Philosophy Prof @ Boston College. I interview philosophers working outside the academy, let them tell their stories, and share the secrets to their success.
Techno-utopians like Sam Altman want you to believe transhumanist AI is the cutting edge. In reality, these are stale and frustrated dreams—100 years old and counting! Consider early transhumanists like J.D. Bernal in 1929 talking interplanetary colonies & cyborg evolution:
Jennifer Welch: “Boycott every fucking thing on CBS News. From the morning all the way through to the evening. These are the same people that fired Stephen Colbert because Trump got his feelings hurt by a comedian. These people are the biggest bunch of pussies that masquerade with these grandstanding letters like they’re such badasses. These people don’t care about the truth, they don’t care about journalism, they don’t care about the Constitution, they don’t care about a free press. It’s just absolutely devastating what these oligarchs have done to our country”
In my Harvard fellowship I study the views of AI accelerationists, safetyists and skeptics.
What I have come to realize is that both the Accelerationists and the Safetyists believe that we are creating an AI God.
The difference is that Accelerationists believe that it is the god of the New testament.
A god of loving kindness.
The Safetyists believe that it is the god of the Old testament.
The jealous one who told Abraham to kill his son, destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and killed everybody in the flood.
The Skeptics think it's just a damn toaster with more knobs.
@stephlepp@TheKenWilber Aw that’s great to hear, so glad you got to have that special experience—please do share the recording! And love to hear about ICON sometime soon
Gad Saad's Rate My Professor page is hilarious.
Nearly half of the students give him a one, the lowest possible score.
Apparently, he doesn't teach anything and just rants about wokeness in his marketing class, sometimes digressing to brag about his book sales. The material is two decades old and he hasn't bothered to update it.
Some examples:
"I once asked the professor why he couldn't keep politics out of the discussions in a marketing class, at least during the lecture hours. Afterall, I told him that I had no interest in his diatribe for feminist hatred or woke-liberal bashing. He told me I was free to drop the class. Avoid this class. Biggest mistake of my life."
"All the professor do in class is complain about feminists and woke and liberals. Like c'mon at least teach some of the course material please!! What a waste."
"Easily the worst class that I have taken in my life. Professor is in the wrong profession. He does not want to teach the students anything relevant to the course material during the lectures, and I have serious doubt if he is even qualified to do so. This class should be avoided at all costs. Total waste of time and money."
"This class is a total waste of time & money. Professor doesn't come prepared to class, has not updated the course material in two decades, and simply talks about random things not at all related to the course. Avoid this class."
Contrary to his critics on the American Catholic Right, Leo's trust in international institutions and modern emancipatory movements is not a quaint relic of the pope’s Boomer generation.
It goes to the heart of his Catholic political rationality.
https://t.co/1p8aXppLrO
@MattPolProf What a pick. Read this twenty years ago, still in my top 5. Almost everything he does is just savage. We should be talking about DD a lot more, no one better transmits nihilism as the structure of feeling of our age
@lukeburgis Love it! I start my year long philosophy/theology great books course with Plato and end with Frankl so maybe this would be the perfect bookend
@McGillPatterson Fair—maybe I’d rephrase it this way. Sohrab seems to care what happens in material reality, while Deneen simply does not. It’s like, would you rather be right about Aristotle or feed the hungry? That’s the difference.
@KonstantinKisin This schtick is played. So played…. This could fly in 2020 but not anymore. Your identity is bound up with opposing barbarism horses of wokeness that barely exist anymore
@NPinkoski@g_shullenberger Ok but tell us why he’s wrong. Run the counter factual of 80,000 votes in MI PA and WI going the other way in 2016. Don’t we get a different 21sr century?
@McGillPatterson It’s easy. Unlike Deneen and co, Sohrab gets political economy, and sees that if you ignore their secular humanist metaphysics, Dems economic and social policies are more aligned with Catholic social teaching i.e. the common good.
@lukeburgis It’s Babel. Communes for techno-capitalists, a will to nothingness, a longing for the end. A death drive drives them on. Not without reason is Nick Land a patron saint for Andreeson.
Because they’re racist!
Liberals use racist to refer to people who say true things. They’ve destroyed the power of the world.
But people who would destroy the future of the country because they don’t like other races around qualify. This is what you should use the term for.