[FRIAM] Alien Crash Site, Complexity, Future Fossils and Jim Rutt Podcasts

[glen]

My jury is still out. But this is similar to my evaluation of the Consilience Project, in particular this concept of "human sovereignty":

https://consilienceproject.org/the-digest-issue-9/
https://consilienceproject.org/the-digest-issue-9/
https://highexistence.com/jordan-greenhall-humanity-global-collapse-survive/

And I can't put my finger on precisely what's unsettling about it. It is similar to Rogan's dissonance, where with so much Rogan "content", you can easily cherry pick both good and bad stuff. But at least with Rogan, in spite of frequent bouts of arrogance, he's really just some dude yapping with people. Stein, Hall, Shmachtenberger, et al [⥀] have something akin to the fevered gaze of zealotry. I get this feeling from all the Eastern mystic-friendly people (present company excluded of course, Dave & Kim). What started my worry was Shmachtenberger's (apparent) alma mater: https://www.miu.edu/.

But backing out of my Pyrrhonian tendencies, my real worry is their idealism, seemingly fueled by eschatological thinking. Putting so much emphasis on concepts like "human sovereignty" seems anthropocentric and a bit arrogant to me. It's directly in the transhumanist tradition, I guess, but more utopian and less Blade Runner/Neuromancer. The stylistic difference coheres a little bit when comparing their feverish narrative(s) with posts by Robin Hanson or Eliezer Yudkowski.

I don't know. I'd appreciate any opinions offered here.


[⥀] Rutt is of a different category. His affinity for anti-Woke rhetoric, constant F-bombs, and Weinstein-style alt-right ideas makes me worry there's also an affinity with the right's obsession with the anti-vaxx "bodily sovereignty" and maybe even the whackadoodle "sovereign citizens" thing. Both Rutt and Weinstein are listed as advisors: https://consilienceproject.org/team/ But I'm obviously OK with cafeteria style idea farming. Even a broken clock's right twice per day, right? [[⥁]]


[[⥁]] Of course NOT! Clocks are mechanisms, maybe even the canonical mechanism. And, as a mechanism, a stopped clock cannot be a clock at all. So "stopped clock" is self-contradictory ... from which, classicaly, we can derive any theorem at all. So stopped clocks are either always right or never right, which means they can't be right 2 times per day. Pffft.

On 2/16/22 10:32, Steve Smith wrote:
> 
> I kinda gave up on Rutt...  he's not exactly Joe Rogan, but there was something in his PlanB stuff that left me feeling like he was snookering me (all of us), even if he himself didn't know it? Maybe reading too much Rebecca Solnitt has made me hypersensitive to (other's not my own) mansplaining.
> 

-- 
glen
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.