Yeah, it’s upsetting how much I’ve ended up thinking back to the crap arms race for how casual a plot detail it is, and how much more apt that descriptor is for LLMs than most other sci-fi conceptualizations of AI.

At this point, especially with Fall, I think he just has a tendency to pick up and run with whatever cool idea techbros are into at the moment without any real regard for how seriously people take it as a belief, resulting in a bunch of conveniently packaged, reader-gratifying ideological vignettes for said techbros to latch onto as a coherent vision and complete the cycle. I don’t think he ever meant to genuinely promote the metaverse or digital money laundering or acausal brain hell or space eugenics, but he seems chronically incapable of mounting a systemic critique of any of his subjects in a style that demands a good guy crypto billionaire, likably clueless cultist, or badass geneticist to outsmart the Islamic terrorists, alien special forces, and conniving cosmonauts and save the day.

I do still find it somewhat concerning how many of his plots come down to “80% of everyone are mindless sheeple enthralled by a higher power,” though.

I continue to be endlessly fascinated by Anathem, by virtue of enjoying it as a kid for the wacky speculative metaphysics, enjoying it as an adult for the case study it presents in how Neal Stephenson can get you nodding along to a set of faux-lectures strung together by road tripping until he gets you to an obviously false conclusion, and now the fact that The Wick is apparently what rationalists actually believe in, just substituting simulations and reality-hacking for quantum woo and nukes? The Incanter Basilisk can entrap your consciousness by manipulating which timelines your brain is quantum-entangled with coexisting copies of your psyche exist in the multimetaverse and selecting among them to give you quantum immortality 51% attack you into the Matrix, I guess.

It’s the difference between “shooting and crying” and “shooting and laughing.” there’s no shame anymore, 0 back pressure against the worst possible depravity, no reason to waste money on PR anymore that could be spent on more bombs, because what’s anyone going to do about it?

Well, obviously?

Easy honestly, you just have to put some effort into your appearance and be ok with that attention coming from weird 60 year old men, just like anyone else.

You would not believe it, I just met the protagonist of sex the other day. Every time a woman mentions being interested in sex in any way, they secretly mean sex with him. I met another one the day before that, too. Actually it’s wild how many random guys on telegram, discord, forum direct messages, and literally any other means of internet communication are all the protagonist of sex.

The maize isn’t high-fructose; corn syrup is entirely an industrial product, made by chemically digesting corn starch. If the yield numbers worked out differently, we could all be eating high fructose wheat syrup or potato syrup, but maize happened to fit into our extractive systems the best, a sad fate for a beautiful grain.

So, snake oil but for text.

Sure, or go see a psychiatrist and tell them you’re suicidal, or go dig up whatever other excuse you can find to go teach at some rural middle school instead of greasing the wheels of the murder machine. They have more than enough rabid racists to fill the front lines already; every waffling centrist opposition voter begrudgingly driving supply trucks is still doing exactly the job the fascist government wants them to.