I've added a list of easily accessible links to futurologists (all of whom I am strongly critical of) and their critics (some of whom I am critical of as well), since this is a topic that has always definitely been part of the mission of Amor Mundi, but which I think it is fair to say is the primary reason folks come here.
Athena Andreadis All around awesome.
Boing Boing
Jamais Cascio As nuanced as futurology gets, not good enough.
Peter Diamandis An abundance... of hype.
Edge If you think scientism is either new or scientific, this is a place for you.
ETC Group
Fight Aging! Techno-Immortalist sect of the Robot Cult.
Foresight Institute Nano-cornucopiast sect of the Robot Cult
Future of Humanity Institute What next, Oxford? Scientologists? Amway products?
FuturePundit
Futurismic
Futurisms Anti-futurological critique in a different key than mine.
Gizmodo Gizmo-fetishization as guilty pleasure.
h+ Pop Robot Cult mag.
IEET Stealth Robot Cult outfit, many Very Serious White Guys of The Future.
io9 "We Come From the Future" (They don't.)
Richard Jones Nano-scale without Nano-Santa.
Alex Knapp Nearly as critical, but much nicer than me.
Ray Kurzweil One of the highest profile Robot Cult hucksters.
Less Wrong So wrong.
Long Bets Futurologists keep confusing making bets with having thoughts.
Blog of the Long Now Neoliberal boutique futurology.
Singularity Hub Singularitarian sect of the Robot Cult.
Singularity University Not a University.
Wesley Smith Bio-Con Anti-transhumanoid.
Bruce Sterling Futurity's Twain.
Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Multi-century lifespans brought to you by software guys, stop making SENS!
Charlie Stross
TED Vapid corporatists selling things pretending to be teaching things.
Terasem New Age Cyberangelic Robot Cultism.
Turing Church Robot Cultism at Its Cultiest.
World Future Society Blogs Approach with suspicion, they publish me.
Suggestions welcome.
http://www.acceler8or.com/
ReplyDeleteappears to have been recently abandoned, the only poster left is one "Valkyrie Ice" an exceedingly creepy 7 foot tall strip club bouncer (looks like John Lithgow in 'Garp') : who fancies himself : 1. "female", 2, a "succubus" and a 3. a "scientist"... he also makes awful pornographic drawings featuring little children and animals ; he is also a huge 2nd life clown with comically morbid gigantomastic and bat wings. Also, noted childrens' party clown R.U. Sirius aka Kenny Boy Goffman has some role with this ugly ass website.
Your description makes it sounds like something worth linking to. Took a looksee, alas, no.
ReplyDeleteyeah very Mondo 35,000 BC....
ReplyDeleteRegarding Less Wrong: I will confess that I have found his Harry Potter fanfic to be pretty enormously enjoyable, as much as I've had to cringe at various bits of transhumanist nonsense working its way into it. On the other hand, my girlfriend doesn't have as much of an issue with it because she's not as familiar with the guy behind the story, and it is reasonably easy to excuse as the excesses of an eight year old protagonist rather than reflecting the actual worldview of the author.
ReplyDeleteWhich rather says something about the whole enterprise.
check out Yudkowsky's OKcupid page sometime, you will howl with laughter at the dogged, tenacious perversity and Nerdcore love woo....
ReplyDeleteof course the little man wants a Harem... Robert Heinlein, What Have Thou Wrought!!!!!!
http://www.okcupid.com/profile/EYudkowsky
What, no Michael Anissimov/Accelerating Future ?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/
Or:
Robin Hanson/Overcoming Bias
http://www.overcomingbias.com/
John Smart/Acceleration Watch
http://www.accelerationwatch.com/
Singularity Institute
http://singularity.org/blog/
Next Big Future
http://nextbigfuture.com/
Extropy-chat mailing list archives
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/
SL4 mailing list archives
http://www.sl4.org/archive/
AGI mailing list archives
http://www.mail-archive.com/agi@v2.listbox.com/maillist.html
not to mention
http://yudkowsky.net/
There were a few likely sites that I found cobwebs on and decided to skip for that reason.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really seeing the yuks in Yudkowski's okcupid profile. Poly, kinky, nerd, so what? The silly turns of phrase and other quirks are perhaps regrettable, but nothing you don't see on the profiles of hundreds of other nerds on okcupid. He's not even an obnoxious kind of poly, there's no whiff (from this anyway) of more-evolvedism or one-penis-policy or any of the common things like that.
ReplyDeleteare you sure you're on the right blog if you think being poly and kinky in itself is good for ridicule?
Hey Dale, why do you hate TED?
ReplyDeletePerhaps you lack a sense of humor. I found it wildly funny that the self proclaimed "most intelligent man currently alive" still has to dance about with no pants, his bare ass on display on a wretched online dating site. And his silly "fetishes"... teh FUNNIE it burns! The "most interesting man in the world" has nothing better to do than write Harry Potter fanfic and write greasy online dating profiles. Capiche?
ReplyDeleteYudkowsky also claims to be skilled in "orgasm denial", but any woman will tell you that 95% of all males are experts in that field...
ReplyDeleteIS IS FUNNY YET?
> [T]here's no whiff (from this anyway) of more-evolvedism
ReplyDelete> or one-penis-policy or any of the common things like that.
Hadn't ever come across that term before
( http://www.polyamorousmisanthrope.com/2010/06/08/the-one-penis-policy/ )
I would guess, from that example, that it applies to a "polyamorous" relationship
in which as many females as are willing are welcome to enter the hot tub
(and do whatever they like with each other), but strictly
one guy, ya know? ;-> (I have reason to suspect in fact that it
may well apply to the "polyamorists" in question, though there's no
specific mention of it in the profile.)
It is true that there's nothing particularly alarming in
that profile, despite the fact that the gentleman in question has made public
remarks in the past, and in other venues, of a more blatantly narcissistic tenor.
For example, he was once avowedly asexual, but allowed
that if Britney Spears ever begged him for his favors,
he might reconsider. He also used to refer (publicly) to
his girlfriend as his "consort". All of this with a straight
face.
Nevertheless, they do seem still to be together
(if the profile is current), so congratulations to them both.
I certainly don't begrudge either of them whatever human warmth
or pleasure they may have stumbled across.
I would also tend to feel uncomfortable making an issue out
of anybody's sexual or romantic proclivities, though the person in question
has made some eye-rolling public statements about them himself,
among so many other eye-rolling public statements.
Hey Dale, why do you hate TED?
ReplyDeleteTED Squawk
Ted Talk =
"Thousands of Robots Talking To Each Other"
A quick funny way to start answering that question.
I have no problem with kink or fandoms at all. I do think sex is usually pretty funny in many of its expressions, my own first of all, but I usually don't see any reason to be unkind about it. I tend to make fun of the pretensions of the masterful or those who aspire to mastery. Guru-wannabes and self-described sooper-geniuses seem patently ridiculous in whatever forum their megalomania manifests itself, and patriarchal preening is always icky, but I will admit I haven't followed those particular links because my interest in the sex lives of singularitarians is nil.
ReplyDeleteAll of this with a straight
ReplyDeleteface.
So. Very. Straight.
Dale Carrico, who was kicked from the IEET for "irresolvable personality differences", propagates his incomprehensible "jilted lover" hate speech, to the entertainment/annoyance of the larger technoprogressive community.
ReplyDelete"Who is Dale Carrico? Oh some bipolar nut in SF. Ignore him"
Brave Anonymous! I'm assuming the quoted material refers to the voices in your head?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my account of the brief IEET relationship is here for any who care to read it. Robot Cultists, smear away!
ReplyDelete