Fred Scharmen

A weird day to be writing about political tectonics and outer space.

Rationalists on the way to being classified as 'Anti-AI Anti-tech extremists'. Basilisk referenced. Rats to Gitmo! We're really speedrunning the storyline lately. Quoting from the article: 'The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City," the report reads. The term "anti-tech violent extremism" does not appear in any publicly available DHS or FBI domestic extremism reports or guides and represents a novel grouping of a wide range of ideologies under a single extremist category' 'In the same Intelligence Bureau assessment, analysts also describe a novel threat emerging in the wake of the arrest and trial of Ziz Laota, an extreme rationalist who allegedly led a small cultlike group, three members of which have been charged with murder, tied to an obsessive ideology focused on the existential risk posed by AI. While the Zizian ideology is extremist in nature, a less extreme version of the same fears surrounding the cataclysmic potential of AI are a common concern among AI alignment experts, machine learning engineers, and even frontier AI companies. Nonetheless, the Intelligence Bureau warns that "paranoid views regarding AI" may proliferate in the aftermath of the Zizians' trial, thanks to their "attempt to reason the belief that a godlike incarnation of AI is imminent," and belief that "humans must best use their time in the present to devote themselves to ensuring its compliance with human morality, or face existential consequences for failing to do so."'

Goddammit my frikken hammer broke. And right when I needed it most.

@norabird I refuse the premise! Let a thousand weird kids blossom!

@sevensixfive not when you have to choose between them...a sophie's choice

mermaid parade son or kim gordon storm king concert daughter

@BLUNDERBUSSTED The Inn at Middleton Place, outside of Charleston, SC

where should i go on vacation next week i don't really have anyone to travel with at the present, and no particular Person to see i want it to be reasonably priced, and i mostly want a place with a great bed, a big desk, and somewhere super walkable and beautiful

Pope Leo XIV recently went viral after issuing an encyclical on the state of the information environment and the population's cognitive resilience. "We really are living in a cognitive wild west. Most people have near-zero memetic defenses or cognitive security suited for the AI age". He adds, "any semblance of it is easily brute-forced by the onslaught of information & the situation is even worse when it comes to AI agent-orchestrated psyops."

Brace yourselves for all the thinkpieces about the backrooms

Something something gradient descent …

@mddirtlaw So glad to have a big screen at home now

@sevensixfive Remember going to the Charles 3 times to see it. Wrote a review for grad school paper, something something cities, pre-"urbanism." Was recently thinking I needed to see it again on the big screen.

Shout out to The Ladd Company and Sir Run Run Shaw, a couple of real ones

Ricardo Bofill, bay-bee!

Conspiracy theories are just fanfiction about reality and that's beautiful

@deepfates Only if your name is Roko

Is it "acausal coercion" to consider the consequences of our actions?

This morning I’ve decided it’s time to come clean about Tartaria.

When "they're trying to put a hex on the Moon" shows up, in the middle of a huge shift in paradigms and capabilities for utilization of Lunar resources, on the *anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing*, pay attention. They're trying to put a hex on the Moon.

Whenever we hear something in culture like "they're trying to put a hex on the Moon," it's always worth it to hold off on ridicule and interpret the thing like myth or literature instead. It's more fun that way, too.

Excerpt from my short story about a situationship in the 1800s

manifest destiny

for @bratton, the hallmark of a "thriving" future is one where planetary intelligence (the entire interconnected process-of-life on Earth) has the widest space of possibility for its continuation not "here's my ideal utopia" not "here's my list of 16 human virtues that all future AGIs should have" to him - the process we're going through now (of changing the planet in order to capture more energy and open up more possibilities) is a continuation of what Earth-life has been doing fundamentally since before the single cell will this process of thrival carry on beyond human civilization? it is possible, thinks Bratton, but not inevitable i think that's exactly right. at the juncture we're at now, there are probably a number of trajectories we could go on that would set the process-of-life back, and there are probably others which would encourage its unrolling expanse may we be wise enough to nudge the future towards the latter