Last edited Sat Nov 1, 2025, 09:33 PM - Edit history (1)
And I was rewatching it yesterday. It is truly prophetic. Luke Wilson’s character is one of the very few relatable characters I have ever seen on screen. Especially because of how completely mediocre he is.
That’s how I sometimes feel (about our pseudo elites especially). I am not that bright and even I can see how daft this is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environment]
Human impact on the environment (or anthropogenic environmental impact) refers to changes to biophysical environments[1] and to ecosystems, biodiversity, and natural resources[2] caused directly or indirectly by humans. Modifying the environment to fit the needs of society (as in the built environment) is causing severe effects[3][4] including global warming,[1][5][6] environmental degradation[1] (such as ocean acidification[1][7]), mass extinction and biodiversity loss,[8][9][10][11] ecological crisis, and ecological collapse. Some human activities that cause damage (either directly or indirectly) to the environment on a global scale include population growth,[12][13][14] neoliberal economic policies[15][16][17] and rapid economic growth,[18] overconsumption, overexploitation, pollution, and deforestation.[19] Some of the problems, including global warming and biodiversity loss, have been proposed as representing catastrophic risks to the survival of the human species.[20][21]
This lot in particular (I keep posting it because it is so worth a read):
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-mad-religion-of-technological-salvation/]
Adam Becker: I’ve been following these sorts of subcultures — longtermists, general techno-optimism, Singularity stuff — for a very long time. I’m a science fiction junkie and first encountered a lot of these ideas in science fiction in high school or earlier. I think I first heard of Ray Kurzweil in college. And I thought, oh, yeah, these ideas are bad, but they don’t seem to be getting a lot of traction. And then the funniest thing happened: tech billionaires took this stuff seriously and started giving these people a lot of money. I moved out to the Bay Area about 13 years ago, and this is ground zero. I realized how deep in the culture this stuff is, these things like the singularity and AI hype, the idea that technology is going to solve every single problem. I was amazed at the uncritical and ubiquitous acceptance of these ideas out here. What people don’t seem to realize is these communities are becoming bigger and more influential. So even though their ideas are sort of prima facie ridiculous, we have to engage with them because they are gaining more power. Fundamentally, that’s where the impulse for the book came from.
AB: I think science is great, and I think it is true that science has brought about really amazing things. It’s also brought about horrors. It gave us vaccines, but it also gave us thermonuclear weapons. What scientific truths we discover, that’s not really up to us. What technology we build off of the scientific advances that we’ve made, that is up to us. There is no inevitable future of technology. It can enable us to do things that we previously couldn’t, but which things it enables are a combination of the constraints placed on us by nature and human choice. The narrative that technology will inevitably lead us to a utopia or inevitably lead us to apocalypse — these are just stories that we tell.
The specific version of this ideology of technological salvation that the tech oligarchs and their kept intellectuals and the subcultures that they fund is ultimately something that springs from a mix of early-to-mid-20th century science fiction and various Christian apocalyptic movements. Because there’s a fairly long history in Christian apocalyptic movements of the idea that technology will bring about the second coming that you find in Christian apocalyptic writing.
AB: Yeah, they are. They have completely misunderstood how the world works, how science works, how people work. I know I keep hammering away at Andreesen, because he’s my least favorite person in the entire book. He says in his manifesto that he is the keeper of the true scientific method, contrasting himself with academic scientists. The real scientific method is not to have a statement of beliefs about what the world is and how it works, or what the inevitable future of technology is. The real scientific method is to be curious and questioning about the world and be open to the possibility that you’re wrong — in fact, expecting that you’re wrong. And that’s not something that I think that these people are capable of.
I love science. I think it is a hard and punishing task mistress, because that’s reality. Science is not a wish fulfilment fantasy. If you just use it collectively for baubles and weapons with some sort of bogus spirituality as your only philosophical insight it doesn’t work out in the long run.
These guys are idiots and no one calls them out on that. It is uncritically repeated ad nauseum that these morons are geniuses because they game the system.
This is a childlike take on science that even the most mediocre scientist can see through.
But as for the few true elites, I am disappointed in them increasingly. They are no help at all. Why can’t they ever check these morons* (especially when the rest of us hurt this much)?
At this rate it will always be permacrisis.
*: ie point out that they are morons. Trickle down infonomics is what the rest of us have to suck up. The mediocre elite are not bothered anymore than the pseudoelite. Just crass sellouts…
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