Debbie McGee

Voluntaryist, pagan, mostly retweets.

[VraserX e/acc @VraserX]

Say what you want about Sam Altman and Elon Musk, but both represent something I deeply respect:

the refusal to accept stagnation as normal.

Altman helped bring powerful AI out of the lab and into the hands of ordinary people. Musk keeps pushing civilization toward rockets, robots, brain computer interfaces, electric transport, and a future that still feels ambitious.

That mindset matters.

Humanity has enormous problems ahead of us. Aging, disease, energy, poverty, climate, war, declining birth rates, broken institutions.

We are not going to solve them by slowing down intelligence.

We solve them by building faster, thinking bigger, and refusing to let fear become our operating system.

Accelerationism at its best is not reckless. It is a belief that progress is a moral duty.

And honestly, I would rather bet on builders than on people whose only vision of the future is a stop sign.

[David Shapiro (L/0) @DaveShapi]

It's interesting watching the Tech Right deal with the cognitive dissonance of "maximum acceleration" colliding with Protestant work ethic.

It basically boils down to "labor and financial precarity are good... Because reasons"

When you unpack it, there is some substance. Humans without striving tend to decay. But in no way does that mean you need enforced wage slavery for striving.

Some, like Marc Andreesen, simply seem to have bought the "labor is virtuous" doxa hook line and sinker. And since he has "zero introspection" he has no clue where that value comes from.

And they are all mistaking a personal aesthetic preference for a universal human truth.

Then, on the functional/utilitarian side, the Tech Right seems to think that human involvement is necessary for things like "entropy generation" without realizing that humans produce less entropy when scrambling in survival mode.

So, to simplify, there's the individualistic view ie "labor is good for the human animal" argument, which is defensible. But modern wage slavery is "good for the human animal" in the same way that prison meets your social needs.

Then there's the macro view ie "enforced precarity causes more prosperity and progress because creativity" (or something along those lines).

But that second opinion utterly fails to realize that most people who were Great Men of the past has zero precarity. Let's just take Charles Darwin for instance. Never needed to work a day in his life because he was gentry. In fact, he was chronically ill, a condition that would have killed him and prevented his work.. However, the fact that he has ample financial security meant that he could spend weeks resting when needed, and decades working on his theory of evolution.

There is zero evidence that precarity boosts creativity or "entropy generation"

Eccentricity (high entropy signals) require financial security.

[Post Disclosure World @PostDisclosure]

Being against UBI is totally fine.

But so many of the arguments people make against it insult my intelligence.

For example, the idea that if people aren't forced to work, they will lose all meaning.

Many people dislike their jobs so much that they would trade working just to survive for the possibilities downtime opens up. Since when do we find meaning in doing something we despise?

Has work for survival become our new idol?

What about spiritual work, reading and studying, teaching, family time, growing food, working out, enjoying hobbies, and so forth?

I'd flip this whole conversation—the fact that so many people think work is the primary source of meaning is a bigger problem than people having the option not to work.

And UBI wouldn’t make working impossible; it just means people could be much more selective about what kind of work they do.

That’s freedom and agency at its best.

[David Shapiro (L/0) @DaveShapi]

Hear me out...

[blue @bluewmist]

i have no desire to be rich so i can buy a rolex or a lamborghini.

i want to be rich so i can control my time and go to the gym at 3pm on a monday.

sit at a cafe and relax for an hour on a rainy afternoon.

so i can cook meals at home with fresh ingredients.

spend on my family and friends without worrying about a budget.

that's my idea of a rich life, not the fake consumerist idea shoved down my throat.

[Andrew McCarthy @AJamesMcCarthy]

Totality.

[Julia McCoy @JuliaEMcCoy]

We are sending our kids to school to memorize facts that AI can retrieve in 0.3 seconds.

We're grading them on essays that AI writes better than their teachers.

We're preparing them for jobs that won't exist by the time they graduate.

The entire education system is training humans to compete with machines at what machines do best.

That's not education. That's sabotage.

The schools that survive will teach thinking, not memorizing. Creating, not repeating. Discerning, not obeying.

Every other school is a museum that doesn't know it yet.

[Rand @rand_longevity]

if you did not have to wake up and go to work, what would you do instead?

we all need to face this question soon

[Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross @alexwg]

https://t.co/6sfBdytNzi

[Debbie McGee @palominogray]

@VraserX No. But there should be a trade off. A portion of their shares goes to a public trust. Those funds would be support social safety nets and infrastructure. They cannot reallocate those funds. Start at 5-20% and as Ai/Robotics scale towards public utilities those percentages scale

[VraserX e/acc @VraserX]

Google monopolizing AI is a direct threat to humanity.

A single ad driven surveillance empire controlling intelligence means control over information, behavior, and reality itself. That’s not innovation, that’s centralized power at a civilizational scale.

AI must be competitive, pluralistic, and open.
One company owning intelligence is how progress dies.

[David Shapiro (L/0) @DaveShapi]

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I'm slightly afraid that there's too much inertia, and we will go sailing off the automation cliff without much prep.

The left is just trying to shut everything down while the right is saying it's gonna create jobs.

Both sides are delusional.

Neither side is preparing correctly.

[blue @bluewmist]

someone told me yesterday that when they feel nervous about trying something new & their heart starts beating really fast, that they call it their “inner applause” because their body is cheering them on, and i think that’s the best narrative adjustment ever.

[Marcos Arrut @MarcosArrut]

If an ethical stance opposes a technology whose ultimate goal is to reduce suffering, then it is not ethical—it is propaganda against human progress.

That's all.

[David Shapiro (L/0) @DaveShapi]

Here's the thing about "AGI" - many people are convinced that we need to see "true AGI" (whatever that means) before it will irrevocably alter GDP and jobs.

But that's just not the case.

What we're experiencing right now is the "J-curve" of tech adoption. That is the deep breath before the plunge as businesses rewire themselves, invest in infrastructure, and prepare for automation.

That trend is expected to take about 3 to 5 years, ending anywhere between 2028 and 2032. By that time, AI will be much smarter, faster, and cheaper than it is today. Furthermore, humanoid robots will be ramping up production and capability.

If we just assume that trends today continue unabated (consider that AI autonomy is still accelerating, as are benchmark saturations) then we don't even need "AGI" to nuke all jobs from orbit in a few years.

We do not need any algorithmic breakthroughs, saltatory leaps, or novel model architectures. What we've got is sufficient to necessitate a transition to post-labor economics.

These are tall claims, and the future will bear them out. The point is that AGI is going to be seen as more of an academic or philosophical debate, rather than an engineering or economic sticking point.

Mark my words.

[Debbie McGee @palominogray]

@VraserX Young, then sick after that everyone else.

[Karun Pal @karunpal]

Introverts don’t hate socializing they just love being home. Where it’s quiet. Safe. Soft. No small talk, no noise, no pretending. Just them. Reading, thinking, listening music, staring at walls, watching movies, feeling everything deeply. For them, it's not boring, it’s healing.

[Dr Singularity @Dr_Singularity]

Don’t fear AI. Fear stagnation, fear a world that stops inventing, that settles for the present instead of designing the future.

One brings uncertainty, the other guarantees extinction.

Progress is the only real antidote to decay.