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The more I hear about Transhumanism, the more I think that people in NorCal need some real problems to deal with. EDIT: The tech industry went from resolving

The more I hear about Transhumanism, the more I think that people in NorCal need some real problems to deal with. EDIT: The tech industry went from resolving everyday problems ("how do I make spreadsheets more quickly", "how do I send this information to a person on the other side of the country") to trying to play God with AI.

kstrauser 2y ago
For reasons I’ve never dug into, NorCal has a rich history of people banding together to do goofy things. Cults? Where better to start one? (It’s one of the reasons I love it here. That same energy manifests amazing art, hackerspaces, meetups, and other fun things.)
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  > goofy things When you have members of the movement referring to those who will be left behind as "median humans" (Altman) and making major changes to government that are to the detriment of society (Musk, to a lesser extent, Thiel and Andreessen), we're no longer "goofy". "Scary" is a better word. The Flying Spaghetti Monster? That's goofy.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    "Goofy" isn't benign to me. It's a statement of quality of the idea, not of the end result of it. For example, Jim Jones's cult was from here and I would describe it as goofy.
throwaway91257 2y ago
many of the weird singularity/transhumanist people do have real problems. lot of childhood trauma. lot of OCD. i guess if you call autism a mental illness now someone will jump out from behind a bush and correct you, but lots of mental health problems downstream of living with autism. if you read about the most extreme groups, people are in and out of mental hospitals with psychotic symptoms. NorCal has been a feeding ground for cult leaders for 100+ years, but I actually think fewer real problems would be better. the people out there without real problems, just have GPT wrapper startups and go lie to people on podcasts, which is annoying, but better for them and everyone else.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  People with trauma, neurodivergence, and the like are everywhere. The only place they can get involved in a culture of "let's build computer god" backed with the kind of money that Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk can bring to the table is Northern California. Perhaps it's the investors who need real problems. Usually that can be caused by having far, far less money.
tim333 2y ago
The history from wikipedia: >The biologist Julian Huxley popularised the term "transhumanism" in a 1957 essay.[ The contemporary meaning of the term was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, a man who changed his name to FM-2030. In the 1960s, he taught "new concepts of the human" at The New School when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles, and worldviews "transitional" to posthumanity as "transhuman".[7] The assertion laid the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More Huxley was British, The New School was in NYC, More also British. I'm not sure you can pin it all on NorCal.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  It's not the 1950s and 60s anymore. They're geographically clumped in one area. It's not NYC or the UK.
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kstrauser 2y ago

For reasons I’ve never dug into, NorCal has a rich history of people banding together to do goofy things. Cults? Where better to start one? (It’s one of the reasons I love it here. That same energy manifests amazing art, hackerspaces, meetups, and other fun things.)

lenerdenator 2y ago
> goofy things When you have members of the movement referring to those who will be left behind as "median humans" (Altman) and making major changes to government that are to the detriment of society (Musk, to a lesser extent, Thiel and Andreessen), we're no longer "goofy". "Scary" is a better word. The Flying Spaghetti Monster? That's goofy.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  "Goofy" isn't benign to me. It's a statement of quality of the idea, not of the end result of it. For example, Jim Jones's cult was from here and I would describe it as goofy.

throwaway91257 2y ago

many of the weird singularity/transhumanist people do have real problems. lot of childhood trauma. lot of OCD. i guess if you call autism a mental illness now someone will jump out from behind a bush and correct you, but lots of mental health problems downstream of living with autism. if you read about the most extreme groups, people are in and out of mental hospitals with psychotic symptoms. NorCal has been a feeding ground for cult leaders for 100+ years, but I actually think fewer real problems would be better. the people out there without real problems, just have GPT wrapper startups and go lie to people on podcasts, which is annoying, but better for them and everyone else.

lenerdenator 2y ago
People with trauma, neurodivergence, and the like are everywhere. The only place they can get involved in a culture of "let's build computer god" backed with the kind of money that Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk can bring to the table is Northern California. Perhaps it's the investors who need real problems. Usually that can be caused by having far, far less money.

tim333 2y ago

The history from wikipedia: >The biologist Julian Huxley popularised the term "transhumanism" in a 1957 essay.[ The contemporary meaning of the term was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of futurology, a man who changed his name to FM-2030. In the 1960s, he taught "new concepts of the human" at The New School when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles, and worldviews "transitional" to posthumanity as "transhuman".[7] The assertion laid the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher Max More Huxley was British, The New School was in NYC, More also British. I'm not sure you can pin it all on NorCal.

lenerdenator 2y ago
It's not the 1950s and 60s anymore. They're geographically clumped in one area. It's not NYC or the UK.
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