do to it is bad. OTOH I don’t like Aella’s frame either: nature as “a temple made of agony and violence”? Reminds me of that clip of two gorillas brawling while a shrill voice yells “wheeere is the zooookeeper?” No, nature is beautiful, violence and all, and humans are part of nature and a pinnacle of evolution. The ideal relationship looks something like Japan: vast national parks stewarded by friendly rangers, interspersed with a dense and growing metropolis. Raingutters so clean koi fish swim in them. Or Starbase, the “frontier town” archetype, small footprint high productivity. Or Italy, with those gorgeous hillside towns stacked over the ocean. In all cases it’s a symbiosis of man and nature that comes from neither antagonistic domination nor from a vetocratic place of constant apology.
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nicole pfp
nicole
@nicole
Every time I read an Aella tweet I don’t think it’s possible to be any more repulsed by her worldview but then she goes and outdoes herself again and again. It’s really impressive honestly.
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shazow pfp
shazow
@shazow.eth
How about instead of optimizing for minimal suffering, we optimize for agency? Plenty of high-agency humans choose to live in some version of misery, some even thrive in it. Obviously there are conflicts with agency (maybe Trump wants to invade Canada, but Canada wants to stay independent) so boundaries must exist to balance different groups, but not for the purpose of stripping away agency for the sake of a higher calling. Maybe this looks like larger nature reserves with more protected spaces favouring specific subgroups by design. Though hard to imagine not needing to succumb to some forms of population control for edge cases, due to limited space/resources that would inevitably overflow into conflict from competition of growth.
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cqb pfp
cqb
@cqb
80k released a podcast in this vein not too long ago, I thought it was super interesting. Nature is full of moral atrocities constantly and we're the only species with the means to do anything about it
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Jeff Excell 🎩 pfp
Jeff Excell 🎩
@jeffexcell
Sounds like they don’t understand. How codependent we are on the world around us
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Cool Beans 🌞 pfp
Cool Beans 🌞
@coolbeans1r.eth
holy fuk. thats an insane opinion.
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exeunt pfp
exeunt
@exeunt
I am against any sort of essentializing or fetishizing, but what we call “nature” (what Aella is describing) is universal, an expression of cosmic laws - thermodynamics, vividly articulated. A CVS or a public school are to an equal extent, except that they tend to conceal and displace the pressure points where they reflect those laws. Natural systems and institutional systems are both often cruel, but when displaced or concealed, we enter into a form of “idiot cruelty” you don’t see in nature. I think some standards can be held up against nature and “kept honest” to reach a happy middle - but this is a much more intense process than people give credit. Human organisms require submission of the agency of many different organisms to function. This is a deep rabbit hole that makes the nature/human distinction meaningless IMO. Check the section in this essay titled “What Does It Feel Like to Be a Pancreas”: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02688/full
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Adam pfp
Adam
@adam-
If this was a Venn diagram, Werner Herzog’s monologue from Burden of Dreams would be right in the middle: https://youtu.be/ze9-ARjL-ZA?feature=shared&t=137 "there is no real harmony as we have conceived it but when I say this I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It's not that I hate it, I love it I love it very much but I love it against my better judgment"
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ruz.eth 🍄 pfp
ruz.eth 🍄
@ruz.eth
Maybe even though natural life is messy we should not always seek to eradicate, control, or imprison it
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Ap.so 🎩 🍖 🟣 🐹🤫 pfp
Ap.so 🎩 🍖 🟣 🐹🤫
@as789
Hullo @vitalik.eth
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Aaron Blaisdell / ittybit 533 pfp
Aaron Blaisdell / ittybit 533
@aaronblaisdell
/microsub tip: 480 $DEGEN
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