• gerikson@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The only people mentioned who are not the usual rogue’s gallery (MuskThielSBF) are Marx/Engels, JB Haldane, John Desmond Bernal (who??) and this fucking guy:

    Max More was one of the libertarian thinkers (non-billionaire) who helped shape modern transhumanism.

    Oh he’s not a billionaire, obviously he is Of The Left.

    (I quickly googled this dude of whom I have never heard and didn’t find any obvious techfash red flags, but maybe he’s better at hiding them than most others)

    Anyway, extropianism!

    like all arguments from first principles, the Extropians encountered problems when trying to extrapolate derivative principles, like political economy. While the Extropian ideas went in an anti-state direction, their logic leads just as naturally to the Enlightenment Left’s conclusion that humanity should take our collective future in hand through democratic deliberation or the guidance of “scientific socialism,”

    “OK so right now it’s basically fascist feudalism, but it could be socialism”, got it.

    More weird framings

    But some effective altruists, most famously the crypto scammer and donor to the Democratic Party Sam Bankman-Fried,

    Outside the “not all EAs!” crowd I haven’t seen this before, but the authors are “democratic socialists” which basically means they hate the Democrats more than the GOP.

    I can kinda agree on their take on Cosmism, which AFAIK is really fringe (I mean, I have heard of Fyodorov, but I have read a lot of SF), but even here they can’t really refrain from oohing over the “weird and wonderful” Russian cosmists, while perfunctorily noting that they’re all fascists now.

    Russian Cosmists also prefigured a version of eco-philosophy, emphasizing the unity of all living beings and the interconnectedness of the universe. Cosmists believed that all forms of life, including animals and plants, were part of a universal whole. They advocated for the ethical treatment of all living creatures and the preservation of biodiversity.

    The Izborsky Club explicitly condemns the technocratic “transhumanism” of Western thought, including individualism, rationalism, democracy, capitalism and transgender rights, as contrary to their “technocratic traditionalist” Cosmism. The Izborsky Club reflects the swirl of NazBol ideas in contemporary Russia, attempting to merge Russian Orthodoxy, Bolshevik authoritarianism and fascist “Eurasian” racial-nationalism. […] In other words actual organized Russian Cosmists today despise TESCREAL ideas and their Western proponents.

    But both Musk and Thiel hate trans people, but trans treatment is essentially transhumanism, how can we square this circle? It is a mystery.

    • self@awful.systemsM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      Outside the “not all EAs!” crowd I haven’t seen this before, but the authors are “democratic socialists” which basically means they hate the Democrats more than the GOP.

      the more I read, the more I get the sinking suspicion that the authors are cherry-flavored fascists who are particularly bad at smuggling their ideas under a thin guise of leftist thought

        • froztbyte@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          Guess it must’ve slipped his mind to mention that when he wrote about it. Whoops.

          Easy mistake I guess, when one is only human. We’ll have to wait for computerbrains to have better memories, no other solution presents itself.

          • froztbyte@awful.systems
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            the dodgily bad-faith stuff doesn’t end there: click to the posting account for more choice panic

              • jonhendry@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                It’s probably more true if you include disabilities that you may not be considering. Acquired hearing loss, blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa, chronic back pain, etc. I find it very hard to believe that a person who lost their vision in an industrial accident wouldn’t leap at a chance to have their vision back. And obviously not all policies to reduce the incidence of disabilities are about eugenics. OSHA isn’t a eugenics program. Vitamin K shots and eye ointment for newborns reduce disability without being eugenics. I assume even blind disability activists don’t think babies should be put at risk of easily avoidable blindness.

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Going by the flow of nominative determinism, this is one remarkable and poignant name in that case