5 ms·
> “Note that I'm allergic to kitsch Americana, especially Westerns, am a singularity skeptic and atheist in real life, expect FTL travel and/or time travel to p
by pavlov 3y ago
> “Note that I'm allergic to kitsch Americana, especially Westerns, am a singularity skeptic and atheist in real life, expect FTL travel and/or time travel to prove impossible, ditto mind uploading and "true" general artificial intelligence, and strongly suspect the answer to the Fermi paradox is that our kind of tool-using intelligent life is vanishingly rare in the cosmos. Manifest destiny is white supremacist (read: Nazi) bullshit, as is eugenics and space colonization. I'll play with these as fictional tropes, but only in storytelling mode, not predictive mode.”
Since he’s the Antipope, does this mean Elon Musk is the Pope? Loves kitsch Americana, manifest destiny space colonization, and generally bullish on all these tropes…
- lacrimacida 3y agoI’m not sure but Musk is certainly trying hard to be the Pope of something, not exactly sure what but I noticed a very high number of ads and posts that are more or less self promoting.
- blowski 3y agoHe’s the Citizen Jane of our day. Trying desperately to be loved by anybody who’ll have him.
- lacrimacida 3y agoI think he’s also swindling his followers with Dogecoin and other stuff nefarious schemes.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago> Manifest destiny is white supremacist (read: Nazi) Nazism is a phenomenon of early 20th century Europe. Even if that political movement drew on some older prejudices, it mixed them with new contemporary concerns, and the total aggregate dates specifically to that era. 19th-century North American manifest destiny was racist, and perhaps for certain people its space-colonization echoes today are, but to apply the label Nazi feels very ahistorical, dishonestly so. One might conclude that the author is being provocative for the sake of profitable online outrage. Labels are getting thrown around too carelessly. I’m reminded of an HN post I once saw where anti-LGBT attitudes in the Muslim world were called literally fascist, even though they often predate fascism (again, a distinct political phenomenon that appeared at a particular point in time and space) by centuries.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoA fascist doesn't bundle an axe into a collection of sticks and then hit you with it either. The nazi party wasn't particularly socialist when it comes down to it, for that matter. The use of words drifts, calling roughly aligned successor movements "nazi bullshit" is a useful signifier.
- FFP999 3y ago"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." -Mark Twain
- slowmovintarget 3y agoHow is useful to refer to attempting to find new homes in places other than Earth "nazi bullshit?"
- giraffe_lady 3y agoWhose homes? Under what conditions and decided by which institutions, under what power dynamics? When you elide all that as "find new homes" you are leaving a lot of room for work colonies, extractive exploitation, and eugenics, yes. "Is having friends a conspiracy?" well... maybe, it depends on what you do with the friends. In cases like this you need to be at least a little specific about the implementation. If this sort of straightforward rhetoric gets even a handful of people to notice that the concrete plan musk has is at least agnostic towards nazi bullshit then it was precisely useful.
- Keysh 3y agoWould it make any sense to describe the Polynesian settlement of Pacific islands as "nazi bullshit"? (Granted, we have little or no access to proto-Maori ideologies of the 13th Century, say, but discussions of what "colonization" is or means tend to be really Eurocentric...)
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
- eesmith 3y agoFrom the front page, "This site is called antipope due to a typing error long ago in the pre-history of the web. If you want to read about it, here's the history" linking to https://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/antipope.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/antipope.html . > Antipope acquired its name due to a drunken mistake in 1991. ... "What sitename do you want?" ... "I said, "How about autopope.uucp?" ... "Okay." Hic. Burp. And the next day, I was the somewhat bemused owner of a site called antipope.uucp .. And of course, it seemed reasonable in 1996 to register antipope.org and hang it off my own server in 1997, when I finally got around to a colocation deal. > So Antipope is not a significant name; it's just a communications error. You have been warned.
- pavlov 3y agoThanks for providing context for the joke.
- eesmith 3y agoWhat makes the joke not work is that cstross is really the autopope, drunkenly mislabeled the antipope. You can clearly see he still provides pontifications. If Musk is the opposite of the autopope, what does that make him?
- FFP999 3y agoA manualpope. Same basic function as an autopope, but needs a human operator.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoAn antipope is someone trying to be pope, confusingly enough. See also; St Peter's cross.