[ExI] [Extropolis] SciAm & Charlie Stross: BS

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Dec 25, 2023 at 2:51 AM Charlie Stross <charlie.stross at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 24 Dec 2023 at 23:20, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> That was a very odd article by Charlie Stross.  The implication is
>> that the worlds envisioned by SF authors are bad, but there is not a
>> hint of what might be better.
>
> It's a massively cut down (by about 75%) version of this:
>
> https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html
>
That's no better, though it does give a bit of what you think we
should be doing rather than working in the direction of a science
fiction future.  I have a bunch of nitpicks, for example, I don't
think Eliezer Yudkowski thinks of himself as a philosopher and there
is nothing on his Wikipedia page leading in that direction.

I think we have been given an unexpected peek at our future;  All we
can see at Tabby's star is a shadow 400 times the area of the earth as
it crosses the star.  It is sopping up 1.4 million times the total
energy the human race uses and is much cooler than it should be for
that much energy.  What else could it be but a data center for
trillions of uploaded aliens, like the Accelerando explorers ran into
at the router?

The whole prospect makes me queasy but if that is the way we are
headed, I have to deal with it.

Keith

>
> — Charlie