Mega-Thread of Low vs High Perspectives

[zurew]

I think your sentiment makes it impossible to progress on anything.

Its one thing to be realistic , but its another to not even attempt to work on the problems and then because of it  - make it a self fulfilling prophecy, where the solution never comes (not because you establish that in principle there cannot be one, but because your attitude make it so that you never even try to work on one).

So if we are actually solution oriented there are multiple moves - even though its extremely unlikely, still giving the transition a chance and or given that shit will inevitably break down, thinking about how to deal with once it breaks down.

[Leo Gura]

@zurew There are many practical solutions. Game B just ain't one of them.

[zurew]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@zurew There are many practical solutions. Game B just ain't one of them.

If you agree with the premise that there are problems that pops up and maintained by Game A dynamics  , then if your solution doesn't involve something that takes care of that , then it might help with gaining time, but its not really a solution that prevents from shit breaking down in the future.

I don't think you can realistically maintain a game A world without there inevitably being civilizational collapse. In principle, its not impossible to solve these problems in game A, for example using power and other tools of persuasion you can theoretically make everyone to do what you want them to do, but maintaining this long term is just as unrealistic as transitioning to game B.

[Carl-Richard]

I think Game B will become more likely and "bottom-up" if we get a non-turbulent launch into Ray Kursweil levels of AI. It's too unstable if there is resource scarcity in any part of the system. If there is severe enough resource scarcity, that's when countries collapse, tribes collapse, families collapse. Higher levels of unity require higher levels of resources.

[Nilsi]

41 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think Game B will become more likely and "bottom-up" if we get a non-turbulent launch into Ray Kursweil levels of AI. It's too unstable if there is resource scarcity in any part of the system. If there is severe enough resource scarcity, that's when countries collapse, tribes collapse, families collapse. Higher levels of unity require higher levels of resources.

Even in Kurzweil’s AI singularity, the dynamics of power won’t simply dissolve - they’ll escalate.

Isn't it comical? We’re living in the most resource-abundant era in human history, and yet inequality is at an all-time high. Marx already showed that technological progress under capitalism doesn’t liberate - it intensifies contradictions.

AI isn’t some neutral force hovering above ideology - it is capital in its purest form: abstraction, automation, extraction. It doesn’t dream of utopia. It dreams of surplus. Every advancement in AI tightens the feedback loop between data, labor, and control. It doesn’t abolish class struggle - it automates it, scales it, embeds it in code.

Edited April 6 by Nilsi

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

I don't think you can realistically maintain a game A world without there inevitably being civilizational collapse. In principle, its not impossible to solve these problems in game A, for example using power and other tools of persuasion you can theoretically make everyone to do what you want them to do, but maintaining this long term is just as unrealistic as transitioning to game B.

All the “Game B” thinkers admit that the acceleration of the current system will lead to a fundamental phase shift. But they’re ideologically invested in a kind of deep-ecological humanism - the belief that humans should become the wise stewards of planet Earth. It’s a noble-sounding vision, but at its core, it’s just a naive, anthropocentric fantasy - a soft imperialism dressed in ecological virtue. The idea that we’re the crown of evolution, that we’ll consciously shepherd the system through its collapse and re-emergence.

Why assume we’ll play any meaningful role at all? It might just as well be the case that the system evolves past us entirely - that it breaks out of our control, shrugs us off, and keeps unfolding without the slightest concern for our relevance. And maybe that’s the most liberating insight of all:

That we are finally lifted from the false burden of responsibility for something we never controlled in the first place.
That we’re free - at last - to pursue whatever ultimately meaningless, absurd, beautiful life we want.

Edited April 6 by Nilsi

[Carl-Richard]

38 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Even in Kurzweil’s AI singularity, the dynamics of power won’t simply dissolve - they’ll escalate.

What is power?

 

38 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Isn't it comical? We’re living in the most resource-abundant era in human history, and yet inequality is at an all-time high.

Not resource-abundant enough.

Edited April 6 by Carl-Richard

[Nilsi]

6 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

What is power?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#

7 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Not resource-abundant enough.

How much "progress" do you need before you finally concede your utopian fantasy in the face of the entire weight of empirical history?

[Carl-Richard]

4 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law#

No, what is "power"?

[Nilsi]

Just now, Carl-Richard said:

No, what is "power"?

In this case, power means precisely the asymmetrical distribution of resources - influence, money, knowledge, attention, etc. - and the deep structural inevitability of that asymmetry.

Of course, there are many other ways to define power, depending on your angle. For example, there's narrative control - which, honestly, feels like what you’re doing to me right now by never actually addressing any of my points, lol.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

It’s a noble-sounding vision, but at its core, it’s just a naive, anthropocentric fantasy - a soft imperialism dressed in ecological virtue. The idea that we’re the crown of evolution, that we’ll consciously shepherd the system through its collapse and re-emergence.

I think there is some truth to that (the need for control and the need for taking credit), but on the other , it is also about this - given that we are here and we are planning on staying here in the future, why wouldn't we try to do it in a conscious,wise rather than an unconsious,unwise way?

[Nilsi]

2 minutes ago, zurew said:

I think there is some truth to that (the need for control and the need for taking credit), but on the other , it is also about this - given that we are here and we are planning on staying here in the future, why wouldn't we try to do it in a conscious,wise rather than an unconsious,unwise way?

Because ultimately, this is a delusional undertaking - and it’s bound to fail.

That said, I do think Daniel Schmachtenberger gestures toward that absurdity. When he says he’s “happy to die on this hill,” fully aware that nothing he does may change the outcome - that’s the moment I can respect. Not because I share the mission, but because he’s honest about the futility and still chooses to act. There’s something deeply human and quietly dignified in that.

Still, there are other models - just as conscious, just as honest - that don’t require carrying this kind of burden.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Deleuze:

“The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still: Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?”

[Nilsi]

32 minutes ago, zurew said:

I think there is some truth to that (the need for control and the need for taking credit), but on the other , it is also about this - given that we are here and we are planning on staying here in the future, why wouldn't we try to do it in a conscious,wise rather than an unconsious,unwise way?

And again, the notion that the “we” who are here now and the “we” who will exist in the future are even remotely the same - that’s exactly what I want to question.

In fact, I think the most liberating realization of our time is this: we were never in control of this thing to begin with. And the fact that we can finally say that out loud might actually be the best news imaginable.

Although, again, most of us still cling to the Enlightenment fantasy of man’s domination over nature - and keep shilling it as if it were some kind of emancipatory wisdom, when in reality, it’s the very form of servitude that Deleuze urges us to confront.

[Nilsi]

43 minutes ago, zurew said:

I think there is some truth to that (the need for control and the need for taking credit), but on the other , it is also about this - given that we are here and we are planning on staying here in the future, why wouldn't we try to do it in a conscious,wise rather than an unconsious,unwise way?

So I’m actually more aligned with Carl’s techno-optimism - but not in the sense that it will bring about some kind of Game B utopia. Rather, in the sense that it will deliver such a radical shock to our collective vanity that we’ll have no choice but to confront our own insignificance in the greater scheme of things. And maybe that’s the real liberation: to finally be free to discover what it actually means to be human, to be an individual, and to be part of something far greater than ourselves - for the first time.

And who knows - maybe that confrontation will bring us closer together. Not through ideology or design, but through the mutual recognition of that paradoxical tension between our absurd insignificance and the absolute significance of our being here, now, on this strange and fleeting Earth.

[zurew]

I dont think I am tracking what you are saying.

The premise is not that we are fully in charge of what we are becoming and what we are doing - the premise is that our actions inevitably affect nature and to the degree to which we have  control over those actions (even if its very little), we should use that wisely.

Edited April 6 by zurew

[Nilsi]

6 minutes ago, zurew said:

I dont think I am tracking what you are saying.

The premise is not that we are fully in charge of what we are becoming and what we are doing - the premise is that our actions inevitably affect nature and to the degree to which we have  control over those actions, we should use that wisely.

The point is: we’re not in control. Not of our actions, and certainly not of their consequences. And even if we were, the world is far too complex to predict what any one intervention will actually lead to. We’re not even in control of our own systems - like the economy - let alone something as vast and entangled as the biosphere.

Of course, you can still try to act meaningfully - through collective coordination, ecological foresight, civilizational redesign - the kind of thing Schmachtenberger’s doing. And fair enough. But even he admits that, in the end, it might amount to nothing more than an ethical gesture. A sincere performance toward a version of human agency that maybe never really existed to begin with.

Because let’s be honest: these aren’t real options anymore. They’re ideological afterimages - fading projections of a species slowly waking up to its own limits. Not just mortality in the biological sense, but the deeper recognition that we were never steering this thing. That we were never the main characters.

The collapse of that illusion started a long time ago: the Pale Blue Dot floating in silence, the Club of Rome’s projections, Silent Spring’s poisoned promise, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the nearness of nuclear armageddon. And it’s still unfolding - in Bostrom’s Superintelligence, Kurzweil’s Singularity, Nick Land’s AI-xenodemon pulling history’s strings from the future. Each one, in its own way, spelling the end of the human being as we imagined it: rational, sovereign, central.

And yeah, we’ve had other hits to human vanity - Copernicus knocking us out of the center of the universe, Freud displacing us from ourselves - but this feels different. More final. Not just another de-centering, but a kind of dissolution. A point of no return.

And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Maybe what’s dying isn’t humanity, but the burden of having to play god. Maybe it’s the end of that long, exhausting myth in which we were supposed to save the world, fix the system, write the next chapter of history. And maybe what comes after isn’t collapse or despair - but some strange kind of release.

A chance to finally live without the weight of control.
To stop pretending we were ever steering history.
To begin again - not as masters, not as engineers - but as what Deleuze calls becomings: open-ended, embodied, desire-driven forms of life. Not fixed roles, not centralized identities, but something more immediate. More alive.

It’s liberating not because it gives us answers, but because it frees us from the pressure to have them. We don’t have to control the system. We don’t have to justify ourselves through mastery. We can just participate. Be shaped by life even as we shape it. Feel, move, act - not for progress or salvation, but simply because we’re here.

Not gods. Not machines.
Just alive. And maybe - finally - that’s enough.

[Nilsi]

Just now, Nilsi said:

The point is: we’re not in control. Not of our actions, and certainly not of their consequences. And even if we were, the world is far too complex to predict what any one intervention will actually lead to. We’re not even in control of our own systems - like the economy - let alone something as vast and entangled as the biosphere.

Of course, you can still try to act meaningfully - through collective coordination, ecological foresight, civilizational redesign - the kind of thing Schmachtenberger’s doing. And fair enough. But even he admits that, in the end, it might amount to nothing more than an ethical gesture. A sincere performance toward a version of human agency that maybe never really existed to begin with.

Because let’s be honest: these aren’t real options anymore. They’re ideological afterimages - fading projections of a species slowly waking up to its own limits. Not just mortality in the biological sense, but the deeper recognition that we were never steering this thing. That we were never the main characters.

The collapse of that illusion started a long time ago: the Pale Blue Dot floating in silence, the Club of Rome’s projections, Silent Spring’s poisoned promise, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the nearness of nuclear armageddon. And it’s still unfolding - in Bostrom’s Superintelligence, Kurzweil’s Singularity, Nick Land’s AI-xenodemon pulling history’s strings from the future. Each one, in its own way, spelling the end of the human being as we imagined it: rational, sovereign, central.

And yeah, we’ve had other hits to human vanity - Copernicus knocking us out of the center of the universe, Freud displacing us from ourselves - but this feels different. More final. Not just another de-centering, but a kind of dissolution. A point of no return.

And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Maybe what’s dying isn’t humanity, but the burden of having to play god. Maybe it’s the end of that long, exhausting myth in which we were supposed to save the world, fix the system, write the next chapter of history. And maybe what comes after isn’t collapse or despair - but some strange kind of release.

A chance to finally live without the weight of control.
To stop pretending we were ever steering history.
To begin again - not as masters, not as engineers - but as what Deleuze calls becomings: open-ended, embodied, desire-driven forms of life. Not fixed roles, not centralized identities, but something more immediate. More alive.

It’s liberating not because it gives us answers, but because it frees us from the pressure to have them. We don’t have to control the system. We don’t have to justify ourselves through mastery. We can just participate. Be shaped by life even as we shape it. Feel, move, act - not for progress or salvation, but simply because we’re here.

Not gods. Not machines.
Just alive. And maybe - finally - that’s enough.

But then again, this is just me spinning my own narrative. So if you feel the need to freak out over the end of the world, or organize a protest, or do whatever it is you mean when you say we should "use our actions wisely" - go for it. I'm not here to stop you.

I’m just trying to offer something different.

[Yimpa]

God is in control.

Humans are out of control. 

[zurew]

2 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

God is in control.

Humans are out of control. 

Thats roughly what Jordan Hall is saying.

Jordan Hall would say that we have no fucking clue what we are doing and from where our motivations come from and we should connect to God and act based on that not based on our ideologies or random motivations.

The idea is that whatever our intellect will come up with will be dogshit and useless , so we might as surrender and let the transcendent show the way.

[Nilsi]

5 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

God is in control.

Humans are out of control. 

No one is in control. There is no control. There never was. There is only the schizophrenic ecstasy of becoming.

How can you claim to know God if your idea of God is so vulgar?
God is a schizo - always was, always will be.