1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:20,440 KMO Show Episode Number 29, Sunday, February 23rd, 2025. 2 00:00:20,440 --> 00:00:22,460 Hey everybody, KMO here. 3 00:00:22,460 --> 00:00:25,720 And in this episode of the podcast, I'm going to share the first part of a conversation 4 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:30,860 I recorded just today with Kopernikon, somebody I know from Substack. 5 00:00:30,860 --> 00:00:35,080 This was our first conversation, so I shouldn't really say I know him all that well. 6 00:00:35,080 --> 00:00:39,520 I don't know where he is in the world other than he is in the Mountain Time Zone. 7 00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:43,080 And I also know that his Substack bio reads as follows. 8 00:00:43,080 --> 00:00:48,680 A happy little concerned citizen and humble meme farmer who is quite tired of the BS present 9 00:00:48,680 --> 00:00:53,960 in modern politics and the intentional violence and evil committed by the progressive left. 10 00:00:53,960 --> 00:00:58,080 I have an MS in anthropology. 11 00:00:58,080 --> 00:01:04,280 And I will just say that I was struggling with Skype when it was time to start with 12 00:01:04,280 --> 00:01:05,280 the interview. 13 00:01:05,280 --> 00:01:09,640 I did not get my input set correctly, so even though I was speaking into a nice microphone, 14 00:01:09,640 --> 00:01:15,140 well not that nice, it's a black snowball, but it's better than the one that actually 15 00:01:15,140 --> 00:01:16,140 did the recording. 16 00:01:16,140 --> 00:01:21,760 It sounds for all the world as if it was the built-in mic in my laptop that picked up my 17 00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:22,760 voice. 18 00:01:22,760 --> 00:01:24,080 Sorry about that. 19 00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:27,920 But the conversation was supposed to be about science fiction, and we do return to science 20 00:01:27,920 --> 00:01:29,240 fiction from time to time. 21 00:01:29,240 --> 00:01:33,880 But here's my conversation with Kopernikon. 22 00:01:33,880 --> 00:01:35,360 You're listening to the KMO show. 23 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:40,600 I'm your host, KMO, and I am joined by Kopernikon, somebody who, like most of my guests these 24 00:01:40,600 --> 00:01:42,400 days, I know through Substack. 25 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:44,320 Kopernikon, good to talk to you. 26 00:01:44,320 --> 00:01:45,320 Good to meet you. 27 00:01:45,320 --> 00:01:49,480 It's been great getting to chat with you ahead of the show, and I'm happy to get started. 28 00:01:49,480 --> 00:01:56,320 Well, my Substack is all about science fiction and futurism, and you contacted me after I 29 00:01:56,320 --> 00:02:01,200 had posted a comment on one of your posts having to do with cyberpunk. 30 00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:07,000 So I wonder if you'd be interested in recounting briefly the point of that post. 31 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:13,200 Well, so initially I responded, I remember I was walking around the house reading your 32 00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:19,960 response because I thought it was brilliant, because you actually understood the details 33 00:02:19,960 --> 00:02:23,600 of some of the things that were said in that post, and a lot of people just sort of blazed 34 00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:25,000 past it. 35 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:31,040 The exact bit is the post itself was a discussion about, in my opinion, the cyberpunk genre 36 00:02:31,040 --> 00:02:33,400 is mostly dead at this point. 37 00:02:33,400 --> 00:02:39,200 And it's dead because the future it described is a future past in the same way as 1950s 38 00:02:39,200 --> 00:02:40,200 futurism is. 39 00:02:40,200 --> 00:02:46,240 So the specific subparticle of that post that you responded to was a discussion about how 40 00:02:46,240 --> 00:02:49,240 neon lights have been replaced by LEDs. 41 00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:54,640 And while that's a minor aesthetic change in the context of something like a film or 42 00:02:54,640 --> 00:03:00,040 a television show in a societal sense, that's very significant because neon lights are much 43 00:03:00,040 --> 00:03:04,880 more expensive than LEDs, so you have much more limited lighting, so you have much reduced 44 00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:05,920 surveillance. 45 00:03:05,920 --> 00:03:09,080 So that means that you can have people sliding underground. 46 00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:13,140 You can have people moving around the edges of society in a very real and physical sense 47 00:03:13,140 --> 00:03:18,000 that can't exist in the modern world because everything is classified and everything is 48 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:19,000 surveilled. 49 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:23,900 And we have bizarre forms of pseudo social credit systems in the West and actual social 50 00:03:23,900 --> 00:03:30,600 credit systems in the East that ensure that everybody has to play by the same rules as 51 00:03:30,600 --> 00:03:35,080 those who lead and those who lead make the rules, of course. 52 00:03:35,080 --> 00:03:40,280 I also brought in the notion of Jevons paradox. 53 00:03:40,280 --> 00:03:46,040 For many, many years, my podcast was almost entirely devoted to the notion of a fast collapse 54 00:03:46,040 --> 00:03:53,880 of industrial society because of peak oil or some other bottleneck in the complex support 55 00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:56,920 system that industrial civilization requires. 56 00:03:56,920 --> 00:04:04,040 I have renounced all Doomer participation in Doomer narratives since then, but there's 57 00:04:04,040 --> 00:04:09,400 a lot of tropes that come with that that stick with me that are useful from time to time. 58 00:04:09,400 --> 00:04:14,360 And one of those is Jevons paradox, which is the idea that if we invent a way to do 59 00:04:14,360 --> 00:04:18,920 something that we were doing before but more efficiently rather than banking the savings, 60 00:04:18,920 --> 00:04:20,320 we just do more of it. 61 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:24,840 Yes, that's definitely something that we've observed through the beginning of the 21st 62 00:04:24,840 --> 00:04:26,960 century, especially when it comes to things like information. 63 00:04:26,960 --> 00:04:32,420 I mean, AI can now pump out a tremendous amount of information, and we're not using this new 64 00:04:32,420 --> 00:04:35,680 ability to make gains. 65 00:04:35,680 --> 00:04:42,080 We're using it to just increase the velocity at which bad information can be created. 66 00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:43,080 That is true. 67 00:04:43,080 --> 00:04:50,240 In the case of the neon lights and the LEDs, though, LEDs, they use less electricity. 68 00:04:50,240 --> 00:04:53,640 They're more expensive to manufacture, but they last longer. 69 00:04:53,640 --> 00:04:59,360 So over time, your amortized cost for the LED is lower than for the neon lights. 70 00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:05,920 And neon is just one noble gas among many that gets used in what we call neon lighting. 71 00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:13,120 But we could just replace the neon lights with LEDs and call it a day, but we don't. 72 00:05:13,120 --> 00:05:14,400 We do more and more. 73 00:05:14,400 --> 00:05:19,560 And that is the application of Jevons paradox in this instance. 74 00:05:19,560 --> 00:05:27,120 I mentioned my my peak oil doomer days because scrolling through your your substack feed, 75 00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:31,680 you are reading a lot of the same books that I read like a decade and a half ago and in 76 00:05:31,680 --> 00:05:35,160 many instances, you know, interviewed the authors. 77 00:05:35,160 --> 00:05:41,840 And in one instance, which is a pretty significant one, given how you've talked about it, longtime 78 00:05:41,840 --> 00:05:46,000 listeners to my podcasting efforts will certainly know the name John Michael Greer. 79 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:51,680 I have interviewed him a dozen or more times over the years and met him in person many 80 00:05:51,680 --> 00:05:55,920 times participated in the same events, things like that. 81 00:05:55,920 --> 00:06:00,280 We largely disagree about the the trajectory of industrial civilization these days. 82 00:06:00,280 --> 00:06:08,360 But he has full, full respect for me for his work ethic and his creativity and his intelligence. 83 00:06:08,360 --> 00:06:14,440 But the book of his that you speak very highly of is the Eco Eco Technic Future. 84 00:06:14,440 --> 00:06:20,160 So I would encourage you to praise that book in whatever way you know it is meaningful 85 00:06:20,160 --> 00:06:21,160 to you. 86 00:06:21,160 --> 00:06:26,920 Well, so I more or less have spent a little bit of time looking for that book is a good 87 00:06:26,920 --> 00:06:27,920 way to describe it. 88 00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:30,680 I read RKU Futurism. 89 00:06:30,680 --> 00:06:33,800 I thought that was kind of a mess and didn't really enjoy it. 90 00:06:33,800 --> 00:06:39,240 But it was why it's been widely discussed and widely spread that specific book. 91 00:06:39,240 --> 00:06:46,720 I read Breaking Together, which is another book that discusses sort of peak oil limits 92 00:06:46,720 --> 00:06:47,800 to growth, that kind of thing. 93 00:06:47,800 --> 00:06:52,760 And I also read the Limits to Growth, which recently had a new publication in 2022. 94 00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:57,640 The Limits to Growth always seemed overly alarmist and every version that I've seen 95 00:06:57,640 --> 00:07:00,000 of it, they're overly alarmist. 96 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,920 And that's in comparison to somebody who does think that we're going to undergo major, major 97 00:07:03,920 --> 00:07:06,960 restructuring due to resource shortages. 98 00:07:06,960 --> 00:07:11,520 RKU Futurism is a kind of a vanity project. 99 00:07:11,520 --> 00:07:22,720 But Ecotechnic Future, I think, is the only book that provides a social and technical 100 00:07:22,720 --> 00:07:29,280 and pseudo-industrial framework for looking at the way human societies are likely to develop 101 00:07:29,280 --> 00:07:34,960 as they transition from universal resource abundance, which is to say that per person 102 00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:39,680 the amount of energy and the amount of raw resources is very high to a post resource 103 00:07:39,680 --> 00:07:46,160 abundance period, where the amount of energy and the amount of resources per person is 104 00:07:46,160 --> 00:07:47,560 dramatically reduced. 105 00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:54,800 And partially that will be just because there's limits to energy production and there's a 106 00:07:54,800 --> 00:07:56,880 lot of people and a lot of industry using it. 107 00:07:56,880 --> 00:08:03,360 And partially it will be because the quality of our ore has gone down dramatically since 108 00:08:03,360 --> 00:08:07,880 we were first building civilization in the 1800s. 109 00:08:07,880 --> 00:08:13,080 You used to be able to walk up to, there were places you could go in the world where you 110 00:08:13,080 --> 00:08:19,580 could find like copper ore, for example, that was two parts rock and one part copper. 111 00:08:19,580 --> 00:08:24,480 And now it's 199 point parts rock and one part copper. 112 00:08:24,480 --> 00:08:27,520 And that is the standard for good ore. 113 00:08:27,520 --> 00:08:32,560 And while we are going to move toward recycling, most of our industry, most of our civilization 114 00:08:32,560 --> 00:08:34,360 is tooled for immediate development. 115 00:08:34,360 --> 00:08:42,000 So Eco-Technic Future provides an excellent framework for looking at the ways in which 116 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:48,120 human societies essentially are going to be forced to change in a broader sense without 117 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:54,800 to a degree, there's a little bit of more doom or oriented collapse, collapse, I don't 118 00:08:54,800 --> 00:08:58,120 want to say theology, collapse messaging. 119 00:08:58,120 --> 00:08:59,120 There we go. 120 00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:02,400 More doom or oriented collapse messaging in the book, but that's not really what it's 121 00:09:02,400 --> 00:09:09,240 about and it is not, in my opinion, integral to the value of the text because the value 122 00:09:09,240 --> 00:09:15,280 of the text is establishing a framework for examining these major social and industrial 123 00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:18,200 transitions that we're likely to see one way or the other. 124 00:09:18,200 --> 00:09:21,200 I like the idea of going out into space and mining asteroids. 125 00:09:21,200 --> 00:09:22,880 Don't think I've discounted that. 126 00:09:22,880 --> 00:09:27,480 A lot of people say, well, we can get more minerals from here or there or whatever. 127 00:09:27,480 --> 00:09:33,040 But I think that there's a lot of people that are good at science fiction and a lot of people 128 00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:39,160 that are good at producing high technology and who understand high technology extremely 129 00:09:39,160 --> 00:09:46,480 well, but they don't understand mining or metallurgy or a lot of the processes that 130 00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:52,200 we currently use in order to extract gold were invented in the 1600s and they're still 131 00:09:52,200 --> 00:09:53,200 used. 132 00:09:53,200 --> 00:10:01,240 And it's because mining and metallurgy is not the same as the production of high technology. 133 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:08,520 So I think that there's sort of an information imbalance to a degree in a lot of the futurists 134 00:10:08,520 --> 00:10:12,240 because they don't have as much experience looking at where the resources are coming 135 00:10:12,240 --> 00:10:14,460 from in comparison to where the resources are going to. 136 00:10:14,460 --> 00:10:20,200 So that's my plug for why I don't think that we're going to go on a gigantic stellar adventure 137 00:10:20,200 --> 00:10:21,200 soon. 138 00:10:21,200 --> 00:10:25,840 I find it likely it's going to happen, but I don't think it'll happen soon. 139 00:10:25,840 --> 00:10:28,520 I hope it will. 140 00:10:28,520 --> 00:10:35,140 But the structure of ecotechnical future provides an excellent structure and an excellent way 141 00:10:35,140 --> 00:10:40,920 to examine these ideas in a context that it doesn't really approve or disapprove of them. 142 00:10:40,920 --> 00:10:44,000 It simply states this is the patterns that we've seen through history. 143 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:46,680 This is the patterns we're likely to see in the future. 144 00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:52,520 And assuming current trends are roughly, roughly predictive of future trends, this is probably 145 00:10:52,520 --> 00:10:57,580 what we're going to observe as the resource crunch starts to become severe on various 146 00:10:57,580 --> 00:11:01,080 civilizations in the world. 147 00:11:01,080 --> 00:11:04,520 Is Ecotechnic Future the only book by John Michael Greer that you've read? 148 00:11:04,520 --> 00:11:06,240 Yes, so far it is. 149 00:11:06,240 --> 00:11:07,960 Do you follow his blog? 150 00:11:07,960 --> 00:11:10,720 I don't, but maybe I should. 151 00:11:10,720 --> 00:11:14,800 Well I don't know if he's still keeping up this level of productivity, but for a time 152 00:11:14,800 --> 00:11:17,800 he was putting out two and three books a year. 153 00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:22,400 And his blog at the time was called the Archdruid Report because he really was the archdruid 154 00:11:22,400 --> 00:11:27,240 of one of the major North American druidic organizations. 155 00:11:27,240 --> 00:11:32,960 And he has since rebranded his blog, it's now called the EcoSophia. 156 00:11:32,960 --> 00:11:35,080 But he's written a lot of books. 157 00:11:35,080 --> 00:11:42,880 And I read the Ecotechnic Future. 158 00:11:42,880 --> 00:11:43,880 And there it is, EcoSophia. 159 00:11:43,880 --> 00:11:46,560 All right, go ahead. 160 00:11:46,560 --> 00:11:52,120 He has written a lot of books and I read all of them for a time. 161 00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:54,880 I'm not keeping up with his output anymore. 162 00:11:54,880 --> 00:11:57,360 But two things I want to say about the Ecotechnic Future. 163 00:11:57,360 --> 00:12:03,200 First is that it's nonfiction, but he wrote a novel which basically illustrates what he's 164 00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:04,200 talking about. 165 00:12:04,200 --> 00:12:06,080 It's called Stars Reach. 166 00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:08,760 And you could classify it as a science fiction novel. 167 00:12:08,760 --> 00:12:12,600 There's not much advanced technology in it, but it is a speculative tale about the future. 168 00:12:12,600 --> 00:12:16,960 So from my perspective, it does count as science fiction. 169 00:12:16,960 --> 00:12:20,480 The other thing that I want to say about it, other than that I don't remember the details 170 00:12:20,480 --> 00:12:24,240 all that well because I did read it a long time ago, but I know John Michael Greer's 171 00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:28,880 thoughts on these matters just from conversation with him and reading his blog and things like 172 00:12:28,880 --> 00:12:30,760 that. 173 00:12:30,760 --> 00:12:36,440 He predicts that the first book of his that I ever read was called Apocalypse Knot. 174 00:12:36,440 --> 00:12:43,240 And while he does respect the limits to growth and peak oil narratives, he also has been 175 00:12:43,240 --> 00:12:48,520 critical as long as I've known him of the fast collapse scenario, which he finds to 176 00:12:48,520 --> 00:12:53,480 be I think alarmist and sensational. 177 00:12:53,480 --> 00:12:58,280 And he says, no, the collapse of this civilization is going to take a couple of centuries and 178 00:12:58,280 --> 00:12:59,960 it's going to be a stair step. 179 00:12:59,960 --> 00:13:07,320 He calls it a catabolic collapse where there will be a crisis and a discontinuity and then 180 00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:08,760 we'll get things back together. 181 00:13:08,760 --> 00:13:12,720 We'll tighten it up and it'll seem for the optimists, they'll be able to make a case 182 00:13:12,720 --> 00:13:17,440 for the fact or for the idea that we're back on an upward trajectory. 183 00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:22,600 But really, it's just a stabilizing period before the next step, the next fall down the 184 00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:24,440 staircase. 185 00:13:24,440 --> 00:13:27,000 And he says that's going to take a couple of centuries. 186 00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:35,040 And in the process, we're going to move from faltering growth based high energy throughput 187 00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:40,800 modality that we're in now into a sort of reclamation or scavenger phase where we're 188 00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:46,080 basically just tearing down the remnants of the old in order to repurpose the materials 189 00:13:46,080 --> 00:13:50,520 and to keep going at a low lower energy throughput level. 190 00:13:50,520 --> 00:13:54,480 And eventually we'll get to what he calls the ecotechnic future, where we're much more 191 00:13:54,480 --> 00:14:01,440 integrated with the cycles of the ecosystem. 192 00:14:01,440 --> 00:14:06,680 And in Star's Reach, they're sort of at that transition between those next two stages. 193 00:14:06,680 --> 00:14:09,000 And you've read the book much more recently than I have. 194 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:11,080 So if I've misrepresented it, please let me know. 195 00:14:11,080 --> 00:14:13,560 No, I think you've represented it pretty accurately. 196 00:14:13,560 --> 00:14:18,520 I think that his big breakthrough, in my opinion, in ecotechnic future that allows for this 197 00:14:18,520 --> 00:14:25,160 framing is the recognition of human civilization as another form of ecology. 198 00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:29,160 With the anticipation that it adheres to more or less the same rules as other ecological 199 00:14:29,160 --> 00:14:30,160 systems. 200 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:34,240 I think that's the big breakthrough that he made in that book. 201 00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:40,600 And that's what I'm most interested in terms of structure and point. 202 00:14:40,600 --> 00:14:46,480 And that makes sense for him to write through the next sort of the one after next, the transition 203 00:14:46,480 --> 00:14:47,660 after next. 204 00:14:47,660 --> 00:14:55,040 In terms of a stepping, a stepping, that's more or less what I read in the book is that 205 00:14:55,040 --> 00:14:58,120 you're going to have different levels of catastrophe over time. 206 00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:00,880 I'm not fully on board with that. 207 00:15:00,880 --> 00:15:02,720 There's another book I've read. 208 00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:06,680 Have you heard of The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tater? 209 00:15:06,680 --> 00:15:07,680 Oh, yeah. 210 00:15:07,680 --> 00:15:10,840 Yeah, I read Tater and I've listened to many interviews with him. 211 00:15:10,840 --> 00:15:15,600 As far as I remember, I've never talked to him, but I'm definitely well versed in his, 212 00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:16,600 you know, 213 00:15:16,600 --> 00:15:25,040 I think his work is a more accurate rendition of what social collapse looks like. 214 00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:29,560 And that is frequently referred to as apocalyptic civilization collapse because the kinds of 215 00:15:29,560 --> 00:15:34,040 historians who look into it are the kinds who get paid by a bloated civilization and 216 00:15:34,040 --> 00:15:39,000 not the kinds and not farmers or mechanics who are working on the sidelines during the 217 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:45,160 collapse because they take generality and increase in quality of life. 218 00:15:45,160 --> 00:15:47,680 I think the first thing I'd point to is the limits of growth. 219 00:15:47,680 --> 00:15:52,280 The limits of growth model made a number of assumptions that don't seem to be accurate 220 00:15:52,280 --> 00:15:53,280 in the long term. 221 00:15:53,280 --> 00:15:55,920 And I was going through this because since the limits of growth was published, we now 222 00:15:55,920 --> 00:16:01,640 have a half century of data, which is why I think it was overly alarmist to begin with. 223 00:16:01,640 --> 00:16:07,040 But the half century of data that we're looking at implies to me that we're more likely to 224 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:11,480 see there's various models that they use. 225 00:16:11,480 --> 00:16:18,320 We're likely to see a stable population stabilization after a population collapse. 226 00:16:18,320 --> 00:16:21,960 And the population collapse is currently happening is the demographic collapse everybody's talking 227 00:16:21,960 --> 00:16:23,520 about right now. 228 00:16:23,520 --> 00:16:29,200 But it seems very likely to me that we're going to stabilize around four billion people. 229 00:16:29,200 --> 00:16:31,080 Industrial output is probably going to remain the same. 230 00:16:31,080 --> 00:16:37,520 And we're actually going to see a higher quality of life on the other side of this cultural 231 00:16:37,520 --> 00:16:41,720 chasm that we're sort of looking at right now. 232 00:16:41,720 --> 00:16:43,680 But it's going to be very different. 233 00:16:43,680 --> 00:16:47,840 The ecology of humanity and the way that human civilizations relate to the world will be 234 00:16:47,840 --> 00:16:53,840 very different on the other side than they are now, both in terms of industrial and technical 235 00:16:53,840 --> 00:16:54,840 capability. 236 00:16:54,840 --> 00:16:58,720 I'd imagine we'll keep most of our technical knowledge through all of this. 237 00:16:58,720 --> 00:17:04,440 But in terms of average quality of life and average resources consumed, it seems very, 238 00:17:04,440 --> 00:17:12,600 very likely that we're going to shift into a almost an aristocratic culture, an aristocratic 239 00:17:12,600 --> 00:17:18,880 type of civilization where you have those who can afford the factory produced goods 240 00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:22,480 because they will be very expensive because shipping will be expensive and there won't 241 00:17:22,480 --> 00:17:23,720 be a huge demand for them. 242 00:17:23,720 --> 00:17:26,320 So they'll be partially artisanal. 243 00:17:26,320 --> 00:17:30,880 And then those that mostly consume that which is produced in their own communities. 244 00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:36,960 So I'd imagine something like, you know, that's a good way to describe it. 245 00:17:36,960 --> 00:17:45,840 1700 centuries, 1700 peasants with cell phones and internal plumbing kind of situation. 246 00:17:45,840 --> 00:17:48,280 You mentioned aristocracy. 247 00:17:48,280 --> 00:17:54,120 Aristocracy is a word that I've been thinking a lot about just because of the fiction that 248 00:17:54,120 --> 00:17:55,120 I'm writing. 249 00:17:55,120 --> 00:17:58,560 There's an aristocratic class in the setting. 250 00:17:58,560 --> 00:18:03,280 And the word aristocracy, it means rule by the best. 251 00:18:03,280 --> 00:18:10,440 We live in a democratic society and we tend to favor and see, you know, democratic norms 252 00:18:10,440 --> 00:18:17,920 as being genuinely good and like objectively preferable to oligarchy or plutocracy or, 253 00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:20,360 you know, monarchy or particularly aristocracy. 254 00:18:20,360 --> 00:18:26,480 The whole notion of aristocracy seems offensive to us, you know, in a democratic context. 255 00:18:26,480 --> 00:18:31,960 And yet, you know, we also talk about elites and they do tend to be, you know, better educated 256 00:18:31,960 --> 00:18:36,040 and more financially successful. 257 00:18:36,040 --> 00:18:40,160 And you know, you could say that their gains weren't they didn't come upon their gains 258 00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:43,680 fairly, but you know, what's fair. 259 00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:52,200 So I just wanted to put in a word of support for the notion of aristocracy, quay, rule 260 00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:55,480 by people who are more accomplished. 261 00:18:55,480 --> 00:19:00,040 So I actually I'm not sure how far through my sub stack you got, but last summer I published 262 00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:02,160 an article. 263 00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:09,800 I believe it was called The Return of Kings, a Reasoned Argument for Monarchy. 264 00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:15,080 And my current political beliefs is actually I am a monarchist for a couple of complex 265 00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:17,400 reasons, a reasoned case for monarchy, return of kings. 266 00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:20,200 That's the name of the article. 267 00:19:20,200 --> 00:19:27,040 And aristocracy, so there's negative things you can say about aristocracy, especially 268 00:19:27,040 --> 00:19:29,060 when they abuse their power. 269 00:19:29,060 --> 00:19:38,680 We currently have a pseudo aristocratic system globally and in the West, especially because 270 00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:44,840 the elites currently have like the Bezos types and the ones you don't know about have power 271 00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:48,480 on par with most major governments as individuals. 272 00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:53,640 They don't exercise power in the same way, but they have the power. 273 00:19:53,640 --> 00:20:00,960 But with a with a monarchy, I find it likely that under most forms of a structured monarchy, 274 00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:03,900 so my recommendation in this case, and this is one of the articles that I'm working on 275 00:20:03,900 --> 00:20:11,600 right now, is how to actually set up a monarchy is with a monarchy, you know that the kids 276 00:20:11,600 --> 00:20:15,120 of the king are going to be the next king. 277 00:20:15,120 --> 00:20:19,400 And that's really helpful because you can aim their education that way. 278 00:20:19,400 --> 00:20:25,200 One of the big problems we have with our current elites is that they're terrible leaders in 279 00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:26,200 the West. 280 00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:29,800 Our elites are awful leaders and that's because they were trained to be lawyers, bankers, 281 00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:30,800 and businessmen. 282 00:20:30,800 --> 00:20:34,560 They were never trained to be statesmen. 283 00:20:34,560 --> 00:20:38,880 They've probably read Plato here and there, but they were never trained on the works of 284 00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:43,640 Napoleon, they were never trained on a lot of these historical works that good leaders 285 00:20:43,640 --> 00:20:45,120 should be trained on. 286 00:20:45,120 --> 00:20:53,560 So one of the big issues right now in the West is that leadership is the class of scoundrels, 287 00:20:53,560 --> 00:20:57,280 thieves, and lawyers. 288 00:20:57,280 --> 00:21:02,000 Whereas under a monarchy, you can get bad kings, absolutely. 289 00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:06,440 But at least you know the kids going to be the next king or one of the king's kids is 290 00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:07,920 going to be the next king. 291 00:21:07,920 --> 00:21:14,720 And so you can train them for that job instead of training them for whatever the school system 292 00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:17,520 pumps out. 293 00:21:17,520 --> 00:21:25,040 Another advantage of aristocracy or monarchy in this case, monarchy with the nobility specifically, 294 00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:32,960 is that the monarchy can give up the spiritual consensus that we kind of have now in the 295 00:21:32,960 --> 00:21:35,520 West of democratic governance. 296 00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:42,600 And in being able to do that, you can remove the idea of egalitarianism under the law, 297 00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:43,600 because it's the king's law. 298 00:21:43,600 --> 00:21:45,200 If you're in a kingdom, it's the king's law. 299 00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:51,360 Like if you're in Vietnam, you don't insult the royal family or you will get arrested. 300 00:21:51,360 --> 00:21:58,000 But because it's the king's law, or because it's the council, if you live in one of the 301 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:06,480 cities, then what that means is they don't have to create this bureaucratic apparatus 302 00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:10,240 in order to micromanage people to give the impression that everyone's treated equally 303 00:22:10,240 --> 00:22:14,400 because that's mostly what the bureaucratic apparatus does. 304 00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:18,800 Instead you can have the count say that building's about to fall down, it's in my city, fix it 305 00:22:18,800 --> 00:22:20,680 or I'm taking your hat. 306 00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:21,760 Simple as that. 307 00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:26,840 It's not some faceless bureaucratic drone who's going to give you fines and maybe they'll 308 00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:29,440 check up on you in six months or a year. 309 00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:33,280 It's the guy right there who can put his foot down and make a judgment. 310 00:22:33,280 --> 00:22:37,800 And I think a lot of people would rather respond to the type of leadership where you can actually 311 00:22:37,800 --> 00:22:43,120 speak to the leader who's telling you that you've messed up rather than the type of leadership 312 00:22:43,120 --> 00:22:49,160 that's attempting to get you to have an argument with a stack of city, county and corporate 313 00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:53,160 policies. 314 00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:57,720 It just reminded me of something that John Michael Greer has talked about as well in 315 00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:05,080 terms of the shape of society as we go to a lower energy throughput status and that 316 00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:07,440 is a return of feudalism. 317 00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:14,160 But he defines feudalism as rule by personal relationships, which is to say the feudal 318 00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:16,400 lord knows his serfs. 319 00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:19,800 They are not some faceless mass off in the distance. 320 00:23:19,800 --> 00:23:26,200 They're certainly not some geographically distributed demographic that he's only in 321 00:23:26,200 --> 00:23:30,000 touch with through administrative systems. 322 00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:35,040 You go to the lord of the manor and you pledge your service to him. 323 00:23:35,040 --> 00:23:39,320 And when the king calls upon him to produce soldiers, he knows the names of the people 324 00:23:39,320 --> 00:23:42,200 that he's going to send into the king's army. 325 00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:47,640 So John Michael Greer talks about as larger administrative systems that are dependent 326 00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,840 on electricity and computers and that sort of thing as they falter. 327 00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:57,120 We are going to have not necessarily a transition back to something which is definitely recognizable 328 00:23:57,120 --> 00:24:01,360 from some previous historical period, but something which is definitely much more premised 329 00:24:01,360 --> 00:24:06,800 on personal relationships between the lords and the vassals. 330 00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:08,360 I find that to be very likely. 331 00:24:08,360 --> 00:24:12,760 I mean, we're already kind of seeing a push for it in really weird ways. 332 00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:18,200 My monarchy article got a tremendous amount of traction, surprisingly enough, when I first 333 00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:20,880 published it in comparison to what I usually get. 334 00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:27,280 And you're seeing a lot more people attempt to develop personal relationships in their 335 00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,840 communities in non-conventional ways. 336 00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:36,320 I would define conventional as between 1900 and 1980. 337 00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:39,240 Between 1900 and 1980, you've got the people in your community. 338 00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:46,280 You've got your mayor and you have these little book clubs and you have your exchange club 339 00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:47,320 and whatnot. 340 00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:53,960 But the way people are forming relationships now are almost best described as microcultures. 341 00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:55,780 They're forming microcultures online. 342 00:24:55,780 --> 00:25:01,760 Young men are forming a lot of different microcultures online, each with its own internal conceptualization 343 00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:04,520 of reality. 344 00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:11,800 And if any of those small communities becomes the dominant community in a place, so if it 345 00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:18,840 localizes from online to a physical location, example is they all move into the same. 346 00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:24,320 You get a Discord server of say 500 or 600 people that are all basically on the same 347 00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:29,160 page and decide to move to the same town of 10,000 people or 20,000 people. 348 00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:32,880 All of a sudden, they're going to become an extremely dominant force because they will 349 00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:41,200 be able to flex a degree of cultural and social control that no one else can do. 350 00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:42,280 And so I agree with you. 351 00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:48,980 I think we're going to see a transition from a system of faceless administration to a more 352 00:25:48,980 --> 00:25:52,280 personal system one way or another. 353 00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:57,160 Although I do think that, so the question was whether this was going to happen soon 354 00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,280 or in several hundred years. 355 00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:06,520 And I think that a year ago, I would have said it's probably going to happen soon. 356 00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:13,620 So within the next 30 to 60 years, with the current administration and the recent election, 357 00:26:13,620 --> 00:26:17,760 it seems more likely to me that we're looking at maybe 200 years out before we transition 358 00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:19,300 into those systems. 359 00:26:19,300 --> 00:26:24,160 The reason being that the US more or less had the options of going through and still 360 00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:28,840 has the options of going through either a Balkanization or an imperial transition. 361 00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:31,600 It looks like they're aiming for an imperial transition. 362 00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:34,840 So from Republic to Empire. 363 00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:39,200 So Warhammer 40K is more predictive than half of science fiction out there. 364 00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:42,480 I love the Warhammer lore. 365 00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:45,640 I'm actually listening to a Caiaphas Kane novel right now. 366 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:46,640 Excellent. 367 00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:47,640 Okay. 368 00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,880 Hey, I'm going to go and refill my coffee. 369 00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:56,240 While I do that, let me encourage you to Google, I think it's Pine Bluff, Arkansas. 370 00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:01,440 I think there's a guy with a lot of money who's buying up lots of property in Pine Bluff. 371 00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:09,040 And basically, you know, it's a town in serious economic decline, with lots of abandoned buildings 372 00:27:09,040 --> 00:27:13,360 and lots of sort of derelict properties, and he's just buying them up. 373 00:27:13,360 --> 00:27:18,580 You know, I don't know exactly what his plan is, but he's going to be the Duke of that, 374 00:27:18,580 --> 00:27:21,400 you know, of that little feudal plot. 375 00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:24,760 There's a few wealthy people that are doing that around the country. 376 00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:26,720 I'm going to look up Pine Bluff specifically, though. 377 00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:27,720 Thank you. 378 00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:38,520 So it is very tempting to focus on current events and the Trump-Vance-Mask administration 379 00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,400 and historical resistance to it. 380 00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:43,440 But I do want to get back to science fiction. 381 00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:44,440 Absolutely. 382 00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:45,440 Yeah. 383 00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:53,720 You talked about the fact that basically the timeframe that cyberpunk was describing is, 384 00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:57,400 if not entirely past, I mean, we've lived through enough of it that it's clearly not 385 00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:58,400 going. 386 00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:00,360 It doesn't look like Neuromancer. 387 00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:01,360 It doesn't look like Blade Runner. 388 00:28:01,360 --> 00:28:07,000 You know, the original Blade Runner takes place, the movie takes place in 2019, which 389 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:08,900 is past. 390 00:28:08,900 --> 00:28:14,240 What I love about Blade Runner 2049 is that it says, nope, that's how it went. 391 00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:15,920 That's what things were like in 2019. 392 00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:17,960 We're just, you know, we're sticking with it. 393 00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:18,960 We're not retconning. 394 00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:19,960 We're not apologizing. 395 00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,080 We're just going to continue the story in that universe. 396 00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:31,760 You know, if you don't gravitate to cyberpunk, what's your science fiction subgenre of choice? 397 00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:37,740 So I enjoyed cyberpunk as much as the next guy back in the 90s when I was a kid. 398 00:28:37,740 --> 00:28:42,680 But it does seem to be somewhat, for lack of better phrasing, outdated in the same way 399 00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:48,800 that 40s, 30s serials are outdated because you're right, history took a different turn. 400 00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:53,680 40s took a different turn and somehow things are worse because it has a big fake corporate 401 00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:54,840 smile plastered on it. 402 00:28:54,840 --> 00:29:00,920 So the subgenres of science fiction that I really am interested into, I, so I like science 403 00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:06,480 fiction in principle because it allows you to discuss ideas that you can't discuss in 404 00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:10,520 other genres or that are difficult to discuss in other genres. 405 00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:15,600 Science fiction is really good at opening people, opening your eyes to, to potential 406 00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:20,920 futures or potential ideas or potential social concepts or political concepts that don't 407 00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,200 even exist otherwise. 408 00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,440 So I've always been, been into more odd science fiction. 409 00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:32,120 I just finished Project Hail Mary, which made me think of the three body problem and going 410 00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:36,720 down to the three body problem, I would say that is probably one of the highest rated 411 00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:39,520 science fiction trilogies I've ever read. 412 00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:42,360 If you've, if you've read it, you know what I'm talking about. 413 00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:46,360 It's the only, it's the only science fiction book that I've ever, that's ever given me 414 00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:48,760 really really weird dreams. 415 00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:51,440 But it has. 416 00:29:51,440 --> 00:30:00,960 So the three body problem essentially posits this question in the position of science fiction. 417 00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:06,880 It takes the for me paradox and it also asks the question what happens if there is, is 418 00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:09,560 not a limit to technological development? 419 00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,680 What if you can actually develop your way through a brick wall? 420 00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:17,720 What if you, what if there's no limit to how good your technology can get or the things 421 00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:18,720 it can do? 422 00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:22,000 What would, what would the universe look like? 423 00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:23,840 And how would humanity react to that? 424 00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,240 It answers a bunch of interesting social questions. 425 00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:31,320 In some ways it predicted, it's impressively good predictive capacity. 426 00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:39,400 It predicted the, some of the social phenomena that have happened both in the East and in 427 00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:47,520 the West from when it was published in 2007 to now. 428 00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:51,760 Basically the way humans behave when all of their problems are taken away and the breakdown 429 00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,440 of hierarchy and gender and all sorts of weird stuff. 430 00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:56,280 It talks about that. 431 00:30:56,280 --> 00:31:04,280 It discusses the way that people can respond to problems in self-defeating ways, which 432 00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:10,680 I think is a lot of what much of the environmentalist activists are kind of doing right now. 433 00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:16,400 And what happens when you take that too far and the way society will bounce back from 434 00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:23,400 it or have a social repost, so to speak, a backlash against bad ideas. 435 00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:28,480 I really like the three body problem because it contains all of these really complex social 436 00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:36,600 and scientific concepts in a system, in a, in a narrative that no one else has ever written 437 00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:37,600 before. 438 00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:39,760 And I really appreciate that. 439 00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:42,480 Another book that I really enjoyed is Accelerando. 440 00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,880 There's also a review of that. 441 00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:51,920 Accelerando is a book that discusses the limits to AI and our ability to control them and 442 00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:57,640 the way in which AI are likely to function in practice rather than function in theory 443 00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:03,960 and how that can create its own nasty set of paperclip problems with the paperclip maximizer 444 00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:09,480 problems with the way that humans sort of are going to and are currently treating AI 445 00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:14,520 as a magic box that will just give them things if they program it right. 446 00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,040 And then I like some of the weirder science fiction out there. 447 00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:21,560 The Strugatsky novels I've really enjoyed so far. 448 00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:24,080 The Doomed City, Roadside Picnic. 449 00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:28,000 I'm currently, excuse me, you asked what I was reading. 450 00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:35,480 I am currently reading through Monday starts on Saturday, which is fascinating to me because 451 00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:39,040 those listeners familiar with the SCP Foundation. 452 00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:43,560 This is the book that I think created the idea for the SCP Foundation. 453 00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:45,480 It's a great book. 454 00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:53,440 And until very recently, there was not really a equivalent to it in modern history until 455 00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:57,160 somebody created the SCP Wiki, which isn't as good as it used to be. 456 00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:58,920 It used to be a lot of fun to read through that. 457 00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:04,720 But Monday starts on Saturday is the Soviet novel that sort of kicked off that genre. 458 00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:09,760 And then the Doomed City and Roadside Picnic kind of kicked off the Soviet fiction genre 459 00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:10,760 in general. 460 00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:16,080 But yeah, I like science fiction with interesting ideas that it wants to discuss more than science 461 00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:19,040 fiction with any specific place in the universe. 462 00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:22,520 I'm planning to start the Zeely sequence here at some point. 463 00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:27,200 I've heard that it's quite good, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. 464 00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:30,200 And then the reason I brought up Project Hail Mary right at the beginning is it's sort of 465 00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:35,240 like the opposite of the three body problem. 466 00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:39,960 While the three body problem is a story spanning hundreds of years, complex characters, and 467 00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:46,540 massive scientific arcs and hostile alien intelligences, Project Hail Mary does the 468 00:33:46,540 --> 00:33:49,240 opposite of all of those things. 469 00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:54,400 One character over a very brief period of time with very consistent technological development 470 00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:56,080 and friendly aliens. 471 00:33:56,080 --> 00:34:02,080 So I just find them fascinating inversions of each other, those two pieces of work. 472 00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:06,440 And Project Hail Mary also has a lot less to say politically and socially. 473 00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:12,860 Well, I just recently listened to the audiobook of the Hail Mary project or Project Hail Mary. 474 00:34:12,860 --> 00:34:16,680 And I should tell people who are not familiar with it, it's by Andy Weir, who is the author 475 00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:18,240 of The Martian. 476 00:34:18,240 --> 00:34:22,960 The Martian, which famously the famous quote from that film is, I'm going to science the 477 00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:24,360 shit out of this. 478 00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:25,360 Yes. 479 00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:31,640 Andy Weir loves to write like hard sci fi in the universe is a problem to be solved 480 00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:38,360 mode, which a lot of people hate science fiction because it takes that viewpoint, or at least 481 00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:39,680 it used to. 482 00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:46,000 Like the pre new wave, like what you're calling the sort of outdated pulps and cereals. 483 00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:47,800 Yeah, it's pulpy. 484 00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:48,800 That's a good way to describe it. 485 00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:54,960 Yeah, I mean, but you know, he he approaches it with humor and goodwill and, you know, 486 00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:58,840 a modern sort of up to date scientific acumen. 487 00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:01,200 And I absolutely love his books. 488 00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:03,240 So I enjoyed the book. 489 00:35:03,240 --> 00:35:05,260 I absolutely enjoyed the book. 490 00:35:05,260 --> 00:35:10,640 It's just bizarre, absolutely the opposite of the three body problem trilogy in every 491 00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:11,720 way. 492 00:35:11,720 --> 00:35:13,800 Now I have not read the three body problem. 493 00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:18,920 I did watch the Netflix the first season of the Netflix show, and there's also a Chinese 494 00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:21,480 TV adaptation of it, which I've seen. 495 00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:26,560 I don't know how much of the novel I'm missing, you know, by relying on those TV adaptations. 496 00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,360 Well, so I can I can give you a breakdown. 497 00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:32,200 The first thing is that the novel is big. 498 00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:35,760 So in the TV show, you've got like these five main characters, and that's because they could 499 00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,640 afford five, you know, B list actors. 500 00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:43,080 And in the novel, you're talking about hundreds of different people and hundreds of different 501 00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:45,120 government agencies kind of thing. 502 00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:50,300 So is the difference between like a James Bond film and what an actual intelligence 503 00:35:50,300 --> 00:35:53,360 apparatus looks like is a good description of the difference between the TV show and 504 00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:54,400 the book. 505 00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:58,960 The other thing I would say about the three body problem is it's very likely to to kind 506 00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:02,520 of fall apart in the second and third seasons of the television show. 507 00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:08,440 And the main reason for that is because the first book, the whole book one of the three 508 00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,640 body problem is best thought of as a prologue to the other two. 509 00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:17,200 Well, it's my understanding that the Netflix series is not taking the story in sequence, 510 00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:21,080 that it is bringing in elements from later novels in the earlier in the first season. 511 00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:23,160 Yeah, it kind of has to do that. 512 00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:24,280 It is doing that. 513 00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:32,160 But so there in the Netflix sequence, Netflix series is adapting it chronologically, whereas 514 00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:37,120 the books are telling stories about different people that each lived through the same like 515 00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:38,720 three or four hundred years. 516 00:36:38,720 --> 00:36:45,000 Which Project Hail Mary is is fun in that there's two two timelines. 517 00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:50,760 One is the current timeline where this guy by himself, this human guy is in a different 518 00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:55,920 solar system trying to figure out basically how to save the world. 519 00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:59,440 And then we're getting alternate chapters where, you know, it's the backstory of how 520 00:36:59,440 --> 00:37:00,440 he came here. 521 00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:01,440 Yeah. 522 00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:06,160 And of course, you know, late in the novel, there are twists revealed in the backstory 523 00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:09,680 chapters which paint everything in a new light. 524 00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:10,680 Very clever. 525 00:37:10,680 --> 00:37:11,680 Yeah, I thought it was clever. 526 00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:12,800 I enjoyed it. 527 00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:18,200 One of my favorite book series, if you've read this one is We Are Legion, We Are Bob. 528 00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:24,120 I listened to the audiobooks of the first few of those and they are fun, but they didn't 529 00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:26,960 they didn't grab me enough that I've listened to all of them. 530 00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:29,520 OK, I just finished the fourth or fifth. 531 00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,120 I think it's the fifth one. 532 00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:33,120 Then they are a serial. 533 00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:37,800 They're there, I described them as dumb, fun science fiction. 534 00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,560 They're hard science in that they're sublight, but they're soft science in that they kind 535 00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:43,520 of start getting out there pretty quick. 536 00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:48,200 But Andy Weir is a much harder science fiction author. 537 00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:52,080 I think that he puts a lot of effort into doing things the right way. 538 00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:53,780 And I really appreciate that. 539 00:37:53,780 --> 00:37:57,760 And I enjoyed Project Real Mary and I will be writing a review of it on my on my sub 540 00:37:57,760 --> 00:37:58,760 stack pretty soon here. 541 00:37:58,760 --> 00:37:59,760 Let's see. 542 00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:02,520 Have you read much of the Stravinsky work? 543 00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:06,920 You know, I started to read Roadside Picnic many, many years ago and I don't know how 544 00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:07,920 far I got into it. 545 00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:10,320 I don't think I finished it. 546 00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:15,520 I really enjoy the Stravinsky novels, but they're very avant garde in comparison to 547 00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:18,280 normal science fiction is a good way to put it. 548 00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:23,440 As the film stalker would would support its very well on guard. 549 00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:27,200 Well and the video game to a degree. 550 00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:32,360 What I really appreciate about I think Soviet fiction is that to keep the spirit of the 551 00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:40,080 to keep the spirit of the book, they had to completely rewrite the plot and the characters 552 00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:44,000 in the film and to keep the spirit of the book, they had to completely rewrite the plot, 553 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:48,100 the characters in the setting in the video game. 554 00:38:48,100 --> 00:38:51,220 But the spirit is the same between all three of them, which I think is fascinating because 555 00:38:51,220 --> 00:38:53,520 most genres don't do that. 556 00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:58,880 Most genres don't need to completely uproot everything but but the core themes in order 557 00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:01,520 to switch medium. 558 00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:05,720 But for Soviet fiction, it does seem to be that way, which I find fascinating. 559 00:39:05,720 --> 00:39:10,520 I also identify with Soviet for Soviet fiction partially because the United States at this 560 00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:16,480 point and this is why the current administration is such a big deal and why I keep oscillating 561 00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:20,720 back the politics, but I'm going to try to stay out of it for this conversation. 562 00:39:20,720 --> 00:39:24,000 But the United States was 35 percent public spending. 563 00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:28,440 Our GDP was 35 percent public spending in the United Kingdom is 50 percent of their 564 00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:30,440 GDP is public spending. 565 00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:35,920 We are on the edge of just living in a Soviet style economy in the West in most countries 566 00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:36,920 at this point. 567 00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:42,200 And so it makes sense that people will that some people might identify more with Soviet 568 00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:43,960 style fiction. 569 00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:49,320 You know, one place where current concerns and science fiction definitely overlap to 570 00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:54,200 a degree that one simply cannot ignore is the role of emerging artificial intelligence 571 00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:58,320 and particularly how it's going to impact people in terms of, you know, any individual's 572 00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:00,520 ability to make a living. 573 00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:04,040 You've mentioned in passing and I don't think you've you've said it explicitly, but I know 574 00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:09,800 that you're referencing Rudyard Lynch and his references to the mouse utopia. 575 00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:15,040 A you know, a total singularity, cornucopia situation where everybody gets everything 576 00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:21,840 they want is not necessarily the best case scenario or a favorable outcome, but nor is 577 00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:27,600 you know, everybody is suddenly being rendered useless and, you know, feeling as though they 578 00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:32,120 have to rely on the charity of the oligarchs. 579 00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:36,360 You know, people need to be able to make a living or at least believe that they're making 580 00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:37,680 a living. 581 00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:43,640 There's a nonfiction writer named Kaifu Lee, who wrote a book called AI Superpowers. 582 00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:49,040 And then he wrote another book after that that was addressing, you know, the challenges 583 00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:51,700 of artificial intelligence in the near future. 584 00:40:51,700 --> 00:40:55,520 But he's doing so in partnership with a fiction writer and he's creating these little fictional 585 00:40:55,520 --> 00:41:03,360 vignettes and at least one of the chapters in the book is about a company that is supposedly 586 00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:08,960 their whole reason for being is to take workers who have been displaced by automation and 587 00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:11,680 finding new jobs for them. 588 00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:16,000 And another company that does the same thing starts up and the first company has got a 589 00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:18,360 success rate of like 20 percent. 590 00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:21,160 And the second company has a success rate in the high 90s. 591 00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:24,160 And you know, the CEO of the first company is like, that's impossible. 592 00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:25,240 There's no way. 593 00:41:25,240 --> 00:41:28,840 And he assigns one of his employees basically to infiltrate this other company and figure 594 00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:29,840 out what they're doing. 595 00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:34,160 And they're just making, you know, they're just basically having displaced people play 596 00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:36,560 video games and call it work. 597 00:41:36,560 --> 00:41:41,560 You know, they people they're told that they're consulting on construction projects and things 598 00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,440 or that they're driving telepresence construction robots or things like this. 599 00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:46,920 But they're really not doing anything. 600 00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:52,120 They're just the company exists to take government subsidies and distribute them to displaced 601 00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:53,120 workers. 602 00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,120 But, you know, to give the word, it's basically adult daycare. 603 00:41:56,120 --> 00:42:01,680 But the adults who are being taken care of believe they're at work, which is necessary 604 00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:03,880 for their sense of worth. 605 00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:09,040 And you know, there are possible futures that look kind of like that, in which case, do 606 00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:13,360 you want to actually know the real nature of the world in which you live? 607 00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:18,160 Or do you want to live with the comforting illusion that you are actually somebody who, 608 00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:23,360 you know, supports a family and does something meaningful and useful for his society? 609 00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:26,520 Well, I mean, like, I'd rather leave. 610 00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:30,160 I think that's what many of the large social movements in the West are about right now 611 00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:35,600 is different groups of people attempting to leave the social system in different ways 612 00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:37,560 to make an exit. 613 00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:38,560 Yeah. 614 00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:45,240 In terms of AI development, it's gotten I don't know how much better it's going to get. 615 00:42:45,240 --> 00:42:50,760 My suspicion is that we're closing in on the limit of how good we can get it. 616 00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:53,920 You had deep sea come out and they said it was a $5 million system. 617 00:42:53,920 --> 00:43:02,400 But I doubt that the Chinese government was heavily involved in releasing deep sea. 618 00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:08,080 I don't know what AI will be able to replace well, it seems like it's going to be able 619 00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:12,760 to replace a lot of the bureaucracy well, and is likely to be used as a replacement 620 00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:16,680 for a lot of the bureaucracy as the current administration is ripping chunks of the bureaucracy 621 00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:19,480 out. 622 00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:29,620 But in terms of more of a long term view, AI might be able to emulate a lot of the things 623 00:43:29,620 --> 00:43:30,880 that people can do. 624 00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:36,960 But I'm kind of worried about are you familiar with the with the training data issue that 625 00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:37,960 AI seems to have? 626 00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:39,560 We'll say more about that. 627 00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:40,560 That's a big time. 628 00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:46,640 So AI has a hard time training on AI generated data. 629 00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:50,680 Now you can somewhat train an AI on AI generated data. 630 00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:52,640 That's less true now than it was a year ago. 631 00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:54,720 Yeah, it's less true now than it was a year ago. 632 00:43:54,720 --> 00:44:00,920 But I wouldn't I find it a lot of institutions are going to require highly specialized AI 633 00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:03,720 systems in order to run. 634 00:44:03,720 --> 00:44:07,120 So if you're running a factory with an AI or something like that, you have your own 635 00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:11,240 AI system, and you've trained it based on the things that people have done. 636 00:44:11,240 --> 00:44:15,200 What that effectively does is it locks your factory into its current structure. 637 00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:19,180 And if you change anything, the AI is going to start having problems with that. 638 00:44:19,180 --> 00:44:23,320 Because the only way to train it on the new things that you're doing is to train it on 639 00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:25,880 the things that it itself has done. 640 00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:30,760 So I do think that we're looking at a future economy that's going to be radically different. 641 00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:37,680 Everybody we're seeing academia is getting hammered right now, partially through the 642 00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:40,720 administration's bureaucratic changes, but also partially because large swaths of people 643 00:44:40,720 --> 00:44:43,720 no longer think it's worth the money. 644 00:44:43,720 --> 00:44:46,580 And it's developed into sort of a factory system. 645 00:44:46,580 --> 00:44:53,640 In many ways, bureaucracies are kind of like AI in that you program them to do a thing. 646 00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:55,720 They do the thing relatively well. 647 00:44:55,720 --> 00:45:01,200 But if you change it, they're extremely sluggish and slow to respond. 648 00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:05,520 Manual labor is going to be a human thing for the foreseeable future. 649 00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:08,840 Complex data and analytics, that's going to be a human thing for most of the foreseeable 650 00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:12,800 future outside of a few specific applications. 651 00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:21,000 The real issue is going to come down to how much AI can get integrated into governance 652 00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:22,720 and management. 653 00:45:22,720 --> 00:45:27,080 Because if it gets fully integrated economically, it's going to be able to replace a lot of 654 00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:28,080 people. 655 00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:33,520 Now, it could be just that instead of banking the savings, we'll just do more stuff. 656 00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:37,680 But a lot of people aren't really inclined to keep themselves busy when they're not 657 00:45:37,680 --> 00:45:41,760 otherwise being stimulated by an economic need. 658 00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:47,400 So what I could see and what I think is that we're in an evolutionary sort of Darwinian 659 00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:55,880 bottleneck where the people that have a difficult time acting outside of a group expectations 660 00:45:55,880 --> 00:46:02,000 mentality are not going to be having a whole lot of kids for the next generation or two. 661 00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:07,200 And what you're going to get is you're going to get people that either have very poor impulse 662 00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:14,040 control or people that have a personal sense of duty and ambition are going to be the ones 663 00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:18,240 who lead humanity after this, because those are going to be the only true groups that 664 00:46:18,240 --> 00:46:19,240 have kids. 665 00:46:19,240 --> 00:46:25,640 And that itself is going to lend itself to a more aristocratic type of social transition. 666 00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:29,520 Even if it's not official, what you're going to end up with is two groups of people with 667 00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:37,600 phenotypes that are distinctly different in terms of their capacity for future planning. 668 00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:40,720 All right. 669 00:46:40,720 --> 00:46:42,080 That was Copernican. 670 00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:46,740 There will be more, but sorry, folks, the remainder of the conversation will be behind 671 00:46:46,740 --> 00:46:48,040 a paywall. 672 00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:53,480 So it will be in an episode of the Sea Realm Vault podcast and also on my sub stack for 673 00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:54,960 paid subscribers there. 674 00:46:54,960 --> 00:47:00,360 I will say that in the second part of the conversation, we do find something to disagree 675 00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:01,400 about. 676 00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:04,960 So it's not like we have a knockdown drag out argument or anything like that. 677 00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:13,960 But we do go back and forth a bit on just how likely or unlikely it is that companies 678 00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:19,600 like, well, any tech company, really, there's no need to pick one out, would be very abusive 679 00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:27,480 in their use of any implants that one might get, particularly cognitive implants, cybernetic 680 00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:29,300 implants in the brain. 681 00:47:29,300 --> 00:47:33,520 If you are not listening to this on sub stack, I would recommend that you check out my sub 682 00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:39,840 stack and from there you can find links to other people's stuff that I have really enjoyed. 683 00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:42,800 Substack is like a blog in the posts section. 684 00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,360 It's more like your typical social media in the notes section. 685 00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,640 And then there's also a like section or liked section. 686 00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:53,760 So you can see which items I have read and liked, but not bothered to comment on. 687 00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:56,720 And if you're listening to this and you are a sub stack user, but you do not follow my 688 00:47:56,720 --> 00:47:59,840 account, well, I would invite you to do so. 689 00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:04,280 Also, if you are new to my podcasting work or just new to my work in general, you don't 690 00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:09,640 know who the heck I am, I would recommend that you check out Fear and Loathing in the 691 00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:10,640 Kuiper Belts. 692 00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:15,280 It is available as a Kindle book or in paperback. 693 00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:20,440 In the fullness of time, it will also be an audio book, but not just yet. 694 00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:21,520 All right. 695 00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:23,640 Thank you very much for listening. 696 00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:30,640 Say well.