Severin Matusek

OpenAI’s proposition with Sora 2 feels slightly different—more like a flashy proof of concept to showcase the power of its models. Announcing Sora 2, Sam Altman wrote that “creativity could be about to go through a Cambrian explosion” as a result of the tool: “And along with it, the quality of art and entertainment can drastically increase.”... See more

Such people have come to be known as the “dissident right,” a loose constellation of artists and strivers clustered around the Bay Area, Miami, and the Lower East Side micro-neighborhood Dimes Square. The milieu was drawn together by a frustration with electoral politics, Covid lockdowns, and the strictures of “wokeness.” Vice signalling has been... See more

What people such as Altman and Andreessen envision is the logical end point of technology itself—a push to eliminate cognitive resistance and bridge the gap between imagination and reality.

The final notes of the AI-and-I essay are cowed resignation, awed acquiescence, and what Trotsky called the “terrifying helplessness” of cultural production at “the beginning of a great epoch”

And in politics, this type of speculation has become the closest thing to agency for people who feel like they are no longer served by the economy. People speculate on ideas, personalities, etc. Why wouldn’t they? But when this happens, you end up with a system optimized for speed and virality rather than stability or accuracy.

Whenever I asked Yarvin about resonances between his writing and real-world events, his response was nonchalant. He seemed to see himself as a conduit for pure reason—the only mystery, to him, was why it had taken others so long to catch up. “You can invent a lie, but you can only discover the truth,” he told me.

The collaboration thing is always: how do I talk to someone one lunch table over and learn their thing? I don’t like going to a music industry event and talking about marketing because I already know that conversation. I want to talk to Abe Burmeister from Outlier about how they do drops, how they run their website. Why don’t you do wholesale? Why... See more

t’s key to research the need for an idea, not only focus on the solution, but what it actually solves. Get intimate with that problem and its many dimensions, understand how it shows up in people’s lives.