Back in the mid 90s I had an unusual experience, in which I was caught in the blast-corona of Operation Sundevil – the Secret Service’s attempt to gain relevance in cybersecurity [wik]. My role was small but it made me realize that the government, at that time, was ignorant enough that they could easily be stampeded into doing stupid things, a form of “terrorism by stupid cop” which I later re-framed as “a denial of clue attack.”
I’ve been struggling with a problem: “what happens if someone tells an AI to ‘code a better version of yourself?’ and – whoosh – the singularity happens?
There is a book that I have returned to over and over again, for years. It fascinates me, because it exposes a lot of philosophical problems that I had never considered.
This is brilliant. It distills philosophical enquiry down to its essentials: fuck it.
This is a very “on point” meme for me.
I have really been going to town on the Tides of History podcast. Wow, it’s interesting.
One of the most influential books in my life has been Robert Paul Wolff’s In Defense of Anarchism [stderr] [wc]. It clarified my politics, to me, and made me able to understand why it was that I was so suspicious of politicians of all stripes. Taken along with Popkin’s History of Skepticism from Savanarola to Bayle [stderr] [wc] it made me feel as though I suddenly understood some things differently and in a more powerful way: skepticism, nihilism, and anarchism are all an alternative to politics or philosophy as usually practiced. That’s a dramatic claim but please let me try to justify it.
[Content Warning: death, sexual abuse, suicide]
A young fellow I knew recently ended his life. We had discussed it before, and he was often miserable, saw no point in being alive, didn’t enjoy it, and as he said “never asked for it.”
Trolley car experiments seem to be a rich topic for “memes.”
I know a few people who were home-schooled as kids, and who grew up to be fine, decent people. I even new one who was incredibly precocious and was tutored (in addition to a good private school education) by both father and mother. Everyone in my high school class knew he was going to be somebody in the sciences and, he is! Yay!