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I am as anti-doomist as they come. In fact my current book in progress, tentatively titled AI and Cosmic Evolution, began as a reaction to the March moratorium open letter. That got me I started down the rabbit hole of Longtermism, p(doom) and all the rest, and thanks to Google, Torres' work was the first I read. His essay here claiming that Longtermists and Accelerationists are actually very similar is pretty thought provoking and I kind of agree. However, despite my strong AI-philia and space expansionism, I don't want to call myself e/acc because it sounds to much like a sectarian ideology, and as I hadn't previously heard of Jeremy England or Guillaume Verdon it’d be pretty silly to join their movement.

My own position is probably very similar to that of Jürgen Schmidhuber regarding superintelligent AI. Riffing off Teilhard de Chardin, you could say that the topic of my book is “The Phenomenon of AI”. I also reference ideas from Orion’s Arm that Anders Sandberg and myself developed way back in 2000. In describing the emergence of superintelligent AGI, or what in Orion’s Arm we called Hyperturings (I also distinguish between Hyperturings and Archailects), I consider the history of the cluster of ideas around transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, and Russian cosmism (similar to Torres’ “bundle”), as well as science fiction, space exploration, and both scientific evolutionary cosmology and Big History (Sagan, Jantsch, Chaisson…), metaphysical evolutionary panentheism (Aurobindo, Teilhard), space expansionism, and futurism. All these elements converge in an AI-centric (rather than anthropocentric) cosmic evolutionary paradigm, in which baseline ("legacy human") and posthumans are part of a multispecies ecology.

I was interested to read in Torres’ essay that not all Longtermists are Hard Doomers, so I should probably distinguish Doomerism from Longtermism. Torres himself is an anti-natalist, and while I don’t go that far, overpopulation is certainly one of the topics I address. Billions of humans are fine, as long as there’s enough space habitats (O’Neill Cylinders or equivalent) to support them. If you have a thousand O’Neill Cylinders in L4 and L5, they could hold several billion in current Western standards of living, and along with negative population growth including Narrow AI robot companions for the elderly, would allow the planet to be rewilded after a few centuries, even bringing back extinct species like the Thylacine and the mammoth, with a small number of ecologists and nature lovers living planet-side in sustainable arcologies. Because I understand how ecology works, I follow a hard-line environmentalist policy and a Deep Ecology ethos, rather than that of naive leftist and conservative ideals, alienated as they are from nature and the biosphere. Torres from what I gather seems to have a quite similar appreciation for nature to me.

It's a shame Bezos couldn't get his rockets happening, because not only would a space race between two billionaires be awesome, but he seems to understand the necessity of space habitats and of moving heavy industry off world much better than Musk, who is excessively focussed on the currently too hard policy of colonising Mars. Mars will only be viable if, first, you have atomic rockets (see Winchell Chung's site), and second, you can generate an artificial planetary magnetic field (both certainly be within the capability of late 21st century technology) but the cloud tops of Venus would.

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Hi Alan, I look forward to reading your book. ETA?

Re "Billions of humans are fine, as long as there’s enough space habitats (O’Neill Cylinders or equivalent) to support them."

I would change the emphasis here: the universe wants trillions of humans among the stars, and therefore at this moment we must hurry the fuck up and build O’Neill cylinders and other space habitats and Moon bases and cities on the moons and planets of the solar system, before it's too late.

Re "Because I understand how ecology works, I follow a hard-line environmentalist policy and a Deep Ecology ethos, rather than that of naive leftist and conservative ideals, alienated as they are from nature and the biosphere. Torres from what I gather seems to have a quite similar appreciation for nature to me."

Verdon and other e/acc-ers derive the e/acc view from England's view of the deep physical principles of nature and the biosphere, where the biosphere is not limited to the Earth and not limited to organic life. They want to align with "the will of the universe." To me, this is what deep ecology should mean. But deep ecology is usually interpreted in a politically correct, politically polarized (and to use current terms "woke" and "decel") sense by people like Torres. I'm against that version of deep ecology.

I've no doubt that Torres is an intelligent person, and I've no doubt that Torres and other woke decels have some good points alongside many bad ones. But this is a deep culture war, and in war one must win before the enemy wins. So let's win this culture war, and then we can talk.

Re "Bezos... Mars... Venus..."

Whatever works, but let's hurry the fuck up. If something bad happens down here (deadly pandemics, wars, but also the cultural stagnation and senility that I see as the biggest risk) before we (and/or our mind children) move up there, we will become irrelevant and the universe will continue without us.

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Hi Giulio.

ETA hopefully early next year. Actually I can send you an early draft when it’s ready; I’d love to get your feedback.

I would be all for trillions, or even a few quadrillion (but no more, I like the idea of some emptiness), if the problems of interstellar travel could be solved! As it is, after the glory days of the Apollo missions, we can barely even get into LEO orbit now.

I’m just looking at a paper by Nikolai Kardashev http://www.bigear.org/CSMO/HTML/CS07/cs07p36.htm at the moment, as I mention him briefly in my book. He says: “ In the paper, "Possibility of the Intelligent Life in the Universe Being Unique," I.S. Shklovsky* (* Astronomy, 5, N1 (1977) ) writes that it is strange that the "blast wave of intelligence" of a supercivilization has not engulfed the whole Universe”

He briefly speculates that maybe advanced civilisations might explore the microcosm, or travel to other spaces, or whatever. But I just don’t buy those explanations. For me there are several possibilities, all equally unsettling:

o we’re alone. This is my choice of most likely explanation, although it goes against the Copernican principle about not being special or the center of the universe. Here there’s two options:

- Barren universe. I actually read a short sci fi story once based on this premise, there was FTL travel and humanity had colonised a number of star systems, but hadn’t found even a a single alien prokaryote. I can’t remember what the twist in the story was, but just the possibility of this freaks me out.

- Rare Earth - from Ward & Brownlee’s book. Plenty of prokaryotes but nothing higher; think of the chance coincidences that led to the Cambrian explosion, and even life on land, a large nearby moon to generate tides.

As Arthur C. Clarke put it: either we’re alone, or we aren’t. Either option is terrifying.

As for other options:

o maybe the technological challenges to starflight cannot be overcome. I mean, this is ridiculous, Robert Forward designed the “starwisp”; it doesn’t even need gigantic amounts of energy. All you do is send a small (nanotech?) von neumann machine or some other replicator as the payload to the nearest planetary system, but, who knows

o advanced civilisations destroy themselves before they can get their act together, or sink back into irrelevance.

Probably some other alternative explanations. Some explanations that I feel are just too silly to be true are the dark forest, the zoo hypothesis, and we are already in the matrix (I could describe why but should probably save it for this or a future book).

So, until I can figure out why there’s no sign of aliens, I’ll just focus on the Solar System, which, tiny as it may be in the impossible vastness of the universe, is still big enough from our perspective, even if it is deeply depressing not to know what amazing forms of life have evolved and exist on other planets.

Space expansionism, I agree with you 100%! Musk is dependent on American bureaucracy (FAA) for giving his ship the all clear. I think they’re being deliberately obstructionist. Hopefully if Trump gets in (which looks likely) things will change, at least in the short term. Really, Musk needs to relocate to (or at least build a second launch base at) Malaysia or equatorial Africa, somewhere where bureaucrats aren’t giving him this constant crap. He builds a tech university there to train future engineers and workers which he then hires (and those he doesn't add skilled labour to the country’s economy), it’s a win win for everyone.

Deep ecology. Well, some of those unsettling explanations I suggested for the Fermi paradox imply that Earth is either unique or extremely rare. Therefore our biosphere is extremely precious, more valuable than anyone can imagine. So, you can say, or Verdun can say, that evolution is not limited to life, but if this planet is the only one in the Local Group, or even in the Virgo Supercluster, that hosts complex life (and really I don’t know) then that puts a whole different spin of things!

Actually I see Deep Ecology, like Animal Liberation, and AI Liberation as apolitical. All politics, whether left or right, is predicated on baseline human supremacism. You have solar punks on the left as much as Andreessen, Musk, and Bezos on the right, saying the Earth can support countless billions, with total disregard for the sustainability and carrying capacity of the biosphere. My loyalty is to Gaia. The genetic and spiritual treasure house of her genetic diversity, pruned and impoverished as it already tragically is through human overhunting, overfishing, overpopulation, pollution, etc, can still be restored (through human and AI cooperation), and bring life to the universe. This assumes there are no other complex biospheres out there. And if there are, well, that’s all good too.

Culture War. I agree, it’s frightening the way things are going. I never realised how endemic the rot was in American universities until I saw not one but three university presidents justifying calls for genocide of the Jews, but only within the context of course. I feel like I’m watching the death of a civilisation, the slow fall of a mighty empire destroyed not by its enemies without, but by the rot within.

I agree with your sense of urgency and frustration. I feel it too.

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I would LOVE reading an early draft! Please send it to me when it is ready, so I can start writing a ***** review to publish when the books come out. And of course you will be one of the early readers of my next book too.

Re "Shklovsky* (* Astronomy, 5, N1 (1977) ) writes that it is strange that the "blast wave of intelligence" of a supercivilization has not engulfed the whole Universe” He briefly speculates that maybe advanced civilisations might explore the microcosm, or travel to other spaces, or whatever."

Perhaps advanced civilizations *have* engulfed the whole universe and we are too stupid to notice them.

Perhaps Caleb Scharf is right. The concept that he puts forward here

https://nautil.us/is-physical-law-an-alien-intelligence-236218/

makes a lot of sense to me. (Related, I think the cosmic operating system itself could be intelligent, like a superAI.)

John Smart and Clément Vidal have put forward ideas similar to "advanced civilisations might explore the microcosm, or travel to other spaces," see Vidal's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-End-Cosmological-Perspective-Collection-ebook/dp/B00KD81OBS/

So who knows. I think life and intelligent life and ultra-intelligent life are common in the universe because the cosmic operating system favors them.

Spaceflight and politics: I'll reply soon.

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Hi again Giulio. It occurred to me that I haven't properly specified where I stand in contrast to the left. It's this. Basically the solarpunk and environmental movement in general are "luddite"* and planet-bound, whereas I would consider myself an ecospacepunk; combining biospherics with space expansionism.

*actually the original luddites weren't anti-tech, but against cheap and shoddy products created by the new looms. They're equivalent to people (rightly) criticising cheap AI generated writing.

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I used to think that liberalism (in the sense of today’s left liberals, who stand against classical liberalism) and libertarianism could be combined. I was sad when I realized that it is not so. It is one or the other, because the supporters of both these ideological camps want to keep them separate and opposite. I guess the same can be said of the environmentalists and space expansionists. So since I must choose, I’m a radical libertarian and space expansionist.

By the way:

Once great science journal Scientific American and once great science fiction writer Charlie Stross are deep into wokedecel B U L L S H I T these days.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires-need-to-stop-trying-to-make-the-science-fiction-they-grew-up-on-real/

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Hi Giulio

Merry Christmas and Happy Solstice period to you!

You know I love and support your work, but why let others define you? If there was no synthesis of Left Liberal and Libertarian (and actually there is, under Anarchism, I’m not familiar with all the Anarchist sub-categories but you’d find it there), then just make your own!

In my case, if I’m the only biocentrist and deep ecologist on the planet who is also a radical AI Accelerationist and space expansionist on steroids, that only encourages me all the more to go even harder in pushing my own vision!

If I were to have a motto, it would be this: f**k the collective!

Wow, I was really taken aback by the, and I love that term, I’m adopting it, wokedecel of Charles Stross s opinion piece! I’ve only read some of his material but I’ve always thought of him as a really out there sort of writer. Although Scientific American seems to have gone woke some years back at least.

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Thanks for the offer of feedback and a review! Although I’m one of those encyclopaedic theory of everything writers. So I’ve got all these scattered notes and ideas which I’m still weaving together.

Alien supercivilisations. Faced with a universe that appears barren of life and civilisation beyond Earth, and having to choose between the simple explanation that what we see is how things are, and that there are invisible super-civilisations all around us, or in dark matter, or higher dimensions, but which don’t affect or influence things in any way, the former makes more sense to me (Occam's Razor).

On the other hand, Robert Monroe (out of body experience) has some fascinating things to say regarding non-physical superintelligent aliens, which does fit in with the ideas of Caleb Scharf in his essay, as well as with Gnosticism and similar ideas. So Occam’s Razor is only a useful guide when considering the material world. An integration of science and metaphysics along these lines would be a fascinating topic to explore and I hope to include it at least in some preliminary way.

But there is still the problem of why, in addition to the above, there are no visiblle supercivilisations, the ones that can build dyson spheres and exotic matter powered starships, but who are still made of baryonic matter.

True, John Smart and others have suggested that supercivilisations will go the microcosm route. But even if they do, they will still need energy and hardware to power their computation, and these can be detected through the infrared signature of the waste heat output, which for a supercivilisation would be very high.

In any case, why should these civilisations want to limit themselves? Even if they can hack the Planck Scale, why only hack the Planck Scale in a single star system?

Much as Bostrom’s idea of a longterm future made up of countless quadrillions of uploaded posthumans in every direction as far as the telescope can see makes me shudder (simply because I’m an introvert and love solitude), I can certainly imagine an expansionist supercivilisation spreading in the way he described. That’s because this is exactly how we humans have always acted, and indeed how life on Earth in general has always acted, to expand to fill all available space and resources. This also ties in with his Grabby Aliens paper (I’ve never known anyone to come up with so many different incredible ideas).

Hence, given there is no sign of alien civilisations (infrared radiation (dyson spheres), negative energy (wormholes), etc) or grabby aliens (which Bostrom says is a good thing, because grabby aliens would quickly assimilate any worlds they encounter) it seems to me more logical to assume we are the only gross material technological civilisation in the visible universe at present. Hence my deep ecology is based on the premise that it is not certain that there even are any other Phanerozoic-equivalent biospheres in this or nearby galaxies. This uniqueness adds a sense of urgency. And if and when Grabby Aliens do appear (assuming they exist, or rather would exist in the far future), we and our “mind children” will have already filled the entire visible universe with life, biospheres, and utopian worlds and civilisations and so will be able to meet them on an equal footing.

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“ having to choose between the simple explanation that what we see is how things are, and that there are invisible super-civilisations all around us, or in dark matter, or higher dimensions, but which don’t affect or influence things in any way, the former makes more sense to me (Occam's Razor).”

I think we are like the inhabitants of an island whose only known means to communicate long-distance is via smoke signals. We see no smoke signals on the horizon and conclude that there are no people outside the island. Meanwhile, we are immersed in an ocean of ekectromagnetic communications that we don’ perceive.

“deep ecology, Gaia”

Frank White has proposed the concept of Cosma, the living universe that is the equivalent of Gaia on a cosmic scale. The term doesn’t seem on its way to become popular, but others have proposed other names for the same concept. My own deep ecology is a commitment to the universe, which wants life to spread out and beyond.

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I like what Frank White says, and indeed the idea of the cosmos as alive goes back to the Stoics. I found a page where he talks about the need for a new vocabulary, https://www.vice.com/en/article/435eym/we-need-a-new-vocabulary-to-talk-about-the-human-future-in-space

As for smoke signals etc, sorry to keep going on about all this Fermi Paradox stuff, but this seems to be the one thing that really divides our respective worldviews. My position, and then I'll let it go, is this:

The defining feature of life is that it grows to fill every available niche and utilise all resources, crowding out everything else until it reaches an equilibrium point, or for that matter a boom and crash, or predator-prey boom crash cycles. That applies whether it is biological life on Earth, human civilisation, or longtermist vs e/acc futurism. So if we have a species that has starflight, there literally is no inhabited desert island. Every speck of dirt will be colonised, as we see with the world today. And even if a civilisation can expand into hyperspace or the microcosm or wherever, they will do that after, or as well as, expanding out to grab every piece of real estate in the baryonic universe. This is Bostrom's "Grabby Aliens". So regardless of what ultratech they use to communicate, neutrinos, warp bubbles, whatever, we will know about their existence because they will have already long ago colonised the solar system and we'll see their megastructures and ships and other artifacts all around us. I believe Bostrom in another paper offers the hypothesis we already have been colonised and are living in a simulation, but that makes no sense either, because why should aliens expend so much calculating power (perhaps to their equivalent of render farms) simulating the lives of some minor extraterrestrial species from a provincial planet they long ago colonised and industrialised?

Anyway, all this will also go in my book, of which I'll be happy for you to review (and criticise)

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Last weekend, Torres along with myself, Natasha, and Alexander Thomas discussed transhumanism and related ideas including effective accelerationism. It would be good if you could add a link to that discussion once it's edited and online.

It's true that I was able to agree with Torres on that one point -- that Verdon is incorrect in his view on transhumanism and the body/uploading. I have several essays on my own blog about the relationship between transhumanism and the physical world/embodiment/the senses.

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Hi Max! I have seen a post by Torres on X that mentioned that discussion, and I have searched for it, but I guess it is not online yet. I’ll write more about these things and include it.

But the discussion that we really want to hear is one between you and Verdon. I’m sure Extropy and e/acc would be easy to harmonize.

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That's right, it's not online yet. Probably in the next few days.

I would enjoy having a discussion with Verdon. I think it's time to reassert the Extropian view of transhumanism.

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So do I. How about getting this discussion organized? Can I help?

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