Book project: On irrational mechanics
Notes & odd thoughts
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Please scroll down for the main topic of this newsletter. But first:
Give some love (and maybe subscribe) to BLAXXKY, the new kid on the futurist media block that
& I & others are launching!
Watch another great SingularityNET interview with Howard Bloom! With Ben Goertzel and Mihaela Ulieru. “In the first episode of our BGI-25 Pre-Event Series, special guest Howard Bloom, Dr. Ben Goertzel, and Dr. Mihaela Ulieru examine how principles of emergent intelligence in natural systems can inform beneficial AGI development.
I can’t wait for Howard’s new book “The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature Is Wrong,” which should be published very soon. I’ve read an early draft but I look forward to a couple of days of total immersion in the final version.
My last article for Mindplex Magazine is a commentary on U.S. President Donald Trump recent statements about Mars. Should we go and plant the flag on Mars, skipping the return to the Moon? TLDR: I think we should permanently return to the Moon first, and then move on to Mars. But Mars could be more inspiring to the young.
Excerpt: “I’m old enough to be an Apollo orphan, and I want to live again the Apollo adventure that I found so inspiring when I was a kid. But I understand that different people of different generations are inspired by different things. Perhaps Mars can inspire the young more than the Moon ever could. A red planet colony could fire up the imagination and ambition of the young, pushing them to work hard and achieve great things not only out there in space but also down here on this planet.
The first Terasem Colloquium of 2025 will be held on July 20, via Zoom, from 10am ET to 1pm ET.
This Terasem Colloquium will explore diverse points of view on the topic of space expansion in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, it will explore answers to the question:
Should we still want to send human astronauts to colonize space? Or should we want to leave space expansion to AI?
The first confirmed speakers are Robert Zubrin and Frank Tipler.
We’ll invite other speakers with diverse points of view and different answers to the question.
In this picture I’m reading the paperback edition of the Italian translation of my last book, published by Moira.
I’m happy with the overall framework that I used in my last book “Irrational mechanics: Narrative sketch of a futurist science & a new religion.” But of course there are many clarifications that I should make and things that I should add. There are many points that I just touched and I should dive deeper into. And of course, there are new odd thoughts that keep coming to my mind.
So I started writing a new book titled “On irrational mechanics: Notes & odd thoughts.” The book will be a collection of short chapters. The new notes and odd thoughts will clarify and complement parts of “Irrational mechanics.”
I’ll also use this book to add new notes and odd thoughts to my previous book “Tales of the Turing Church: Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology.” The last, longest, and hardest part of that book is also titled “Irrational mechanics.”
For the cover page I plan to use detail from the painting “Raum und Kraft Konstruktion” by Lyubov Popova. She is considered a pioneer of cubo-futurism, an artistic movement inspired by Italian futurism and developed within Russian futurism. In the painting I see a planet, perhaps ours, through strange geometries that defy description.