Dick Pelletier (who calls himself a "Positive Futurist," thereby making the very characteristically American error of confusing vacuity with positivity) is one of the Very Serious White Guys of the Future at the stealth Robot Cult outfit IEET, the Institute for Ethics (where the ethics are rarely actually discussed) and Emerging Technologies (where the technologies are rarely actually emerging). He has written a new piece (well, as "new" as a thing that says the same thing facile futurologists say over and over and over again without ever being the least bit more true can be said to be "new"): Live 20 More Years and You May Never Die. Twenty years -- of course! (From my Futurological Brickbats: "LXIX. I Predict That In Twenty Years Futurological Predictions Will Still Inevitably Begin 'I Predict That In Twenty Years.'")
There's no reason to read the thing for substance -- there is no there there -- but I will say it is doubly good for shits and giggles. First, as Jim [who is not "JimF" another longtime friend of this blog although I clumsily made that misattribution earlier --d] mentioned in drawing my attention to the piece in the first place, Pelletier's little futurological number is practically a straight up reproduction, element for element, of the sort of piece I parody in my How to Write Your Transhumanist Article (A Guide for More Profitable Prophesying) lampoon. This lead Jim more or less to throw up his hands and declare the Robot Cultists essentially unparodiable, which may indeed be true, as certainly other idiotic ideological formations like Movement Republicanism likewise show signs of being nearly unparodiable.
But the second reason the piece is worthy of a wry looksee is because of an absolutely hilarious exchange in the comments section to the piece. A True Believing Robot Cultist enthuses ecstatically: "In just 20 years we will be immortals, have fusion energy and AI, if we have the courage to stand up to the deathists, the environmentalists, and the cognitively impaired. Onward Transhumanist soldiers!" to which the author then responds: "Well said!" [I have been informed that the original comment was actually a parody by a skeptic that the True Believing author failed to grasp as such and simply endorsed as his literal position -- which is even better than I thought or hoped. --d]
Skepticism is here identified with cognitive impairment you will notice -- a state of affairs that is, as Jim says, not exactly a fertile ground for functional satire (let alone any kind of actually enlightening discourse more generally). I mean, really what can one say to such people? Presumably the only thing keeping techno-immortality and techno-sooperabundance from spontaneously emerging as these Robot Cultists see it is people like me who are "deathists" for noticing humans are actually mortal and "reactionaries" for noticing that stakeholder politics actually exists.
These Robot Cultists seem to think they are some kind of "soldiers" forming an army guiding us all to the utopian future just because they never tire of clapping louder. You know, science!
In a world with any standards these people would be scrubbing urinals or processing extruded fast-food meat substitute for a living.
There's no reason to read the thing for substance -- there is no there there -- but I will say it is doubly good for shits and giggles. First, as Jim [who is not "JimF" another longtime friend of this blog although I clumsily made that misattribution earlier --d] mentioned in drawing my attention to the piece in the first place, Pelletier's little futurological number is practically a straight up reproduction, element for element, of the sort of piece I parody in my How to Write Your Transhumanist Article (A Guide for More Profitable Prophesying) lampoon. This lead Jim more or less to throw up his hands and declare the Robot Cultists essentially unparodiable, which may indeed be true, as certainly other idiotic ideological formations like Movement Republicanism likewise show signs of being nearly unparodiable.
But the second reason the piece is worthy of a wry looksee is because of an absolutely hilarious exchange in the comments section to the piece. A True Believing Robot Cultist enthuses ecstatically: "In just 20 years we will be immortals, have fusion energy and AI, if we have the courage to stand up to the deathists, the environmentalists, and the cognitively impaired. Onward Transhumanist soldiers!" to which the author then responds: "Well said!" [I have been informed that the original comment was actually a parody by a skeptic that the True Believing author failed to grasp as such and simply endorsed as his literal position -- which is even better than I thought or hoped. --d]
Skepticism is here identified with cognitive impairment you will notice -- a state of affairs that is, as Jim says, not exactly a fertile ground for functional satire (let alone any kind of actually enlightening discourse more generally). I mean, really what can one say to such people? Presumably the only thing keeping techno-immortality and techno-sooperabundance from spontaneously emerging as these Robot Cultists see it is people like me who are "deathists" for noticing humans are actually mortal and "reactionaries" for noticing that stakeholder politics actually exists.
These Robot Cultists seem to think they are some kind of "soldiers" forming an army guiding us all to the utopian future just because they never tire of clapping louder. You know, science!
In a world with any standards these people would be scrubbing urinals or processing extruded fast-food meat substitute for a living.
> . . .as JimF mentioned in drawing my attention to the piece in the first place. . .
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't me! (My God, what am I going to do? There's another Jim.)
There Is Another System!
Has there been a transporter accident recently? Sorry for the mis-attribution, I wasn't reading carefully enough obviously -- sorry to both of you!
ReplyDelete>But the second reason the piece is worthy of a wry looksee is because of an absolutely hilarious exchange in the comments section to the piece. A True Believing Robot Cultist enthuses ecstatically: "In just 20 years we will be immortals, have fusion energy and AI, if we have the courage to stand up to the deathists, the environmentalists, and the cognitively impaired. Onward Transhumanist soldiers!" to which the author then responds: "Well said!"
ReplyDeleteI thought that was jimf parodying transhumanists (Jim in the name field and the use of the term 'deathist').
No such luck.
Post has been fixed. Also, other Jim: welcome!
ReplyDeleteIt now seems Jim Moore really did get a parody through and my confusion of Jims undermined my grasp of his splendid subversion. Of course, the author's reaction still makes the point I was highlighting (as was Jim). I also realize I auto-corrected the spelling -- the response wasn't "Well said!" but the even better "Wel said!" I wonder if the whole exchange is gonna be unpersoned now?
ReplyDeleteSee it is impossible to do parody on the internet.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I tried.
I used fusion energy and AI both of which have been 20 years away for the last 50 years.
Courage to stand up to deathists, environmentalists, and the cognitively impaired?
Yes Deathists, that secrete cult of Kali that has been thwarting attempts at immortality sense Gilgamesh. Environmentalist with their ideas of limits (environmentalists totally hate fusion power by the way??!!??!!) are the enemy of progress. And only the cognitively impaired (the stupid) would dare notice that being intelligent is really hard.
Onward Transhumanist soldiers! Come on, I thought I had jumped the shark, with that remark.
If it hadn't been for my Jim confusion I would have recognized it for the kind of Yes Men intervention it was. At least I think I would have -- to be honest, sad to say, a stroll down my archives would reveal your parody a fairly literal impersonation of some of my actually outraged critics, fusion, deathism and all. What sensible people see as jumping the shark transhumanoids see as animal uplift and techno-transcension.
ReplyDelete> "In just 20 years we will be immortals, have fusion energy and AI,
ReplyDelete> if we have the courage to stand up to the deathists, the environmentalists,
> and the cognitively impaired. . ."
And the courage to stand up to the Democrats and the Obama-lovers.
What? You thought the Great Leap Forward of Science and Technology
was apolitical? Well, it is. It's just that some political views
are -- cognitively impaired. ;->
Mitt Rmoney and the Koch brothers will help you to live forever!
Bring on the Republican time machine! (And the women in cat-suits.) Reboot the (paleo)future!
ReplyDeletehttp://thelifeofmanquamanonearth.blogspot.com/
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The situation must suck for the 20th Century's science fiction writers
who haven't died yet, like the sexagenarians and septuagenarians
Greg Bear, David Brin, Vernor Vinge, Gregory Benford, Ben Bova,
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who look around now and realize
that they had based their careers decades ago on the premise that
they lived at the beginning of a technologically progressive
"space age," only to see in 2012 that the era they had assumed in
their visions of "the future," namely, right about now, ended a
generation ago and turned their stories into historical curiosities
instead of plausible portrayals of life in our time and in the coming
decades. . .
[W]e feel nostalgia for the paleofuture genre because it often shows
purposeful, competent men who accomplish great things through their
own efforts, without much interference from the statism, bureaucracy
and political correctness which have poisoned so much of our lives
in recent decades. We respond to the values we see expressed in
these stories, in other words, and not just to the superscience
hocus-pocus, the depictions of conflict or the fact that these
stories often feature as supporting characters well endowed and
sexually available women in catsuits.
Though, of course, I see nothing wrong with having well endowed, sexually
available women in catsuits as companions. A man has to have his dreams,
after all. : )
In general I agree with Peter Thiel's sentiment that we would probably
have a better future than we can foresee now by going back to the
science fiction published circa 1960, then using that as a template
for rebooting life in the real 21st Century. . .