Caught the bit on lesswrong and figured you guys might like.

  • Deborah@hachyderm.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    > Yarvin turned to the new right’s fountain of meaning: technology. The captive’s cell would not be bare. It would include “an immersive virtual-reality interface which allows him to experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world”.

    Wait, so Moldbug just ripped off (and Torment Nexused) The Matrix less than a decade after it came out? That’s so *lazy*.

      • Deborah@hachyderm.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        How many technofash problems arose because these dopes were just functionally illiterate and didn’t know how to do even the basic New Critical analysis of the text that every 10 year old learns?

        • self@awful.systemsM
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          so many! sometimes the first tell that you’re reading techfash bullshit is when they lead in with the worst take you’ve ever heard about a work of sci-fi you’ve enjoyed. I firmly blame these fuckers for making cyberpunk boring as fuck, turning singularity fiction into a religion, and ruining post-scarcity sci-fi, all by way of stubbornly refusing to understand any of the work they’ll never stop trying to claim as their own

          • blakestacey@awful.systemsM
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            12
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Apropos:

            Musk, the boy, loved video games and computers and Dungeons & Dragons and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and he still does. “I took from the book that we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe,” Musk tells Isaacson. Isaacson doesn’t raise an eyebrow, and you can wonder whether he has read “Hitchhiker’s Guide,” or listened to the BBC 4 radio play on which it is based, first broadcast in 1978. It sounds like this:

            Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former galactic empire, life was wild, rich, and, on the whole, tax free. . . . Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural because no one was really poor, at least, no one worth speaking of.

            “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” is not a book about how “we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe.” It is, among other things, a razor-sharp satiric indictment of imperialism:

            And for these extremely rich merchants life eventually became rather dull, and it seemed that none of the worlds they settled on was entirely satisfactory. Either the climate wasn’t quite right in the later part of the afternoon or the day was half an hour too long or the sea was just the wrong shade of pink. And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of industry: custom-made, luxury planet-building.

            • raktheundead@fedia.io
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Musk, the boy, loved video games

              And so he went on to make one of the worst Sega CD games. Bad show.

            • Deborah@hachyderm.io
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              The kicker of that article is one of the best kickers I’ve ever seen, at least for readers of Hitchhiker’s:

              (I know the image won’t appear on awful.systems but the article’s not paywalled and the entire paragraph is chef’s kiss perfect.)

        • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          neoreactionaries and lesswrongers are animu nerds to a man, and the answer to “what the arsing fuck??” is always anime

      • self@awful.systemsM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Characters: Agent Smith, OC Culture Mind, OC Culture Ship, Neo, OC GSV

        oh I can already tell this is going to be a ride