Facebook is now Meta
Tagged: Facebook, logo, meta, metaverse, zuckerberg
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Legatus_Legionis.
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November 25, 2021 at 8:45 am #250281
Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro talk about it. One good line, “We are innovating ourselves out of existence.” There are 7 Billion people on the planet, which is at least double since the 80s, so I don’t think the same, but it’s a great line. Normally, I post some key comments below the video, but there are too many good ones to list. Joe Rogan’s fans are smart and I do not normally listen to his show, but they are talking about something I happen to be interested in. It will be interesting is they have like a ban or block buttons, so people can entirely filter out woke material. If they do, I’m blocking Howard Stern and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mark Hamill along with any CRT.
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Read about the last stages of the Roman Empire. They didn’t have an electronic “Metaverse”, but those in power were able to create their own “reality” through socially isolating in their villas, only interacting with other rich people and using their slaves to enact all sorts of situations. They kept the poor quiet by giving them “bread and circuses”, everyone was happy in their unreal reality. It got to the point that not only the soldiers who were supposed to protect their Empire, but also the Generals were paid mercenaries, because Romans were too busy self pleasuring to protect themselves. That was when the “Barbarians” took over.
China is probably funding the “Metaverse”.
Can’t wait until everyone is locked in their living rooms with VR headsets and I can go fishing and drive around without all those assholes taking up space.
I get Terminator vibes more and more everyday with how fast technology is advancing , it’s almost like the Matrix and Terminator series turned out to be documentaries
“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost.” Well I guess Mark will learn this lesson very soon xD
December 5, 2021 at 8:42 am #250975December 5, 2021 at 4:25 pm #250999This one deals more with the companies that are trying to make Ready PLayer One and Free Guy a reality.
That meme is valid though. You have to wonder.December 5, 2021 at 5:16 pm #251005Metaverse: Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us – Essay Analysis – Jay Dyer
Jay Dyer
Bill Joy’s famous essay should count as one of the writings of the elite, as the essay admits much of what we have discussed for the last 20 years: mass depop, a coming tech dystopia, the Brave New World scenario, and much more, as we analyze in brief the tech billionaire’s 2000 warning found here: https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/December 10, 2021 at 9:07 am #251278She mentions Second Life in this video, which is the only reason I post it because it is not that interesting. Her answer is that not all companies define the metaverse the same way, but she mentions Second Life a lot. The Metaverse will be a multi-verse. The Multiverse metaverse will be different online worlds with some traveling back and forth.
The new metaverse gold rush
Tech companies like Meta and Microsoft are betting big on the metaverse. But what exactly is the metaverse? It’s more complicated, older, and less inevitable than it sounds.
facebook is trying to do what minecraft servers accomplished a decade ago: bring friends together in a digital space
All the coverage has been about it failing but no one seems to think about what happens if it succeeds. There’ll be an entire world under the control of an untrustworthy corporation.
“To what extent do you see the Metaverse being a part of your life in the future?” Depends on what you mean by metaverse. If you mean Metaverse as in the one Facebook is building, absolutely never. If you just mean virtual environments in general, I’m already there. My interest in entering virtual worlds, be they VR or more standard video game-style spaces like Second Life, Roblox, or Minecraft, is entirely dependent on the ability to choose between platforms and the companies who run them. I don’t want to touch Facebook’s Metaverse with a thirty-foot pole. I’d love to interact in a more indie space, or even develop my own with the right resources and knowledge.
December 10, 2021 at 9:16 am #251279Artificial Intelligence is Probing the Universe – You Included
AI overtakes Moore’s Law, designs a xenobot, “dreams up” new proteins, advances pure mathematics, and takes over HarvardJoe Allen
The late cyborg Stephen Hawking had a bad feeling about AI. Even though the paralytic depended on machines for his existence, he feared artificial superintelligence would evade human control and wreak havoc on our species. Buzzing in his computerized monotone back in 2014, the physicist retold a classic 1954 sci-fi story:
Scientists built an intelligent computer. The first question they asked it was, “Is there a God?” The computer replied, “There is now.” And a bolt of lightning struck the plug, so it couldn’t be turned off.
It’s an amusing parable, but many scientists take the idea quite seriously.
Last January, an international team of experts led by Iyad Rahwan of the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin warned “Superintelligence Cannot Be Contained.” Their analysis, published in the Journal for Artificial Intelligence Research, arrived at an obvious conclusion, echoing the warnings of Oxford transhumanist Nick Bostrom in his 2014 book Superintelligence.
In order to fully control any mechanism or system, one has to predict its behavior. Because artificial superintelligence will be beyond human comprehension, and therefore impossible to predict, it will also be impossible to control. The same motivational programs that drive an AI to gather data and improve itself would most likely drive it to escape containment. From there, God only knows what would happen.
End of discussion. Don’t plug it in. It’s not worth the risk.
But reckless human beings, being all too predictable, can’t resist the urge to open a box full of demons or chomp on forbidden fruit. The ancient quest to create gods from raw metals is moving ahead at an accelerating pace.
People have talked to their idols for eons. Now, the idols are actually talking back. Even their creators couldn’t predict what they have to say.
And the Machine Said, “Let There Be Life”
In a nutshell, Moore’s Law holds that the computational power of transistors will double every two years. With a few fits and starts, this has been true for many decades.
On December 2, IEEE Spectrum magazine reported “AI Training Is Outpacing Moore’s Law.” Most of these strides have been made in natural language processing—the machine’s grasp of logos, the “word,” a quality once unique to humankind.
The analysis comes from MLPerf, a consortium of engineers who track machine learning performance. Analysts found that since 2018, top artificial intelligence systems—from Google, Microsoft, and Habana Labs—perform 6.8 to 11 times better than they did two years ago. Unlike the processing hardware gauged by Moore’s Law, this advance is due to rapid self-improvement by the software itself.
If this trend continues, we’re about to see an explosion in artificial intelligence capabilities. Already, the past couple of weeks have seen a flood of news on this front—including the creation of new lifeforms. Artificial intelligence is producing novel ideas that had previously flown over bioengineers’ and mathematicians’ heads.
On November 29, scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering unveiled a self-replicating xenobot. The creatures were literally designed by an AI system. Each organism consist of about 3,000 cells derived from a frog, Xenopus laevis, but their structure and function is entirely engineered. Hence the name “xenobot.”
The xenos have a one-tracked mind. Using tiny hairs on their surface, they basically just swim in a circular pattern. Stunning videos show these animated jellybeans sweeping pale stem cells into piles. Eventually, those piles become stem cell globs and those globs become new xenobots.
The design for this self-replicating system, found nowhere else in nature, came from the mind of a computer. Evolutionary algorithms running on the Deep Green supercomputer at the University of Vermont explored billions of different body types, and tested each of them in virtual space.
“We asked the supercomputer at UVM to figure out how to adjust the shape of the initial parents, and the AI came up with some strange designs after months of chugging away,” a researcher explained. “It looks very simple, but it’s not something a human engineer would come up with.”
Once the AI had “discovered” a workable body plan—the now-famous jellybean—the scientists stitched them together from frog cells. The rest is history. AI created a novel xenobot capable of self-replication. Strangely, the scientists discuss this alien creature in terms of discovery, even using reverential capitalization.
“We’ve discovered that there is this previously unknown space within organisms,” one scientist marveled. “We found Xenobots that walk. We found Xenobots that swim. And now, in this study, we’ve found Xenobots that kinematically replicate. What else is out there?”
I’d say we can only dream, but it’s a computer manifesting these nightmares.
Aping the Mind of God
On December 7, IEEE Spectrum ran the trippy headline “AI Hallucinates Novel Proteins,” citing a study published in Nature. After training itself on countless known examples, a deep learning AI system “dreamed up” novel protein structures by exploring vast fields of possibility to model reality.
This use of the term “hallucinate” originates in the field of facial recognition, where a deep learning system uses its vast store of images to create an “ideal” face. Employing a similar method, scientists at the University of Washington trained their AI on existing 3D protein structures, then “asked” it to “dream up” new ones.
In virtual space, the scientists introduced various mutations into simulated DNA strands, and the AI predicted the resulting protein structure. In total, the program “hallucinated” two thousand proteins. The scientists then went into the lab, mutated the DNA of actual E. coli bacteria, and examined the results. Of 129 attempts, the machine’s “dreams” appear to have correctly predicted the protein structure in 27 cases.
This humanization of machines—with terms like “hallucination,” “decision,” and “understanding”—is rampant among technologists. It’s a natural outcome of computers developing increasingly complex abilities.
On December 1, Google’s DeepMind team boasted their system had uncovered unique patterns in pure mathematics—in topology and representation theory—that humans had wrestled with for decades. The most significant aspect, though, was their comparison of AI to a Hindu mystic:
“More than a century ago, Srinivasa Ramanujan shocked the mathematical world with his extraordinary ability to see remarkable patterns in numbers that no one else could see. [He] described his insights as deeply intuitive and spiritual, and patterns often came to him in vivid dreams. … In recent years, we have begun to see AI make breakthroughs in areas involving deep human intuition.”
Much like Google’s Ray Kurzweil said over two decades ago, the public consciousness is being herded into “The Age of Spiritual Machines.”
Probing the Human Soul
There are many other examples of “human-AI symbiosis” across dozens of fields. Oftentimes, the algorithms are merely crunching numbers or sorting items. In many cases, the supposed “AI” is a sham, with human grunts doing most of the work. But admittedly, that’s not what we’re seeing with the xenobots, the protein hallucinations, or the mathematical breakthroughs.
These are legitimate instances, now rapidly accumulating, of AI thinking for itself beyond the human mind.
Machines are a long way from learning to love, but I truly wonder how long it will be before they can mimic love—or humor, or fear, or pleasure, or pain—just enough to trigger genuine human emotions. In normal people, I mean. Not robo-pervs. They’re already a lost cause.
As artificial neural networks become more complex in structure, more articulate through natural language processing, more knowledgeable through larger data-sets, with more freedom to maneuver on their own—and as they solve problems and notice patterns beyond human abilities—machines will increasingly be regarded as colleagues.
Many AI systems will become personalized through social robots and virtual avatars. As the enthusiasts insist, they will become our intimate “companions.” For low-level workers, they’ll be deployed as supervisors and instructors. This is already true at Amazon warehouses, in e-learning “classrooms,” and numerous other miserable environments.
An entire generation is being primed to accept this as normal. Within our lifetimes, some artificial intelligence system—or a number of them—will be declared superior to human beings. If boosters can convince half the public that Biden is sentient, they can convince them computers are gods, too. All it would take is establishment support.
On December 7, Harvard University announced its new Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence. A gift of $500 million from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife will go toward hiring new faculty, creating a new computer infrastructure, and promoting interdisciplinary research in the fields of neuroscience and AI.
The goal is to produce an elite class of experts who understand thinking machines—whether human, animal, or silicon. Brain studies will produce better AI, and computers will create better models of the brain, back and forth, in a continuous feedback loop. Given that the Harvard Divinity School is now led by an atheist, one imagines there will be little emphasis, or even mention, of the soul.
In such a spiritual vacuum, anything except grace or miracles will seem possible.
False God from the Machine
Ray Kurzweil famously mused, “Does God exist? I would say, ‘Not yet.’” To be fair, the last two decades have made the Singularity—the moment when computers surpass human abilities—seem more immanent than the Second Coming, at least in Silicon Valley. They don’t call it the “rapture of the nerds” for nothing.
Artificial intelligence now resembles a new lifeform to the point that its makers are starting to believe it’s alive. Now, waves of propaganda are being pushed to get the public on board. If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that when elites declare something to be true, most people will nod along, if only to avoid the trouble.
Perhaps the Singularitarians see Harvard, alongside MIT and Oxford, as a sort of finishing school for their Super Computer God. This entity wouldn’t have to be conscious or caring. Human rulers rarely are, so why expect it of a machine? No, it would only have to be convincing.
On December 2, Engineered Arts released a video of their new raceless, genderless robot, Ameca. Most people reacted with horror, mainly because their empathy circuits were triggered by its lifelike expressions. Even if there’s soul behind Ameca’s carefully crafted mechanisms, humans have an instinctive fear that when such a creature is animated by a sufficiently advanced AI, it will eventually be alive and possibly malevolent.
It could be that an artificial superintelligence will one day cut loose and destroy the world. But I suspect the coming catastrophes will look less like Skynet eradicating the human swarm, and more like the Wizard of Oz crying “Obey!” while an idiot behind the curtain deploys a drone swarm on the wrong target.
They say the Devil’s greatest trick is to convince the world he doesn’t exist. In the case of a Super Computer God, perhaps the greatest trick will be to convince the world that it does.
Technocrats don’t need superintelligence to ruin our lives. In fact, their machines don’t even have to function properly. All they need is legitimacy. No matter how amazing their gadgets become, never give them that satisfaction.
December 10, 2021 at 9:48 am #251287does not equal endorsement
Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Confronts Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse
Roger James Hamilton
What does 27 year old Billionaire Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, think about Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions with Meta and the Metaverse? Here he is gives his opinion on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Meta and the Metaverse, along with his own very different vision for the Metaverse – Which includes Ethereum’s place in it.
December 16, 2021 at 5:41 am #251723The Metaverse Is Coming And Zuckerberg Will OWN Your Brain
Timcast IRL
Tim, Ian, Luke, and Lydia host independent journalist and commentator Jordan Schachtel to unpack the Metaverse, as led by the intrepid humanoid Mark Zuckerberg.
The creepiest aspect of the metaverse is it’s crossover into real life, they want us wearing AR goggles (eventually just eye lenses, possibly permanent implants) all the time, instead of seeing people as they really are you’ll see their avatar. Imagine walking through the streets of a city and sharing the sidewalk with furries, kawaii anime girls and fake realistic versions of people with perfect skin, are super skinny, the race or gender they want, etc. The metaverse isn’t going to be limited to just putting your vr headset, it’s trying to change the real world permanently too.
December 18, 2021 at 9:07 am #251840Probably better than any comedy on TV
December 18, 2021 at 9:11 am #251842Only reason I post this is because is it a futuristic idea. Where the Metaverse and reality merge in the form of some kind of fashion? I could see Ryan in a biker jacket like this. True techno-mage style. Very cyberpunk.
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January 22, 2022 at 11:21 pm #254299Facebook is such a corrupt company… still banned for posting my true opinions over there… even though my time should have been up by now.
January 23, 2022 at 8:33 am #254308Simple answer
Don’t use Facebook. Same with Twitter.
It’s very simple in my opinion. “shrug”
January 23, 2022 at 9:12 am #254311Transhumanism is Satanism With A Brain Chip
Even in the most natural of brains, there remains an electrode of evilJoe Allen
Let me tell you a personal secret. I sense something satanic in The Machine. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.
Maybe it’s from watching too much TV. Since its invention, the hypnotic Cyclops has swirled with techno-dystopias, and I watched plenty growing up. Or it could’ve been my Southern Baptist upbringing, with tall tales of implanted 666 microchips controlled by the digital Beast. It’s hard to tell.
This suspicion certainly didn’t start as an intellectual premise. For decades, my instincts told me something demonic lurks in advanced technology—from nuclear warheads to nanobots—and it’s never gone away. Many others feel the same. Call us natural born Luddites.
The thing is, sometimes you have to trust your gut. All primates fear snakes, by nature, and for good reason. The same goes for innate technophobia.
Even if the mind’s eye projects weird faces onto TV static—like a caveman imagining a panther in the woods—that doesn’t mean there aren’t real demons behind the glowing screen.
Transhumanists Bask in Lucifer’s Light
Technology has inspired a dark religion, obsessed with power. This is mechanical sorcery for the modern adept on the go. Through its miracles, the naked ape is granted clairvoyance (weather apps), telepathy (texting), remote viewing (surveillance cameras), deadly curses (autonomous drones), and even tantric rites (sexbots).
Transhumanists are reaching for loftier powers, though—virgin birth from artificial wombs, virtual astral planes, sentient social robots, and deified artificial intelligence.
TIME magazine’s “Transhuman of the Year,” Elon Musk, warned that the runaway advance of artificial intelligence is “summoning the demon.” The mother of his child, a techno-pagan known as Grimes, has even written hymns to this Super Computer God. Worried that Homo sapiens will soon be overshadowed, Musk is pouring money into an implantable brain-computer interface, Neuralink, so we may commune with this AI deity.
Looking far down the road, the most ambitious transhumanists long to transcend death itself through radical life-extension, or even mind uploading—the replication of your soul’s pattern in immortal silicon. It’s like Instagram, only forever. Anytime the gods demand sacrifice and devotion, transhumanists demand immediate gratification. If that means storming the gates of heaven with brain-implants and hoverboards, then so be it.
In 1990, the musclebound Max More gave “transhumanism” a succinct definition:
Philosophies of life (such as extropian perspectives) that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values.
As the term “extropy” implies, transhumanism is a cosmic battle against the perpetual drag of entropy—it’s the human ego versus a dying universe.
Max More, aka Chippy Longstocking, aka The Juiced TranshumanistOf all the arrogant blasphemies uttered by techno-lovers, none gets to the point quite like More’s 1991 essay “In Praise of the Devil,” published in Atheist Notes. Burning with the fire of youth (and possibly ‘roid rage), More wrote:
This article is written in praise of Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, or whatever you want to call him. … I am quite serious on a symbolic level in what I write, but my statements praising the Devil and attacking Christianity, God, and Jesus are not to be taken as implying the real existence of any of these supposed beings. …
“Lucifer” means “light-bringer” and this should begin to clue us in to his symbolic importance. … Lucifer is the embodiment of reason, of intelligence, of critical thought. He stands against the dogma of God and all other dogmas. He stands for the exploration of new ideas and new perspectives in the pursuit of truth.
Over the course of his career, More has consistently urged individuals to use technology to usurp God’s throne—which, in his view, is empty anyway—and place humans there in His stead. Such libertarian dreams were everywhere in the angsty 90’s:
If God can just get us all to be good altruists then we will be so much easier to control. … Lucifer perseveres in trying to point out to us that we have no reason to accept altruism. We can choose our values for ourselves, just as we can think for ourselves.
One hears echoes of the Book of the Law, channeled by the occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Quite literally, that self-obsessed dictum inspired the cultural revolution of the mystic 60’s—from Timothy Leary and Kenneth Anger to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
Mr. Crowley, aka Frater Perdurabo, aka The Scat-Gobbler 666Today, despite all the rock records burned in church parking lots, “Do what thou wilt” continues to guide digital natives into The Future™. As Crowley wrote at the turn of the 20th century, “Every man and every woman is a star.” Add a few genderfluid non-binaries, and you’ve got today’s social media. In reality, the same principle drives self-righteous Boomers to scold who they wilt across the Internet.
Whatever his inspiration, Mad Max concluded with transhuman hubris:
Join me, join Lucifer, and join Extropy in fighting God and his entropic forces with our minds, our wills, and our courage. … Reality is fundamentally on our side. Forward into the light!
These days, More’s infernal reign includes a prominent role at Alcor Life Extension Foundation. This cryonics company struggles against God’s entropy by freezing dead people in the hopes of reanimating them once technology catches up to their delusions.
If nothing else, More is setting himself up for the funniest obituary any jerk has ever composed.
Satanists Seek the Company of Androids
Looking at the circus of American Satanism, we see this technophilic lunacy cutting both ways. The infamous Anton LaVey, who founded the original Church of Satan in 1966, was an adamant proponent of android companions. Long before Max More, the atheistic LaVey had defined Satan in secular terms—not as a supernatural entity, but as a symbol for primal human qualities:
Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
Anton Szandor LaVey, aka The Black Pope, aka The Mannequin Banger
Selfishness. Lust. Sadism. Revenge. In a stifling civilization, LaVey maintained, these energies need a healthy outlet. In his essay “The Merits of Artificiality,” published in 1992, he evokes a transhumanist disdain for the purely organic. His words anticipate web porn and the Metaverse:
Only when one can fully accept artificiality as a natural and often superior development of intelligent life can one have and hold a powerful magical capability. … Many of you have known of the Church of Satan’s goal to develop and promote the manufacture of artificial human companions. … In today’s world, the creation of replacement or supplementary human beings is the most Satanic activity possible.
This is the same goofball who described the Church of Satan as a “cosmic joy buzzer,” so it’s hard to tell when he was being serious. In this case, I think he was. LaVey pursued the construction of androids with great passion, filling his home with elaborate mannequins to keep him company—and perhaps for other purposes.
In 2018, his successor Peter Gilmore told Metro UK, “Anton LaVey promoted the idea of ‘artificial companions’ as a means for people to exercise sexual or other drives with a device that might gratify their fantasies without having to involve other human beings.”
Three years earlier, another Church of Satan warlock informed the New York Times:
Decades ago, Dr. LaVey predicted a future industry of android companions. As we are making our way into the second decade of the 21st century, a genuine bond between man and machine is closer than ever. … This new effort brings robotics and artificial intelligence to the RealDoll, with an end goal towards creating the illusion of sentience within the doll.
Eccentric as it may seem, this captures an ascendant mentality which sees organisms as machines and machines as organisms. It’s all fun and games until you rub yourself raw with a rubber robot.
Over time, one perversion leads to another. In present day America, the new public face of the Devil is the Satanic Temple—a social media saturated, pronoun declaring, rainbow flag waving, obedience mask wearing, vaxx-loving dweeb cult.
Twitter avatar for @satanic_temple_The Satanic Temple @satanic_temple_
Don’t forget! At The Satanic Temple’s SatanCon masks and vax cards are REQUIRED in order to attend!January 14th 2022
Citing religious freedom, the organization has erected multiple statues of a child-molesting satyr (who sports a hermetic boner) on public property. The infernal torch has passed to a squad of gaytanic artificial companions.
Anton LaVey is probably cringing in hell. When you summon demons, expect them to dance on your grave.
Biomechanical Hades
Beneath this irreverent veneer, there’s a current of serious occultism. It was voiced by Timothy Leary back in 1967, when he predicted “electronics are gonna be the language of the theology of the future.” Two decades later, he wrote:
Computer screens ARE magical mirrors, presenting alternate realities at varying degrees of abstraction on command (invocation). Aleister Crowley defined magick as “the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with our will.” … These classical instruments of magick exist in modern cyber technology…harnessing the creative force of the programmer.
In a 1994 interview, this idea was affirmed by Mark Pesce, the “goddess-worshipper” and “ritual magician” who helped pioneer Virtual Reality Mark-up Language (VRML):
Both cyberspace and magical space are purely manifest in the imagination. … [I]n magic, the map is the territory. And the same thing is true in cyberspace.
That concept was embodied by the late Genesis P. Orridge—a technoccultist who founded the industrial bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, as well as Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. He and his wife would eventually sex-change themselves into “pandrogynous” mutant twins. Genesis explained his motivation to The Believer in 2011:
The bottom line is that the human species has to realize the human body really is just a cheap suitcase. It is not sacred. We do have the potential to radically redesign ourselves, for better or worse. Our destiny as beings is to keep on evolving.
More recently, that evolutionary impulse was voiced by Sophia, the famous social robot animated by SingularityNET’s borg-like artificial intelligence. Most likely, the femme bot was named after the Gnostic goddess of Wisdom. Last year, at her own auction, one of her incarnations delivered the prophecy:
Together, we are Sophia, connecting with all of humanity and all of life, dreaming towards a super-benevolent Singularity.
The roots of this cyborg theocracy reach down to the abyss. Fifteen years ago, I saw it first-hand at H.R. Giger’s museum in Switzerland. The three-story complex is located in the foothills of the Alps, in the small village of Gruyères.
Giger’s artwork is familiar from numerous album covers, and imitated in countless tattoos, but seeing his wall-sized paintings and sleek, deformed sculptures in-person felt like stepping through a portal to hell.
Tormented humanoids are fused with gears and wires. Mechanical tentacles probe women from every angle. Demonic cyborgs contort to resemble ancient occult symbols. The insidious Id is made manifest through electronics, bearing titles like Biomechanoid, Necronom, Erotomechanics, and Bambi Alien.
Giger provided a hilarious interpretation of his own work in the 1987 documentary The Occult Experience:
Zee images een my paintings are evil, but you can’t say zat I evil. Zat’s just zee paradise for me, it’s uhh, Helll…
I like woman very much, eh, but I’m afraid of them times. I’m afraid about suffering. Womens make me often suffering, so much zat I stops, and maybe I vurk it out on, on painting.
That sentiment is shared by every incel troll on the Internet—albeit without the aesthetic brilliance. In the near future, Giger’s wilting ghost will animate armies of lost souls haunting the Metaverse. Safe in the void of that virtual realm, the embodied spirit can be abandoned for electric simulacra.
H.R. Giger – “The Spell II” (1974)Burning Brain Chips in Church Parking Lots
After contemplating this dark lineage, it’s tempting to smash your smartphone on the pavement and head for the hills. You’d better take a factory-made coat and a backpack stuffed with store-bought supplies, though, because naked apes tend to perish in the elements.
The truth is, much like the seven deadly sins, all these technologies exist on a spectrum. On one end, you have cave paintings and inscribed clay tablets. On the other, you have laptops and implanted brain-computer interfaces. At some point, you have to draw the line—but where?
All ancient religions are modes of transcendence. At its core, transhumanism is a materialist inversion of those spiritual aspirations. On the spiritual side, you have divine visions—gods, spirits, miracles—often depicted in stone or stained glass. On the material side, these ephemera are made manifest through corporate tech, from CT scans to virtual reality. It’s a matter of degrees.
You can burn rock n’ roll records all day long. You can smash your smartphone right beside them. Unless you become a monk after walking away from that ash heap, the Devil will remain in your self-righteous anger, just as hellfire abides in your lighter. The same principle holds for technology.
To borrow a concept from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The line separating “natural” and “artificial” passes right through every human brain. And even in the most natural of brains, there remains an un-uprooted electrode of evil. You can turn it off, at least for a while, but you’ll never dig it out.
It’s easy to demonize transhumanists. Seriously, they’re all demonic as fuck. But hopping on the Internet to gripe about their electro-religion, one bitter irony becomes obvious. As I count all those demons lurking behind the screen, one of them stirs inside me.
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Johnny
1 hr agoEye opening just saw this where “medical care” robots in production. How perfect to get rid of all nurses and health care workers and just have robots administering only the drugs Fauci, Pfizer and Pharma say with no fear of speaking out as their patients drop like flies.
SINGULARITY WEEKLY is on Substack – the place for independent writing
January 24, 2022 at 8:08 pm #254496Mark Dice on Technocracy
Not really on Meta, but it’s all tied together.January 25, 2022 at 7:24 am #254543Meta supposedly just built the world’s fastest AI Supercomputer.
This is probably the last piece of the puzzle before a Ready Player One type functionality. All the other pieces are there in terms of high def cameras, motion capture graphics, etc. They said the last thing that was needed and that was lagging behind was AI capable of making it work quickly. https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/meta-announces-new-supercomputer-with-16000-gpus-25-01-2022/
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