Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
In ordinary language, we frequently speak of machinery or ideas ‘doing’ things in our lives. But they do nothing. People – human persons – produce, operate and apply their creations. The problem with assigning agency, even informally, to the nonhuman is that this disguises the strength of human control, limited though it is in other respects. It... See more
Bennett Gilbert • On hope, philosophical personalism and Martin Luther King Jr | Aeon Essays
In the end, transhumanism and other techno-utopian ideas have served to advance what Lanier calls an “antihuman approach to computation,” a digital climate in which “bits are presented as if they were alive, while humans are transient fragments.” In a way we are already living the dualistic existence that Kurzweil promised. In addition to our
... See moreMeghan O'Gieblyn • God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
monstrous messianic
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
He described modernity’s obsession with Machen —do/make—as the belief that only what we can build, manipulate, or produce is real. This becomes the default metaphysics of acceleration: faster iteration, more output, more control. But Ratzinger contrasts this with another mode of being: Verstehen and Stehen —to understand and to stand. That is, to... See more
Luke Burgis • Everything Is Fast
The Straussian Moment
gwern.net- "the concrete practices of the tech industry now structure identity and individuality in ways that support its own hegemony. While it presents endless avenues for expression, it sees us as wholly reducible to market logic, where we are real to the degree that our consumption habits are rational. This vision of selfhood promotes uniformity and... See more
Emma Stamm • Who Can It Be Now — Real Life
